Annie Aubin juggled anxiety and depression all her life. Over the past two decades, she has consulted five psychiatrists and has tried around twenty drugs, without obtaining real results, until one of them offered to use the psilocybin.
After several long work stoppages, a psychiatrist finally declared her invalid. Traditional medicine no longer knew what to do
says the fifties.
However, not accepting this status, Annie Aubin consults a new psychiatrist. After several evaluation sessions, the latter offers an alternative approach: therapy assisted by psilocybine, the active ingredient of magic mushrooms.
Having nothing more to lose, she accepts.
Annie Aubin is in remission after twenty years to live with depression.
Photo : Radio-Canada
Your brain is in boil
When the day comes, Annie Aubin settles on a lounge chair. I take the capsule and I am installed a headband on my eyes to cut the stimuli. There is music in the background
she describes.
This is still destabilizing. You say to yourself, I will take a molecule that I do not know and I will not be in control, and when we do anxiety we try to control everything.
The molecule is quietly beginning to have an effect and plunges Annie Aubin into a state of altered consciousness. The latter says that she had had a difficult, but transformer experience.
Psilocybin, which we see here in the form of capsules, can have beneficial effects and can allow patients, with the help of qualified therapists, to face fears and traumatic feelings. (Generic archive photo)
Photo : CBC
Without going into the details of her personal life, she admits that the session has caused many changes in perspective and has started several reflections at home.
You go from there and your brain is boiling. It’s like a pot, it splashes everywhere. There is no respite. […] That’s why it takes someone who will help you deposit and clean up in your ideas.
Unlike the microdosage, where the dose makes the effects barely perceptible, therapy assisted by psilocybin aims to create a state of altered consciousness.
A remission after 20 years
Following the treatment, Annie Aubin met her psychiatrist Dr Ugo Lévesque on several occasions. These meetings are used for this kind of treatments. Their purpose is to consolidate the learning made during the experience.
More than a year after taking psilocybin, Annie Aubin is delighted to note the beneficial effects of therapy. I have always had difficulty taking my place. Now I’m going to others more. I am also less controlling, I am able to let go.
she explains.
Dr. Ugo Lévesque judges that the potential for this type of treatment is enormous.
Photo : Radio-Canada / Alexandre Painchaud
In the case of Annie it was impressive the results we had with her
concludes Dr. Ugo Lévesque. It is the first time in 20 years that she has no depressive symptoms.
How does psilocybine act on the brain?
Dr. Ugo Lévesque believes that Annie Aubin is an ideal patient for this type of treatment. According to him, psilocybin can be beneficial for people who have a certain mental rigidity.
What psilocybin actually does is that it creates chaos in our brain.
If we take disorders such as depression, anxiety, obsessive compulsive disorder and eating disorders, they are disorders where people repeat the same behaviors. The fungus, what he comes to do is that he comes to offer new connections, new ways to see things in the hope of changing the behavior
explains Ugo Lévesque.
The Quebec psychiatrist specifies that the molecule as such does not heal anyone
. Rather, it conceptualizes psilocybin as a catalyst that can give access to elements of the past of a person who are not accessible differently.
Psilocybin and hallucinogenic fungi remains illegal in Canada for recreational consumption. (Archives photo)
Photo : Radio-Canada / Sohrab Sandhu
Consuming hallucinogenic mushrooms is illegal in Canada. Since 2022, an exception, however, has existed for some people with refractory depression for treatments. The process is rigorously framed. Each dose must be administered by a psychiatrist and must be approved by Health Canada as part of the Special Access Program (PAS).
According to Ugo Lévesque, the potential for therapy assisted by psilocybin is enormous. However, it deplores the difficulty of access to the substance. Currently I have a person that it has been seven months that He was asked for Health Canada approval. It is a person who has suffered for over 25 years who has made multiple attempts at medication
he illustrates.
He judges that the process is long and tedious could discourage several psychiatrists to train in this kind of therapy.
Difficult access
According to data published in the magazine Nature Mental Healthpsychiatrists who make requests to NOT are more and more refusal.
The rate of refusal for patients with depression doubled between 2022 and 2024, from 21 % to 43 %. However, the number of requests did not increase during this period.
With Health Canada, we are inappropriate regarding the reasons for decreases. […] It is not as if there has been new data that would suggest that there are dangers with this substance, or a lack of efficiency.
Dr. Nicolas Garel, psychiatrist and researcher at the CHUM research center, should be more transparent to be more transparent about his decision -making process. According to him, the treatment assisted by psilocybin is promising, but it calls for caution.
Do studies multiply and demonstrate positive results? Absolutely. But I think we are still in a young science and that you have to be careful. You have to move forward, but take the time to do things well.
He believes that more clinical studies should be carried out and that lighter protocols should be established for this type of therapy.
Health Canada has declined our interview request. The organization replied by press release that each request is evaluated individually according to a series of criteria. Refusals can be issued for various reasons, such as an incomplete request or health problems in the patient.
