Chapter 8: Candy Nose
I was in a bad place again.
A really bad place.
And this really bad place marks the beginning of my mycological journey.
I swore I’d never eat mushrooms again. Not after the first—and last—time (more on that in a future chapter). But here I was, going back on the promise I made to myself years before.
Because I was desperate.
And when you’re desperate, sometimes you cave.
For the second time in my life, I had a mushroom chocolate in my palm.
At 40 years old, how had I not yet overcome this albatross around my neck? These depressions. This never ending cycle. I had been in its claws for way too long. I couldn’t take it anymore. One of us had to go.
Six months earlier, a friend was visiting. A good friend. She knows me well. She saw it in my eyes. We talked.
“When was the last time you felt joy?” she asked.
I thought about it.
I thought some more.
I could recall good times, some key moments, relaxing vacations, small victories. But joy? What did that feel like? Is it the same as happiness? And if so, had I ever felt true happiness?
I searched my brain for evidence of joy. Maybe it left behind an echo. A stain that I could point to as proof. A hieroglyph etched into my skull, a moment of joy forever recorded upon bone.
But there was nothing.
Wow.
I wasn’t just broken. I was broken broken.
The best years of my life were those that followed the birth of my child. Motherhood suited me. I was good at it. Like really good. When I was pregnant, I was terrified I’d be cursed with the world’s most heinous case of postpartum depression. I was basically a walking, talking open wound begging for infection. But it never got me. I was depression-free for three solid years after the birth of my child. Long enough to believe—foolishly—that I was cured. Maybe the pregnancy had reshuffled my hormones. Or maybe it was the cesarian. When the surgeon jiggled my organs back into place, perhaps he knocked something loose in my head as well. Something that had been stuck in the wrong position. Something that had been leaking the wrong chemicals all these years.
But a cure is too big a burden to place on a child, and the baby bubble couldn’t protect me forever.
The depression found me once again.
And it’s found me every year since. Every month, even. And because I’m the luckiest girl in the whole wide world, frequently more.
I was diagnosed manic depressive at age 15. In my early twenties, re-diagnosed “bipolar with depressive tendencies.” There was even a time when my crazy brain went through a year-long period of what’s called rapid-cycling. That year was one of the hardest. That year I finally breached the threshold of insanity. Every day I hoped someone in my life would be brave enough to have me committed. But no one was. So I endured. And barely survived it.
But now here I was, on a day that would mark somewhere around day 60 of yet another massive depressive episode.
And I remembered something.
A few weeks earlier, a trusted friend urged me to try small doses of psilocybin mushrooms to treat my depression.
I had declined immediately. Told him about my one wretched experience with mushrooms, and don’t ever mention them to me again, please and thank you very much.
But now.
Something had changed.
I was losing the battle.
So I put it an emergency call.
And there I was, a few hours later, mushroom chocolate in my hand.
At this point in my life, I was completely uninterested in psychedelics. As a teenager, I did the usual rounds with LSD, but all I recall is watching my fingers waggle through the air as they flashed colors at me. At 40 years old, staring at my fingers for hours on end no longer sounded like a good time.
But at this point, I would’ve eaten a pound of cat litter if it showed promise in medical studies.
Because I was no longer trying to get through the depression. Now I was trying to save my own life.
I was told the little chocolate wrapped in red foil contained 1.2 grams of psilocybin mushroom. A standard moderate dose.
Penis Envy. My hero.
I had no intention of taking this full dose. I wanted only 1/10 of the psilocybin contained within. A commonly accepted microdose.
But how could I possibly trust that this chocolate had been thoroughly blended? My doses might be terribly off once I cut the chocolate into ten servings. What if all the psilocybin floated to the bottom? What if the candy mold was slanted during the cooling process and all the mushroom bits went to one side?
So that’s how I ended up hunched over a mirror like a cokehead. I shaved and obliterated the chocolate with a razor blade, blending it all voraciously, before dividing it into fat little rails. Ten fuzzy brown caterpillars reflected back at me.
I scooped nine little lines into nine little squares of waxed paper, folded them and taped them shut, stashing them for later.
I stared at the one remaining line of chocolate on the mirror.
Was I actually going to do this? Had it all really come down to mushrooms? Why couldn’t psilocybin be found in almonds? Or banana cream pie? I don’t even like mushrooms on my salad.
But it was better than a pound of cat litter.
Maybe.
So I leaned over the table, rolled up a Benji, held one nostril and…
Just kidding.
I ate that shit!
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