A Long, Strange, Clearing-out Trip

How a little mushroom did what 50 years of talk-therapy didn’t.

Faulkner said it long ago — “The past is never dead; it’s not even past.”

Many of us remain stuck in the same behavior patterns that became hard-wired into our nervous systems as children. Whether out of neglect, abandonment, abuse, or some other trauma, a great mass of adults struggle to move on from legacy survival “adaptations”. Add to that what seems like a never-ending series of new traumas and stress that swirl into our adult lives and it becomes harder and harder to get un-stuck.

People who have not been able to heal wounds from childhood carry all of the anxiety, stress, and other emotional muck with us as packets of toxic energy in our brains as cognitive memory AND (as Bessel Van der Kolk so masterfully explains in the New York Times bestseller “The Body Keeps the Score”), lodged biophysically in the body.

This is where magic-mushroom-as-medicine offers a new — or old — way to get un-stuck. For centuries, Native and Indigenous tribal peoples all over the world have used these little (usually purple-tinted) fungi to heal psychological and biophysical wounds human interactions rarely achieve. Magic is indeed the perfect adjective.

Talk therapy had been the only self-work modality I’d ever known. Upon moving to Boulder, CO in ’17, a serendipitous encounter led me to work with a new counselor/mentor, who has now become by far the most helpful I’d ever worked with. I’d been making great progress in a much more focused talk-therapy protocol through her approach anchored in and designed specifically to un-stick my wounded, toxic, past.

What I had not anticipated was her suggestion that I try plant-based medicines (note my use of the word medicine vs. drug), in which she had already been deeply knowledgable and experienced in administering for many others similarly stuck. As soon as she described the efficacy of psilocybin’s unique ability to “clear out” stuck packets of toxic energy, I just knew this was what I’d always needed. my intuitive self jumped at the chance to, finally, clear out and unwind toxic energy that had gotten in the way of me becoming who I always knew I could be.

And so began the last, best, most unique part of my life-long journey to move beyond so many of the beliefs and behaviors I’d never been able to re-wire. Let’s do this!

Go to a Phish or EDM show on a 1/2–1.0g of psilocybin and chances are you’ll have a great f-ing time. This is magic-mushroom-as-recreational-drug. Not that I don’t want to recreationally trip; I’ll definitely try that at some point. Particularly because Phish is playing their asses off again! But that’s not what I did.

I went on a healing journey. Starting with intention-setting.

For several months I worked with my mentor to clarify what I wanted this medicine to do for me. Intention is critical, as I would later learn, because one of the magic properties of this wonder-stuff is that, when properly crafted and ceremoniously employed, it works “with” us, within our wired energy pathways. For lack of a better way to describe it, it follows our intention to heal what needs to be healed.

It’s a sun-soaked morning in a blossoming desert in America’s southwest somewhere. Of course I knew where I was, I just don’t want any of you reading this to.

I meander into the kitchen to find my mentor preparing the medicine, a pot porrie of herbs, spices, cacao, and other things, including many grams of psilocybin mushrooms. Smells great.

After about an hour, the ceremony starts. Calming native drumming interspersed with convocations to native spirits culled from tribal ceremonies from around the world. It is peaceful. I am slightly nervous at what is about to happen to me but also so thankful at being at a place in my life where I can invest in a process like this with someone who is so experienced, guiding, supportive, and aligned with who I am and what I need. I write my intention on a small piece of paper, light it up and burn it into ashes as I drink the medicine. Here we go.

I sit down on a soft mattress. There is a music soundtrack playing — which will do so for the next 5 hours — that I never would have chosen for myself…but turns out to be an abjectly powerful and fantastic accelerant and canvas for the unknown I was about to experience. She told me that the medicine might take 10–20 minutes to take effect, and that when I start to feel something it would be time to lie down, place the eye goggles on, and just let it happen. Surrender to it. And that’s exactly what happened and what I did.

Not that I had a choice to surrender…

THE NEXT 5 HOURS — here are the notes I wrote that night after the journey.

eyes plastered shut to the world around me under a patch of black cloth bursting in my mind’s eye at a phantasmic kaleidoscope of colors and objects and places, shedding buckets of ecstatic tears, a bewildered and betwixt passenger on a ride from nowhere to somewhere. fingers ripping through my clothes gnawing and kneading through muscle into marrow of who i had been. yet so proud ihad this body.

PHASES

shivering. quaking. uncontrollable.

massive pressure, a gravity, on or in my gut and chest.

it was convulsing me from the inside. and isaw the light energy beam shoot up and out of my core, a lava stream of white hot shimmering me blasted straight up, pulling out of me something or everything emptying me crushing my body inward and at the same time sinking me into myself like an eddy or whirlpool of me dropping into a black abyss. aflow of white hot energy of me starting at my gut shooting up into the above and nothingness; oh holy shit what the fuck is happening. the shaking convulsing pulsing with me being sucked out of me up and away i’m crying and screaming but it isn’t pain it’s something else it’s the deepest visceral thing idon’t know how long ican do this!!!!!!! wailing crying to the marrow of bone and every fucking cell this is what i’m feeling it’s what is happening holy fuck this is insane. i’m gripping cross chested and pulling muscle then down kneading quads and aching and convulsing.

dark, geometric shapes of mask faces undulating across an angled, menacing, flowing astride into and out of each other in the movie my eyes are seeing inside my head this otherworldly place my brain has been shipped and launched into unlike anything i’ve ever seen.

the soundtrack of low moans and menacing chanting haunts from the masks gets louder like it’s right in my ears like a layer of cement connecting my shivering and quaking body to the complete strangeness of the visions flowing through my brain. this is just unfuckingbelievable.

then.

the foreground in front of the darkness somehow becomes bursts of colored darts splashing and swirling like starry night exploded into phosphorous melting arrays and i think this is me, my bits and bytes, a code of me, my code, streaking meteors of colored light flickers, an alien sky filled with light-constellations of who i am, spinning flywheels of my DNA causing and being caused by existentially body crushing fits of crying outpours and wailing shrieks sucking all the breath from my collapsing body and at the same time elation, ecstasy in the flooding out of it all, my face covered in wet tears and snot and spit…i’ve got nothing left it’s taking it all out of me i’m stripped down to nothing there is nothing left, my fingers and wrists ache from kneading my shoulders and holding on for dear life holy fuck what is happening, my thigh muscles squeezed so hard by my hands that they’re bruising, i can’t hold on anymore.

a change in the music changes the whole fucking thing, like more optimistic native chanting it’s fucking beautiful even as i’m in this non-pain in between wails and crying fits so deep there’s nothing left.

pressure, a sucking down and in and out, pulling me apart, collapsing into myself and exploding inside, hands clenched across my chest digging into deltoids and pectorals then down to rip into my thighs then my neck, holding on for dear life as this stuff, this medicine, this energy rampages through me. i’m exhausted spent done there is nothing left. i give surrender done i’m gone.

and then.

i have no idea how long this went on for a minute an hour five hours. uncontrollable shivering and quaking abated and i can take a breath and it feels wonderful and my mind’s eye is seeing a brighter landscape of shit i’ve never even imagined or seen before and there’s a feeling being drunk or stoned or somehow high in a way i’ve never known or felt, the quaking morphed into quieter spasmodic pulses. the deep fits and wails of crying subsided.

inside my skull my brain as i came down off the intensity of the physical itook off. gone. launched into a completely different visual and visceral dimension. or dimensions. i can’t believe what’s happening propelled into holy shit this is insane…my head twisted and mouth completely stuck in saying the words holy shit and it stayed this way almost in a smile this is unbelievable not at all scary just nothing like anything a new universe inside my head i’m seeing and feeling and the music it’s just awe. i’m in a state of awe.

aloft, floating, flying, transporting in a black but not-scary seascape of phantasmic images journeyed me into my cells, that’s what I saw and felt in a felt-sense of utter awe and amazement. shapes things orbs i really don’t know how to describe this. i’m not here, i’m there. it feels weird in my body but i love it i love it i love it i want more of this i want to go deeper i want to go more.

dave’s face from 2001 A Space Odyssey, as he tumbled and catapulted through time and space and dimension is how I pictured myself in the moment.

And then my toe touched a small planted pot near the edge of the bed and i realize i have to pee. I tell her I have to pee, and she helps me come out of it. I sit up, pull the eyeshade up, and sit at the edge of the bed for a bit. I am simply shredded, joyous, completely bewildered, laughing, still crying. She helps me stand up and I’m ok and slowly walk to the bathroom. I figure I should sit down to pee as I don’t want to risk passing out even though there’s no reason that would happen. I’m sitting and crying and laughing and she asks me if I’m ok and I yell back to her “everyone in the world has to do this!” and i’m crying and laughing saying this. she responds, “that’s what everyone who does this says!” She helps me back to the mattress, i lay down, cover my eyes, and drop right back in.

yep i’m fucking gone, back in, back out, who the fuck knows! the music has a chant from a country i’m sure i’ve never been to maybe a world i didn’t even know existed it is absolutely beautiful i cannot believe how this just goes on and on and it’s with me in the flow of what i’m seeing or feeling in this new universe inside my head i just can’t believe this it’s unbelievable.

my body is empty and it feels absolutely amazing, empty and full at the same time. after some time in the floating inside me and the warm high i feel i can feel that i’m coming down or out of this thing or place or dimension whatever it is. it is fantastic. i want more of this.

I sit up and pull the eyeshade up to re-enter the world. She asks me if I’m ok, I look up at her and her smile, and I am crying and smiling. “I have no idea what just happened but it was just phenomenal. I have no idea how to describe it.” Shaking my head in disbelief, awe, joy unlike anything I’d ever felt, a fulfillment like I’d never known.

Postscript.

Upon waking the next morning, I felt great physically and emotionally. But I still hadn’t come to a place where I understood exactly what had happened. I knew I’d need some time to process the whole thing. She told me she would be busy for about an hour, so I dove back into the world by opening my laptop and catching up on messages and emails. After about 40 minutes, I stood up and walked outside to stretch and just look at the beautiful morning, catch the hummingbirds bickering over territory.

And then it came to me. It was gone. The trauma I’d carried with me my whole life. This medicine pulled it out of every cell in my body. That’s what the visions were; that’s what the physical quaking and muscle-kneading was. It was gone. That’s why I felt simultaneously empty and fulfilled. Overcome with this realization I couldn’t stop tears of joy, the years of frustration and confusion and feeling like I lived in a different universe. Gone. I’m me. Except I’m not.

Driving to the airport later that day, I called my best friend. There was no way to explain the whole thing to him in detail but he asked me “do you feel lighter?”

My answer — “Yep. I feel like for the first time in my life, I’m home.”

Talk therapy helped me survive — and in many ways thrive — since the age of 9, when my mom realized I was an abject mess, unable to sleep, constant digestive system dysfunction, and a whole litany of behavioral issues at home and in school. In reality, having someone I paid to talk to weekly became a crutch and bandaid rather than what I’d been searching for and needed, which was a new way to live, a transformation out of the hardwiring that had, by adulthood, kept me locked in patterns — the most challenging of which was a complete disconnection between my mind and body, which unbeknownst to me was sick and suffering more than I would ever imagine.

The mentor I reference above changed all of this by introducing me to a new life path that created newfound connection between mind and body, way beyond the talk therapy protocol that I’d known. Including micro-dosing psilocybin and the journey described above.

I am the same person. But not. The psilocybin mushroom journey cleared out a deep well of toxic muck I’d carried with me as stuck behavioral wiring that lodged in every cell of my body from before I was born. Or something like that. It created the “space” for me to do work — mostly anchored in talk therapy — to re-wire my brain and body, thereby re-wiring my behavior. A re-wired life. Stripped down to the studs and rebuilt. Same but different. Talk therapy alone, at least for me, could never do this.

Sometimes artists find ways of saying the thing just beautifully. I found this song recently and can’t stop playing it. For the musicianship and funk, even more for the lyrics.

I spend too much time in calculation
I’m living all the time inside my head
My body and my mind are in separation
How do I get them back together again?
Somehow I lost the connection
Am I just a floating brain?
Is my blood still in circulation?
Is my blood still running through my veins?
I spend too much time in calculation
I’m living all the time inside my head
My body and my mind are in separation
How do I get them back together again?
Then something strange begins to happen
The ground is moving, blood orange in the sky
The mouth of the earth begins to open…
“You know what you must do to survive…”
You must Move. Love
Dance
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Move. Love. Dance. More