Depression + psilocybin – Pt 1

Beginning in his early childhood, depression held its grasp on Kynan Cooke’s life for a protracted stretch of time.

“As early as I can remember, from five or six years old, I recall feeling the dullness of mood for over 30 years,” the 55-year-old accountant-turned-entrepreneur recalled about the severe mood affliction that, like dark clouds, lingered forebodingly.

“I didn’t realise until well into my adult life that I was suffering depression. In my mid-30s, I was medically diagnosed with clinical depression/major depressive disorder and began taking medication,” Cooke divulged in a recent interview.

The prescription drugs administered, according to him, “had the effect of noticeably numbing the dullness and was functional, akin to a painkiller, but the sickness was very much there.

“Eventually, I ended up using attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) medication. This was by far the most effective medication I had used to this point and for the first time I felt ‘normal’, like a fully functioning person.”

A word of caution would come from the physician, however, who advised her patient that “it might not be the best idea to stay on this medication indefinitely”.

It was then that Cooke said he looked into mushrooms as a replacement for the pharmaceutical drugs. “I bought mushrooms wherever I could find them, probably about 12 years ago, and started self-medicating. I got the results I was looking for. In addition to treating depression, I found that focus, creativity, personal bandwidth and well-being all improved as well, which was not the case with any of the previous prescriptions I’d had.”

VARYING DEGREES

Cooke’s depression is far from a rarity among Jamaican males, with one in every two persons experiencing symptoms of the severe mood disorder.

According to a 2022 study conducted by the Northern Caribbean University (NCU), titled Assessing Depression in Jamaican Males: Post-COVID 19, 52.7 per cent of the island’s menfolk admit to varying degrees of depression, 24.6 per cent feel life is not worth living, 3.4 per cent have had suicidal thoughts, and 1.1 per cent have attempted suicide. The sample of the survey participants was a cross-section of 1,066 male respondents, using the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HDRS) for the assessment. HDRS is the most widely used clinical depression gauge and has a margin of error of three per cent and a 95 per cent confidence rate.

The World Health Organization reported in a 2023 study that 3.8 per cent of the global population, or 280 million people, experience depression, including five per cent of adults (four per cent among women and six per cent among women, and 5.7 per cent of adults older than 60 years old).For Cooke – a divorced father to an adult daughter who established his own mushroom-inspired company, Pscared Therapeutics in 2019 and also owns an outdoor advertising company – the replacement of pharmaceuticals with psilocybin (a natural psychedelic compound produced by more than 200 species of mushrooms) to treat his depressive state brought with it a sense of deeper introspection.

“Mushrooms have had a profound impact on my growth and understanding of myself. Mushrooms have the ability to dissolve our core beliefs and egos, and allow us the opportunity to encounter ourselves without these,” he explained of the mood turnaround, on account of dosing with psilocybin. “It allows us the opportunity to rebuild and reshape without our preprogrammed reflex interfering and channelling our behaviours that were long established.”

SPECIFIC REGIMEN

Like Cooke, clinical psychologist and transformational coach Magalie Piou-Brewer is a believer in the power of psilocybin. She posited that an increasing number of clinicians and non-clinician providers have discovered that the traditional Western approach of psychopharmaceutical drugs, such as Adderall, Concerta, Wellbutrin, only target symptom management and do not effectively offer lasting and beneficial relief.

“They have found that plant-based medicine, and specifically psilocybin – the psychoactive ingredient in ‘magic mushrooms’ – to be very effective if taken at a microdose level with a specific regimen tailored to the individual.”Psilocybin, Dr Piou-Brewer explained, can be taken in various forms, including chocolate, capsule pill and whole mushroom, to alleviate feelings of anxiety and sadness, while simultaneously increasing attention and focus.

Experientially, the medical expert, who holds a doctoral degree in clinical psychology from George Washington University in the United States, said there is a marked difference in persons who have switched from pharmaceuticals to psilocybin.

“Yes,” she affirmed of patient cases where this has proven true. “There is a lot of anecdotal evidence to support this notion that psilocybin, when taken on a prescribed, microdose regimen, is very helpful in uplifting one’s mood, giving them the ability to think differently, more creatively and more purposefully.” She explained that psilocybin acts upon the neural connections to the brain to help develop cognitive flexibility, assists with ruminating thoughts, and contributes overall to an increased level of well-being.

To this end, Dr Piou-Brewer, who runs the holistic retreat company Healing Escapes, which incorporates psilocybin dosing, is naturally “on board with psilocybin in patient care, as long as it is utilised in a safe, legal, supportive environment”.

The mushroom advocate created The Emotional Domain Assessment as a tool to measure how the use of psilocybin at her retreats affects participants’ overall level of health and well-being.

The Haitian-American psychologist noted that while legally available in Jamaica, psilocybin is not legal in most states in America and also “not legal on the federal level across the USA... . Despite this, it is accessible and widely used in the ‘underground’ population, as both mental health professionals and those in the allied health field have found proven benefit and value in its medicinal use”.

Brewer’s holistic retreats are held four times a year in St Ann and St Maryat several locations, including Boscobel, Tower Isle, Mammee Bay and Ocho Rios.