Mushroom Dispensary Victoria

In the City of Vancouver, buying magic mushrooms, in at least one case, can be as easy as ordering your morning cup of coffee.  In a development reminiscent of its first unlicensed pot cafés, the city has seen a recent shroom boom with at least four new dispensaries openly setting up shop: two in downtown Vancouver, one on Commercial Drive and another on the Downtown Eastside.Many of them tout the benefits of psilocybin, an hallucinogenic compound found in mushrooms that the medical community has been studying for its therapeutic use in treating mental health conditions and end-of-life distress. From the outside, the mushroom dispensary on the edge of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside makes no attempt to hide the federally controlled substance it offers.Its owner, Dana Larsen — no stranger to bending the law in the name of drug reform — is proud of his products.”I was heavily involved in the cannabis movement in Vancouver and across Canada and I see psychedelics and mushrooms in particular as the next step in that process,” he said. “We kind of operate in this grey area and I hope to change that grey area to lighter and lighter shades of grey, and hopefully in the next few years, we see a change in the laws around psilocybin mushrooms.”

Spencer Hawkswell is the CEO of not-for-profit TheraPsil, which helps Canadians in medical need obtain federal exemptions to access medical psilocybin. But he says it’s a complicated process, with each request needing to be approved by the federal health minister. So far, his coalition has helped more than 80 Canadians access the drug. He says it’s understandable that Canadians are getting it elsewhere.”The demand for psilocybin is real. The number of Canadians out there who are seeing this research, who are fed up with the treatment options that aren’t working and realize they don’t have alternatives, they’re looking for support.”