Joe McKay tried everything for the blinding headaches that began in the months after 9/11, when the former New York firefighter spent weeks wading through the dust and smoke at the World Trade Center, whose towers were toppled in the 2001 terrorist attack.
On his worst days, McKay was in agony every few hours, feeling like someone had stabbed him in the eye with an ice pick.
“It’s the worst pain I’ve ever felt,” he said.
He tried numerous prescription medications without lasting relief. Doctors diagnosed him with cluster headaches, also known as “suicide” headaches for the despair sufferers experience. The suicide rate for cluster headache sufferers is 20 times the US national average, according to the Cluster Headache Foundation.
Some common medications for cluster headaches have serious side effects. For example, Verapamil can cause heart rhythm problems such as heart block, which occurs when electrical signals in the heart are disrupted, or bradycardia – slower heart beat – and neurologists often give patients an electrocardiogram (ECG) to test their heart health before prescribing it.
McKay heard about an unusual treatment: psilocybin, the psychedelic chemical found in “magic” mushrooms.