The Psilocybin Solution
(Part 7 of the story of my psychedelic-enhanced journey to mental health)
I felt frustrated and discouraged. My progress at ridding myself of my sense of shame had halted and seemed to be reversing. The talk therapy was making no progress on lowering my emotional shield. And what looked like the most promising path forward, trying to enhance my neuroplasticity with psilocybin (magic mushrooms), seemed to be off the table because it was illegal.
Or was it? From online research, I could see that Oregon had legalized psilocybin, albeit prospectively. And some progressive cities, like Denver and Ann Arbor, had decriminalized it. As a lawyer, I knew that federal law preempted contrary state and local laws, but marijuana, while still illegal by federal law, had been similarly decriminalized in many places without the federal government trying to prevent or prosecute its use. So maybe there was still hope.
It turned out to be relatively easy and not very expensive to buy psilocybin mushrooms. I did have a “false start” when I went to Ann Arbor, Michigan to buy them, which was necessary because they had been decriminalized only within the geographic borders of the city. I traveled there only to find out that the selling company was freshly sold out! Ultimately, I found a Canadian company online that would ship small quantities to the U.S. fairly cheaply.
In any event, I recognized that I knew next to nothing about psilocybin — especially how to use it properly. Since it remained illegal in most places, it was not like ketamine, where I could visit a licensed ketamine clinic and have a medical doctor oversee the treatment.
An internet search quickly took me to the website for Psychedelic Passages [https://www.psychedelicpassage.com/], which billed itself as “Your Trusted Network of Psychedelic Guides & Trip Sitters.” Who knew that such a thing existed? I contacted one of its founders, Jimmy Nguyen, to find out more.
What a smart decision that turned out to be! Jimmy seemed to know everything about psilocybin, including how best to use it in conjunction with mental health therapy. He had literature and other incredibly helpful resources about the drug and its use. And he seemed eager and happy to help me.
How could he and his company do that and so openly, I asked, given that psilocybin was still illegal in most places? Jimmy explained that his company didn’t possess the drug and wasn’t involved in any transactions for it. They just acted as a knowledge and counseling organization whose role was to “minimize harm” for anyone who was considering or determined to use the mushrooms for their own purposes.
That was exactly what I needed. I hired him on the spot. Jimmy (and his company’s literature) taught me what I needed to know about psilocybin and to prepare to use it.
Equally as important, the thoroughness and professionalism of his company helped me to persuade Andrea and David to support my psilocybin plans and to participate in them. Andrea was concerned for my well-being, and Psychedelic Passages’ academic and medical information about the drug was reassuring. And Jimmy was able to convince my therapist, David, that he could safely participate in my psilocybin trip without risking prosecution if David limited his involvement to counseling and harm minimization, which was always his intent anyway.
There was also an unexpected benefit from hiring Jimmy to be my “trip-sitter.” It was like having a second therapist, but one with experience in preparing patients for psychedelic experiences. He was so supportive and nonjudgmental. I felt that I could share my innermost thoughts and fears with him as safely and supported as I felt with David.
So I did. I started cc’ing Jimmy on my pre-trip e-mails to David discussing my internal flaws and fears and what I hoped to discover. Jimmy always expressed gratitude for my sharing these details with him and often had helpful observations and suggestions.
(Apparently I’m not the only person who was so impressed with Jimmy Nguyen. A graduate student filmmaker at NYU recently produced and directed a 30 minute documentary about Jimmy and his trip-sitting. The trailer for this film is at http://newsdocfilmfest.com/year-2023/journey/. (Full disclosure: I have a small role in the film.)
The preparation that Jimmy put me through was more extensive than I had expected. He had me develop a “mantra” for what in general I wanted the mushrooms to do for me. It could be any short phrase that I would hopefully remember and recite if I felt myself drifting or losing my direction during the psychedelic experience.
I had trouble coming up with a mantra. Ultimately, I settled on an excerpt of the lyrics from the song, “Listening to You” from The Who’s rock opera “Tommy:”
See Me
Feel Me
Touch Me
Heal Me
In retrospect, that seems like a perfect description of what the mushrooms do. Even today when I hear or even think of these lyrics, it opens a very vulnerable part of me to some intense but positive emotions, primarily gratitude and pride.
Jimmy also had me identify specific psychological goals, called “intentions,” that I wanted the psilocybin to help me accomplish. That was easy. I wanted to get rid of my sense of shame, and I wanted to lower my emotional shield.
With Jimmy’s help, I devised short, very simple phrases to help me remember my intentions while I was under the influence of the psilocybin. So I committed to memory: “Banish the shame,” and “Lower the shield.”
I asked Jimmy whether the mushrooms could really help me accomplish these intentions. He wouldn’t make any promises or predictions, but Jimmy was encouraging. He told me, “The mushrooms won’t always give you what you want, but they give you what you need.” That was good enough for me.
I put myself in Jimmy’s hands to prepare for the experience and followed his recommendations faithfully. He had some specific suggestions about rest and nutrition, but most of his recommended practices involved mental preparation.
I don’t consider myself to be a very spiritual person. My life has always been ruled by logic and science. Jimmy’s approach was more spiritual than I was used to, but I followed his recommendations and didn’t judge them.
We set a date for my psilocybin trip: January 4, 2022. We would do it in the basement of my house, a safe space for me, and without windows to minimize distraction. Andrea would be home but would not participate or even go downstairs since Jimmy wanted to turn the space into what he called a “sacred container” for me.
Both Jimmy and David would stay with me throughout the duration of the trip, which Jimmy had estimated to be from 5–8 hours. Jimmy would fly into town, and David would drive to my house from his distant suburb. Jimmy would oversee my use of and reactions to the psilocybin, and David would keep track of what I said and did and try to help me focus on the psychological issues that I wanted to address.
Once the details were settled and all the arrangements made, I began to get nervous. It was really going to happen! Everything about the upcoming psilocybin experience, from managing all the details to using a mind-expanding drug, was completely out of character for me. But that is what I wanted: to be out of character — to change my character from one dominated by shame and devoid of emotion to a new character that is shame-free and feels normal emotions. I was determined to make it happen — or to do my best to try.
Andrea asked me how I felt putting my life in the hands of two people whom I barely knew. I had never met Jimmy in person, and I had only met David in person once before, at the ketamine clinic. But I trusted them both and felt confident. From all of our very frank and vulnerable discussions, I felt that I knew them better than many of my neighbors whom I saw nearly every day.
It was really going to happen! Nearly age 65, I was going to take a heavy-duty trip on psilocybin. It turned out to be perhaps the bravest and most terrifying thing that I ever did, as well as the most incredible experience of my life.
