I began my wandering through psychedelic spaces mid way through my high school career, not long after my moms coming out and my parents subsequent divorce. I never knew about psychedelics as a means of healing before I first delved into them. However at the peak of my depression and social isolation, those first few journeys began to shift my world view into a more positive one and I began to wonder whether other people felt this way. From there on I was more or less obsessed and read anything and everything I could find on psychedelics, I took this information and began delving deep and experimenting with a variety of doses and substances, and slowly over time developed a system that worked for me. Whilst developing my practice I was able to psychically and emotionally confront myself and force myself to reckon with the barriers and walls I had created both physically and mentally to protect myself from my feelings, something psychedelics showed me in a language I could understand. I was able to begin the second part of my journey and begin to dismantle these blocks and allow myself to really feel and accept my life at that point and move forward. Psychedelics work for me because they have always allowed me to confront, experience, and understand internal discomfort in comfort.
Like Jade, psychedelics have also impacted my life well beyond the healing and fun they helped me achieve, and I guess in a way these other impacts are more or less a parallel path of self improvement, started by my use. Use of mushrooms has always for me been my end all be all ride or die, and this use evolved into a self driven education in the vast world of fungi. From cultivation of medicinal and gourmet varieties, both commercially and independent experimentation. To foraging wild edibles and medicinals. Fungi have become a pillar in my lifestyle and have completely changed my path in life, one that puts my needs and happiness first.
From my lens of psychedelia and history of cultivation I notice trends in psychedelic conversations that are parallel to other more normal trends in society. We tend to talk alot about good produce and foods but not so much the huge communities and networks of people that propagate and distribute these products for us to enjoy, yes this is changing in regards to food. But it also needs to change in psychedelic conversations, we are currently focused on the end user, the consumer and the practitioners, and fighting for their right and freedom. But why are we leaving cultivators, producers, and distributors out of the conversation? They are an integral link in the long chain that allows many of us to currently experiment and explore. Leaving them out of the conversation not only furthers social stigmas surrounding professionals working in these taboo careers, but it shuts the door on a large part of our community and leaves the door wide open for corporations and big pharma to seize the right and power to produce and distribute which breaks the ties of psychedelics and sustainability. I am happy to see more decriminalization efforts include producers and distributors but we need to continue the conversation and not only decriminalize personal lifestyles but also professional lifestyles in this psychedelic space. As for some the cultivation, production, or distribution of psychedelics is interwoven and integral to their use and experiences with psychedelics and can play a part in a person’s ability to heal.
I would also like to touch on the issue of the elitism I see in psychedelic conversations. Be it holding some drugs or psychedelics in higher regard to others, or some peoples experiences as more worthy. I believe this trend shuts down conversations that could be had with some members of our community. Everyone’s psychedelic journey and manner of healing is different, substance of choice, methods or practices, and semantics of their experience can all contribute to the greater collective knowledge of psychedelia. Substance of choice kind of aligns itself with the god complex syndrome, something not often talked about, where a person whose had a “breakthrough” experience on a substance they deem superior, like ayahuasca vs mushrooms, then doesn’t recognize the findings of others experiences on “lesser” substances. Methods or practices speaks partly to the issue of the “heroic” dose problem where someone whose taken more of a substance than someone else holds their experience to have imparted some greater knowledge or understanding. It also encompasses the hierarchy some medicinal users hold over recreational users as well as those who have some ceremonial purpose vs those who do not. Semantics of their experience touches on the hierarchy of language present in psychedelic culture, some may call it philosophy vs stoner talk or scientific vs spiritual language. Each group has validity and can explain things the other can not, through a careful combination of these languages we can all communicate better.
These questions may not be something I thought about when starting my journey into psychedelics as a white boy, but as I’ve developed and learned more about this culture I’ve noticed more discrepancies and issues, many from learning of jades perspective and understanding her reality. Others came from myself and my passion for fungi and the non-representation in the community I am in.