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January-February 2024

Beat generation

Some people swear these auditory illusions can alter their moods

Tyler Hein

Sometime around 2005, in the halcyon days of the internet when it was still treading its path to ubiquity, I peaked. Hunkered down late at night in a small room exclusively dedicated to housing a family desktop computer, I used the free peer-to-peer file-sharing client LimeWire to pirate the less-free peer-to- peer file-sharing client LimeWire Pro. […] More »
January-February 2024

Building a village

How Toronto's Rwandan community is creating its own housing

Likam Kyanzaire

In the summer of 2023, 200 African asylum seekers were left homeless in Toronto. With nowhere to go, they had no choice but to sleep on the streets after escaping poverty, political violence and climate disaster back home. While municipal, provincial and federal governments twiddled their thumbs, Black and African organizations in the city rallied […] More »
November - December 2023

Breaking the silence

Canada is severely behind in providing support for female genital mutilation/cutting survivors

Kena Shah

“It was just something to do…like getting your hair braided,” says Kayowe Mune, describing the mindset held by many communities about female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C). Mune, now 42, is a content creator based in Toronto and was cut when she was six years old, as part of what’s known as vacation cutting, which often happens […] More »
November - December 2023

How TV podcasts helped me regain my memory after Long COVID

Nisa Malli

When my girlfriend of six years broke up with me by text, followed by a short call, I couldn’t comprehend it. It wasn’t grief, shock, or denial. My brain, damaged from 16 months of Long COVID, couldn’t read or write, splice voices from background noise, or parse words said fast enough to react. When our friends […] More »
September-October 2023

A long trip home

If I didn't experiment with psilocybin during therapy, I may not have seen my estranged mom again

Jacqueline Salomé

My mother’s house looks like my long-repressed childhood memories. The black floral wallpaper is veiled with dust, cloaking walls yellowed by years of chain- smoked cigarettes. Everything decorative is dangerous: swords hang in place of picture frames, flanked by ominous leather ropes of unknown origin. My mother’s house feels like a castle, but one where […] More »
November - December 2023

A sober thought

After I quit drinking, I set off to find a new community. I'm still looking

Conyer Clayton

The last time I drank I was surrounded by family. I’d just returned from a solo trip to Scotland where I drank heavily every day for several weeks. When I got home I put my foot down. Okay, only on special occasions now. Every alcoholic knows this little cha-cha. A few weeks later, my partner’s […] More »
November - December 2023

Searching for solutions

Rachel Cairns frankly addresses gaps in Canadian abortion care in her new play

Dominique Gené

“How do I get an abortion?” an anxious woman asks the doctor. He responds with his own questions about her relationship status, her income and her decision to not have a child. This interaction isn’t fictitious; it’s the opening scene of Rachel Cairns’s podcast “Aborsh” and her upcoming autobiographical play, Hypothetical Baby. Her unhelpful doctor’s appointment […] More »
September-October 2023

Policy prejudice

B.C. has decriminalized some drugs, but in private institutions, different rules may apply

Nathan Bawaan

Jenna Rizvi was spending a significant chunk of their time organizing naloxone training workshops and fentanyl testing strip distribution events. But this isn’t what they do for work; they were volunteering during their first year as a student at the University of British Columbia (UBC) in Vancouver. In the 2021/22 school year, students at UBC […] More »
September-October 2023

The Beautiful After

In the ’00s, taking gobs of diet pills didn't feel like a choice. In some ways, little has changed

Rachel Ganz

It was the first day of class. I was an eighteen-year-old Broadway geek entering Syracuse University’s (SU) acting program. I spent the morning seated on the floor of “movement” class with 29 other adolescents in front of our teacher, David, a loud and upbeat SU graduate, Broadway star and self-described “hotdog”—an actor who trained with […] More »
September-October 2023

Tuning in

What's the media's role in the psychedelic renaissance?

Sofie Mikhaylova

One brisk November 1938 afternoon in Basel, Switzerland, chemist Albert Hofmann successfully synthesized lysergic acid diethylamide for the first time. The compound was set aside and forgotten for five years until Hofmann resynthesized it, accidentally absorbed some, and took the world’s first acid trip. The discovery of acid, or LSD, changed the course of social […] More »
September-October 2023

Contingent freedom

Travel can be nearly impossible for Canadians who take methadone

Mikaela Toone

Charlotte Munro and her mom smiled for a selfie high above the frothy water of Niagara Falls. Amidst a difficult year where Munro endured both opioid withdrawal and a near-deadly infection, the weekend trip should have been a respite. But the getaway quickly turned sour because she was forced to forgo packing one essential item—her medication. […] More »