A Personal Introduction to Psilocybin Mushrooms
mushroom journeys and what they can inspire
During a recent psilocybin journey (psilocybin is the active ingredient in psychedelic or “magic” mushrooms), I experienced a felt sense of what it might feel like to exist in the world as a woman.
It was a shock to my male-bodied, male-conditioned self. Who doesn’t know the statistics, that 1 in 3 women experience sexual assault sometime in their lives? And who doesn’t know that that’s just what’s reported.
Deeper than that, I know what it is to be male in this world, to have my desires catered to by the medical system, media, politics, even the automotive industry. I know what it is to be priviledged in ways that I can’t imagine because so many systems are bent toward facilitating the male experience.
Thus, that comfortable, familiar experience of maleness was turned upside down in a second. Suddenly, within the body of a woman, I was no longer catered—but subject—to all that my sober self took for granted.
The felt sense was sheer terror—a vulnerability so deep and intolerable that my body went rigid with fear. There were no thoughts or words to the experience, just a reptilian freeze response.
I was blessed to have a facilitator sitting with me during my journey, who lended a calm and loving presence as I worked through that fear. I also felt lucky because I had a sense of how to work with the different parts that came up.
Years of therapy and trainings and psychedelic journeys like this one offered just one nugget of wisdom: meet it where its at. Let it breathe. Love it up.
The experience was a gift beyond measure, a somatic memory that I cannot, and would not want to, un-experience. It was five minutes of experiencing a degree of something that many, if not all, women may experience every day of their lives.
One of the practices I took from that experience was to become more aware when I am around women out in the world: yes, with my wife, and also with those at the coffeeshop, the grocery store, on the sidewalk. What am I looking at, and why? What is their body language saying? Are there ways that I can help women feel more safe, perhaps by creating more distance when they’re turned away, or approaching from the front instead of behind? Are my hands in my pockets?
Of course, I have no idea if asking these questions helps anyone feel more safe. But there’s something in it for me about practicing consideration of the possibility. Many men are deeply aware that women track a zillion things that we don’t bother paying attention to, and I’ve heard from some men that it’s not their “job” to make women feel safe, especially ones they don’t know.
It’s not my job either, nor is it an obligation. It feels like a challenge, though, and one I’d like to step more into. I want to open my awareness wider, broader, and with more detail. For me, it’s fun to know, sense, and feel more.
Psilocybin helps you see beyond your reality
As a non-specific amplifier, psilocybin brings up material from the sub- and unconscious, from memories to feelings of awe and wonder and one-ness, and can also bring up more difficult experiences like paranoia and fear. My teachers and mentors approach these more difficult experiences as oppotunities to work through something that wants more awareness upon it, wants to be healed.
I have also experienced profound connections to my ancestors, to the land on which I live, to spirit, and to the vast miracle of life itself—realms that my rational, linear-thinking, Western mind once thought to be woo-woo, or total bs.
The often beautiful visuals that many experience during psilocybin journeys, often thought to be a “side-effect” by many Western medical folks, can inspire creativity, works of art, rejuvenate relationships, or offer new life directions.
See What Sticks
Be gently aware, however, that sometimes the content of inspiration is simply the imagination practicing its charge. Please wait at least 6-8 weeks post-journey to make any big life decisions inspired by the journey.
Held and integrated in a good way, psilocybin experiences can begin to crumble the barriers we’ve built from fear; build bridges across mental, emotional, and spiritual chasms; heal things we’ve pushed down and away; and move things that are stuck—just as mycelium and mushrooms break up the soil in the forest to connect and nourish its many seemingly disparate parts.
Integration, Integration, Integration
There is an old adage about psychedelics that I’ve found to be true: they don’t do your work for you. The work comes after the journey.
Anyone can go bungee-jumping or skydiving and have an experience that feels life-changing. Many people have taken psilocybin hoping that it would change all the things in their lives they wanted to change.
The work comes in the days, weeks, months, and years after.
Have you experienced psilocybin or other psychedelics in a safe, intentional container?
What have you experienced in these journeys?
How have you brought aspects of those experiences into your life?
Share in the comments.