The Decibel - The new ‘Rosé All Day’? Stressed moms are microdosing mushrooms

Episode Date: November 7, 2024

The U.S. Surgeon General recently issued a health advisory saying that 48 per cent of parents with kids under 18 are completely overwhelmed by their stress. Most of those stressed out parents are moms – and some of those moms are turning to microdosing psilocybin to cope.Amberly McAteer is a Toronto-based writer and former editor in The Globe and Mail’s Opinion section. She looked into this trend and explains how parenting now is more stressful than in past generations, and explores what the consequences might be of microdosing an illegal, unregulated substance.Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail]

Amberlee McAteer has two daughters under five. And as every parent knows, even the most routine weeknight is a lot of work. From the moment they get in the car, it's kind of a crapshoot of whether or not they're going to be in the best mood ever and tell me about their day and the chickens are hatching at school or something terrible happened and somebody took their sticker and they're throwing shoes at me or they're, you know, screaming and or worse, one of them's had a good day and one of them's not. And the car ride home from school and daycare is just the first hurdle. So we get home, I wrestle them out of the car seats, we get in the door and every move is a negotiation. Who's going to take off their shoes for me? Who's going to wear their dirty shoes through the house? Who's going to take off their shoes for me?

Who's going to wear their dirty shoes through the house? Who's going to put their jackets on the hooks? Then Amberlee has to set about keeping her kids entertained while she also makes dinner. Who knows if they're going to eat the dinner that I cook or it's going to wind up on the floor. If it winds up on the floor, I'm often on the floor trying to pick up that dinner

and then tell my four-year-old to get her feet off the table while I'm picking the dinner up, while the dogs are trying to eat the dinner. The two-year-old is having a meltdown because I'm not sitting beside her closely enough. And then I get a phone call from my husband that he has to work late and he won't be home for bedtime. Then she has to get through bath time and bedtime before she can finally have a moment to herself. Kind of. And then it's about 9, 9.30 where I can actually start to think about, I don't know, paying the bills or preparing for this interview or doing the work that I need to do. Amberlee isn't alone. The reality is that parenting is stressful, especially these days. Public health officials are even warning people

about it. And for some moms, they're finding relief by microdosing psilocybin. Yep, magic mushrooms. Amber Lee is a Toronto-based writer and former editor in the Globe's opinion section. And she looked into the trend of mom's microdosing mushrooms. She explains why it's happening and what might actually help solve the stresses of modern motherhood. I'm Maina Karaman-Wilms and this is The Decibel from The Globe and Mail. Amberlee, thank you so much for being here. Thanks for having me, Manika. So Amberlee, you just described to us your typical kind of weeknight chaos in your house, and I think a lot of parents, of course, can relate to that, right? So I think we should look at the issue of parental stress maybe more broadly here, because I guess I wonder, the default parent, as it's kind of called now.

And the mental load of parenting or the invisible labor often falls to us. So that's the pressure of finding good and affordable child care, communicating with the teachers, signing up for swim lessons, school pickup, school drop-off, booking their flu shots, dentist appointments, and then make a healthy dinner. And then also, by the way, have a career. And it's a lot on moms. So you're juggling like career and child rearing. Is that the difference? Or I guess, what is the difference of this generation that's really feeling the stress so much more acutely? Well, I think there's two things. The Pew Research Center in D.C. did some wonderful data on heterosexual two-parent households. And they found that even when the mom is the primary breadwinner, so she has the more demanding career now, she is still the default parent more often than not. We are now spending more time with their kids than even the stay-at-home moms were in the 60s. I think children are closer to

us in proximity all of the time now, which is, I think, good, but also bad. And it also really falls on the moms to be the you know, the decision makers and the problem solvers and the comfort givers. And that's not to say that dads don't do this, but moms are overwhelmingly the sort of air traffic controllers. You know, things flow, they might land at dad's plate, but they're going to flow through moms more often than not first. What about information around parenting? Like the kind of just because we're in this space right now where anything is at our fingertips, right? So how does that play into this? Absolutely. So, you know, we've got so much

information on our phones all the time. And as a parent, I have to say it is really helpful. You know, I can read about scary things like warnings on the red dyes in foods or the damaging effects of screen time. And also everywhere on social media, there's these wonderful communities where we get to sort of connect with other moms and ask, hey, what are you doing? You know, this morning, I just watched this great Instagram reel on what happens to your toddler's brain during a meltdown and what's the very best way to help them through that. So it's great, but it's also overwhelming. And a lot of this information is targeted to mothers and it falls on mothers to know, and it falls on mothers to execute, and then it falls on mothers to relay to their partners. So there's kind of a few different

parts to this. You're saying there's the intense stress on mothers, but then also this proliferation of information, which is good. It can help you parent, but it can also be really overwhelming. It can be extremely overwhelming. So, for example, there's this gentle parenting movement on social media right now, which I think is wonderful in a lot of ways. So gentle parenting essentially teaches us to meet our kids where they are developmentally. So we're not yelling at them to stop stop crying as we did in years past, but we're understanding their capacity for emotional regulation and we're trying to regulate our own emotions. And we're told that sitting with them in the discomfort of that meltdown is the best thing to do. But who do you think is sitting

with them and doing the emotional work? You know, it's easier to shut a kid in their room and say, come out when you're happy. But now we're told that it's actually better for the kid, but it's harder for us. And it's often the moms that are doing that emotional work. So what is the effect of that? Like, if I can ask you personally, Amberlee, like all of this, you know, the kind of evenings that you described, what is that effect on you as a parent and also just as a person? It's overwhelming a lot of the times to be this sort of best parent. I look at my kids and I always want the best for them. And by no means do I want to tell you that I'm, you know, this amazing mom.

Like, sometimes we're all human. We all have moments where we just can't be that great parent. And then there's the guilt that comes with that. And then how do I get better? How do I be a better mom? And then again, you're looking at your phone on, hey, what should I do? And then your phone tells you, well, you should repair with your kids. And that is extremely important. And that's what, you know, I do. And that's why I'm thankful for my phone. But I also, it's like just this basically fire hose of information on how to be the best. And it can be a lot for me and moms I know.

So we've been talking about this kind of anecdotally. But do we actually have any numbers on this, like about how stressful parenting actually has become these days? So really interesting. The U.S. Surgeon General's warning on parental mental health, which came out a few months ago, was to me surprising, but also extremely not. I think a lot of mothers just sort of nodded in agreement, like, yes. And Dr. Vivek Murthy, the surgeon general said that 48% of parents say that most days their stress is completely overwhelming. So he's sort of giving this health advisory like you would read, you know, against smoking. But the difference is, if you read that with smoking, you can stop smoking.

You can't exactly stop trying to be the best parent you know how to be. So like I say, I think a lot of mothers sort of said, uh-huh, yes, and I'm glad it's getting attention, but what now? Yeah. Wow. That's a pretty staggering number, right? Almost half of parents feeling that they're completely overwhelmed by their stress. And so in order to deal with this, I guess, some parents are starting to microdose psilocybin. So let's talk about this, Amberlee. What makes this in particular, I guess, so appealing to stressed out moms? So moms that I know and advocates of microdosing that I've spoken to say it's life

changing. And some of the people I've spoken with will tell you that it's life saving. So there's these large online communities of moms, literally M-O-M, moms on mushrooms, who microdose and they say it's made them a better mom, a less stressed person, you know, a nicer wife, more grounded, less anxious. I had a friend who's a doctor text me after reading my essay in the Globe, and she told me microdosing literally saved her life. She was going through a deep depression after COVID, you know, being a doctor through COVID. And she said that antidepressants and therapy were just not working. So she went to a state where microdosing was legal, and she said it helped her work through really dark feelings that were otherwise what she called really not reachable to her. So I think that's some amazing feedback from people who have tried it and continue to do it and say it helps them.

I think one thing it's important to know is that it's sub-perceptual. So microdosing is a very small one-tenth of a mushroom trip, you know, a typical large dose. So you don't feel it. Moms are not getting like spaced out like you would, or, you know, having three glasses of wine and feeling tipsy. They're taking these capsules, not daily, and saying that they've felt and experienced these amazing results. Okay. And we are going to talk about, I guess, some of the science around microdosing soon, but I just want to focus on this idea of this trend that's happening.

Do we have a sense of, I guess, how popular this is? How many moms are taking mushrooms? Well, of course, there's no, you know, real market data because it is illegal. So there's no, you know, research on what age group are doing which kinds. But from my own observations and from my own reporting, I know moms across Canada who are microdosing psilocybin. There are four in my own neighborhood in West Toronto. Because I was at a mom's night gathering this summer and, you know, we sort of drink too much wine and vent about our lives and our parental stress. And I was telling my friends that I was having this real brain fog, the sort of feeling of I can't get, I can't access this concentration that I once had, and it feels stress-induced.

And they basically all turned to me in unison and were like, so why haven't you tried psilocybin? Wow. And I was like, wait, you've? You have? Like, we're all doing mushrooms? And they're like, ah, yeah, we get it from this company or somebody's husband actually grows them for her, you know? And it's like, yes, of course. It just helps you, as I say, be a more grounded person. So I was, so then I started researching. I kind of put my journalist hat on and was like, wait a second, how many people are doing this? How many people do I know?

I started speaking to others. And then in my research, I came across this parenting coach, Jen Abatiello in Hamilton. And she coaches moms primarily to be better parents, to be the parents they want to be. Again, kind of like what we were speaking about before is that they're doing too much yelling and they want to have more emotional empathy and be more emotionally connected and be the parents they want to be. So I spoke with her and I was fascinated to find out that she recommends microdosing to her clients and she does it herself. She said about 40% of her clients microdose and with success, it helps them. That's pretty significant.

40% is a significant number. She said it's one of the many tools in her tool belt. And I asked her sort of about the stigma of like you're getting people to do mushrooms and she said well why not you know we sort of normalize this idea of moms need a glass of wine after bedtime because we're so stressed and we need something to sort of take the edge off or back in the day you know the rolling stones talked about mother's Little Helper, which I think was Valium. So she talked about how the substance use to minimize stress is nothing new.

So it sort of got me thinking about these common phrases we see, like, but first coffee, or rosé all day, you know, for moms. And now it feels like psilocybin in small doses are helping. At least that's what moms told me. But then these substances, like as you say, this is it's not a new thing to turn to a substance in order to help you cope, right? But it's not really addressing, I guess, the underlying issue, right? It's not. There's that stress that's still there.

And the stress has been there, like we talked about um it's just getting more intense now that women are being asked to juggle more balls um and it can be too much but yeah to your point it's it's about surviving the day-to-day and it's not really solving the issue of of mother's stress in the world we'll be back after this message okay so that kind of gets at the i guess the why when it comes to mom's microdosing psilocybin but of course as you mentioned earlier amber, magic mushrooms at any dose are illegal in Canada. Absolutely, yeah. Obviously, you can still get them, but is there any kind of regulation, I guess, of this gray market?

Yeah, you're absolutely right. Health Canada is very clear. The production, sale, and possession of magic mushrooms are illegal in Canada. In terms of warnings, they focus on the traditional large dose sense, so an actual mushroom trip. And they say users can experience a sense of mental and emotional clarity or paranoia and anxiety. But again, that's the large dose and they don't focus on microdosing. They say there have been no clinical studies. But right now, there's a huge international study going on, and it's led by the University of British Columbia. And their head researcher there talked me through it. And they said 22,000 participants have been included in this research. And it's conducted online,

and it's a peer-reviewed study. And the head researcher there told me that she's seeing overwhelmingly positive results. She said that in her study, microdosing decreases depression and decreases anxiety. But again, there's no clinical studies. And that's something everyone can agree on, that we actually need clinical trials in scientific studies to see what's actually happening with these tiny doses of psilocybin. So essentially, though, there's no real research on the effectiveness of microdosing yet. Absolutely. So a clinical psychologist that

I spoke with for the essay, Dominique Morisano, she deals with psychedelic therapeutics. And she told me that the only scientifically proven aspect of microdosing is the positive effect of the placebo which at first I thought oh well you know if it's a fake thing then it's not that's your answer it's not really working but she said no that's it's actually great because you can prove with the placebo that just taking an action to improve your mental health actually improves your mental health, which is pretty cool. And it doesn't take away from what microdosing is doing. If the intention is there to improve a mental health aspect, then you actually improve your mental health, which I think is pretty cool. Yeah. That's an interesting point too, because you mentioned

earlier, Amberlee, that the effects are sub-perceptual, right? Meaning you can't actually tell. You can't feel it in your body. You're not like and that it's made them a better parent and more grounded. Sort of in the same way that a large dose of mushrooms would drop your walls and, you know, reveal your inner self. They say that microdosing helps them be more connected to their inner parent. So more heart and less head, if that makes sense. Okay. And even like you were saying there too, even if maybe it doesn't have so much effect, even if it is a placebo effect that is helping you. Then so be it. That's great. If it's helping.

I mean, so that's important to recognize that people are, you know, anecdotally finding that this helps them. But I guess we should just address the fact that this is, of course, an illegal substance. And a lot of people probably would take issue with taking mushrooms. Absolutely. It is an illegal substance. It is a completely unregulated substance. And it's not been tested in a clinical setting. That can remain true. It also remains true that people are doing it. And so there does absolutely need to be clinical studies in, you know, scientific settings to say whether or not this is actually helpful and actually a good thing. We just don't know. I guess I have to ask,

are there any harms to microdosing? So to me, the harm is in the supply. It is, as you said, it's this gray market where anything goes. And there's no real way of knowing what's on the bottle is actually what's inside the bottle, which is obviously unsafe. But yet, mushroom dispensaries are plentiful in Canada, particularly in large urban centers in the country. Vancouver has 12, Toronto has 14 the last time I counted. So that means you've got a lot of customers, a lot of demand, a lot of supply, and absolutely no government oversight or regulation, because again, it's still very much illegal. In my mind, it's kind of like the cannabis stores before marijuana was legalized. In my mind, this is kind of similar. So you've got this huge demand and huge supply and customers going in and out, but no regulation, which is unsafe. Just in our last few minutes here, Amberlee, I want to come back to this idea of why moms are doing this in the first place, right?

The stresses of modern motherhood. For sure. I guess I can see how this would help someone feel a little less stressed, even if it is just a placebo effect. But it is not going to take away that stress. So what, I guess, what could be a better solution here in terms of helping alleviate that stress? You know, I wish I had a good answer for you, Manika. In my mind, it's an impossibility. I mean, can we create a society that doesn't immediately call the mom when the kid is

sick, even if the dad's the first one on the call list? You know, can we create a society that doesn't immediately applaud dads for doing the bare minimum? I mean, not to be dramatic, but can we end the patriarchy? Like, I really don't know how do we fix the load on moms externally? The U.S. Surgeon General's Advisory had this solution list, you know, at the end, and it said something like prioritize preventative care for stress management and mental health. And I thought, well, that just sounds like, you know, put your feet up, moms, take time for you. What does that mean to prioritize preventative care for stress management? It just sounds like hyperbole to me. And there's not any real systemic change that can happen. You know, it's like, oh, take some me time, moms, but don't forget to have dinner on the table and have the best children and have a career and do all the things. Is there something about, I guess, maybe putting more value on caregivers and the act of caregiving and value that differently in society? Absolutely. Absolutely.

But to me, I don't know that that's going to happen. Yes, absolutely. I would love for this to be a call to change society and understand that women, moms of young kids specifically, have a lot on their plate and like society needs to step in and shoulder that stress. What I do know is that the external stressors on moms are always going to be there, right? But what I think we can control is the stress that's self-inflicted. You know, I'm always asking myself if I'm doing enough for my kids, if they're getting enough mental, physical, emotional stimulation. Before this interview, I made a list of like, get more vitamins, check the shoe sizes.

You know, it seems to be just relentless in that, am I doing enough and am I being the best? And I'm always looking to my phone to answer that. What am I doing wrong and how can I be a better mom? Right now, there's this huge push to get kids off of phones and get phones out of schools. But for me, I think I'm going to start listening to that advice as a parent and tap into my intuition more and stop with the constant fact checking on my phone if I'm doing something right and just check in with myself and say, you know what, I am doing a good job. Take a deep breath. And I just think, you know, parents and moms just need to give ourselves the grace that

we give our kids. Emily, thank you so much for being here today. Thank you. This conversation was fun. Thanks, Vanica. Emily, thank you so much for being here today and having this conversation This was fun, thanks Manika That's it for today I'm Manika Raman-Wellms Our producers are Madeline White Michal Stein and Allie Graham

David Crosby edits the show Adrienne Chung is our senior producer and Matt Frainer is our managing editor Thanks so much for listening and I'll talk to you tomorrow Adrian Chung is our senior producer, and Matt Frainer is our managing editor. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll talk to you tomorrow.