Down the Rabbit Hole: My Journey With Mushrooms
“Look into the Stamets stack,” the voice in my ear-pod whispered a simple key to a fascinating world that was quietly, always in front of me. As I typed “Stamets stack” into Google, I felt like Alice chasing the white rabbit down the rabbit hole. At that moment, I went after it, never once considering how in the world I was to get out again.
Mushrooms saved my life. Literally.
But I need to be very clear before we begin. I am neither a doctor nor do I play one online. I am sharing my personal experience with mushrooms for informational and educational purposes. I am very conservative when it comes to advocating for people to take psilocybin mushrooms, as I believe that not everyone should take them.
Taking psychedelics can have serious effects on your mind, psyche, and overall well-being along the spectrum (good and bad). This is why it is critically important that, if you are interested in this medicine, you do your research and consult your doctor, psychiatrist, therapist, etc. Especially, if you are already in some form of a psychiatric program. Even though the results of the psilocybin research and my personal experience are very promising, taking this medicine should not replace your on-going treatments.
And now, back to the beginning of my story….
I recognized that, for 23 years of my life I felt unsafe. I was operating from a place of anxiety, as if someone was about to pull the rug from under me. I was constantly looking for the next thing to grasp onto to give me a sense of certainty. I had fallen into an elusive, unending cycle: I need to achieve the next thing to be able to achieve the next thing. The reality of life quickly caught up with me, I began to burn out.
Finally, I quit my job to focus on me. I began to really dive into my consciousness and awareness and rewire my brain to operate from a place of safety. I began to research online, which led to speaking with a few neurologists on the topic. I told them about my situation and my desire to stimulate neurogenesis and neuroplasticity (the scientific terms for creating new brain cells and building new connections between those cells).
I received similar answers that boiled down to this:
Oxygenation of the brain- make sure your brain is getting enough oxygen
Exercise - Heavy lifting and cardio
Meditation
A clean and whole diet
8-10 hours of sleep
I was excited, as this is what I do already in my daily practices. In my excitement, thinking I had this in the bag, I asked how long I had to intentionally do this to see the desired results. The answer: about two years to even start creating new patterns.
My excitement immediately ended. I was deflated. I was desperate for change, but I didn’t think it would take two years to accomplish. Yet, I was committed to making the changes. The two-year journey began that day.
I began to explore my eastern practices of meditation and intention setting and began to incorporate daily practices that allowed me to operate from a safe place. Every night before going to bed, I would say to myself, “I am safe.” But through the process, I kept saying to myself, “there has to be a way to supercharge this.”
Then one day, in the middle of exercising, I had an epiphany: I had to speak to Tommy*, a dear friend of mine who has been studying the effects of nootropics on the human brain. His knowledge of biochemistry in the human brain has both depth and breadth. I texted Tommy:
We hopped on a phone call, and he began giving me the same advice as the neurologist I had spoken to plus some brain hacking tools to better my focus. Then there was a pause in our conversation.
“Hey Tommy, you there?”
He responded in an inquisitive yet guiding voice, “yeah, I am just thinking. There is this concept of microdosing that has been floating around in the community for neurogenesis for some time.”
That’s when the magical words were uttered, “Look into the Stamets stack”
He began telling me the concept around the stack and how it involved mushrooms. Tommy is also the person who introduced me to mushrooms. My first mushroom journey came from Tommy, as a gift for me to connect deeper with my inner self. So of course, it’s a full circle.
Down the Rabbit Hole
As I began my research on the Stamets stack, I found myself going down a rabbit hole and into a world that opened awareness to a whole new way of life. I immediately recognized that this wasn’t going to be a simple research project. Rather, the more I learned about mycology, the scientific study of fungi, the more I became fascinated with mycelium, mushrooms, and fungi. As a result, I decided to turn my interest into a passionate commitment to learn as much as possible about mushrooms in order to become an advocate and a bridge between people and the kingdom of fungi.
When Tommy first introduced me to Psilocybin Mushrooms, I knew there was something special about mushrooms. Though, at that time, it was only a hunch. There were special to me in a way a workout is special. You can tell the world all about the benefits, but only you can feel the results.
Since 2014, I have experimented with mushrooms in very sacred and intentional settings, usually, alone or with really close friends in very safe environments. Every time I am called to mushroom medicine, I am intentional about the journey and take them very seriously. I am incredibly detailed about all the precautions necessary. My process includes making sure my onboarding, experience, and off-boarding rituals are safe and highly curated because I understand the power these organisms have on our consciousness, awareness, and our physiology.
As I dove into the world of Mycology, I discovered that mushrooms are incredibly powerful organisms. First, I learned that mushrooms aren't plants. They are fungi, which means they are in their own stand-alone kingdom. Humans have been so used to seeing them in the forest alongside plants that we just call them “plant medicine.”
But they are far from plants.
Fungi breathe as humans; they inhale oxygen and exhale CO2. Fungi actually outnumber plants by a ratio of 6:1.
Medicinal mushrooms are more than just the fruiting body. In fact, they comprise three main parts: mycelium, the fruiting body, and the spores. The mycelium spreads out in a network under or on the soil, and it helps the mushroom to absorb valuable nutrients from its surroundings. Mycelium can be visible to the eye, appearing like very fine white hairs. The fruiting body is the part of a mushroom that commonly grows above ground, while the spores act like seeds and help to spread new life. Depending on the exact species, all three parts of medicinal mushrooms can be used for their healing and rejuvenating properties.
Empowered with a significant amount of research and knowledge, I decided to start prepping for my microdosing experiment. In my research, I found that there are two popular methodologies for microdosing. There is the Fadiman System, which is based on James Fadiman, and the Stamets Stack, which is the birth child of the renowned mycologist Paul Stamets.
James Fadiman’s system: Fadiman recommends taking a microdose once every three days: Take a microdose on Day 1. Then, do not take a microdose on Day 2 or Day 3. On Day 4, take another microdose.
The Stamets Stack: Stamets recommends taking a microdose every day for four days, then taking three days off to avoid building up a tolerance. He also suggests making psilocybin a central part of the stack, which also includes lions mane and niacin, to help with neuroplasticity and general well-being.
Per Tommy’s recommendation and the research I found, I decided on the Stamets Stack.
My top priority was to make sure my journey was well documented, the same way a scientist goes about their experiments-- measuring, calculating, and documenting everything from dosages to diet and sleep to exercise.
Before I began microdosing, I set my physical environment up for success and had a pretty clear understanding of what my desired outcome was: feeling safe and reducing my anxiety. On top of that, I made sure to cleanse my body of all other supplements (vitamins, minerals, etc) from my system to make sure that I was tracking only the Stamets stack.
I continued to implement my morning routine that looks like this:
Secondly, I set up a controlled environment of how I would be tracking my progress. Given my love of journals, I created a journal to track the following:
Date
Time
Psilocybin Dosage
Exercise
Diet
Activities
Meditation
Vitals: heart rate, blood pressure
Mood: Morning, Afternoon, and Evening
Sleep (tracked with Oura)
Caffeine Intake
Vitamin B3
Lions Mane
As we know, sometimes we can omit specific emotions from journals. To track my full emotions, I kept a video blog of my progress.
Video Diary: Day 1
Summary of my experiment:
Paul Stamets Stack
Track Essentials
Document via journal and video
Prime environment for success
Continue to implement morning routine and rituals
90-day timeline
Silver Bullet It Is Not
Throughout my experiment and journey, I experienced a profound transformation in my consciousness, anxiety, and overall feelings of safety.
That said, there were many factors that played a key role in this development. Perhaps the mushrooms encouraged me to take my exercise, meditation, diet, sleep, etc in a more serious way because I knew it was being measured. As a result, I believe that mushrooms help supercharge/amplify what I was already doing.
Through my journey, a lot of emotions came up that needed to be addressed and spoken about to help clarify and interpret their meaning in my life. I had an incredible resource at my disposal: Lindsey, my wife. Lindsey has a master’s in psychology from Cornell University. She’s incredibly empathetic, and she was fully aware of my experiment, which she embraced fully. I can say with full conviction that her guidance, her reflections, and her line of questioning when my emotions arose and when my ego flared were critical to my results.
I’ve devoted my life’s calling to being of service as a Coach, helping people to achieve freedom and fulfillment in their lives. So I know the importance of having the right support systems in place -- whether it is a coach, a loved one, and/or a therapist. I can’t stress this enough. If you are planning to microdose, please have someone to support you on your journey.
During my microdose, I made some significant changes in my life that helped get to where I am today. I changed my name. I launched my coaching practice after burning out. I began living and trusting my own authenticity.
I found myself more present in the task at hand and having the ability to communicate my needs effectively in a safe manner. There is a major difference in my communication with others: I found that the microdose created a small space between receiving information and responding to the information. This allowed me to process things from a place of curiosity, safety, and not from a reactionary place. I found myself responding versus reacting to conversations and my emotions.
During the experiment, a lot of emotions came up for me. Everything from joy, happiness, bewilderment, confusion, anger, sadness, hurt, and everything in between. With that said, I was able to create awareness around my emotions. One of my practices that was magnified in my experiment was my ability to recognize my emotions and not identify with them. This gave me the space to process the emotion without attachment from a place of curiosity. From this practice, along with some guidance of my coach, I learned to shift my question around my emotions from “why is this coming up?” to “what is coming up?”
As I kept tracking my progress, something interesting happened on day 32/90. I woke up feeling safe. Not the perception of feeling safe -- the actual psychological understanding and acceptance that I was safe. Something really interesting unfolded. I woke up with an intuitive feeling that I didn’t need to continue taking the microdose. For the next few days, I felt confident that the changes in my brain, consciousness, and emotion were starting to mold themselves permanently in my life. I continued to do everything in my experiment for the remainder of the 90 days minus the microdose -- the effects were still present.
For the record, I neither had any craving for more mushrooms nor experienced any symptoms or behaviors of addiction. Studies have shown that psilocybin is not an addictive substance.
The fact of the matter is that microdosing was an incredible medicine in my journey, one that helped supercharge the start of seeing effective and measurable results, moving the date from 2.5 years down to just 32 days. I am not saying that these results are the same for everyone. Everybody has a different physiology, emotional state, brain structure, and environment.
From time to time, I still microdose, but it is in a similar fashion of someone having a hard deadline and drinking a cup of coffee after 8PM: infrequently and only when needed.
You Are The Medicine
One of the major take-aways I recognized from this, and other psychedelic experiences I’ve had, is that no matter the substance, you are the medicine.
So many times we give our power to external factors that we tend to overlook the fact that it was actually us doing the work. Facing our fears, seeking to understand our emotions, asking the questions that lead to powerful answers which liberate us from our stories that are holding us back. Yes, these medicines allow us to facilitate our experiences in a deeper more meaningful way, one that is sacred to our development as humans and souls. But remember, you are doing the work.
I am inspired to write an upcoming piece that will dive deeper into the concept that you are the medicine. Stay tuned for that.
—
I must confess something. For the last few months, I have been hesitant to publicly share my experience with mushrooms. I had a fear/story that I would be judged for my love of mycology. “What would people think?” “I'm a coach, I can't be writing about mushrooms.” There was a narrative that lingered in me that I would lose credibility, but I realized that it was me who was judging myself all along. Mushrooms helped healed me, how could I be so selfish and keep all this knowledge to myself? That’s when I realized that mushrooms called me and not the other way around. By sharing this knowledge, I get to be of service to the world.
As a result of this experiment and my research over the course of the last year, I am launching a new 90-minute course where I will be covering a basic introduction to mycelium, the history, variety of gourmet and medicinal mushrooms, and the magic of psilocybin. We’ll go into detail about mushrooms in culture, the legal matters, and what you need to know for micro-dosing.
I will share my practices, resources, and a detailed breakdown of my sleep patterns, blood pressure improvements, and other effects that came from my research and experiment.
