Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/1470128
7 Megan L'Heureux Group Editorial Director, Cannabis Science and Technology ® ; Cannabis Patient Care ™ mlheureux@ mjhlifesciences. com Psychedelics: New Frontiers in Alternative Medicine WHAT COMES TO MIND when you hear psychedelics or psilocybin? If you're like me, perhaps you think of col- lege-age kids experimenting with "magic mushrooms" or funny scenes from movies such as Super Troopers. What doesn't immediately come to mind is the me- dicinal use or microdosing of these substances. I first started hearing about such things about a year or so ago, still amid the global pandemic with lockdowns and quarantines. People wanted to know if we were cover- ing it—in fact, many people wanted us to cover it. I hes- itated. I did not see the connection between psyche- delics and cannabis, aside from the way the US Federal Government classifies them. While I admit that I still have much more to learn when it comes to psyche- delics, I have discovered that the path for psychedelics and cannabis to be seen as legalized medicine are per- haps not too far from one another. Patients, advocates, and researchers are paving the wave for psychedelics to be viewed as a treatment option for certain indi- cations in the same way that medical cannabis first came about. The research and medical use surround- ing psychedelics is growing—so, in this supplement, we dive in to find out more from people in the field. In our first article, Larry Beresford discusses what legalization and widespread availability of psilocy- bin therapy would look like with Dr. Sunil Aggarwal, a palliative care physician and cofounder of the Ad- vanced Integrative Medical Science Institute (AIMS) in Seattle, Washington. Dr. Aggarwal already offers ketamine-assisted therapy, which has shown power- ful results against depression, suicidal ideation, and psycho-spiritual distress. In our next feature, Erin McEvoy interviews Dona- ghue Woodman, the Head of Research and Develop- ment and Chief Medical Information Officer at Cann- sun. Cannsun was recently approved for a clinical trial on the effects of psilocybin in treating a preva- lent yet unresolved issue in South Africa. Their study plans to look at the physical and mental health dis- eases affecting a large population in South Africa by studying the effects of psilocybin with psychother- apy on HIV positive women who have major depres- sive disorder. Once psychedelics are legalized in more states (or countries), how do we make them more acces- sible? Dean Harris presents an outline of the are- as that might be critical in creating an infrastructure for building the right kind of psilocybin production space. We also have an exciting summary by Frank Priscaro of a recently published peer-reviewed pa- per detailing the assembly of a highly contiguous draft reference genome for the Psilocybe cuben- sis mushroom written by Kevin McKernan, Medicinal Genomics Chief Science Officer, and colleagues. In another paper, nurse James Schwartz provides an overview of the therapeutic role of psychedelics that goes back thousands of years, as well as the new research and the application of micro-dosing principles that have created renewed interest in the power of psychedelics. And last, but certainly not least, we present a conversation with Dr. Denise C. Vidot, an epidemiologist at the University of Miami and Founder of the International Cannabis & Psy- chedelic Research Collaborative. Dr. Vidot shares her research background, a short overview of her talk from this year's Cannabis Science Conference West titled, "Co-Use of Cannabis and Psilocybin to Manage Mental Health Amid the COVID-19 Pandemic: Prelimi- nary Results from the International COVID-19 Canna- bis Health Study," and more. I hope you'll join us in learning more about psych- edelics and the fascinating work that is being done to understand how to use them as a medicine. Enjoy! cannabissciencetech.com Psychedelics: New Frontiers in Alternative Medicine from the editor c a n n a b i s s c i e n c e a n d t e c h n o l o g y ® | m a y / j u n e 2 0 2 2 | v o l 5 • n o s 1