It is 9 a.m. The therapists, Natalia and Daniel, hand me the two mushrooms, the equivalent of 3 grams. Natalia tells me that this variety, coming from a controlled cultivation that guarantees optimal quality, is quite strong, and that they rarely administer such a dose during their therapies. If they made this choice, it was with full awareness of my situation. I had informed them that I was not a beginner in this type of experience, and that I usually have more difficulty connecting than average, as is also the case during my ayahuasca ceremonies.
They advise me to chew them slowly, mainly using my incisors rather than my molars, in order not to leave residues. Their taste reminds me of a Roquefort-type cheese, not unpleasant for a French palate, though quite intense. Once the two pieces are swallowed, Natalia hands me a bowl of bitter cacao. Beyond the symbolic aspect, since cacao has been used in pre-Hispanic traditions to begin sacred ceremonies, this drink is systematically served during their therapies to ease digestion, support the onset of the effects, and prevent possible nausea.
I am then invited to lie down and, if I wish, to place a sleep mask over my eyes in order to have a deep introspective experience. Daniel places his chair next to the bed and will remain by my side throughout the entire experience. His method is never to interfere with what I am going through. His discreet presence is reassuring, because I know he will be attentive to everything that happens and available if I need anything or have questions. I consider this individual experience a privilege, almost a luxury. Daniel is also responsible for a crucial element, the music. A speaker is placed on the bedside furniture and the playlist begins. During the hours the ceremony will last, Daniel will act like a conductor, changing and adapting the music according to my sensations and my experience. The goal is to guide me through several phases, each with different intentions.
After a few tens of minutes, I begin to feel a slight wavering, like a light mist slowly enveloping my senses and weighing down my body. I feel the work happening in my stomach. I imagine the substance subtly spreading throughout my body, like a diffuse energy circulating in my blood until it reaches my brain, where the chemical process begins through a reorganization of the usual circuits, allowing networks that normally communicate little to start exchanging information.
Under psilocybin, the psychoactive substance in magic mushrooms, the brain becomes less hierarchical, with disinhibition, increased global connectivity, and reduced filtering. This allows access to buried memories, particularly traumas that may resurface, to forgotten sensations, and enables stronger connections between the physical, mental, and emotional dimensions. In Latin America, this is referred to as medicina, just as ayahuasca is defined. In the Western collective imagination, taking mushrooms is seen as purely recreational. The substance is associated with the hippie era, during which young people seeking spiritual experiences were stigmatized. Yet scientific studies on psychedelics at the time demonstrated numerous therapeutic benefits, before research was abruptly halted for political reasons, when the American administration decided to classify psychedelics as drugs, out of fear of a collective awakening of consciousness.
Prejudices are persistent, and despite the resurgence of scientific studies over the past twenty years, there remains the idea that mushrooms are only used for the pleasure of “getting high”, experiencing an ecstatic moment in which perception of the environment is enhanced through an altered state of consciousness. Some people do indeed use them this way. And even so, there is nothing inherently wrong with that, aside from illegality, as mushrooms, like other psychedelics, do not cause physiological addiction and do not produce negative physical aftereffects, unlike many other drugs, or even the “drugs” that are legalized and socially accepted, such as alcohol, tobacco, or sugar, three extremely powerful industries, incidentally.
However, this pursuit of sensory pleasure is not my objective when I seek a psychedelic experience. To be honest, I feel that this medicine offered by nature should only be used for therapeutic purposes. To go deep into the recesses of our brain in search of the reasons behind the consequences of our current state, of our ways of being, acting, and thinking. We are all built and conditioned from childhood, through our education, whether familial or academic, through our overall environment, through the codes we are expected to adopt. Certain events or habits continue to shape our identity as adults. In short, we are the product of our past. But nothing is fixed. Life offers us the possibility to evolve or change at any moment, if we feel that a part of ourselves and of our personality, shaped throughout our development, is no longer aligned with who we should be, or with our search for peace or happiness.
Psychedelics have this extraordinary ability to allow us to detach from a part of ourselves, the part that prevents us from moving forward or feeling better. Ego dissolution is one of these characteristics. But so is awareness, through sensations, visions, or a form of absolute knowing.
This is not my first experience with psychedelics, and I feel deeply connected to this gentle medicine, gentle in the natural sense, even though experiences can sometimes be extremely demanding. It aligns with my desire to understand myself and to improve. Spirituality, in my view, is an extension of philosophy. Philosophy is a discipline that seeks to understand life in order to live better. Spirituality is, for me, the next step, one that allows us to enter the concrete realm and experience this desire for change. And for that, one must go through self-questioning, through an examination of one’s past. Accepting our current state, our personal construction, our past, in order to heal, to understand, and to try to become a better version of ourselves, not in the pursuit of perfectionism, but in the search for inner peace, moving closer to well-being and happiness.
The time between ingesting a psychedelic, such as eating a mushroom or drinking ayahuasca, and the arrival of the first effects, is for me an opportunity to reflect, to clarify my intentions regarding the experience to come, often with a certain apprehension about what will unfold. This morning, I feel no apprehension. I know that unlike other medicines such as ayahuasca, mushrooms rarely cause nausea, there is no purge, and no physical discomfort. This is a gentle medicine.
Here in Latin America, hallucinogenic mushrooms are called niños santos, holy children. Because they have the particular ability to make us work with the forgotten parts of our childhood. Physiologically, mushrooms act on our default mode network, the one that maintains our adult identity, weakening its dominance. As a result, older layers of our personality become accessible, particularly those related to childhood and primary emotions. Unlike other psychedelics such as LSD, which is highly cognitive and mental, oriented toward ideas and concepts, or DMT, the psychoactive substance in ayahuasca, which is more dissociative and symbolic, psilocybin is more emotional, affective, and bodily, and therefore acts strongly on memory and emotions. This is why childhood memories often surface during mushroom ceremonies.
As I write these lines, the day after the experience, it is difficult for me to recall it in detail. During moments when the brain functions differently, temporal and structural unity is disrupted. For a rational and organized mind like mine, this creates a significant gap. Memory gives way to pure experience. Added to this is the near inability to find precise words for experiences that go beyond rational and verbal frameworks. This famous ineffability applies to events for which language feels insufficient. Simply because the experience is sensory, emotional, sometimes hazy and irrational. Still, it is an interesting exercise for me to attempt to put words to my experience, even though no words could ever fully capture the precision of what took place within my body and mind.
The moment when the medicine begins its work on my body is not my favorite phase. Being naturally inclined toward control in my life, I always struggle at this stage to open the door to the medicine and accept surrendering to it and to the work it has to do. It works on what I need, not on what I want. Letting go, trust, and faith are therefore essential. These are aspects I like to work on through my different psychedelic experiences, as they are areas I need to develop. Past experiences have gradually helped me loosen this rigidity that is part of my personality, and which I carry more as a burden than as a strength.
When I feel the first effects approaching, mainly through bodily sensations, I consciously work on opening the door to the medicine. I have the impression that this phase lasts about ten minutes, as if I were struggling to open this heavy gate of surrender, and then the medicine takes its time to cross through. I imagine it entering like a long, colorful, magical flow that spreads through every part of my body until it reaches my mind, where the work can finally begin.
Before any mental work, however, physical sensations are the first effects to appear. Driven by the music, I feel spasms, especially in my legs, like a discharge of the nervous system. I realize that I can control these movements. With deep breathing and an almost meditative state, I can soften the reception of the musical waves so that they do not impact my body too strongly. Then I realize something. By trying to channel this energy, I am once again in control, in the desire for my mind to direct everything, ignoring my body’s need to express itself. I decide to let go. I allow my body to fully feel the waves and the energy carried by the music. This surrender also concerns the ego. Accepting the possibility of looking ridiculous by making spontaneous, incomprehensible gestures. Here, I am not afraid of ridicule, because I am in a personalized therapeutic setting with practitioners who understand that these experiences can take unusual forms. So I let myself go. And ultimately, even thinking about the concept of “ridiculous” reveals that I am still in judgment, my own judgment, which serves no purpose, as it reflects a deep attachment of my ego, understood as the desire to control my image. So I surrender, and a symphony of movements begins, lasting nearly four hours.
At no point do I lose consciousness. I know exactly what is happening and what I am doing. Every gesture is felt and assumed. Sometimes these are spasms or tremors, and at other moments, they resemble dance. Lying down, I dance, but not in the conventional sense. I let my body follow the music in its own way. No choreography, no technique, no aesthetic goal, only gestures that feel necessary. I do not know whether this is a spontaneous release of energy or a purposeless desire to move, but I enjoy letting my body connect to the music. Interestingly, my movements are mostly concentrated on the right side of my body, particularly in my leg. The right side of the body is primarily connected to the left hemisphere, associated with language, control, and identity. By working on my past and identity, the medicine strongly activates this network, which explains why the discharges can be lateralized.
My fingers also join the experience. Like receptive antennas to the music, I feel the urge to move them, completely out of sync with one another. Each phalanx is engaged, and I offer Natalia and Daniel a playful ballet of my ten fingers, knowing they are present and attentive despite their silence. I reassure them, the eye mask still on, telling them that I am aware what I am doing may seem strange, but that I feel both a need and a sense of relief in letting myself be carried this way. I would define this moment as a conscious trance. Knowing that I can focus and stop these bodily movements at any time reassures me, giving me an exit if I feel I am losing too much control. But I fully trust the work of the medicine and consciously allow my body to express itself this way.
One aspect is consistent across all my experiences with the medicine. I have never had visions. It is very common to experience visions during altered states of consciousness, whether with eyes open or closed. Some people have them from their very first experience. In my case, roughly fifteen experiences have never produced such effects. And ultimately, despite early disappointment, I no longer feel frustration about this absence of visions. I have understood that my psyche does not process the experience through imagery. There is a widespread myth of powerful visions associated with psychedelic experiences, archetypal images, jungle animals, spectacular scenes, memories from the past. But this is not the dominant mode of perception for everyone. In everyday life, I am very visual, sensitive to light and aesthetics, highly observant. Under psychedelics, when control drops, this sense no longer serves as the primary channel. It is as if it steps aside to allow other modes to emerge. I perceive things differently, through what is known as “clear knowing”, the sensation of knowing without reasoning, of perceiving obvious truths and realizations. Information comes to me in an integrative rather than perceptual way. This does not mean analytical integration, as there is no reasoning, analysis, intellectual search, or deduction. It is a pre-verbal understanding. Knowledge arrives before words. Then comes the introspective phase, extremely powerful in all my experiences, often during the gradual descent of effects, especially with ayahuasca. The introspective capacity induced by altered states of consciousness is profound and meaningful. Ego dissolution allows me to adopt a different perspective, one that feels obvious and beneficial, as if my thinking and understanding were more accurate.
When I feel a strong bodily energy while my body moves to the driving rhythm of the music, I think about channeling this energy into something stronger, controlling the spasms and using it for deep meditation, going further, extracting more benefit, “honoring” the power offered by the medicine to find deeper meaning. I sit in a cross-legged position, ready to meditate, and attempt to control this energy. At that moment, I realize that it is my perfectionism sending me this misguided signal. I am constantly searching for a better version of myself, for optimization, whether intellectual, spiritual, or physical, to the point of feeling guilt or shame if I enjoy something without justification. This survival strategy tied to identity is part of my perfectionism. The very trait that helps me stay structured, avoid distraction, and not lose my way also prevents me from enjoying without reason. I become aware of this pattern, which is deeply embedded in my life. I then decide to abandon meditation and let myself be carried by the music once again. This realization will be one of the integration points I will need to work on after the experience, in order to draw lasting benefits.
The same applies to my relationship with my body and with sport. My calisthenics practice is framed within a structured, rigid, and controlled approach, with precise, demanding, repetitive movements guided by strict discipline. I take care of my body, but I treat it more as a tool than as a partner. What I feel during this trance is the need to let my body express itself differently. I need to rethink my relationship with my body and its expression, to learn to move it freely rather than structurally. This too is a lesson I will analyze and explore in the days that follow.
I notice that I receive musical energy differently depending on the type of music being played. Daniel carefully selects the musical sequences to guide the process step by step. Some musical moments invite my arms and fingers to follow a flow of movement shaped by the rhythm coming from the speaker. Sometimes the gestures are soft, sometimes sharp and precise. And when the rhythm slows, my body relaxes, allowing me to enter a new introspective phase. At times the music feels heavy and dense, as if it were meant to retrieve buried memories and help me work deeply. After the session, Daniel explains that he played music he does not dare share with everyone, as it can provoke psychologically difficult states. Knowing my experience with the medicine and my ability to manage altered states of consciousness, particularly since I have never experienced panic episodes and know that nothing bad will happen during a ceremony despite potentially unpleasant bodily, sensory, or psychological sensations, he offered me particularly intense musical moments. And indeed, my unconscious explored very old memories. At times I wondered whether I was conditioned by knowing that psilocybin would connect me to my childhood, or whether it was naturally the reduction of the barriers shaping my identity, caused by the substance, that brought certain past events to the surface.
Up to that point, due to the rhythmic music, my experience is highly bodily, interspersed with moments of introspection and analysis of personality traits I know I should work on in the future. Then Daniel switches to something softer. At that moment, fragments of childhood images come to my mind, particularly images of my paternal grandmother. Once again, I question whether my mind is intentionally retrieving these memories or whether disinhibition is offering them spontaneously. Ultimately, it does not matter. I see my grandmother’s face and feel that she is very present within me, very close, to the point of sensing that she may be my guardian angel. Emotion overwhelms me for the first time during the experience. Tears symbolizing first sadness, then gratitude, and above all deep love. I place my hands over my heart and feel her presence. I analyze what is happening and struggle to determine whether this is a connection, a presence, or simply an intense thought. But it does not matter. There is no coincidence in such moments. If this feeling arises, it is for a reason. Feeling her presence within me is enough to comfort me and ultimately bring a smile.
Daniel was an exceptional conductor, guiding me through these four intense hours of musical journey. Music is undeniably a powerful and essential tool in psychedelic ceremonies. It is now 1:30 p.m. I remove the eye mask. My mind feels hazy. I sense it is time to close this powerful experience, even though a desire to go further remains. I talk with Daniel and Natalia about what happened. I try to organize my thoughts, revisit sensations, ideas, emotions, lessons. It is a lot of information. Perhaps I have forgotten some of it, but I trust that, unconsciously, work will continue in the coming days. The most important benefits, however, will have to be implemented by me. As after every experience with the medicine, I am aware that I am responsible for change. The medicine is not magical. It is merely a channel that allows information to be received. The same information that already exists within us but does not easily reach us due to trauma, ego, education, social codes, and lived experiences. It is up to us to create that magic from this information, to move closer to alignment, to our true identity, and to inner peace, a combination that allows us to approach happiness and a fulfilling life.
My sincere thanks to Natalia and Daniel from Geo Mikelyon for their professionalism and their medicine, as well as to Julia for her presence and support.
