Nine Months Ago I Ate Magic Mushrooms — This Is What I Learned

Big answers can be found in the third kingdom

Did you know that mushrooms have more in common with animals than with plants? For example, they have to obtain energy from outside sources (not directly from the sun), just like we do. This is because they belong to a third kingdom called Fungi, and their genetic path split from the animal kingdom millions of years later than plants did, making them more closely related to us.

About nine months ago, I ate mushrooms for the first time. These weren’t any old mushrooms, of course. These were, shall we say, “special” — and I ate a “heroic” amount of them.

The eating of mushrooms was something I’d been carefully researching and planning for years prior. They first caught my attention when I learned about their life-altering impact on people like Paul Stamets, Aubrey Marcus, and several other interesting characters. I was even more intrigued when the scientific community, led by top institutions like John’s Hopkins, recently relaunched their efforts to investigate various compounds like those found in mushrooms, primarily for therapeutic applications in mental health, for the first time since the 1960s.

This post is essentially an amalgam of my pre-mushroom notes and my post-mushroom reflections. At first, I was hesitant to share them in public. But the insights I received during this experience have served me on such a deep level — and not just in a transitory way, but in a lasting way — I can honestly say it permanently changed me for the better. So, I finally decided that not sharing them would be selfish.

And so, here we are…

Keep Your Room Clean

This first insight is highly pragmatic. It seems banal at first, but the more you think about it, the more profound it gets.

As I was processing the emotions, memories, etc. that came to me after eating the mushrooms, I spent a few hours laughing and crying, often at the same time. This eventually caused my nose to become runny and a little stuffy. It started to feel like the stuffiness was somehow blocking me from having the full experience…

All of the sudden, it came to me: to live a good life, it is vital to keep things clean.

What do I mean by this?

Well, it applies to all levels of experience. When your nose is stuffy, blow it. When your room is messy, clean it. When you have unfinished conversations, finish them. Don’t wait. Every second you do takes away from your full experience of life in the present.

We often don’t notice this, but everything that isn’t “clean” takes up space inside of us. If you own a bunch of clothes you no longer use, you think you can just put them away somewhere and forget about them. But every second of every day, they will weigh on you mentally, even if you aren’t aware of it — like a ball and chain dragging behind your psyche.

Cut the chain.

Keep your room clean.

Fear of Death Is the Wrong Way To Look

Before I ate the mushrooms, I had a conversation with the friends who were there to support me. It was mostly focused on death. You see, in one way I believe I have an unusually healthy and strong relationship with death. I’ve accepted my own death and I try to be aware of it every day, to remind myself that life is short and precious. In another way, death has been fortunately absent in my life so far. My grandparents died before I could form a meaningful relationship with them. Few people close to me have died since. So, I was a little bit worried about how I will take it when death finally pays a proper visit in my life.

This conversation became the backdrop of my whole mushroom experience. And right out of the gate, I was slapped in the face with understanding and awe of a cosmic truth: not just existence itself, but the fact that existence exists is so amazing — so unlikely — that nothing else matters.

You exist. You get to feel. To experience. The fact that you get to be here, open your eyes, and take just one breath is utterly, earth-shatteringly, unbelievable! In light of this, death becomes completely irrelevant. Fearing it is the wrong direction to look. It’s not about how many years you get to be here or how many experiences you get to have. It’s the fact that you get to be here at all that’s the mystery.

So, wonder about life instead.

Another thing I realized is that death, in fact, is not so dramatic. It’s more like a flow of atoms going from one state to the next, from one being to the next. For a brief moment, you borrow these atoms to inhabit a physical form that defies entropy. Then you dissolve and return them to the whole. This is the cycle of life.

Consciousness Is the Common Source

Have you ever thought about the fact that every single human has one thing in common?

Consciousness.

We all share the human experience of consciousness. It’s like we all wake up in the morning and plug into the same source — the same “Matrix” if you will.

If you meditate, and you have reached a certain level of experience, you will also know that the only part of you (or anyone) that’s actually real is your consciousness.

This is the common ground. Whatever our differences, whatever we are fighting about, this is what we can always come back to. In this way, we are all exactly the same. Everything that disturbs you, everything you fear, everything that makes you sad is because you lost connection to this truth.

Because we all share the same experience, it doesn’t matter so much what you did or left undone in your life. In this weird, cosmic sense, both you and I have a claim in all human experience.

There is also a responsibility in understanding all of this, which many people don’t.

Competition Is Primal

One of the things I’m struggling with from time to time is dealing with competition. I used to have a big ego, and perhaps I was made to feel a little too special when I was a kid. So, my natural instinct is to get upset when someone else tries to play with my toys, so to speak.

I’ve improved on these tendencies a lot, in large part thanks to my mushroom experience. During it, I had the realization that competition is the very thing that gives winning all its value. It’s primal — in the natural world, every single species has to deal with competition. To not back down and go on the offensive despite the cold threat of competition — that is what makes you a winner, even if you don’t win!

For every winner, there must be a loser. But this is only true if your perspective is small. The bigger picture is that the whole of human civilization is mostly a positive-sum game. You win some, you lose some, and we all learn and grow together. So, it’s also OK to lose. It’s part of the game.

Art Is the Door to Existence

At one point during my experience, I heard myself exclaim: “I understand art now!”

Now, that’s a pretty weird thing to say, but amazingly I actually did understand art in a way I never had before (and I still do)!

Remember what I wrote about death and the wonder of existence? It turns out, art is our connection to this wonder — the door to our existence. It’s more real than reality, really. And it’s kind of the only thing that matters. That said, art can be found in almost anything if you look closely enough…

What is the feeling you get when you view great art? Awe. This is the same feeling you get when you watch a beautiful landscape. It’s the feeling of being grateful, amazed, sometimes almost frightened of your existence in the world.

Allan Watts observed:

“In every national park there is a so-called inspiration point, with a scenic view. People come there and say ‘Oh, this view… it’s just like a painting!’ ”

And that is the connection. Art is more real than reality. It’s the door to existence itself.

Your Body Is a Gift

Physical activity has always been a huge part of my life. From being an athlete when I was younger to now living in the mountains and skiing most days.

But I never considered myself a dancer. In fact, I always kind of “feared” dancing, since I wasn’t any good at it.

What I realized during my mushroom experience was that when I move my body, whether it’s skiing, climbing, lifting, or literally dancing, what I’m actually doing is dancing with life — this is what it means to be gifted with a fully functioning body and to use it. To dance with life. To express yourself through movement.

It all comes back to the wonder of existence. At one point, I exclaimed; “F*ck, I’m so grateful for skiing”. But what I really meant was; “F*ck, I’m so grateful I have this channel through which I can experience life fully”.

This is why I believe you and I have a responsibility to take care of our bodies — because not everyone is gifted with a fully functioning one.

Lastly, I realized I will have to say goodbye to my physical body at some point, at least the one I know now. That makes me sad.

Comparing Ourselves to Others Is the Worst Thing We Do

I admit — I often fall into the trap of comparing myself to others. Like, way too often. Invariably, it makes me feel like shit. It’s easily been the most consistent happiness-destroying factor in my life over the last ten years.

But in all problems, there is opportunity. This particular problem became the foundation for the most unique and transformational part of my mushroom experience. Towards the end of it, the subject of comparing myself to others entered my consciousness. Then I saw myself objectively, from the outside, as if I was someone else. Not only that, I saw myself through the eyes of everyone I’ve ever met, all at the same time!

As I watched this boy, this teenager, this man that is Sebastian Hallqvist, I felt their emotions. I thought their thoughts. I experienced how, for so many of these people, I have been the source of jealousy, insecurity, and even self-hatred.

This made me cry again. It was devastating. I mean, what are we doing to each other? It’s all a circle, you see — we have this tendency to elevate other people; their abilities, their lives — while minimizing our own value, not realizing that every path is unique and has nothing to do with our own.

I realized how insanely stupid we are all being. You can’t compare to anyone else. Every person’s circumstances are different. If you can just accept that, and accept everyone's place in the world, you should be able to feel a lot better about yourself most of the time.

Final Reflections

The most powerful thing about this kind of experience is the level of emotion you feel. More specifically, you get to completely embody insights that you may already understand logically (all of this is coming from your brain, after all) but haven’t helped you so far in any pragmatic, happiness-boosting way. Understanding is not the same as knowing, and mushrooms can help you make the transition between the two.

My final note from the experience is that I was reminded of and overwhelmed by the people I have in my life who love me and care for me. That is truly not to be taken for granted.

“If you have nothing in your life, but you have at least one person that loves you unconditionally, it’ll do wonders for your self-esteem.”

– Naval Ravikant

I want to end with a reminder: to anyone reading this, remember that eating mushrooms or any similar type of experience must be treated with lots of respect, and should only be pursued for the right reasons.