Shroom boom

Tucked away inside a dark room of a generic office building in Burnaby, B.C., a collection of plastic boxes contains a fully legal and licensed magic mushroom grow-op.

At a counter, mycologist John Hume inoculates mushroom spores onto a round tray filled with a blue growth medium called agar. Its the first step in the process.

They grow fast, says Hume, dressed in a lab coat with hair nets covering the top of his head and beard.

After a couple more steps and a couple more weeks these magic mushrooms will be ready to harvest. After drying the mushrooms, their compounds will be extracted and purified and they will be turned into a capsule that contains a 25-milligram dose of psilocybin. Finally, those pills will be distributed throughout Canada and around the world.

Its certainly a macro dose. A heroic dose, some may say, says Hume, borrowing a phrase used in the psychedelic community.

It would be a very potent experience.

Filament Health runs the operation. Its a natural psychedelic drug development company that provides psilocybin the psychoactive compound found in magic mushrooms to Health Canada and clinical trials.

Its one of 69 licence holders in Canada permitted to produce psilocybin from either natural sources or synthetically.

Across the country, demand for psilocybin-assisted therapy is growing, with more people seeking out the compound as a potential treatment for a variety of mental health conditions like depression and addiction.

But while demand has grown, access is limited. And advocates say many Canadians are stuck wading through bureaucratic red tape as they seek permission from Health Canada to use the drug medicinally.

Even though microdosing or ingesting a very small amount of psilocybin has become popular, psilocybin is a controlled substance in Canada. The production, sale or possession of magic mushrooms is illegal except under very specific circumstances.

Right now, Canadians can only legally access psilocybin through a Health Canada clinical trial, the agencys Special Access Program (SAP) or by getting an exemption to the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act (CDSA).

Health Canada recognizes the importance of access to needed treatments, as well as the growing interest in psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy, the federal agency said in a statement.

Since regulatory changes in 2022 made access possible, 176 Canadians have been authorized to access psilocybin through Health Canadas SAP, which says it has approved 78 per cent of applications for the drug.

Ben Lightburn, CEO of Filament Health, gave CBC News a rare tour of its Burnaby production facility. Psilocybin products created here make their way to Canadians who have received Health Canada special access, as well as to individuals involved in 30 clinical trials around the globe.

Lightburn says the psychedelics potential to treat the national mental health crisis is a big force behind the growth in interest.

We have these substances which humanity has been using for thousands of years, which may provide a potential solution or certainly need to be considered as a potentially valuable tool in the war against many of these very serious problems that we have in our society, says Lightburn.

Standardizing the product into controlled doses is an important step in the shift necessary for magic mushrooms to become a life-altering medicine rather than a mind-altering recreational drug.

Filament currently produces three different standardized psilocybin capsules at one milligram (a microdose), five milligrams and 25 milligrams (a hero dose).

Standardization is doubly important to get accurate results in clinical trials.

Filament Health is involved in clinical trials in several countries, including Canada, the U.S. and Belgium. These trials study psilocybins efficacy in treating a wide swath of health conditions ranging from alcohol use disorder and chronic back pain to cancer-related anxiety.

When a doctor writes a prescription, they wouldnt write, If you take a cap, take half as much than if you take a stem, says Lightburn.

They need to be assured that there is a very high degree of standardization between the participants in that trial.

The company was recently authorized by Health Canada to move forward with a pilot study on psilocybin as a potential treatment for opioid use disorder.

Vancouver, where Filament is based, is one of the global epicentres of the illicit drug crisis and we are working tirelessly to bring about potential solutions, the company said in an end-of-year letter.

Zach Walsh, a psychology professor at UBC Okanagan, has worked extensively in the world of psychedelics through psilocybin-assisted therapy sessions and his own research.

He says psilocybin-assisted therapy can help the brain communicate in a way it hasnt done before.

Its sort of rewiring some new pathways, he said.

When it comes to treatment, Walsh says a patient and therapist will first meet for a few sessions to build a rapport, set goals and discuss the process.

The therapist will then guide the patient on several day-long medicine sessions, where a patient ingests a macro dose of psilocybin to experience a powerful trip that can last around six hours.

What happens for people is often theyll have new perspectives on their behaviours, says Walsh.

They may have some difficult experiences from the past that they havent processed fully, that can come up and be experienced in a new way. Sometimes theres creativity and problem-solving that takes place. Sometimes theres just a sense of connection and peace.

The therapist will then help the client work through and process their experience in follow-up sessions.

Walsh says theres a growing body of research around the benefits of this treatment for depression. In 2022, a Johns Hopkins University study found two treatments of psilocybin paired with psychotherapy substantially reduced symptoms in patients with major depressive disorder.

Its not without risks, he adds.

Psilocybin is a powerful drug that can impact your capacity to make smart, sound judgments. And, though rare, it has also been linked to the risk of psychosis.

Thats why its important to pair the drug with therapy, he says.

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But given the potential benefits, its also why he says Canada needs to invest more heavily into research.

We really need to fast track this because we see the rates of overdose, we see the rates of suicide. Theyre just out of hand. This [mental health disorders] is one of the major causes of death and disability so we should be throwing all our resources at it, he says.

The truth is we have a lot of suffering but not a lot of options, so if we can introduce something new to the table that works for some people, thats going to be a big help.

Right now, Health Canada has authorized 36 psilocybin clinical trials. These are happening as pressure mounts in Canada for more research on the efficacy of the drug.

Late last year, the Senates Subcommittee on Veterans Affairs urged the federal, provincial and territorial governments to fund large-scale research programs on psychedelic-assisted therapy for post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, in veterans.

Despite evidence demonstrating the effectiveness of psychedelics, Canada has adopted a wait-and-see approach that is failing veterans struggling with major mental health problems, the committee wrote in the report.

Veteran Kelsi Sheren spoke at the subcommittee hearing in Ottawa to advocate for greater access for veterans to psilocybin-assisted therapy.

Time after time, our veterans have stood up selflessly to protect this country, yet we are being left behind to fall through the cracks of the system, once again, she told the subcommittee.

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Sheren was 18 when she joined the military in 2008. She was inspired after seeing a female veteran on a bus with a chest full of medals.

It was really profound, recalls Sheren. What I realized is that woman had lived a life worth dying for.

A year later, while serving in Afghanistan, she developed severe PTSD.

She says the military didnt know how to help her. After being shuffled around for a few years, she was medically discharged in 2011.

Back in Canada, she found herself in a new war with herself.

I was incredibly suicidal for the majority of my 20s. Which is really unfortunate. Because these medications are given to you and they numb you out. And they dont give you the ability to process anything. It, like, stunts you and holds you in place, said Sheren.

After fighting for access to psilocybin, she became one of the few Canadians to be approved through Health Canadas SAP last year.

For Sheren, psilocybin has been the key to recovery, helping alleviate her depressive days.

When I do have those days, instead of going to the basement, we just go to the middle floor, she said.

It allows you to move through thought a lot clearer. It allows you to look at perspective shifts. And when you shift your perspective, everything else around you in this entire world changes.

Many advocates believe magic mushrooms are following a similar journey to medical marijuana.

Prior to legalization in 2018, cannabis was a controlled substance. Canadians couldnt access medical marijuana until 1999, when exemptions to the CDSA made it possible. By 2013, the government changed the laws to ensure the product was standardized. Under the new law, Canadians could now access quality-controlled medical marijuana.

Health Canada says it recognizes there may be times when access to unauthorized drugs may be appropriate.

We have great empathy for individuals diagnosed with mental health and substance use disorders ... and the impact this can have on patients and their families, it said.

While some initial clinical trials have studied potential therapeutic uses of psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy, including for the treatment of end-of-life anxiety and distress, this investigational therapy is also associated with possible psychological and physical risks to patients.

While Sherens experience with the drug has been positive, she says the struggle to access it was far too great.

It took her more than eight months to be approved.

Im lucky that Im a younger adult who could handle the stress, the back-and-forth, and the constantly having to prove that youve tried everything, said Sheren.

I cannot imagine being a stage 4 cancer patient who is fighting to have access just to the simplest thing that grows in the ground that could alleviate the end-of-life depression, the pain management issues.

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On average, Health Canada says it renders a decision on a typical SAP request in about two days. Certain requests, including psychedelic-assisted therapy, can take longer to process and review.

Factors that affect review time include: proposed treatment dates that are months in advance, deficiencies in the requests that require follow-up discussions with practitioners, and clarifying aspects of patient history, it said.

Health Canada says it has strict requirements and safeguards in place to protect the safety of patients and participants in clinical trials.

Sheren worries those requirements create a barrier that could see many Canadians either throw in the towel or turn to the black market.

We tie their hands and literally tie bricks around their feet and chuck them in the ocean and say, Lets see how long you can last, said Sheren.