I was at a Death Grips show at the Warfield in San Francisco when one of my oldest friends showed up wearing a massive cowboy hat and handed me four desiccated—but relatively large—psilocybin mushrooms. “These should do the trick,” he told me, palming them into my hand in one fluid motion.
A few weeks prior, we’d decided it was a good idea to do some shrooms at this show. If you’re not familiar, Death Grips is an experimental rap group out of Sacramento, consistently drawing praise and befuddlement from critics. (Pitchfork described them once as “politically agnostic and persistently agitated.”) Their music is akin to wearing a metal garbage can over your head while someone beats on it with a hammer and screams cryptic threats at you. The catalog is loud, intense, and chaotic. But also fun.
The smart move would have been consuming one cap and stem, observing how it felt, and then taking more if I felt like taking more. Haha... no. I popped all four caps and stems into my mouth and buckled up.
It’s often hard to tell how strong a magic mushroom is. The amount of psilocybin in an individual piece hinges on a number of factors—freshness, storage method, how it was grown—and the intensity of a trip can also be affected by everything from your mental state to how much food you consumed during the day.
Things went sideways about 30 minutes in. I am no stranger when it comes to psychedelics—I mean, I go to Burning Man every year—but suddenly, blaring music and large groups of people seemed overwhelming. So I grabbed my friend and we exited onto Market Street. At this point, a host of powerful, but pleasant, audio and visual hallucinations set in, so we strolled around San Francisco’s, ahem, colorful Tenderloin neighborhood for a time, then caught an Uber back to my house.
For people who have tripped on powerful psychedelics before, what I’m about to describe will make perfect sense. For those who haven’t, I’ll do my best. The second I walked through my front door, I could no longer remember who I was. (This is what’s commonly known as ego death.) Soon after, I lost the ability to speak coherently. I had no idea what my name was, where I lived, or what I did for a living. After a few hours of pacing around my home office and staring at the intricate patterns of the wood grain in my bookshelves, I softly returned from the void—verbal abilities intact!—but I was confused about what the exact year was. The remainder of the evening was a hilarious series of clichéd high-person activities. I tried (and failed) to make mac and cheese, tried to convince my friend to help me steal a speedboat, and threatened multiple times to fight the ocean. By sunrise, I was glowing but exhausted—like a wet cloth that had just been wrung out.
I took magic mushrooms at a Death Grips show—and things started to go sideways about 30 minutes in.
Mental Health and Me
In general, I’m an upbeat, optimistic person, having never experienced depression or anxiety. I have no problems with addiction. My only issue is I’ve been prone to disorder and wandering thoughts my entire life. After my colleague Dave Holmes eloquently wrote about being diagnosed with ADHD as an adult, I got myself checked out and—eureka. Finally, I had an explanation for the lifetime of missed deadlines, lack of organization, and frequent inability to get places on time. Usually I can get by with a mix of exercise and vitamins. Occasionally I’ll pop a tiny bit of Adderall or—God, I feel slightly ashamed admitting this—some Zyn, to put myself in a place where I can focus.
In the weeks after the trip, I noticed an uptick in creativity. My work was snappier and felt effortless to produce. Checking my phone held little appeal. I was more present. And maybe most importantly, my ADHD symptoms largely disappeared. People with ADHD describe how it feels in thousands of different ways. For me, it’s as if every single task in my life, no matter how important or mundane, is red-alert mission critical. Once I start a task, my mind is already leaping ahead before the first one is done.
Suddenly I could just focus on something and not feel pulled in a thousand different directions. Keeping a calendar straight, turning in work when it was due, getting to appointments on time all felt like second nature. I was floored. Is this how neurotypical people feel all the time? The mushrooms probably had an effect. But how? I decided to search for answers by consulting some of the brightest minds researching psychedelics today.
Psychedelics increase neural communication. There’s going to be more complexity in the brain. You’re turning that volume knob up.
Dr. Connor Murray is a neuroscientist at UCLA’s Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior who specializes in treating compulsion and addiction issues with psychedelics. He tells me over the phone that while I’m not the typical patient he works with, the psychedelics still had a positive impact. “In your case, even though you were not seeking relief from something like alcoholism, you were still able to have the same types of therapeutic effects,” he says. “On the microscopic level, psychedelics act on the serotonin system, specifically the 5-HT2A receptor.”
For those of us without a doctorate in neuroscience, the 5-HT2A receptor is like a traffic cop for serotonin in the brain. Normally, serotonin acts on the surface of our neurons, but certain psychedelics enter the cell and activate an intracellular storage of 5-HT2A. “That’s where all this magic happens in terms of these structural changes in the neuron itself,” Dr. Murray adds.
When you look at a neuron under a microscope, there are little branches coming off it. These are called dendrites and axons, structures that allow neurons to communicate with other cells. Dendrites receive information; axons send information out. “What you see is this genesis of dendrites where there’s this big arborization; there’s a lot more ability to connect and send signals down the line,” Dr. Murray says.
Sounds complicated? It is. Our brains are literally the most complex objects in the known universe. Imagine your brain as a ski slope. All day, every day, people are carving down it, making deeper and deeper paths in the powder. The ruts are so deep, so well-worn, it’s almost impossible to take a new route. Psilocybin acts like a blizzard, covering the slope in fresh snow and allowing you to zig-zag down the hill in any way you please. In essence, the large dose of psilocybin allowed different parts of my brain to communicate in new ways, and a byproduct was that, for a little while at least, my ADHD symptoms evaporated. “Psychedelics increase neural communication, increase psychoplastogenicity. There’s going to be more complexity in the brain,” says Dr. Murray. “You’re turning that volume knob up.”
For several years, California lawmakers attempted to pass laws that would have decriminalized a host of psychedelics. In October 2023, a bill reached the desk of Governor Gavin Newsom, who quickly vetoed it.
America’s Evolving Relationship With Psychedelics
The United States has been in official conflict with psychedelics since 1970. In that year, President Nixon signed the Controlled Substances Act, which placed psilocybin into the Schedule I category. (Read: no accepted medical use, with a high potential for abuse.) A year later, Nixon formally declared the war on drugs because, to paraphrase George Carlin, Americans love a good war.
In the ensuing 53 years, the United States burned an estimated $1 trillion, incarcerated hundreds of thousands of people for nonviolent drug-related crimes, and pushed a narrative that taking any kind of drug would permanently ruin your life. The highly ineffective D.A.R.E. program told multiple generations of young people that it didn’t matter the substance—crack, PCP, magic mushrooms—any drug would reduce your brain to a fried egg and turn you into a purse-snatching junkie.
Eventually, more nuanced messages began to rise above the din of “Just say no.” In 2018, Michael Pollan published How to Change Your Mind, which chronicled the often complex history of psychedelics in the United States and intertwined Pollan’s own personal journey experimenting with mind-altering substances. The book became a New York Times bestseller and helped alter the national conversation about psychedelics in America.
For years I treated magic mushrooms strictly as a recreational activity. Take a bunch of shrooms, giggle, and watch the walls melt!
While Pollan’s book (and subsequent Netflix adaptation) wasn’t the only cause, efforts at legislation at the state level soon followed. In 2019, Denver became one of the first cities in America to decriminalize the possession, use, and cultivation of psilocybin mushrooms for people 21 and older. Oregon passed Measure 109 in 2020 and became the first state to legalize therapeutic psilocybin, allowing trained professionals to administer the substance for treating a number of mental health conditions.
For several years, California lawmakers attempted to pass laws that would have decriminalized a host of psychedelics, including DMT, MDMA, LSD, and psilocybin mushrooms. Finally, in October 2023, a bill reached the desk of Governor Gavin Newsom, who quickly vetoed it, stating that there needed to be more regulations and guidelines around the therapeutic use of psychedelics before they were decriminalized.
A few days after Newsom nixed the bill, Joseph David Emerson, an off-duty Alaska Airlines pilot, attempted to shut down the engines of a flight between Everett, Washington, and San Francisco. After being arrested and charged with 83 counts of reckless endangerment and 83 counts of attempted murder, Emerson claimed that he had a psychotic break after consuming psilocybin mushrooms 48 hours before. It’s easy to see how an incident like this would be a potentially lethal setback to the legalization of mushrooms. But advocates are still pressing forward.
California voters will probably revisit the legality of psychedelics in November 2024, when two initiatives will most likely appear on the ballot. The first would legalize the use and sale of mushrooms for people over 21, while the second seeks approval for $5 billion to create a state agency responsible for developing psychedelic therapies. But for now, the use and possession of psilocybin mushrooms in California—and at the federal level—remains largely illegal.
That’s not to say things aren’t changing, albeit slowly. Recently, the Biden administration—along with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services—recommended that the DEA reclassify cannabis from a Schedule I to a Schedule III controlled substance. It’s hard not to be cynical about the timing of the move during an election year. And yet it’s also hard not to expect substances like psilocybin to eventually follow—especially with the growing volume of scientific evidence suggesting the substance’s benefits for everything from depression to anxiety disorders.
Even still, there are those who aren’t waiting for laws to change or for the federal government to get involved with psychedelics.
The Potential Big Business of Mind-Altering Substances
“A government-run psychedelic program sounds scary to me,” Derek Chase, founder of the L.A.-based Psilouette, one of a growing number of psychedelic therapy companies, tells me. “They just need to get the f*ck out of the way.”
Chase, a cannabis-industry veteran, started Psilouette in 2020 as a way to get people psilocybin products while circumventing drug laws. Because customers are technically paying for the service and not the substance, Psilouette operates in a legal gray area and, so far, has not been seriously harassed by any state or federal agencies.
That may be partially because Psilouette is not alone. In the last few years, psychedelic therapy has exploded, with over 50 startups (in the United States alone) offering treatment for everything from depression and addiction to PTSD and anxiety. Globally, the psychedelic therapeutic market is estimated to be worth around $2.78 billion, and by 2030 it could be worth as much as $6.5 billion. There’s big money to be made, and when an industry is in its infancy with little oversight, it often attracts unscrupulous people looking to make a quick dollar.
Thankfully, from what I can deduce, Psilouette seems to put its customers’ well-being first. The process of buying mushroom products is pretty easy. You browse a slick-looking website and pick from a number of options, including gummies, teas, and grow-your-own-fungus kits. After an onboarding session with a therapist, the products are mailed out, and you have the option of joining a single or group therapy session. Chase reports that Psilouette customers are typically trying to find relief from anxiety and depression and that the group therapy sessions are highly effective—they create a sense of community that many people find appealing.
Chase also wants people to think of psychedelics not as an all-in-one fix for mental health but more as a powerful tool for those who have already done work on themselves. “It’s the mindfulness-based stress reduction. It’s meditation, it’s the physical exercise, it’s the sleep,” he says. “I consider [psychedelics[ something you don’t leverage often—a nuclear option to get you to see things differently.”
Return to a New Normal
Months after my experience at the Death Grips show, I noticed I was beginning to see things a little differently. Or rather, things were reverting back to my old baseline. I was spending a little more time on my smartphone, a little less time being present, and the wandering thoughts associated with my ADHD were creeping back into my day-to-day life. I got in touch with Psilouette, which sent me a host of products to try out. Remember when I said that it’s sometimes hard to gauge how powerful a magic mushroom will be? Not the case with Psilouette’s lineup. The amount of psilocybin in each product is carefully metered out, which makes the experience consistent.
One evening I popped several Micro 300 gummies. While I didn’t dissolve and become one with the universe, I did enjoy a very pleasant trip. Afterward, I noticed milder versions of the mental improvements from the Death Grips show: more focus, more presence, and much better concentration.
For years, I treated magic mushrooms strictly as a recreational activity. Take a bunch of shrooms, giggle, and watch the walls melt! Now I see them as something a bit different. As I’ve gotten more into middle age, they’ve become part of my health maintenance routine, as essential as getting regular exercise, sleeping consistently, and seeing a therapist.
In the meantime, it’s important to remember that psilocybin is still technically illegal and using it carries a small degree of risk. But if you are interested, it’s undoubtedly a good idea to talk to doctors, therapists, and experts who are well versed in these drugs. And before you get started—no matter if you’re slamming a handful of shrooms at an experimental hip-hop show or taking part in a guided medical study—it’s smart to keep this oft repeated mantra about psychedelics in mind: Know your setting, know your dose, and know yourself.
