30 Days Of Microdosing With Homegrown Psychedelic Mushrooms: Part I
[Reading time: about a small I’m-on-the-toilet-instascroll ]
*depending on much fiber you eat I guess
Early adaptor, hippy, psychonaut or just a little crazy?
30 days of microdosing was my first experiment and set in motion the 30 day format. It was the perfect project to create a journaling habit, explore my writing style and to start doing instead of dreaming. At this time, April 2021, microdosing and psychedelics were yet to hit their popularity tipping point.
For the mainstream audience ‘magic mushrooms’ still had a slightly negative reputation. My interest peaked when I came across an article about how microdosing was becoming a trend in Silicon Valley: framing the use of psilocybin in small doses, as supplementing rather than doing drugs.
Technically an alcoholic, and probably a junkie…
Although I grew up in the north of the Netherlands, I have lived in Amsterdam for over 10 years, which made me quite liberal in a lot of aspects in life. During my student life, and probably for a little too long after, I have occasionally dabbled in recreational drugs. It never seemed to affect my day to day life, so it never seemed troubling to me. Now, when you combine this with the shifting values in Amsterdam, where no one seems to be shocked when little baggies and keys are being pulled out on a regular Friday night, it’s a slippery slope into a bad habit. I am all for a ‘to each their own’ approach, but somewhere down the line, we, privileged people in any city doing recreational drugs, forgot that ownership and consequences are also part of the deal. Boy, did I manage to stick my head in the sand on that one, all while the solution was right under my nose. It’s all well and good to set your intentions, meditate and manifest your way into a holistic lifestyle, but when you’re starting to dip your keys to offset your alcohol levels, your body kind of shifts from temple to dumpster. If at this point you feel offended or called out, this feeling too shall pass. It’s not personal, but it helps to have your nose in the air and to read between the lines.
I learned the hard way that my body and soul don’t handle comedowns well and that being hungover takes up at least 3 days of feeling depressed and lost. My weekly Huberman Lab update has also made it harder to keep ignoring the self sabotage I created with alcohol and drugs. More on this in my 30 Days Sober project, which ended up lasting about 4 - 5 months.
While I like to believe my values are relatively traditional, for outsiders, I am probably considered really open minded. My experience with drugs and my inquisitive nature now awakened the experimental journalist in me: What could microdosing do for me, creatively and mentally? After researching what goes into recreational drugs, did mushrooms really seem that bad? There was only one way to find out.
Before I started the 30 days of microdosing experiment, I too was full of assumptions on psychedelics and particularly mushrooms. The “I heard someone high on mushrooms jumped off a building because they thought they could fly” tale gets told an awful lot, probably by people who have never even experienced psilocybin or psychedelics.
Now, I don’t believe there is such a thing as ‘a bad trip’. Before you come at me with your worst story, let me add some nuance: I believe the mushroom will give you what you need, whether that’s a mind altering realisation or an ass whooping of your ego. When using psychedelics, your set and settings will heavily influence your experience and there is a big difference though, between using psychedelics in a therapeutic or holistic setting, or in more of a ‘let’s look for gnomes in the park with the homies’ kind of trip.
Back to the Silicon Valley article: it summed up some pretty convincing pro’s, and the cons didn't seem that bad. I dug a little deeper and found a few more articles and websites that educated me about psilocybin, dosage, strains and how to cultivate mushrooms. Going down the Psilocybin rabbit hole made me realise how incredibly negligent I had been when it came to recreational drugs: it seemed I had a nose for obsessively researching anything, but mostly when the outcome was health-oriented or in my favour.
Saying there’s no such thing as a bad trip doesn't mean mushrooms are for everyone. Mental illness, or sensitivity to psychoses is probably a good enough reason to steer clear of them, or to at least speak to a psychiatrist before going on a journey: with great power comes great responsibilities.
Let's not get carried away though, sometimes you have to take a calculated risk and live a little, what's the worst that could happen?
