Chapter 6: Not A Microdose
There are many schools of thoughts as to the dosage and frequency of using psilocybin mushrooms for mental health. You’ve no doubt heard this referred to as microdosing. A microdose is typically anywhere from 1/10-1/20 a moderate dose, depending on who you ask. To make things even more hazy, the standard moderate dose can be anywhere from 1-3.5 full grams, depending on who you ask. And depending on the strain, with the average standard moderate dosage weighing in at around (give or take) 1.2 grams of dry mushroom. A Google search will lead you to a plethora of differing opinions on this (and everything else), but 1.2 grams will be what I reference when speaking of a full/moderate dose.
With this is mind, a microdose would then be anywhere from .12 grams (at 1/10) to .06 grams (at 1/20) of dry mushroom. For accuracy, I recommend purchasing a gram scale.
A true microdose is virtually undetectable. There are an abundance of studies showing the vast benefits of microdosing, with no bump in dosage required. My first microdose weighed in at .12 grams and my shins caught a brief chill.
That was it.
Perhaps I was too eager for proof. I still doubted the mushroom. After 40 years of crippling depression, of pondering a lifesaving solution day in and day out, never once had I considered the state of my shins.
For my second dose, I immediately took a small step up from the standard microdose.
Maybe I am of the mindset that if it hurts, that means it’s working. I needed to feel what I was putting in my body. Feel it working. A noted difference in either my bones (chilly shins aside) or my mind. Even if it hurt.
Luckily, it didn’t.
I bumped my next dosage to .2 grams, and here there be magic.
At doses this small (1/6 a full dose), the next step is easily reached. I call a .2 gram dose my “Chill Dose” as it replicates the calm of my favorite ex-partner, Xanax.
Psilocybin has now replaced Xanax in my medicine cabinet, and both my mind and body are healthier for it.
At .2 grams, the mushrooms were finally detectable. I could feel them! No visuals. No leaps in consciousness. Nothing that would interfere with my day. Just a blissful, optimistic calm.
Is there any better a state of mind than blissful, optimistic calm?
I now take this dose 1-2 times per week.
This has become my own personal “micro” dose, tailored specifically to my needs. Perhaps your needs will be altogether different. This collection of essays leans more toward memoir than instruction manual. Nothing in life is an instruction manual. No matter how young or old, we are all just fledgling souls wandering around this planet, hoping to figure something out. Anything someone (even me) tells you about mushrooms—or anything else—is merely a launch point for your own discovery. Just a few guideposts to mark the path. The rest is on you.
After flirting with my Chill Dose for a while, I decided to step in deeper. I call .35 grams my Meditation Dose.
I close my eyes when the psilocybin begins to cool my shins. I get cozy. I grab a blanket. And I feel. I begin with my toes, welcoming a lovely vibrational pulse, and I slowly pull it into my legs and my hips, my stomach and my chest. When I reach my neck, I pause, shifting my attention to my fingertips, then my arms, my shoulders. And then I’m ready to feel the mushroom’s vibration in my neck, my face, and my head. And that’s where I stay for an hour or more.
Just feeling. Just being.
The vibration of a Meditation Dose is unique. It hums like sound, cresting together until it forms ocean waves across my skin, and eventual tides that roll through my bones.
But it’s not jarring. It’s delightful.
The last half of my meditation session is feeling this vibration as it explores my brain.
I had a unique experience once, many years ago. I’ve never forgotten it; never will. I was on the verge of sleep, trying desperately to cross over, when I began to hear electrical noises in my head. It sounded like little zips of electricity whizzing from one area of my brain to another, as though on wires. Connections being made. Communication. It was palpable. I could feel them. My fingers actually twitched each time another little zip flew through my head. This experience lasted only a few minutes but left me feeling as though I had stumbled onto a new universe. Something inside me. Something we have taught ourselves to ignore. Was I hearing my own neural pathways forming or shifting? Was it the sound of my brain’s autonomous functioning? I suppose I’ll never know. But I think of that moment every time I meditate, with or without mushrooms. It’s something I seek to tap into again one day.
On a Meditation Dose, those psilocybin surges are most prominent in the left side of my head. The vibration is powerful. It almost rattles my teeth. A unique sidetone, perhaps. Or maybe the mushroom has discovered the source of my chemical deficiency and is seeking to repair it.
I’ve frequently described my emotional issues as a series of faucets in my brain. Only they’re faulty. The wrong ones turn on. The wrong ones turn off. They’re rusty. They leak. Perhaps the cracks lie somewhere to the left.
The brain is more complex than you or I could ever understand. Nodules and lobes and whatnot. I ain’t no scientist. But it is well known that the left side of the brain is the side of logic. Information, reading, calculations and the like. The right side is the visual half, focusing on creativity and intuition.
I’ve got creativity down. No shortage there. Visual learning? Intuition? Done and done.
But that tricky left.
Despite appearances on the surface, I’m not all right brained. My left is quite dominant, and is likely the half that gets me into trouble. I’m an over-thinker by nature. An analyzer. Statistics get me hot. Lists and outlines and micro-organization, oh my. But the analyzation of life, meaning, our place is this ridiculous world is relentless and overwhelming. It’s a concept that’s impossible to understand, and yet that pesky left brain is out there just thinking—thinking, thinking, THINKING—all the time. The weight of that burden is too heavy. I can’t carry it all. And so eventually, I fall.
When the left side of my head begins to buzz, I believe it to mean that the leaky faucets are beginning to slow. A medication of meditation. Plugged and sealed by little specks of psilocybin, one small dose at a time.
I replace my standard Chill Dose with a Meditation Dose once or twice per month. Enjoyable as this dose is, it leaves little in the way of energy, and the rest of my day is wiped out. Strangely enough, this lethargy goes away when I take it to the next level.
The Beach Dose: named in honor of my cormorant experience, sitting on that beach, watching the storm.
.6 grams.
More than enough to know you’re on mushrooms. Little enough to still be functional. For me, this dose marks the onset of visual distortions. Nothing crazy. Just enough to feel a little silly (and adults need to feel silly more often, don’t you think?). I take a Beach Dose once every month or so. It’s a powerful experience, the memories of which last a good while, long after regular life has returned to normal.
A Beach Dose delivers intense feelings of connectivity with the natural world and the people in my life. It’s best done in a natural setting, just don’t try to drive anywhere afterward, no matter how sober you feel.
Trust me.
Enjoy your yard, a scenic place within walking distance, or enlist the help of a non-psilocybin partner to drive you around. At .6 grams, this dose will change you if you are a willing participant.
Cue the cormorant.
I didn’t just recognize his joy and freedom. I felt them. For the first time in my life. The cormorant experience was over six months ago now, and I can still feel those previously unfamiliar emotions. Once your brain knows joy and freedom, it doesn’t forget. If you’ve never eaten chocolate, your tastebuds would be unable to conjure the taste. It would be impossible. But odds are you’ve had chocolate at least once in your life. And you will know the flavor of chocolate forever.
Emotions are like chocolate. I know that now. A mushroom placed the taste of joy and freedom on my tongue, and I will never forget.
That’s why experiences like this have the power to change the rest of your life. It’s not about seeing the clouds tremble or the grass breathe or the tiles in your bathroom melt into rivers. That won’t change your life. But if watching the grass breathe instills a new understanding of the world and your place within it, that sure will.
Or if you feel moved to tears by watching the clouds stretch across the sky, fluttering as though trying to reach you, as though trying to show you something, as though trying to drape across you. And you’re flooded by the understanding that you and the clouds and the shoes on your feet are all stardust.
That may change your life.
Or maybe it’ll be a cormorant playing in a rainstorm.
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