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In March of 2020, 10 days before New York City would lockdown and hardly anyone knew what the novel coronavirus was, my girlfriend of 4 years packed the last of her essential belongings for a trip back to her native country. We had no idea when we would see each other again. Her visa status in the United States had nearly expired and I had made the decision to not marry the deepest love I had ever known for a green card. I refused to accept how high the stakes were, I thought it’d all work out— she’d find a job to sponsor her, she’d be home in no-time and I could avoid my fear of a marriage I felt I wasn’t ready for under the pressured circumstances. She painfully accepted my decision and we vowed to work our best through the unknown. On our last weekend together, we laughed, cried, annoyed each other and kissed as we walked from the top of Manhattan to the bottom, touching nearly every neighborhood hand in hand. As the week went on, and the discussion of shutdowns reached mainstream news, we felt, much like everyone, the world was ending, ours already was. I left her at the airport in a near cinematic display of goodbyes as she boarded an international flight as the only passenger out of New York. As worldwide lockdowns became everyday reality, quickly, our long distance relationship hopes of reconnection became strained— The uncertainty was too much to bear and it would all eventually be the end of us. Soon, the cozy Queens apartment we made a home together became a living museum to our dead relationship and I was haunting it.

I did stay above water for a few early weeks of lockdown. Cooked healthy meals, maintained my yogic practice, read books I had meant to read years ago. But something happened between the barreling headlights of my relationship ending and ambulances routinely carrying people away from my building. Whisky and video games became wonderful isolation comforts. As Homer Simpson wisely proclaimed: “Alcohol, the cause and solution to all life's problems.” Career wise, I was in a uniquely privileged position— I could not perform my job duties in reality television from home and as a good standing corporate employee for a massive international company, I essentially was kept on payroll to stay home and hang out until this whole thing blew over. This was wonderful news for many reasons but now the only reason it mattered was that it perfectly supported my new found lifestyle of drinking myself into comas each day. For a while, I falsely believed my benders and World of Warcraft raids were mending a type of crippling emotional condition. I found odd delight and romance while drunkenly sobbing for the return of my estranged girlfriend and mourning the viral death of all of humanity. In shame, I would routinely turn my phone off for days at a time and turn it back to no missed calls or texts. I felt bitterly unsupported by everyone in my life, betrayed, yet in reality, I was living in the total secret of my suffering. Help cannot find you when there is no smoke. The day would inevitably come when the hangover was so bad and my loneliness so obvious, I couldn’t recognize the apartment through the filth I had created around me. The staple source of grounding and healing in my life through Kundalini yoga was gone. The idea of sitting in lotus to raise my vibration and align my chakras felt like old world stupid hippie bullshit which I was embarrassed of for ever participating in. The songs of success I’d sing over its beauty in my life made me want to throw myself into traffic. I had lost myself and whatever remained, I was ridiculing and character assassinating daily. I was scaring the shit of myself and wanted abso-fucking-lutly nobody to know about it. More and more, suicide became a warm, fuzzy feeling to daydream of. Years earlier, I had witnessed the very violent suicide attempt by a friend— Rode the ambulance with them and called my friend’s parents to explain the unknown status of their life. This wasn’t an encouraging story to recall for me as it turned out. But, noticing where my feelings led me, I recognized the need for immediate healing action. This hellish realm was a place I never wished to visit again.

I’d heard about psychedelic mushrooms being used in research trials to treat afflictions like PTSD, anxiety and even smoking cessation. New York City is a place of hopes, dreams and scoring any drug you can imagine at any time of the day, so I acquired a substantial amount of mushrooms with no plan or information in place. At 4am on a Sunday morning, shakingly hungover as death, I ate 5 grams of dried Golden Teacher Psilocybin Cubensis Mushrooms and proceeded to lay on the floor of my living room, weeping uncontrollably. Within 40 minutes, my ears began to ring, adjusting to a new level of awareness, the air had changed. Suddenly I was no longer alone and felt the growing presence of someone with me, observing me. A playful, gentle, motherly consciousness, with a voice and personality was begging to interact with me. I sank through the floor into the center of the Earth. This presence hugged me tightly and she carried me through every regrettable, embarrassing, painful moment I could remember in my life. I relived them all with overwhelming sensations of gratitude and compassion, transmuting traumatic energy into understanding, love and respect— Not only for me, but for all characters in the story of my life. Out of nowhere, several audible voices chimed in, breaking this transient state, it was as if a party had suddenly arrived through my front door. Utterly terrified, darting my eyes around the room, I was astounded to realize that low and behold, my house plants were actively communicating with me. More voices came, this time, telepathic in nature, rose from inside my body. I overheard conversations between my organs and cells, they asked me directly to catch a break, requesting I begin a 5 day fast, consuming nothing but raw herbs, tea and honey. So...I listened to my body. During this fast, I cleaned and organized every inch of my apartment, stored all my now ex-girlfriends possessions away and poured all alcohol down the drain while repeatedly spinning my Incubus records. On the final day, I felt an intuitive calling to destroy my ego and rebuild it from nothing. To me, that meant eating 10 grams of mushrooms and standing naked in front of a mirror while never breaking gaze with myself.

Now here—most experienced psychedelic users would tell a beginner to avoid mirrors, not to mention, an unmanageable extreme dose while unsupervised. I now understand of course, why that all is. It is very much an open invitation to dance with insanity with no ticket home for a while and it did not disappoint. I watched my reflection melt and shapeshift through the history of my genetic make-up, through generations of ancestors until I was facing primordial man and primate. From here, time spun forward and split. Soon, I was facing the me of lower realities and timelines. Some of them blatantly ignored me, some hissed advice condescendingly, but mainly I met individuals who threatened me with mania, death and castration all while cursing me in terrifying guttural languages. I was in a full blown war with the darkest elements of myself and they came to win. I chanted affirmations of love, I invoked protection from religious figures across all denominations, I even cried out to the memory of my beloved childhood dog for help vanquishing these mother fucking assholes. The beautiful and nurturing consciousness I had met days earlier seemingly stared at me from the ceiling with a bag of popcorn and 3D Glasses. I found myself locked into repeating the phase, “I am my highest self” and miraculously, neutralized this terror. I was not so much blessed by, but smacked in the face with a pie of sobering clarity. At my feet, I was standing in a pool of sweat. I had no idea if it had been minutes or hours. I dropped to the floor and fell asleep from sheer exhaustion. As the sun rose, piercing my eyes, I noticed a lightness in my chest. My depression was gone, entirely cured overnight. I started the day cooking a massive banquet of breakfast while counting every blessing in my life. I called my parents and told them how much I loved them. I went on a total compassion parade, sending well wishes to friends and family. By the evening, I was captivated studying fungi cultivation. I structured a path of continued healing for myself. I wanted to go deeper and I wanted to lock reassurance into my DNA I would never fall back into such hate-ridden thoughts of myself or others ever again.

With a combination of yoga, micro-doses, brief periods of abstinence and monthly full doses in meditation with pranayama, everything in my life began to positively transform. It completely warped the gravity of my existence. Additionally, outside of the psychedelic family of mushrooms, I began to introduce significant amounts of Reshi, Chaga, Lion’s Mane and many other varieties into my daily diet. I attribute them to keeping me vibrantly healthy and spiritually grounded while the ongoing. pandemic, social unrest and fears worked overtime to consume our planet. After one year, physically, I was in the best shape I had ever achieved. Mentally, my self limiting beliefs had unraveled and ate themselves into a positive self-image, the resting attitude of my internal monologue had become love centric and present. My basic interactions with anything from a strawberry to the bank teller were nothing less than walking miracles. When friends and family began to notice changes in my character, they shook me down for answers and wanted in. The infectious healing properties of the fungi had spread through me and now to my surrounding social circles.

There was no aspect of my life left untouched— Even my sexuality had reconstituted itself. In one particular psilocybin ceremony, the mushroom consciousness meticulously illustrated for me the walls of imbalances surrounding my well of divine masculinity, they then completely annihilated those walls. Deeply burrowed nests of shame, guilt and trauma latched within my body image, sexual history, attractions and fantasies were rendered powerless near instantly. It was perhaps the most profoundly comforting and freeing moment of my entire life. Most conventional wisdom may rule this solitary experiment in self-healing to not only be risky but outright dangerous, especially so with escapism or hedonistic pursuits at the hair-pin trigger---which this all easily can lose control into. There are no doubt, even seemingly healthy individuals among us, who should reject any slight tug on the fabric of their waking reality. The adventure of self is boundlessly evolving, sentient and eternal. Humanity's relationship to these ancient intelligences is symbiotic. If called so righteously to truly face yourself, to mend your known and unknown wounds, there are blessings to be found for the sincere uninitiated. Regardless, the fungi kingdom is waiting to consume us all in death. Our unity is law in the coding of universal transformation. Everything has and always shall be one.