How Magic Mushrooms Changed My Partner’s Life

This is what happens when you know the importance of set and setting.

Circa 2020

When my partner decided she wanted to trip for the first time, I was apprehensive. I knew firsthand that, even though psychedelics could be healing, profound, and life-changing, they were not something to be taken lightly.

(If you’ve read my other article on this subject you’ll know what I’m talking about.)

However, despite my doubts, I also knew I was projecting my own experiences onto her.

The difference between my trips and hers would be one of set and setting.

Set and setting are of the utmost importance when preparing for a psychedelic experience and, as a recent study has now reinforced, they have a huge influence on the nature of the trip.

My partner, being very much aware of this, had arranged for a trip sitter to guide her. Unlike I had done in the past, she was approaching the whole experience with maturity and respect.

Despite this, I was worried.

I didn’t want her to go through what I had been through.

But the train had already left the station — this was happening regardless of how I felt about it.

Our own personal Viking

(To preserve the trip sitter’s identity I will fittingly refer to him as Thor.)

When Thor arrived we were both slightly taken aback. He pulled up in a massive, dusty motor home (think of the RV from Breaking Bad) right outside our block of flats. As we’d just moved in we were worried about the prying eyes of the neighbors. Would they hear the ceremony? Would they complain?

When we first met him, Thor seemed kind of…odd. I mean, I wasn’t expecting Don Draper but still, our guide made quite the impression. He looked like an actual Viking — big beard, long hair with shaved sides, tattoos, bohemian attire — and emitted a powerful presence.

Originally, my partner was going to do peyote (the cactus that produces mescaline)but Thor advised that, since she hadn’t tried either, she should opt for magic mushrooms. His logic was that mushrooms are gentler and peyote lasts for a lot longer. Naturally, she took his advice —mushrooms it was.

Our own personal Viking then transported all of the necessary accouterments from his motorhome — bongos, didgeridoo, speakers, psychedelic pictures, little curios — transforming our sparse living room into a psychedelic hub.

We were then treated to an interesting talk on Siberian shamanism (the tradition Thor drew from) which is a truly fascinating subject.

Short of detailing the rich iconography pictured above, each of the human figures are gods representing a unique aspect of existence. Thor said he was aligned with Erlik (the scary guy on the left) who is the god of the Past, memory, and the underworld. Basically, if you want to dig up some unresolved trauma, Erlik’s your guy.

I think Thor had his own ideas about the journey my partner was about to take. He wanted her to go to her past and confront her shadow self — but she had other ideas.

After I’d retreated to our bedroom to give them some privacy, she took 2 grams of dried mushrooms (a decent entry-level dose). Most of what I’m about to divulge is based on what she told me about her experience.

Laughter and sound

With Thor’s guidance, my partner set an intention, lay down on the bed, and put her eye mask on.

Our Viking then put on some tribal, drum music (which the surround sound accentuated) and they waited.

After some time had passed, Thor asked, “Are you tripping?”

“Not yet", she said.

So he advised her to take 1 more gram. 3 grams of dried shrooms as a first dose is nothing to sniff at—and she was about to find this out firsthand.

After twenty minutes or so, she began finding the music a little uncomfortable. Why was Thor playing such scary tunes? She put her fingers in her ears.

“Can you change the music?” She implored.

“You have to witness your shadow self”, he replied stoically.

“Please!”

So Thor put on something a little more chilled out.

Then the laughing began.

My partner does not laugh easily. She has a very sunny disposition, but, unlike me, laughter is something she struggles with. What ensued were unstoppable childlike hysterics — all the laughter she had been deprived of throughout her life was pouring out of her. It was liberating. I could even hear her shroom-induced guffaws from the bedroom—as you can imagine, this eased my doubts.

Then she really started tripping.

At one point she heard (or I should say became) sound. A deep, deep pulsing enveloped her whole body until she couldn’t distinguish between herself and the sumptuous sonic vibration.

In utter awe, she managed to get the words out: “Did you hear that?”

From the corner of the room, she heard a deadpan response in a thick Scandinavian accent:

“I am playing an instrument."

Of course, Thor had been playing the didgeridoo.

But if she thought that was intense, things were about to go up a notch.

Maharajji in the clouds

It’s difficult for me to do justice to the next stage of her trip, but if you’ve ever had a strong dose of psychedelics you may be able to relate.

Both my partner and I are huge fans of the late spiritual teacher, Ram Dass. We must have listened to nearly all of his recorded lectures. You see, the love of my life has been through a hell of a lot—a difficult childhood and debilitating chronic illness — and her spirituality is one of the things that has kept her going.

When she set her intention at the beginning of the trip, rather than seeking to resolve trauma locked away in her psyche, she wanted to feel the unconditional love that Ram Dass always talked about.

That was her intention — she wanted to feel God’s love.

And she did.

Within her mind’s eye, she began to see a morphing network of interlocking geometric patterns. They were ineffably beautiful (some of you reading will know the kind), but it wasn’t so much what she saw as what she felt that made an indelible impact.

This may be hard to believe, but she felt as if Ram Dass was there with her, literally. She told me later it was like that feeling when someone you know is standing close to you — you can feel their presence. That’s how she felt about Ram Dass — his guidance, assurance, and love. With her ego and identity dissolving, my partner lost/found herself in an infinite source of unconditional love. Something she had never felt before.

Whether it was actually Ram Dass on some other dimensional plane or a vehicle for a message she received is immaterial.

What was important was, for the first time, in every fiber of her being, she felt and knew the true power of unconditional love.

But it didn’t stop there. In her visions, geometric clouds began to form, and within those clouds, she saw Ram Dass' guru, Neem Karoli Baba.

He was smiling at her.

Known simply as Maharajji to his disciples, Neem Karoli Baba was a great saint who embodied love utterly and completely. Now his presence was looking down on her and letting my partner know that it was all okay; that death was nothing to fear.

A bumpy landing

During what I’ve just described, my partner had no sense of self. There was no boundary between what she was, and the rest of the universe. She was the universe; she was unconditional love.

But things began to get a bit shaky during her return to earth.

That’s when Thor decided to fetch me.

When I entered the room, she was repeating phrases like, “Am I dying?” And “I’m too hot. Why am I so hot?”.

It was obvious she was disoriented, but, ultimately, I knew she was okay and couldn’t help but find it kind of funny (a little insensitive, I know).

Now, returning to her sense of identity, ego, and body, there was clearly resistance. After experiencing such ecstasy, such profound love, returning to her body (the source of so much of her suffering ) was understandably difficult.

She was struggling to take her jumper off and later told me it had been comprised of twisting geometric shapes blending with her body. So I helped her remove it in the hope it would cool her down a bit.

The whole time this was going on Thor (who had taken a small dose of mushrooms himself to be on the same wavelength) was sitting on the floor with his back against the wall.

From her perspective, my face was changing from young to old, and she felt as if she could see Thor’s lineage in traces around him.

It was all getting a bit much for her.

“Ben, will it stop soon?”

“Yes, just relax, it will all be over soon”.

She leaned over to me, and, in a secretive way that still makes us laugh to this day, said:

“Ask that…man when it’s going to stop”.

Indeed, it must have been strange for her, whilst tripping, to see this Viking-looking gentleman sitting against the wall. Could she even remember his role in all this?

Eventually, she regained her senses, and we all had an interesting, profound, and hilarious chat about her first trip.

What did she learn?

As opposed to my hellish experience, my partner treated psilocybin with the respect it deserves. Her beliefs, which before were more conceptual, had been reinforced by palpable, incontrovertible feeling.

Thanks to what she experienced that evening, she no longer fears death and knows with all her heart that unconditional love is the true source of all things. Having observed the importance of set and setting, the mushrooms yielded their glorious bounty to her.

Of course, you’re not obligated to believe what I’ve recounted has any significance beyond drug-induced illusions — it’s framed per my values. Rather than convince you of a specific belief system, I merely wanted to share the life-changing potential of psychedelics. After all, the mysteries of the cosmos will always remain mysteries no matter our probing. All we can do is get a little slither of Truth from time to time, and integrate it as best we can.

Our beliefs are based on unique experiences, and as such, can’t be proven through philosophical inquiry. But occasionally, with a little help from some friendly fungi, they can be felt.

I am positive that, if you are truly ready, and carefully observe set and setting, there is no doubt that magic mushrooms can (like they did for my partner) radically change your life for the better.

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