“Disclaimer: Psilocybin may be illegal where you live. I am not encouraging its use. As you know, I’m not a doctor. I’m describing my own personal experience and journey out of the grips of addiction. Other people’s experience may vary.”

This is a blog about what psychedelics, specifically psilocybin, did for me. I had heard about the unique properties of the class of drugs known as psychedelics for a while. What peaked my interest is their anti-addictive properties. With magic mushrooms 3.5 grams will throw you into an intense trip lasting hours. Take that same dose the next day and you will feel almost nothing and possibly nothing at all. The same dose on the third day and it becomes just another edible mushroom. The second property of psychedelics that I found intriguing was that cultures that integrate the use of psychedelics don't seem to have addiction at all, such as the Bwiti in Africa. The third property of psychedelics that interested me was they seem to be able to provide a map to spirituality or spiritual ideas even for someone who finds religion in pretty much all its forms to be ridiculous.

So I decided to get psilocybin containing mushrooms and try a 5 month cycle which would begin with a hero's journey (6000mg) followed by micro dosing 2mg once every three days for 5 months and culminating in another hero's journey. I had done mushrooms many times before when I was young and had no respect or understanding for these drugs. I decided not to set an intention of what I wanted to get out of this cycle because I am a born sceptic and wanted to mitigate the chances of a placebo effect as much as possible. I went into it with an open mind to view the mushrooms as teachers and what followed was extremely profound. What I did decide to do was get my mind ready. I made sure to meditate every day for at least 20 minutes the week leading up to the beginning of this experiment. Changes happened almost instantly. Here are the biggest.

Right after the first hero's journey I quit smoking cigarettes. The whole trip had a "life is an amazing journey" theme to it. I felt connected to every other living thing. I was a part of this crazy life experiment that began some 4 billion years ago. In that context taking even the smallest chance on killing myself early with cigarettes seemed so crazy. So crazy that I couldn't imagine what it felt like to be okay with smoking cigarettes and this coming from a 2 – 3 pack a day smoker. Haven't had one since.
I immediately made some very dramatic dietary changes. Along the same lines of quitting smoking I quit sugar and foods that contain preservatives. I had always had this attitude "live life, restricting what you eat is no fun". There was an immediate 180 degree flip. I decided that food is fuel for a machine and the quality of the fuel dictates how efficiently and effectively that machine will run. Or put another way what you eat is one of the biggest determining factors in how you feel. So I decided that living life meant that when I am deciding what to eat I will first consider how it will make me feel, how it will affect my energy levels, how it will effect inflammation, etc. Second comes taste. Taste is always second to nutritional value. Once a month I allow myself to eat ice cream cause I earned it. It's not a cheat, its planned. I found that while the restrictive nature of my decision to eat a ketogenic diet does suck sometimes the benefits far out way the downsides. No contest.
I learned that everyone needs a purpose. I saw where science and spirituality converged. The idea that person is lost if he or she doesn’t have a purpose in life is something I always equated to something other than science. But in thinking about it "purpose" or "meaning" are really just code words for a biological mechanism we don't fully understand. When we feel "fulfilled" that feeling is really just chemicals in our brain. Nothing more, but that doesn’t make having a purpose in life any less vital. In fact, for me, understanding that made it more vital. I had to decide what I was passionate about. I found that I was passionate about the underrepresented minority that I am a part of. Addicts and Alcoholics. More than that I was passionate about the underrepresented minority within the addict community. The non-religious addicts who have to try to mold a clearly religious program into a secular idea.
I discovered the root of my addiction was a fundamental misunderstanding of drugs. There is no such thing as a good or a bad drug. The dose makes the poison. The frequency of use and rout of administration make the poison. I found that this was true of almost everything. Exercise is healthy at a specific dose. Too little and there are negative consequences. Too much and there are also negative consequences. There is a sweet spot to everything. This was the catalyst to completely rewire the way I look at drugs. Everything I was taught about drugs and addiction I allowed to fade away. I would never again imbue a drug with emotion from my past experiences. I came to believe that I should be more worried about the effect taking anti-depressants and serotonin reuptake inhibitors prescribed to me in rehab had on my brain than the effect of 15 years of heroin use. I realized what I needed to do the entire time was think of drugs as tools and decide which ones I wanted in my tool box, then do my research and make an informed decision on the minimum effective dose required to get the results I wanted out of those drugs while keeping potentially negative side effects to a minimum. Suddenly the idea of being an "addict" was a non-issue. A truly incredible psychic change.

Those were the macro effects. The micro effects were far more numerous, harder to quantify, and even harder to spell out in a blog. The affect that these small incremental changes had on me rearranged the way I look at stress, conflict, anger, etc. I became much more able to look at challenges as learning experiences. Any time something goes sideways the first question I ask is "what can I learn from this? Where is the lesson?". This simple change in perception had ripple effects that completely reframed the way I move through the world.

In the aggregate it's difficult to know just how much of my journey to rewire my brain away from addiction is due to psilocybin. I believe it was the spark that sent me down a healthy road that lead to me adopting a lifestyle geared towards optimal performance and longevity. The idea of viewing every drug and calorie that I put into my body through the lens of longevity definitely had its inception from psilocybin.

My experience led me to ask "why are drugs that are literally impossible to get addicted to and might even be a valuable tool in combating addiction considered a relapse in 12 Step recovery?" This lead me down a rabbit hole. The founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, Bill Wilson, tried LSD after he formed AA and immediately saw its application in treating alcoholics. And what did AA do when it's creator came to them with the opportunity to evolve? They shut him down. AA had become its own establishment by this time and vehemently rejected both LSD and Bill W. for suggesting its therapeutic value. They saw it as just another drug. They believed, incorrectly, that it could cause mental illness or exacerbate addiction. One of the first examples that AA was turning into its own religion. Unwilling to accept new ideas. Thinking of itself as perfect. Believing it had all the answers and so it did not need to evolve. It pains me to think about where AA would be now if they had listened to Bill. I think this is one of the biggest tragedies in the war against addiction.