https://www.saltwire.com/atlantic-canada/news/ns-magic-mushroom-farmer-took-too-much-of-his-own-product-i-murdered-myself-100865135/
It sounded like a wild party was underway in Clayton Park, but when the police showed up, it was a party of one.
The superintendent of a Chadwick Place building called police about 25 minutes shy of midnight on March 10, complaining about the noise coming from a third-floor apartment.
“The caller heard yelling and banging coming from the apartment, and he was unsure how many people were inside,” Halifax Regional Police Det.-Const. Jeff Patriquin said in his application for a search warrant in the case.
The super told police it was a man’s voice.
“He could hear a male voice yelling from inside the unit: ‘I murdered myself. Have you ever heard of anyone murdering themself,’” Patriquin said.
The super could hear banging on the walls, said the detective.
“It sounded like things were being thrown around.”
When police knocked on the door and called out to the occupant, they heard more banging noises from inside the apartment. 'Weird facial expressions'
Then a 41-year-old man opened the door.
He “was sweating profusely,” Patriquin said.
The man’s “skin colour was pinkish, and his pupils were fully dilated; (he) was twitching and making weird facial expressions,” Patriquin said.
When an officer asked the man if he had taken or smoked anything that evening, he answered: “Yes, shrooms, too much of them."
He invited officers inside, where they observed plastic boxes in one bedroom “described as humid on the inside, on top of a dresser,” Patriquin said. 'Various stages'
There were also three similar see-through plastic containers “containing a growth of what appeared to be psilocybin, described in various stages of growth from ‘very small buds’ to 2 cm stems.”
In a small room next to the bathroom, police could see “mycelium (fungus) in approximately 50 small closed plastic containers, blue and brown in colour,” said the detective.
“In the same room, (they spotted) 28 glass jars with grains that ‘seemed to be in different stages of spawning,’” Patriquin said.
In a walk-in closet, police saw “a large bag of grains, with approximately 7 kg left in it, and trays from a drying chamber,” he said.
A near-empty bedroom contained a food drying machine sitting on a chair, said the detective.
Paramedics showed up and took the man to hospital. 'No history with police'
Police left the apartment at 12:42 a.m.
“Since that time, HRP officers have had the scene secured, with police standing outside the apartment awaiting a warrant to enter,” Patriquin said.
The detective queried the man’s name on two databases to learn he “had no history with police.”
Patriquin convinced a justice of the peace to grant a search warrant for the apartment, saying he was looking for signs of drug trafficking, including digital scales, cellphones, cash, score sheets, bulk drugs, packaging to divide them into smaller amounts for resale, and personal records to show that the man really did live in the apartment.
“It is common for drug traffickers to reside with other people that are listed on the lease or ownership however there are often personal documents including the drug trafficker’s name and the address of the place being searched or to show ownership of other property,” the detective said in information to obtain a warrant filed at Halifax provincial court. No charges
During their March 11 search, Halifax Regional Police seized 1,226 grams of psilocybin mushrooms from the apartment.
“The investigation has been concluded without charges,” Const. John MacLeod, who speaks for the force, said Friday in an email.
Growing magic mushrooms isn’t difficult, said Keith J. Williams, a mycologist and ethnobotanist who lives in the Annapolis Valley.
“If you have a modicum of scientific knowledge and if you’re meticulous in your attention to detail, it’s not that hard,” Williams said.
The man police caught growing magic mushrooms in Clayton Park was likely cultivating a strain called psilocybe cubensis, he said.
During the fall in Nova Scotia, people pick a different strain, psilocybe semilanceata, commonly known as the liberty cap, Williams said. “It is not suitable for cultivation.” More potent
The wild magic mushrooms found here are typically more potent than cubensis, he said. “But it’s hard to grow, and they’re very small petite fruit bodies, so the yields would be quite low. Also, if you’re picking them outdoors there’s the risk of misidentification and poisoning.”
Growing magic mushrooms would have been much more difficult 10 or 15 years ago, he said.
“But now there are companies that sell syringes and other products that allow you to skip the most challenging of steps in mushroom cultivation that require the most scientific expertise,” Williams said.
Magic mushrooms can cause visual and auditory hallucinations, he said, noting the effects can last up to eight hours. 'Mystical experience'
“Psychologically people often experience things like an increased sense of nature relatedness, especially with plants,” Williams said.
“On higher doses, ego dissolution occurs, which is a feature of what many scholars of religion describe as the mystical experience."
While magic mushroom are still considered an illegal substance in Canada, dispensaries have been selling them openly in Ottawa and Vancouver for a year, Williams said.
“Probably that’s because of the changing public opinion around psychedelics and their efficacy for addressing treatment-resistant depression, anxiety, (post-traumatic stress disorder) and alcohol abuse.” Demand growing
The demand is growing for magic mushrooms, said Erika Dyck, a psychedelic historian and Canada Research Chair in the History of Medicine at the University of Saskatchewan.
She noted their popularity has magic mushrooms popping up repeatedly in movie and television scripts.
“As word gets out people want to try it and the market doesn’t really exist in a legal way right now,” Dyck said.
“I predict you’re going to see more people like (the fellow in Clayton Park) growing them at home, and this may be a symptom of that kind of policy gap that we exist in.”
The U.S. Federal Drug Administration has declared psilocybin mushrooms to be part of a breakthrough therapy for major depression, Dyck said. 'Parallels with cannabis'
“There are some parallels with cannabis,” she said. “I don’t think that psychedelics are on the same path as cannabis. But we saw the kind of medicalization of cannabis as a bit of a gateway perhaps to opening up that legalization more broadly."
Advocates argue that psychedelics, accompanied by psychotherapy, allow veterans and first responders with PTSD “to revisit those traumatic experiences in a safe place,” Dyck said. “And it is the equivalent of eight to 10 years of psychotherapy.”
Magic mushrooms aren’t “a magic bullet,” she cautioned.
“But right now, it’s really being touted as something that’s outside of the mainstream box.”
Dyck isn’t sure Canadians are ready to turn the corner yet on legalizing psychedelics.
“Parliamentarians and regulators are going to want to have much, much more evidence of the efficacy of these substances before we declare them to be benign enough to sell at 7-Eleven,” she said.
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