Milestone in Canada: Private company uses legal psilocybin for palliative care (Patreon)

This is something that has been years in the making, finally, a private company was able to legally treat a terminally ill cancer patient in Canada with psilocybin.  The preliminary results look encouraging.  According to the patient: "I would say that 50% of the extreme anxiety and depression I have been feeling just disappeared immediately.  I suddenly feel at peace within, and for the first time in years, I feel physically and mentally relaxed."

He added, "I had high hopes that this therapy would make a difference, because it was my last hope to see some kind of improvement in my quality of life.  I couldn't have imagined how profound it would actually be.  This has been an amazing gift to me and my family, and I hope that others in my situation are soon given the chance to experience it for themselves."

His partner Rebecca Crewe has been astonished at the transformation.  "It's as if something has completely flipped a switch," she said.  "We are absolutely gobsmacked at the impact that a single therapeutic psilocybin journey has had thus far." She explained that his speech has improved drastically with very little slurring occurring, which had been a significant side effect of chemotherapy.  His physical mobility has increased substantially, his quality of life has been greatly augmented, and she has noticed a new motivation and enthusiasm that has been missing for some time.

"Tony is able to be more present than he has been in almost three years, telling me he loves me and being loving with our dogs.  He is suddenly smiling, happy and carefree.  I feel like I have my partner back".

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The company behind this plans to expand and make psychedelic-assisted therapy "accessible to thousands of Canadians as the government continues to acknowledge and support the evidence-based science and real-life outcomes that are arising from this approach".

Slight tangent here, but I found the anecdote about improvement in the patient's speech particularly interesting. Paul Stamets has also claimed that high dose psilocybin cured him of a serious speech impediment (stuttering) but I have not seen much about this in published research so far. Something to keep an eye on, and something I would love to see vigorously researched (it would be amazing if psilocybin could be used to reliably help people with speech problems).