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ketamine / Psilocybin
by Vmaxocalz Sat 23 Jan 2021, 10:18 am
Canadian veteran hoping to make use of psilocybin to treat mental illness
BY TOM ROSS
Posted Jan 22, 2021
TORONTO (660 NEWS) — As our understanding of mental illness continues to evolve along with knowledge concerning recreational drugs, new treatments are starting to emerge.
Magic mushrooms are emerging as one of the possible solutions, offering alternative treatment that does not involve addictive drugs. Specifically, the active psychoactive ingredient contained within the fungus, psilocybin, is being studied as a way to treat conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
In Ontario, a clinic is helping a Canada Forces veteran obtain an exemption from Health Canada to use psilocybin in a therapeutic setting under observation from doctors.
Master Corporal Scott Atkinson served in Yugoslavia and Afghanistan, and upon leaving the service after 25 years, he experienced several issues.
“I was in the Invictus Games in 2017 in Toronto, and only six weeks before that I was in rehab. I was drinking, I was using a lot of painkillers,” he said. “I tried to figure everything out with alcohol, I was lying to all the doctors.”
After Atkinson left the military in 2018, he started using cannabis and that helped open his perception towards using psychoactive substances to treat his condition. This led him towards trying to microdose with magic mushrooms. Microdosing involves consuming only small amounts of the substance, limiting the chance of having an overwhelming experience while also still getting benefits out of it.
Atkinson said he started to notice an immediate change in his mood.
“I found how my days changed. I actually was excited to get up in the morning, my view of the world changed.
“It opens your mind, for lack of a better term. You let go of the ego.”
As a result of this, Atkinson was able to stop using drugs and almost never touches alcohol either.
“I don’t need it, I’m happy. I used to think it was needed to be happier.”
Afterwards, Atkinson was connected to Field Trip Health Ltd. in Toronto, a clinic that explores the use of psychoactive substances in treating mental illness. They already use ketamine for some treatments, but psilocybin still requires an exemption from Health Canada when used in a clinical setting.
Co-founder and Executive Director Ronan Levy said there are issues with traditional forms of treatment for conditions such as PTSD — including the prescription of anti-depressants or painkillers — and there’s less risk when using something like psilocybin, even if it is scheduled as an illegal substance.
“These are orders of magnitude more effective than current treatment options, and despite what we may have learned in high school, psychedelic molecules are by and large safe, they’re non-addictive, it’s extremely hard to overdose,” said Levy.
Health Canada does offer what is known as a Section 56 exemption under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act in some scenarios, including for people in palliative care. But there have been no cases for a situation like Atkinson’s.
In fact, if they do get approval, Atkinson would be the first veteran granted such an exemption and the first to be granted to a Canadian without a terminal illness.
In a letter addressed to Minister of Health Patty Hajdu, Atkinson explained how the intense experiences defining his years of service have left him emotionally scarred, and other forms of treatment failed to improve his condition. As he struggled to cope, his relationship with his loved ones suffered and participating in regular daily activities was of great difficulty.
Levy said that Atkinson is a perfect candidate for this exemption.
“He served our country dutifully and with valour, having done a number of tours in Yugoslavia and Afghanistan, and he’s paying the price for it. Out of sheer compassion and humanitarian consideration, we think it’s important that he get access to treatments that may really enhance the quality of his life.”
Levy added that this can also spark an important dialogue around the wider treatment of mental health, at a time where we are already becoming more open around discussing the issues in the first place.
But when it comes to psychedelics, it can lead to situations where patients are able to tackle the issues more head-on.
“Studies have shown that psychedelic experiences tend to be the most meaningful experiences of people’s lives, you’re going to see people want to get proactive about their mental and emotional health,” Levy said. “I think that could possibly be the most important thing that could happen to Canadian society and global society in possibly history, if we started thinking about our emotional health and mental well-being as much as we consider our physical health and our physical well-being.”
Atkinson agreed this could be a life-changing experience for himself and many others struggling with mental illness, including veterans and first responders.
“I see veterans struggling all the time,” he said. “We were coming back and they didn’t have any venues to talk about mental health, they were scared to talk about mental health and if they did, they were pushed away. It’s changed now.”
Furthering the evolution in treating mental health, the therapy session when using psilocybin also look much different than what someone may typically experience.
Levy said they have a very open setting, with patients always under a watchful eye when consuming the substances and there are follow-up sessions to track progress. It starts with meeting a doctor to develop a good rapport so everyone has a level of trust with each other, and then there can be an appointment involving the intake of psilocybin.
“He’s invited to put on eye shades, put on music, and go inwards. This is not about having a good time on psychedelics, it’s about going inwards and doing the work. What tends to happen during a psychedelic experience is people are able to revisit past traumas, past experiences, with a degree of objectivity,” he said.
Levy said there is increased neural plasticity as a result of consuming psilocybin, and even one session can lessen the effects of depression for years. After that session, the patient will discuss the experience with a doctor and then they can further examine the trauma to treat it further.
Atkinson knows that it is not an immediate fix, and it will have to be combined with other forms of continued treatment for a long period of time. But he can see a light at the end of the tunnel with this possibility, and he hopes that other people struggling with conditions such as PTSD can look at psilocybin as an alternative solution.
“The help is out there,” he said. “It can be such a ground breaker for a person to see a whole new life after starting to use psilocybin.
“The joy of being able to be human again. It’s good.”
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Re: ketamine / Psilocybin
by Lightning Tue 16 Feb 2021, 12:22 pm
Magic mushroom therapy could help treat PTSD in Canadian military vets
Sam Riches
Publishing date: Feb 16, 2021
Sam Riches
Publishing date: Feb 16, 2021
"If we can bring something new to offer our veterans that have basically sacrificed body and mind for our countries, that's really our goal."
This story first appeared in Weekend Dispensary, a new weekly newsletter from The GrowthOp. Signup now to get a story delivered to your inbox every Saturday.
Having spent more than 30 years as a medical officer and psychiatrist in the Canadian Armed Forces, including deployments in Rwanda and Afghanistan, Dr. Rakesh Jetly has both a personal and professional interest in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
A chronic condition, PTSD is defined by the Canadian Mental Health Association as a mental illness that “involves exposure to trauma involving death or the threat of death, serious injury, or sexual violence.”
According to Veterans Affairs Canada, it is estimated that up to 10 per cent of war zone veterans — including war-service veterans and peacekeeping forces — will experience PTSD. There is not a clear explanation as to why some people are more affected than others.
The condition can be particularly hard to treat in veterans, Dr. Jetly says.
“There are lots of evidence-based treatments for post-traumatic stress disorder but like many treatments in mental health, they don’t work for everybody,” he says. “So there’s a huge need to think outside the box and think about novel ways in which to help people that are suffering with post-traumatic stress disorder.”
In November 2020, Dr. Jetly was named the Chief Medical Officer of Mydecine Innovations Group Inc., which acquired Vancouver-based NeuroPharm Inc., a developer of natural psychedelic-based treatments for mental health disorders in the Canadian and United States veteran communities, earlier in the year.
In his role as CMO, Dr. Jetly — who is also an associate professor of psychiatry at Dalhousie University and at the University of Ottawa — is overseeing international research into the efficacy of psilocybin and psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy to treat veterans and first responders with a PTSD indication. And though the COVID pandemic has interrupted their work, Mydecine announced in November that it was expanding its Phase 2A clinical research to additional sites.
The company is working with researchers and institutions in Canada, including the University of Western Ontario and the University of Alberta, as well as Leiden University Medical Centre in the Netherlands, and is planning to include additional clinical sites in the U.S., Europe, and Australia.
“There seems to be this urgency for us to develop more effective novel treatments and maybe give people more choices if the traditional first-line evidence-based psychotherapy and exposure-based therapies don’t work,” Dr. Jetly says.
He offers a few hypotheses as to why PTSD in veterans can be difficult to treat.
There are often multiple traumatic episodes experienced by vets, rather than a single occurrence, he says, and rates of childhood trauma are often higher among those who join combat forces. Another factor to consider, Dr. Jetly says, is the concept of moral injury, first introduced by U.S. psychiatrist Dr. Jonathan Shay in the 1990s.
Shay offers a three-part definition of moral injury in his 1994 book Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character. “Moral injury is present when (1) there has been a betrayal of what is morally correct; (2) by someone who holds legitimate authority; and (3) in a high-stakes situation,” he writes.
Dr. Jetly explains moral injury as persistent guilt, shame, or anger as a result of transgressing values or highly-held beliefs. He offers the example of a soldier tasked with clearing a mine site, missing a mine, and then witnessing a convoy being killed as they attempt to navigate the area.
According to Dr. Jetly, traditional treatments for PTSD may not be as effective when the predominant problem is guilt and shame and that novel treatments, like psilocybin assisted psychotherapy, could be “better suited to help people to deal with this underlying feeling about themselves.”
“Maybe we can demonstrate through some of our studies, that there’s a fundamental shift in the way the brain and the mind are interpreting their environment, their sense of self, and which makes them more receptive to some of the therapeutic principles that are being performed,” he says.
In traditional treatment options for PTSD, Dr. Jetly says the medications offered, such as antidepressants, are to “quiet the noise” and allow psychotherapy to take place. He stresses that the Mydecine trials are not for a drug but rather a mode of treatment.
“It is not something that I ever really see where it’s ‘Here’s a pill, you’re going to feel better,’ because it really requires working through the trauma,” he says. “This is not a trial of Paxil or a trial of Prozac. This is a medication-assisted psychotherapy trial — this is the substance with psychotherapy, that’s what we’re studying.”
Patients will undergo the psychedelic experience two to three times over a 16-week trial, Dr. Jetly explains.
“We believe that both the psychedelic and the psychotherapy together are the active ingredients that will lead to improved patient outcomes,” he says.
For Josh Bartch, chairman and CEO of Mydecine, he says he’s excited about the opportunity to be involved in something that could potentially be “revolutionary in the way that mental health is treated throughout military constituencies, whether that’s active military or, as in our case, starting with veterans.”
“These people come home from war, after fighting for our freedoms, and are essentially just left,” Bartch says. “There’s really no viable solution to fix this ailment in PTSD. In the United States, 22 veterans a day are committing suicide with PTSD, it’s a staggering number.”
In November, Mydecine announced that its subsidiary NeuroPharm Inc. had filed a provisional patent application in the U.S. for a “psychedelic therapy enhancer for the treatment of certain psychiatric disorders, including enhancements to treatments for PTSD.”
According to the release, the enhancer reduces the enzymatic breakdown of psilocin, the active ingredient in psilocybin that causes psychedelic effects. “This may result in an enhanced psychedelic experience in the treatment of PTSD, whether by extended in time, intensity, intensity per dose, or a combination thereof,” the release states.
Mydecine has also been approved by Health Canada to import and export, extract and analyze natural and synthetic psychedelic compounds.
“For us, we see it as a massive hole among people that need [treatment options],” Bartch says.
After being slowed by the global pandemic, Dr. Jetly is hoping the trials will be able to get back on track this spring.
At Leiden University in the Netherlands, one of the oldest universities in Europe, researchers are working on the first draft protocols, he says.
“It’s very exciting in terms of putting these ideas together,” he says. “We really want to demonstrate the safety and efficacy of psilocybin assisted psychotherapy. If we can bring something new to offer our veterans that have basically sacrificed body and mind for our countries, that’s really our goal.”
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Re: ketamine / Psilocybin
by Cooper Sat 23 Oct 2021, 9:33 pm
Ketamine and psilocybin, better known as party drugs, showing promise for treatment of mood disorders
Published Saturday, October 23, 2021
Published Saturday, October 23, 2021
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Re: ketamine / Psilocybin
by Whiskey Tue 26 Oct 2021, 1:53 pm
How ketamine therapy helped this Canadian veteran
The GrowthOp
Publishing date:Oct 25, 2021
The GrowthOp
Publishing date:Oct 25, 2021
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Re: ketamine / Psilocybin
by Covert Fri 26 May 2023, 7:08 am
This veteran says ketamine therapy changed his life. But Veteran Affairs won't pay the thousands in costs
Government department says there's a lack of evidence of treatment's safety and efficacy
Kathryn Marlow · CBC News · Posted: May 25, 2023
Kathryn Marlow · CBC News · Posted: May 25, 2023
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Re: ketamine / Psilocybin
by Slider Wed 08 Nov 2023, 4:58 pm
Canada must study psychedelic treatment for veteran PTSD ‘immediately’: Senate report
By Eric Stober . Posted November 8, 2023
A Senate report is recommending the federal government “immediately” conduct a “major research program” into how psychedelics can help veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
In a press conference Wednesday, deputy chair of the subcommittee on veteran affairs, Sen. Pierre-Hugues Boisvenu, said they are “encouraged” by the evidence of the effectiveness of psychedelic therapy.
He said Canada is falling behind other countries, such as the United States and Australia, that have already begun studying how psychedelics can help patients.
In July, Australia authorized psilocybin-assisted therapy for treatment-resistant depression and MDMA treatment for PTSD. Alberta currently is the only province to issue guidelines on the use of psychedelics.
“Despite the evidence, Canada has opted for a wait-and-see approach,” Boisvenu said. “The time is now to act.”
The report examines psychedelics such as psilocybin, also known as “magic mushrooms,” MDMA and ketamine.
Boisvenu, along with subcommittee chair David Richards, told stories of veterans who had tried other medications and therapy — in one individual’s case, trying 11 different medications — without success, but saw a breakthrough with psychedelic therapy. Conditional treatment could even make matters worse for veterans, Boisvenu said, whereas psychedelics often give positive results.
About 10 to 15 per cent of Canadian veterans have been diagnosed with PTSD, according to the report. It also states that the suicide rate for male veterans is 50 per cent higher than the general population, stands at 200 per cent higher for female veterans and is 250 per cent higher for male veterans under the age of 25.
Scientists who testified to the committee all say they have seen positive results with psychedelic therapy, Boisvenu said. The report states that psychedelics such as psilocybin and MDMA can be “transformative” for veterans.
However, Richards admitted that not everyone may benefit from such treatment, and not everyone will react the same way. Psychedelics have a storied reputation of sometimes giving “bad trips,” in which fears and anxieties can be amplified.
The call for more research into the use of psychedelics comes as more “magic mushroom” shops are opening across the country despite the drug still being illegal in Canada. The trend closely mirrors what happened before cannabis was legalized in Canada in 2018, with police not able to keep up with the number of stores due to resource constraints and lenient public opinion.
While the report released Wednesday is limited to psychedelic use among veterans, Richards said such research does lend itself to the idea of legalization eventually.
“Our veterans sacrifice so much — we must do everything we can to help them,” Richards said.
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Re: ketamine / Psilocybin
by JAFO Thu 09 Nov 2023, 12:03 pm
Like our "sacrifices" mean anything to those trough-eating bureaucrats at VAC
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Re: ketamine / Psilocybin
by Rigger Tue 12 Dec 2023, 5:11 pm
Canada owes its veterans new mental health tools: Access to psychedelic therapies is overdue
Published: December 12, 2023
The Canadian Senate Subcommittee on Veterans Affairs recently released a striking report entitled The Time is Now: Granting Equitable Access to Psychedelic Therapies.
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