EP 149 HEALING WITH PSILOCYBIN MUSHROOMS

Sweet, silly, mischievous magic mushrooms. This medicine has been with me since the tender age of 19, when I had my first journey and they showed me that everything I thought I knew was incomplete at best, at downright false at worst. It was the beginning of a long and winding road with psychedelics. For a long time I thought they were drugs, and I used drug words and I took them at festivals and in social situations without a thought. I marveled at the visuals I would get and laughed and they were fun. For a time.

As I got older, they began to nudge me in a different direction. The journeys stopped being fun and funny and started being darker and more serious. The mushrooms that I had loved in my youth began to shift. They became stern. Parental. Finally, they flat out told me DO NOT COME BACK HERE UNTIL YOU ARE READY. Because I was still trying to use them to escape. Little did I know, there was no more escape. The only path for me was going deep inside myself to find my way home. They told me to go sit with ayahuasca and do my inner work.

This is what it feels like when you are called. My first intentional and ceremonial experience with mushrooms was at a retreat in Mexico in 2020, smack in the middle of Covid. I had been struggling with my periods, digestion, and chronic pain, and I was desperate for help. I finally decided to ask the mushrooms to take me in and give me answers. That retreat ended up being exactly what I needed.

When I met the mushrooms this time, I was ready. I had done the work that they asked of me. And it was completely different. Because of my deep relationship with ayahuasca, I walked through the portal with psilocybin, and knew how to go into my pain and trauma and heal it. I had learned how to listen. To walk in the dimension of the mystery.

The feeling of those two medicines felt almost identical, and I was astounded. I learned in that retreat that mushrooms have the same power to heal and transform as ayahuasca. In just a few ceremonies, I healed deep ancestral trauma on my maternal side, and got a clear answer about what to do for my body. I also learned that I need to take moderate doses of mushrooms to get the most benefit. For me, higher doses cause anxiety, panic, and a feeling of being overwhelmed and lost in a doom spiral.

This is very different than what you hear online about how to work with them. The whole “5 dried grams in silent darkness” thing is played out. People need softness. Not to be blasted out of themselves and smashed over the head with a sledgehammer. You can heal without punishing yourself. It can be easy and soft.

Taking more medicine will often make your experience more intense, but that isn’t always better. Whatever experience you have with medicine is what you need at the time. Sometimes it can take months or years to fully understand a journey.

I began to work more with them over the next few years. The more I learned form them, the more softness they showed me. They have helped me anchor into the knowledge that my medicine is Earthy. It is soft and slow and gentle. And that isn’t a flaw, it’s a strength. Being grounded and well rooted is how you soar.

Mushrooms are amazing creatures. An ancient consciousness that has been gathering Earth wisdom and performing energy alchemy for billions of years. How they work in nature is how they work in our bodies. The mycelium network connect, transforms, and transports. It turns death into life. It takes what is no longer needed and creates fertile ground for planting what wants to grow instead.

Fungi are literally magic. And the fact that we are able to take these mushrooms into our bodies and brains and experience All That Is is not an accident.

They grow everywhere. They are sustainable, accessible, and affordable. Mushrooms have a rich history of healing and helping humans for thousands of years if not longer, across many indigenous lineages, including the Mazatec and Wixárika people of Mexico.

Most of the clients I work with are healing with some kind of psilocybin mushroom. They are easy to grow at home, and are often the most accessible and practical entry point to experiencing psychedelics. They are very safe and don’t have the kind of strict requirements around diet and medical guidelines as ayahuasca. They can also be a bit more gentle on the body and system, especially for beginners.

In this week’s show, we’re getting to know about the surprising and powerful magic mushroom. This is the third episode in a series getting to know my favorite medicines (Aya, San Pedro, and Psilocybin…)

Love, 

Sinclair