Tim Baker wants psychedelic therapy legalised for cancer patients

A writer with strong ties to Byron Bay argues fresh thinking is needed to help people cope with cancer. Here’s why.

Tim Baker has been living with stage four prostate cancer for the past seven years and he has just released a sad yet uplifting novel, ‘Patting the Shark’ that documents this experience.

Baker said he knows this “sounds pretty grim and dark” but he hopes to have told a story “with a range of emotions”, including his suicidal ideologies.
“At my darkest moments, I can remember lying awake in bed at three-o’clock in the morning,” he said.

“We live on a hill with a busy road at the bottom of our street that connects to the M1 freeway and in the middle of the night, I could hear trucks thunder by and I remember lying awake thinking, ‘all I need to do is walk down the hill and step in front of one of those trucks and this torture and what I’m putting my family through, would all be over’,” he told the Byron Shire News.

Although, Baker said he never felt in serious danger of acting on this thought, he said “it’s a pretty scary place to find yourself and so I realised I needed help”.

Tim Baker surfing (Supplied: UrbnSurf/SurfChimp)

“I felt like there was a conversation that needed to be opened up around the nature of the illness and the treatment and what we can do to better support men.”

Baker started researching psychedelic assisted therapy.

“The study that really caught my interest is that 80 per cent of terminal cancer patients who were given one dose of psilocybin which is an ingredient in magic mushrooms, experienced a complete loss of any fear of death, so it’s not curing cancer but it’s allowing you to live out your life at peace,” he said.

Through some discreet inquiries around the Byron Shire area, Baker was able to find a qualified counsellor who did psychedelic theory, and had a session with him using MDMA and another session using psilocybin.

“And I’ve done a little bit of micro-dosing since with LSD and psilocybin at different times just as a self-maintenance thing as required and for me I’ve had a complete relief of any depressive symptoms,” he said.

“But it’s dangerous for this therapy to be conducted in an unregulated way because it’s not legal.

“Hopefully the police have better things to do than to come after a cancer patient who is trying to avoid becoming suicidal.”

Baker said that men aren’t great at discussing their health in general and women are more open about breast cancer, whereas men don’t want to talk about the impact of the prostate cancer hormone therapy “because it’s such a threat to their masculinity”.

“When it became apparent to me what I was being prescribed, you realise what this medication does to you as a man, it’s pretty shocking,” he said.

“Hormone therapy is a polite euphemism for chemical castration.”

It took Baker “four years to see a men’s sexual health specialist which is pretty typical because you are so caught up in survival that you don’t attend to that aspect of the side effects of the treatment,” he said.

“These things could be very easily incorporated into standard care and so that’s really what I am advocating for.”

Baker urges anyone with suicidal ideologies to get a mental health care plan from your GP and to find a good psychologist.

“If you don’t find a good one on your first attempt, keep trying don’t give up,” he said.

“Reach out to your mates. Have real conversations, don’t suffer in silence.”

* If you, or someone you know needs support or information around depression and anxiety, please dial 1300 22 4636.