Shannon McKenney has had severe migraines for about 1,500 days straight.
“I have trouble sleeping and it’s hard for me to fall asleep,” the Burnaby, B.C., musician said during a recent phone interview while dealing with the same lingering headaches that are often accompanied by dizziness and exhaustion.
“In April 2011 my appendix also burst and it changed my life. I’ve had sepsis four times.
“I used to live my life with a lot of energy and now I’m like an old cell phone that doesn’t work well and doesn’t charge properly.”
McKenney’s story is one of several included in a judicial review application filed Monday in the Federal Court on behalf of more than 100 health professionals across the country, including doctors, psychologists, clinical counsellors, social workers and nurses. They are challenging the federal health minister’s decision last month to reject their application to use restricted psychedelic drugs for training in psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy.
This therapy involves ingesting mind-altering substances such as psilocybin, an active ingredient in magic mushrooms, in a clinical setting as part of more traditional psychotherapy. Other drugs may include ketamine, LSD, or MDMA, the active ingredient in ecstasy.
The federal government signaled earlier this year that it would reject the applications, said Nicholas Pope, an attorney representing TheraPsil, an advocacy group that runs the training program in which health care practitioners are enrolled.
Pope said at the time, the only reason cited was that those professionals could gain access to an existing clinical trial instead. Then in June, when the request was officially denied, Ottawa offered to hold its own trial.
“So we’ve said in our statements that this won’t work for a number of reasons,” Pope said.
Mainly, existing trials are expensive and don’t work for many of the professionals he represents due to time and location.
“You can’t just set up a clinical trial in a few days,” Pope said.
“Many patients on waiting lists have suicidal thoughts because of their depression, and many have end-of-life distress, have terminal cancer, and may die soon.”
McKenney said she tried to participate in an existing trial as a patient, but that too was too expensive for her.
“Because I’m disabled, I can’t afford $6,000 for three rounds of therapy,” she said.
Pope said some specialists also do not want to participate in existing trials because they are designed to study psilocybin.
“This can interfere with learning, because the primary purpose of a clinical trial is not learning, but gathering information. And there is no uncertainty in the expert community about the safety of psilocybin in healthy adults.”
In 2020, Health Canada began granting exemptions under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act to provide psychedelic treatment to patients suffering from end-of-life psychological distress, treatment-resistant depression and major depressive disorder.
Documents filed in court show hundreds of Canadians ask about it each year, but Pope said there aren’t enough professionals in Canada to provide the treatment. Some requested the substances to treat anxiety, depression, PTSD or other illnesses.
“Manitoba does not have fully trained and qualified health care professionals, but there are 10 patients on the waiting list for TheraPsil,” a summary of the application states.
“Two health practitioners from Manitoba requested exemptions. If these two exemptions were approved, patients who otherwise do not have qualified health professionals within a radius of thousands of kilometers could be able to access psilocybin psychotherapy.”
McKenney said he could get the drugs from other channels if he wanted to. But she doesn’t want to because she has a mental illness.
“If I do too much or have a bad trip, sometimes there’s no going back that. If I’m going to do it, I want to regulate it and I want it to be monitored just for safety reasons.”
Pope said in the judicial review request that he also wants the federal government to recognize that patients’ rights to life, liberty and security have been violated.
A spokesperson for Health Canada said in an email that it is deeply concerned about the burden of mental illness on Canadians.
“Health Canada is aware that psilocybin is being studied by researchers in Canada and internationally for its potential to treat a variety of conditions, including anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and various substance use disorders,” said Marie-Pierre Burrell.
“Each exemption request … is reviewed on a case-by-case basis, taking into account all relevant considerations, including evidence of potential benefits and risks or harms to Canadians.”
McKenney said if more professionals were trained and she had easier access to psychotherapy using psilocybin, her life would change.
“I have been relatively disabled for 10 years. If I can get even a tenth of my former life back, that would be something.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published on July 11, 2022.
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