I spent a few days last week augmenting my normal morning routine of espresso and soda water with some “mood-altering” supershrooms and gummies. It’s all part of a new line of “mood juice” being sold at Toronto’s four Strange Love locations.
I started with the “power” expression, which contains rhodiola, ashwagandha, guarana and cordyceps (two herbs, a fruit and a mushroom). It was tart, refreshing and just sweet enough, likely the result of the guarana, a delicious, caffeine-rich, berry-sized fruit considered a sacred plant by several tribes in the Amazon basin.
While the guarana is probably responsible for the drink’s tastiness, it’s the mushrooms that are driving Strange Love’s “supershroom” initiative. The two other mood-altering drinks (called “focus” and “relax”) respectively contain lion’s mane and chaga: two other mushrooms that are currently trending.
Why? Although they’re not the same as psilocybin (a.k.a. “magic mushrooms”), which have hallucinogenic properties and are currently illegal in Canada, they’re not unrelated. Some people who micro-dose psilocybin (exactly how it sounds, tiny doses every day that are too small to cause a “trip”) add lion’s mane to their regimen, since there has been speculation that both mushrooms can help create new neural pathways.
Much of this follows the work of Paul Stamets, an American mycologist who claims that mushrooms are important to human health, notably our microbiome and brains. Stamets, who has caught the attention of author Michael Pollan, director Louie Schwartzberg and podcaster Joe Rogan, argues that mushrooms possess intelligence. Since we (humans and all animal life) evolved from fungi, mushrooms are our elders, according to Stamets and the architects of our environment. Reconnecting with our inner fungus might help us be healthier, happier and better humans and, although psilocybin is the mushroom that gets the most attention, we haven’t really begun to explore the interconnectedness of the many species that form the “mycelium network.”
As these ideas trickle into the mainstream via podcasts, streaming services and even old-fashioned books, some from the cannabis sector think history is repeating here and that psilocybin is headed toward legalization, too. On the cultural side, mushroom supplements and tonics are chipping away at the stigma. On the more practical side, new research, which allows growers to legally cultivate psilocybin, is starting to push it by establishing legal precedents. The key word here is starting, though.
“We really know very little about the efficacy and safety, although there’s been a wellspring of research since studies have started to get approval to do this stuff again,” explains Norman Farb, associate professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, who’s starting to research psilocybin after decades of studying mindfulness.
“And it’s accelerating in ways that are very similar to other fringe movements that have come into the mainstream, like mindfulness meditation,” Farb continues. “You could see the number of papers published on wellness just skyrocketing in the early 2000s and now the same thing has been happening with psychedelics over the past two or three years.”
So is psilocybin the next cannabis? Well, it’s important to note that there are two very different things going on: the aforementioned microdosing trend and the integration of psychedelics (administered in larger doses) into some psychotherapy treatments, particularly for post-traumatic stress disorder and terminally ill patients dealing with end-of-life acceptance. In early August, four terminally ill patients in Canada won the right to use psilocybin to combat end-of-life distress through an exemption granted by the Office of Controlled Substances.
“I think this really points to the fact that the federal government is recognizing the potential of psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy,” says Dr. Devon Christie, medical director at Numinus Wellness Inc., a Vancouver company centred around safe, evidence-based, accessible use of psychedelic-assisted psychotherapies. “And I think it’s definitely signalling a pathway for Canadians in need of accessing it, as well as the start of a shift toward psilocybin being administered as part of therapy — in safe and controlled environments, that is.”
Johns Hopkins University kicked off a lot of the research into the therapeutic potential of psilocybin nearly 20 years ago, when researchers started to administer psilocybin to volunteers and determined that, used as “adjunct” to psychotherapy in a safe environment, the drug had potential to help reframe or renegotiate the subjects’ feelings about past experiences and/or fears about the future.
“So that therapeutic context that we’re focused on assisting and bringing forward in regulated ways looks very different from, for example, a legalization pathway for psilocybin for the average Canadian to use on their own for their own devices,” Christie says.
Although this has likely inspired a lot of people to explore microdosing, there’s no high quality evidence to suggest it has therapeutic properties at non trip-level doses.
“I think those people who are microdosing are more like yuppies who are trying to just, like, get that extra edge or maximizing performance or life quality,” says Farb. “Microdosing is sort of a slow burn, almost like the idea of taking a multivitamin, except they think it’s going to be more than a multivitamin.”
Leaving aside the question of whether or not microdosing works, there is also the question of how safe it is. Although psilocybin is widely considered safe to human health compared to alcohol, tobacco and many other stimulants, nobody has established safe consumption levels for driving or operating heavy machinery. Farb is hoping that the research he and his team at U of T are starting to do will clarify some of these issues, especially since microdosing is the most likely way psilocybin will be “productized” should it be legalized, which a lot of people are betting will happen sooner than later.
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“There’s so much hype now you have to ask where the hype is coming from,” says Farb. “A certain percentage of the population has been super-interested in psychedelics in every generation so it’s not like that’s changed. What has changed is that you’ve got a lot of people who just got a big bite of the cannabis pie in the private sector, and they’re looking for the next investment and the next magic pill they can sell to the public.”
Farb warns that we may see a lot of far-reaching health claims about psilocybin’s power to heal the world, and encourages caution. Although hopefulness about the promise of psilocybin is justified, it needs more research.
Back to the mood juice, though, how did it all work out for me? How smart was my brain on plants? Well, to be honest, I can’t say I could see a big difference, except I felt a little extra-caffeinated, which probably boosted my mood a little.
No deep revelations into my psyche or wisdom from the mycelium network though, I’m afraid. I guess next time I’ll have to up the dose.
