A Love Letter to Magic Mushrooms

Muchas gracias, hongos de mágico.

I remember the day we first met, 11 years ago this spring, in my sunlit Victoria apartment. ‘Twas a threesome with a woman I loved deeply. You were infused in chocolate, gentle as could be. You took my psychedelic virginity with nothing but the most tender, loving care. What a blessing of a first experience. What a precious gift.

What a goddamn delight.

After 7 years of building curiosity and rising tension, finally getting into bed with you filled me with so much excitement. We’d tried before, but the timing never aligned. 

You sure didn’t disappoint. I like to think I didn’t either.

We certainly both wanted more—and more we would have in the years to come.

We’ve run the gauntlet now: from tears of rage and sadness, to joy and awe.

But we almost didn’t make it. 

We didn’t get here without grief or pain, rupture or heartbreak.

We traversed malignant darkness to toxic sludge to internal architecture that now makes me weep with love. You’ve helped shape me into who I am today, as I knew you would long, long before we first climbed, quite literally, into bed together. 

I’m forever grateful for never giving up on you, for never ending things. Even during our silences, our disconnections, when the very thought of you made me recoil.

I must confess, I did wonder if we were done forever then. If I’d asked you for too much, too soon, too recklessly. I didn’t know if we could repair our relationship. 

I didn’t know if I wanted to.

You’re not the only psychedelic I’ve built a relationship with, of course. There are plenty of other fish in the sea—all of whom I find easier and less demanding. 

But what they bring in lightness they lack in truth.

And truth is the most important thing of all: your greatest gift.

You revealed truths I couldn’t ignore, even when I ran and hid.

The undeniable brilliance of your truth undoes me every single time, demanding that I remake myself in its image. In this, you’re a mistress I’m delighted to serve.

Your truths burned away my illusions, my masks, my stories, my false gods.

You showed me that the most precious experience in life is becoming fully, wholly, who you really are. Which is something not given or stumbled into. Only earned.

You are not easily pleased—but your praise, when given, is unmatched.

Muchas gracias de nuevo, hongos de mágico.

Without you… I cannot imagine who or what I might have become. Our relationship began long before any sense could be made of it, and has now been nurtured for so long that you are me, I am you, we are we. How weird. How insane. How beautiful.

I may never fully understand how I knew at such a young age that our paths were intertwined, that this lifetime was our dance to share—but I’m glad I stepped in.

You were never about escape.

You were a reckoning I recognized before I knew what that meant.

With love from the forest,

~ Alexander