The Shroom Years

With Jinxification Day upon us, the time feels ripe to trace the weird, winding, mushroom-riddled path that led me here—from wriggling walls and mysterious hallucinations to cascading sugar skulls and forested meltdowns. 

My psychedelic curiosity was sparked in my mid-teens, from sources unknown.

Despite only just discovering that magic mushrooms were even a thing and barely able to wrap my head around the basics of what they could do, I was filled with a deep sense of knowing that they’d come to play a starring role in my life.

Which, in hindsight, was a weird conviction for someone whose days revolved around barely-tolerating school, playing hockey and Call of Duty, and reading fantasy novels.

Then again, nothing to do with magic mushrooms is ever normal.

(I haven’t kept a trip journal, so I’m relying on a mix of barely-legible scribbles pulled from dusty notebooks, faded memories, brain-burned visuals, and where I was in the world in a given year to dig up the particulars of what follows. I may have misplaced or missed a trip or two, but the gist is here.)

While my slow-burning ache to explore psychedelics began in the late 00’s, I didn’t get my first taste of what lies behind the veil until Spring 2015, when the textured walls of my girlfriend and I’s apartment came to wriggling life like bugs in a log. We gazed, we giggled, and we fucked until reality settled enough for us to want sushi.

(In mushroom-speak, “the veil” is the liminal line between this reality…

And where the mushrooms take you.)

Our next adventure behind the veil came in Summer 2015, when I had my first and still only proper hallucination. Meaning, I saw something that had no basis in reality, and wasn’t a mushroom-infused interpretation of anything that already existed: 

A young girl with long, straight black hair and a downcast gaze, wearing a red dress, walking slowly along the treeline, down the driveway and across the street. I’ve chewed on this vision ever since, and curiously, I fiiiiiiinally figured out what this hallucination was all about just a couple weeks ago—‘tis a story for another day.

On Christmas Eve 2015, after the traditional bbq’d burgers at my parents' house, we ate mushrooms for dessert and waited for Santa to come. He didn’t, but we sure did.

We broke up in Fall 2016, and I wouldn’t wander behind the veil again until Spring 2018, when I helped my new girlfriend access and process a traumatic experience from her past. Looking back, I had no business guiding anyone that early in my own journey—but sometimes love and trust outpace wisdom, and that day was healing.

In Fall 2018, I went behind the veil thrice. Once for my birthday. Once with my girlfriend—which was my first ‘hero’ dose, where I saw a lot of tiny little dancing Hitmonchans (yes, the Pokémon), rocked out to Avicii (RIP), and embarked upon a manic-feeling cleaning spree for some reason. The last adventure of 2018 was during a road trip with my girlfriend and her brother in the thick of the Californian Redwoods. I swear those trees grew just to be witnessed while on mushrooms.

(“Hero dose” is a term coined by Terence McKenna for mushroom doses of 5 grams or more. For context, a ‘standard’ dose for most will be in 2.5 - 3.5g. I took 7g.)

In Spring 2019 while living on Long Island, New York, we took a gentle little dose in a park and then blissed out to the wonderful music of Rodrigo y Gabriela at a nearby theatre. As you might expect being in New York, very very cheesy pizza followed.

Now Summer 2019, we wandered into the heart of Vancouver’s Pacific Spirit Park where I saw the most beautiful waterfall of Mexican Sugar Skulls cascading over a very large stump (which is still one of my favourite psilocybin-induced sights to date.)

Come Thanksgiving 2019, my step-dad and I ventured into his favourite part of the mountains near my hometown, where I held space for him as he frolicked, played, and met his spirit animal—an orca whale. Which I thought was so, so cool.

Later in Fall 2019, we returned to Pacific Spirit Park with a friend for a group adventure, and I went yet again alone a few weeks later as I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had unfinished business to tend to in those woods.

What unfolded Wasn’t a Fun Mushroom Trip—But One I Needed.

2020 passed without going behind the veil, despite living in Amsterdam where you can easily buy ‘truffles’, which taste like ancient unwashed ass and require eating a lot more than their mushroom counterpart to elicit the same effect. Bleh, I’ll pass.

2021 began with a trip where I unexpectedly found myself reliving and finally feeling the unprocessed emotion from our house fire 10 years prior. This also wasn’t remotely fun, but was undeniably healing, freeing, and eventually, soothing.

Then for my birthday in September 2021, I wanted to take a big dose again. In turn I was confronted with what I know now was the release of an overwhelming deluge of frustration, sadness, and rage at the state of my life. I was deeply unhappy at the time, and the mushrooms sure let me know. 

(“Psychedelic” comes from the Greek roots psyche meaning soul and delos meaning to reveal—which is something mushrooms certainly excel at.)

This also wasn’t a fun time. I was so shell-shocked and unsettled from that experience that I didn’t feel called to venture behind the veil again until September 2023, when I was in a better place mentally and spiritually, albeit temporarily.

Summer/Fall 2024 brought two trips behind the veil, one which I recall as being cozy and calm, and the other which was The Coolest Mushroom Trip of My Life (So Far!)

Then came Ceremony Day earlier this year.

And now…

We’ve arrived at Jinxification Day.

I’ll catch you on the other side, fused and crowned.

With love from the forest,

~ Alexander

P.S. The Velvet Telegram released its first proper telegram into the world yesterday, which contains one of the most intimate and raw pieces of writing I’ve ever published… So far! That’s TVT’s ethos, so we’re only going deeper from here.

Here’s a little taste of How I Became My Own Muse: 

For the longest time, I thought my muse would show up in someone else’s body.

Not metaphorically. Literally. Flesh and blood. Likely a woman, one who seemed summoned from the edge of myth. No doubt she’d have long hair curling like smoke, a sassy, heart-melting smile, and smudged lipstick from biting her own lip too hard.

Someone who would look at me with a deep, ancient recognition so searing I’d forget who I was, inviting me into a grander realm of life—one only accessible through the portal offered by a muse.

Sounds rather lovely, no?

This dream of mine wasn’t unfounded. I caught glimpses of her over the years, bites and tastes just solid enough to keep me believing. But as life twisted and turned, as I strayed from my true path, the signal faded to black. And so did I.

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