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This year, Canadas health minister Patty Hajdu granted 12 terminally ill Canadians Section 56 exemption to the Controlled Drug and Substances Act so they may legally access psilocybin therapy.

Earlier this month, the first non-palliative Canadian,Mona Strelaeff,was also granted an exemption.Strelaeff, 67, said she has struggled with anxiety, depression and addiction for years, but following her psilocybin treatment, her depression and anxiety seem to be gone.

For the first time, I feel like I have won the battle in my mind, she said.

Levy, who alsoco-founded CanadianCannabisClinics, a national medical cannabis access and education service, credits cannabis legalization for helping challenge perceptions and opinions about the plant, including in the medical field.

Years ago, he says, if he attended a medical conference to speak about cannabis, physicians would pass his booth with a wide berth. They would walk around and not even engage with us to avoid a conversation, he says. And within a couple of years, it changed rapidly.

Field Trips medical director, Dr. Michael Verbora, has noticed the same thing. While, five years ago, some of his colleagues worried that he might be harming his patients by giving them microdoses of THC and weaning them off anti-psychotics, he says colleagues now approach him about prescribing cannabis for a variety of conditions, even where theres a lack of supporting evidence.

So the tide has completely changed there, Dr. Verbora says. And I think its going to happen with psychedelics, as well.

He says that one of the great benefits of psychedelics is that they can introduce neuroplasticity in the brain. That really just means flexibility in the brain, he says an ability to relearn and reframe old ways of thinking.

You get this period of time, he explains, where we can rewrite some of the narratives that we tell ourselves and, perhaps, shift that into a more positive setting.

Read more from the original source:

People are increasingly open to psychedelic therapies. Whats driving that change? - The GrowthOp