Sickness Was the Medicine
Or the gifts of a “bad” trip
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A quick rewind
Just joining? These past posts provide context—dispatches from the front lines of being touched: mind, body, and spirit.
• How Sexological Bodywork Woke Up My Skin
• Origin story of Touch Me There: Reclaiming Desire, Power & Purpose in Midlife
Mushroom Medicine
One summer evening in the waning days of the Pandemic, I found myself at a picnic table in my friend Sarah’s woodsy backyard, having been summoned for food and company—simple needs that make us human.
Another guest, looking full and contented, pushed away from the table and turned his chair to face the sunset dipping below the neighbor’s rooftop. Perhaps it was this spectacle that prompted him to inquire about Lizzie’s recent trip.
“Have you taken a vacation?” I asked, surprised to hear the travel industry was making a comeback so soon.
“Not that kind of trip,” laughed Lizzie. “Psychedelic-assisted therapy.” She explained that she’d had a breakthrough experience on a “hero” dose, or large dose, of Psilocybin. Magic mushrooms. Since then, she’d been micro-dosing weekly and had developed a love of all things fungi, spending weekends foraging for mushrooms with a local Meetup group and learning about the vast, branching web of fungal threads beneath the soil, connecting the forest floor in quiet collaboration—passing nutrients between species, sending pest warnings, even sabotaging unwelcome intruders.
Lizzie’s hands spiraled and fluttered as she grasped for fragmented descriptions of her mushroom experience that, while hard to follow, communicated something vitally important to her: she had accessed a source of universal love.
“I’ve developed a sort of tender affection for myself,” she ended shyly, allowing her hands to come to rest on her thighs.
Now I was curious. Sarah and I had taken a small dose of magic mushrooms once in college. It was not what I’d call a therapeutic experience, but ever since Michael Pollan’s book How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence came out in 2018, I’d been hearing more and more about the effectiveness of a wide range of psychedelic compounds in treating mental health conditions from depression to PTSD.
The new wave of research picked up where earlier studies had stalled in the early 1970s, when many psychedelic compounds—once used in medical and therapeutic settings—were reclassified as Schedule I Controlled Substances, deemed to have no accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse. Illegal or not, psilocybin was now embraced by some of the world’s pre-eminent scientists and doctors.
I believed in their promise, too. Which is why I’d already gone down the path of ketamine and MDMA, and was open to learning what these medicines had to teach. Each one had taken something apart, loosened a screw in me, unlatched a door. But still, I felt stuck. Mushrooms, I reasoned, felt older, wiser. I had the sense they might show me what I’d been carefully avoiding. The part I still braced against, even now.
On the drive home from the party that night, I resolved to try them. And like my earlier forays into psychedelics, I wanted to do so with a guide, a trusted presence to navigate the unknown. I made some calls to friends and friends-of-friends. It didn't take long to tap into the subterranean network of psychedelic-assisted therapists and guides in northern California that, like the mycelium, had been right there under my feet the whole time.
***
I arrived early at the meeting place, a parking lot in Sabastopol, and waited for a woman named Corina, who was to be my guide for the Psilocybin journey. The mourning doves—usually a comfort—unsettled me that morning. I was anxious about the journey ahead, having heard that Psilocybin, more so than Ketamine or MDMA, had the potential to unfold in difficult, even turbulent ways.
When Corina arrived, I got into her car and together we traveled thirty miles through light rain to a town called Jenner. As we pulled up, the house revealed itself, a stark, white structure against the enveloping fog. We walked around, getting acquainted. In the backyard, a well-loved flower garden peeked through the mist. Corina started to sing a sweet-sounding song in Castilian—her first language, she told me, and filled a large glass bowl with the garden hose. She carried on singing and humming as she casually strolled along the yard collecting stones and picking wildflowers. I wondered what it was like to facilitate experiences like this as a profession. It was a calling, it seemed to me, to be of service to another person’s body, mind, and spirit. She was a doctor, therapist, and priestess all in one.
“Shall we begin?” Corina offered. First, she guided me in a small ritual to “open” a sacred space between us. I chose three rocks from her collection and dropped them into the glass bowl of water.
“These are the stories that no longer serve you,” said Corina. In that case, I thought, we’re going to need a bigger bowl. My inadequacies, my not-enough-ness, could have filled one million glass bowls in one million backyards. I let the rocks slip from my hand and sink to the bottom.
“Good. Now choose three flowers.” These, she told me, represented my flourishing. “Identify three things you wish to blossom in you.” I set the flowers afloat on the surface of the water, weightless and perfect. It was a lovely ceremony, but I felt like a spiritual imposter, handicapped by my own rational brain and nagging doubts.
“Ancestors, we call on you. Walk with us today,” Corina intoned softly.
I longed to feel connected to my ancient ancestors, to be steeped in the kind of inherited wisdom that made rituals feel instinctive, vital. Instead, what I felt was only an empty space, an ex-Catholic’s cynicism where reverence for rights and rituals might otherwise live. Corina, I could see, believed. She added her own home-grown prayer to seal the rite and led me inside the creaky old house to a makeshift altar assembled on the fireplace mantel. She lit candles and incense, then invited me to place something of my own on the altar. I reached into my pocket for a small turtle-shaped pin that had once belonged to my mother. I set it on a wooden plate, reminding myself of the significance I had assigned to it—endurance, resilience—when I selected it from among the random items strewn in my dresser drawer. There were several dried mushrooms on the altar, there for me to consume with a large glass of water. They tasted like dirt. I didn’t mind.
Corina cued the music, and I settled into a cozy spot on the couch and waited.