Hey Reader,

It's Jeff here. Let's see...how do I talk about this...

Let's just get right to it.

I started microdosing shrooms this week.

​Read this post on my site​

If you're not familiar, microdosing means I'm taking small amounts (100mg) of psychedelic mushrooms a few times per week instead of in one large dose. It's getting more popular and legal in some states as a way to treat anxiety, OCD, and CPTSD.

A few months ago, I heard an episode of the OCD Whisperer Podcast where they interview some folks who do psychedelic treatment for OCD at a clinic in Colorado. Cool I thought. I also read a chapter in Sean Webb's book The Human Mind Owner's Manual about microdosing shrooms. Cool again.

There were a few other synchronicities that I experienced that led to me finally taking action on this goal. I did some research and dove in.

I ordered them online from a Canadian shop through a recommendation from a friend. She had a good experience with them and vouched for their quality. They were measured out into 100mg capsules. The recommended dosage was one capsule every three days.

This isn't my first experience with shrooms. A couple years ago, I had two trips with a 2g (medium dose) and had an experience I'll never forget.

My biggest breakthrough in those prior trips was just how disconnected from my body I've been. How I'd seemingly forgotten the natural biological aspect of being a creature on this Earth. I felt like prior to that I've been living my life like I was a "head on a stick" as they say. You know, very smart, intellectual, spiritual, creative, and imaginative. But ungrounded and anxious.

In my first shroom trip, it was like I dissolved into the primordial ooze from which all life springs from and felt wave after wave of birth, life, and death happening through me... millions of years of evolution and how I was connected to all of it... I was all of it.

You know I call myself a Starseed. Which is like saying I'm an alien from another star system temporarily stationed here on Earth for special mission. A mission that I'm not clear on and don't have an instruction manual for.

What characterizes a Starseed is a feeling that Earth is not their home, that their true home is somewhere else in the stars. I call my music project Starbound Renegade alluding to my intention to return back to the stars and how I feel like I don't fit in here on Earth.

Starseeds resonate with the spiritual and imaginal realms. The astral plane. Dreams and out of body experiences. A desire to escape this flawed and messy meat suit and transcend pain and suffering. Most Starseeds are sensitive souls who cannot understand the violence and exploitation that goes on here on Earth. It seems horrifying how people treat each other and even how animals prey on other animals and eat them alive, with seeming no regard for the suffering their causing. Only a primal drive to eat and fuck.

Disillusionment

My spiritual awakening in 2013 began with an existential depression. A desire to know what is really real and true. My inner drive for authenticity was, at its core, a longing for Truth. To discover my true self beyond language and thought. Beyond flesh and bone. I could sense there was an essence deep within and that through meditation I could tap into this.

This was a disillusionment with the false self. The egoic personality was discovered to be not really real. That Jeff didn't really exist, but was my human personality in this lifetime (one way of looking at it). A character in the video game, and my true identity was the player in another dimension.

All of this sounds woo woo, and that's because it is. It's not based in this reality. It's beyond the physical.

Coming Back to Earth

I say all this to contrast it with what my experience on shrooms. While my spiritual and Starseed awakening showed me who I am beyond my body, the shrooms showed (reminded) me how profound it actually is to be in a body.

There have been times where I've had spontaneous enlightenment experiences. Me just derping around my apartment feeling subtly depressed or sad. And when I stopped distracting myself and feel into it with loving curiosity I notice this sadness turns to grief and sometimes I'll end up purging it out through tears, snot, or spitting it out into a bowl.

One time this happened I had this vision flash into my minds eye. That my true identity was something like a nebulae. Like one of those images of space you see from NASA. It wasn't a casual insight, it was like an experiential feeling of being it. Woah.

I was the entire cosmos crushed into this physical body and it hit me like a ton of bricks just how profound this was. How do I go from being the infinite everything to being in this limited flesh suit? I started weeping and fell to my knees. I felt an overwhelming sense of unconditional love and gratitude swelling from my heart extending out to all my cells and nerve endings. Utterly mind blowing.

By the way, I gotta make the same cliche disclaimer that everyone else who has experiences like this says. That I'm not special or unique. That technically we're all faces of God. We're all the infinite cosmos crushed into bodies and various expressions of life.

I just did a Google search and it said, "Nebulae are interstellar clouds of gas and dust. Many nebulae are formed from the remnants of dying stars. Nebulae are often also regions where new stars are born." Interesting.

This experience lasted maybe 15 minutes. By the end of it my face felt like it was turned inside out. I was completely sober. No shrooms or drugs of any kind.

Now, I bring this up because my only two experiences on shrooms both felt like this. Except much more intense and lasted for several hours.

The main difference with shrooms is that it wasn't the cosmos I was experiencing, it was the biological aspect of life on Earth. We're talking everything from the primordial ooze, to worms and insects and amphibians, to the animal kingdom, to native humans, etc. I also experienced myself as a dinosaur who lived and died and felt at peace even as my decaying corpse was being picked apart by carrion feeders.

But not only was I connecting with life on Earth, I was also connecting with the faerie or elemental realms, getting detailed visions of smiling gnomes and elves. Feeling welcomed. Feeling a sense of play and delight, that I wasn't just an alien in a meat suit, but that I belonged here too. That life on Earth is majestic and rich in its diversity. Something I miss entirely in my longing to leave this planet and transcend pain and suffering.

In my shroom trips, there was no suffering. Sure there was pain, there was grief, sadness, death and loss. But it was felt with such a compassionate and unconditionally loving presence that it didn't feel like "suffering". It felt transformative. It would come in waves that would initially begin with fear, shame, or disgust... then transform into sadness or grief or pain... then love and compassion would mix with these sensations almost like it was breaking it up and transmuting it. Then this feeling of gratitude would emerge for the experience. This is how I observed the cycles in my trips.

Suffering is pain and grief without that unconditionally loving presence. Suffering is the experience of feeling alone and abandoned by God/Source and trapped here on Earth. It's no wonder people say suffering is a path to spiritual awakening, because it's through suffering we feel ready to surrender and ask for God, however you see it.

This unconditional loving presence could also be called the Christ consciousness. From my experience, being raised Christian in rural Ohio, people talked a lot about Jesus and how he saves you from sin. How he's the only way to God. You have to accept him "into your heart." That you need to repent and pray to Jesus for forgiveness.

I had a falling out with Christianity in my college years after seeing the hypocrisy in the supposed Christians around me. I was relieved to not have to do my compulsive nightly prayers anymore. I used to fear that if I stopped, God would make bad stuff happen. And I could relieve this anxiety by praying and repeating the same lines over and over. I later learned that this is pretty typical OCD behavior.

But, I do think there's something to the Jesus thing. What Jesus represents to most people is Truth, Divine Love, or Forgiveness. There's a reason people associate Jesus with the heart. With this masculine fatherly witness energy that sees you at your worst and doesn't flinch. He still loves you. He has no human agenda and is a perfect capacity to love everyone to an infinite degree without needing anything in return.

This unconditional loving presence really does heal. It sure does something good that I can literally feel in my body. I just don't have a name for it and it doesn't look like a white guy with a beard and long hair. It's beyond words.

It doesn't feel like anything extra that I need to "call in." But something that's been here all along. Does that make sense?

In recovery work for Complex PTSD or trauma, the techniques tend to focus on mixing mindfulness (or "witness" consciousness) with acceptance or unconditional love. There's a special magic that happens in that process.

In the book Whole Again, author Jackson MacKenzie speaks on this.

In my opinion, this loving presence is actually what our true self feels like. If you meditate on the feeling/intention of ultimate Truth, prime reality, what is, or simply this, you can begin to tap into that feeling. Do this enough and you can watch it grow within you. It gets easier and better with practice, but also cannot be reached with striving or effort. One of those spiritual paradoxes.

Psychedelics are a way to experience this, but the feeling is temporary. As I've heard it described, it's like getting an elevator to the top of the mountain. You get a glimpse of the truth for a moment, everything makes sense, but then you come back down and struggle to hold onto those realizations. It fades away like a memory and you're back to your old habits and addictions. Back in your meat suit crawling around like a beast.

IFS (Internal Family Systems) or "parts work" is also another way to experience this. It's like a backdoor into spiritual awakening because of how it helps get you into your witness/loving state of mind that is separate from all your "parts."

My Microdosing Experience

Microdosing psychedelics is more subtle. For me, it's only been a week but here's my experience so far taking 100mg every three days.

First dose... I was not expecting much, maybe a slight change in my perception. But no, it had a significant effect. About an hour in, my body was tingling and feeling warm and I just couldn't be on my computer anymore. I had to go into my room and feel. I felt sadness and grief and ended up crying for "no reason". I spent the next hour or two in my room feeling and purging out (through tears and spit, snot) various heavy emotions. I did my usual practice for emotional processing. The shrooms went in and kind of stirred stuff up, and allowed me to see/feel them and let them process through.

The rest of the day I felt very zen and light, relaxed and feeling a sense of groundedness. Anxiety was still there at times, but my relation to it was different. It's like I could see it and surf the waves without getting wrapped up in it.

The next two days after my first dose... Anxiety was higher than normal. I felt more sensitive than usual and would find myself getting "triggered" at small, dumb things. But my ability to notice and not buy into them was better. I definitely did NOT feel euphoric or even at peace. I felt kind of nervous and skittish. I also felt very tired and unmotivated to work on anything. Very distractable, ADHD symptoms heightened, constant task switching, boredom and restlessness, etc. I spent a lot of time in my room trying to love myself and process what came up.

Dose 2 was not as dramatic. Probably because my body's more aligned with it and more tolerant of it's presence. I felt grounded and calm and chill. I was able to surf anxiety with more stability. Cara joked that I was like a shroomy zen master haha. That's nice, but really I just wasn't "in the mood" to analyze our problems or even talk about them. I just wanted to feel and love the core wound, not mentally examine the intricacies of things.

The following two days have been pretty nice. I've been motivated to work on my website and feeling inspired. Anxiety has been much lower than usual.

Overall, I just feel more grounded. Less in my head. The things my anxiety tells me are serious things to worry about feel less important. Even though I felt anxiety spikes at times, my ability to surf it and process the feelings underneath were better.

I like to say the shrooms shake stuff up and reveal what's already there bubbling under the surface. If I'm living out of integrity or out of alignment with my truth, I can see it easier. If I'm resisting difficult emotions with distractions or addictions, I am more able and willing to experience those emotions.

I also had inklings of awareness that my YouTube and Podcast addictions might not be necessary. I spend a lot of time watching and listening to content about personal development, mental health, etc. It occured to me that what's motivating it is a subtle feeling of not being good enough as I am. Even though I cognitively know this, I'm still "searching" for something through external means to settle my nerves through some sort of insight or aha moment.

I began to imagine what I'd do with my time if I'm not doing that. Huh. Who would I be without my books, podcasts, and YouTubes?? Nah, I can't imagine quitting them all! But what would life be without YouTube? Hmm...

That's it so far. It's only been a week. I plan to do this for the next 2-3 months. We'll see how it goes.

That's about all for this week. If you made it this far, thanks for your attention.

Have a good weekend✌️

Jeff

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