What Magic Mushrooms Do

Imagine your body as a piece of rope.

(From a pirate ship, ideally.)

Thick and strong, formed by many individual strands bound into a greater whole.

When your body-as-rope is bound, there’s tension, solidity, form.

But should you slip behind the veil and into the mushroom realm, oh-ho.

Tension slackens. Solidity crumbles. Form fades.

The strands of your body-as-rope unwind. You come undone. 

There’s a known mechanism at play here:

Psilocybin switches off your brain’s Default Mode Network (DMN). In turn, allowing other regions of your brain to come online and communicate more freely, more easily.

The DMN functions when your brain is at wakeful rest, such as daydreaming. Or when thinking about yourself or others, remembering the past, planning the future. 

Very, very notably, your Default Mode Network is also responsible for creating a coherent internal narrative that’s foundational to your sense of self. 

The DMN keeps the strands of your body-as-rope bound.

Turn the system off, and glorious technicolour chaos breaks loose.

This is where what I’ve come to call energetic flossing begins.

Without the Default Mode Network maintaining order, the strands of your body-as-rope unwind. And when tightly bound rope unwinds, dirt, dust, and debris fall out from between the grooves. The strands breathe, expanding into new space. 

What comes loose will be unmet, unfelt unprocessed emotion. Echoes of breaths once held, finally being exhaled. Some will still carry the heat of the moment, which can be challenging to navigate. Others will fall away in silence, almost unnoticed. 

All should be welcomed with a grin, and perhaps a tear. But not all debris will go easily, on the first try, or all at once. Some won’t go without an almighty fight.

Your peace and freedom will be earned from courage and compassion.

In this, healing comes not from repair, but release.

And when the mushrooms fade, your body-as-rope will rewind. 

Tension returns. Solidity reforms. Form rebuilds.

You’re whole once more, but somehow, lighter, brighter.

With love from the forest,

~ Alexander

P.S. If joy keeps leaking from your life, this might be why.