AID YOUR BRAIN, RELEASE STRESS AND WELCOME EASE
How psychedelics can improve your life
Carter Rose
When I started writing this article I thought I wanted to make it about how psychedelic mushrooms can affect your life in a positive way and can rewire your brain in a way that allows your more peace and harmony with yourself. A way to release yourself from streams of negative thoughts. Yes, I am going to talk a lot about mushrooms but the point ties into the whole idea of living a better life individually so we can add to a more peaceful existence. We can do this by adding things to our diet. We don’t have to throw away everything we like to eat, we can add things to our meals. Something as small as using turmeric in your dinner will add tremendous health benefits. Small doses can make a huge difference and even one time events can rewrite the thoughts in your head to induce better feelings.
Psilocybin is a parallel composition to DMT, which is a neurotransmitter in our brains. DMT protects our brain from high levels of stress. Serotonin influences many functions in our bodies. Our sleep, our digestive system, our moods, our bloodflow, all things that are regulated under serotonin. Ingesting mushrooms increases your levels of serotonin while it is in your body. I believe that adding things to your diet and regular body movement is enough to alleviate mental illness in people. Although, I also believe that sometimes we experience situations and feelings that don’t allow us to go about our lives normally. We all experience traumatic events in life to learn and grow from, but what if, because of an experience you are unable to remove yourself from the heavy feelings of negative emotion? Everyone has a different method to how they deal with stress and negative things that happen to them. If you are a person who prefers to drink alcohol when you are dealing with something, if you prefer to smoke weed, if you prefer exercise, meditation, yoga, if you overeat, if you binge-watch TV shows, whatever it is, no method is wrong or right. It is our choice what works for us.
If you are like me and you enjoy substances, then mushrooms could be a better alternative. I am in no way promoting substance use, I am speaking from my personal experience and can say that substance use and abuse are separate side streets off the main road. If you know your limits, if you can take care of yourself, if you have focus in other areas of your life, I believe this is a healthy substance user. A substance abuser is someone who prioritizes a substance over food, shelter and human connection. I believe this is someone who feels they are separate from people, people have wronged them multiple times, they don’t feel safe with anyone or themselves, they don’t see anything worthwhile for themselves in the now or future.
Psychedelics can be helpful for either of these people. The substance user as myself enjoys the loose feeling of alcohol, the elated feeling from weed, but can draw these feelings with other experiences naturally. Shrooms have my love and interest because it offers a deep reflection of oneself, my recent experience felt like all parts of myself were communicating and coming to agreements with one another. It allowed me to reflect on my life as a human on this planet. It’s very easy to get caught up in the everyday. Our minds in the past or the future, in images, in other people's lives, in ideas. When we are comfortable with silence and presence in our beings, this is when we can realize the undetermined state that we are constantly living in. At any second, I can make a drastic decision, like trekking across the country, or a minor one like turning my head to look at a leaf being pulled by the wind. What will One do with the uncertain future? Intuition. Self reflection is a wonderful way to increase your intuition. Understanding your thoughts and why you do the things you do, the things you believe, the things you say. I’d like to think that some of these things are on auto-pilot. If you are allowed even the smallest idea of why you say and do the things you do, then it will allow you the ability to shed light for someone else. This is why a therapist is a great person to meet with as well. It allows you an unbiased, welcoming, outside perspective. We can say that psychedelic mushrooms can be your therapist.
No, they’re not going to put you on a reclined couch and give you chai tea. Although, that would be an ideal environment to consume them in.
The way that psilocybin interacts with your brain, it influences the brain activity to resemble your childhood brain. During childhood, our brains are fresh and new and things are firing to connect with each other and as a child, you are seeking the bounds to which you can reach with your words and actions. The reason that this is so lovely in adulthood is because our brains are in a more dormant state because there are things that are secure and certain in your life and there are no visible reasons to change your approach. I would say as a disclaimer that if you feel your life is free of stress, you are grateful for the position you are in, you couldn’t be more satisfied and pleased with what you have accomplished, or you would say your state in life is “just chillin” then there is no need for you to do anything. There is no real need for you to have this experience either way. I believe our lives are set up to teach us lessons and bring us further to more peace and happiness naturally. If you have a heart that is still beating, that is enough to say “I am living a fulfilled life.” Some of you may disagree with this because of the hardship you are enduring and I am in no way invalidating the harsh realities we can face on this planet and in these bodies. I say that strategically to imply that this is not the limit to our existence. I believe the root of consciousness extends far beyond our life as humans and also is ingrained between us, serving the unseen dimensions and collective information that we all take part in. There is a video I watched where some people wanted to remap the transit route for the buses. They accomplished this by setting up food at different stops and allowing a species of fungus to reach each stop, one at a time. The result was a much more efficient route. This tells me that mushrooms have encoding and messages that they can relay. There is data to suggest that before we became humans we had to separate from fungus. One of these findings is the sigma 1 receptor in our brains. Basically its composition is closely related to a fungus. I don’t have to hear much more than that to draw my theory. I’d like to say we have much in common with the mushrooms and they have a message they would like to write on our neurons.
There are many different variations of mushroom, each offering a different experience depending on what you are looking for. Each experience for me was different because of the place I was in my life, (physically, mentally and spiritually). The main component that causes the trip is psilocybin and is present in each variation at different levels. As I said before, psilocybin mirrors a chemical that is naturally occurring in our bodies, DMT. DMT is an anti-inflammatory for the cells in our brain. Inflamed cells to me are unhappy cells and DMT does its part to alleviate the stress in the cells and therefore, in our bodies and minds. There are studies to suggest that DMT is released to protect your brain from high stress related occurrences. In the event that you may enter cardiac arrest, it is a possibility that DMT is released then, too. These two psychedelics can make a major difference in how you see life, what makes you upset, how you respond to things, what you think about, the people you want around, what you want to do with your life, etc. I’ve also found that I don’t crave eating meat as much after a mushroom experience.
To put it plainly, psychedelics can be used as a way to clear any blockages you feel in your relationships, your body, your mind, your heart or anywhere else you feel you are stifled. As like with anything, it is what you make of it and is simply a tool for “self” discovery. I hope you enjoyed this memoir reader, happy days ahead.
