After several years of casual reading online and reading "How to Change Your Mind", I decided to experiment with psilocybin.

What I did was borderline reckless. The substance is illegal. Using it outside the context of carefully designed interventions has no evidence of improving the well-being over the long run. Despite these clear detractors, I feel sharing my experience may help others in their search for happiness.

My main concern was how to know if I was given the real thing or the right dose. I decided to go with dried, whole mushrooms and grind them up at home. For a month, I took around 150-250g every 3 days and took notes throughout the day. This helped me record how I was feeling (even on 'off' days) to assess how it was affecting how I felt. This could be considered microdosing, but not quite as somedays I noticed a difference: I was more aware of my emotions and what happened throughout my day. Intense anger, sadness, joy, beauty, the whole thing. I noticed details details I had never noticed in my daily commute.

This could have been due to the journaling. My main objective was to see how the substance affected me. After concluding the trial a friend asked me 'so, are you happier now?'. That was not the point. My takeaway was that the exercise made me more aware of my feelings - something I realized would be useful if I wanted to get to know myself better. After this, I was still scared to do a 'full dose' and left it at that.

After around 6 months, I decided to try it out. Felt I needed supervision but my close ones thought I was crazy for wanting to do this. Stupidly, I did something riskier and went on trying to find a 'healer' online. Luckily I found a nice lady (she had yelp reviews and all) who took care of me while I took 2g of dried shrooms. She didn't seem to do anything special, just make sure I had a nice/safe space to lie down while high. Again, the dosing was gradual: first 1g (4-5x what I had during the microdosing trial) then an extra one after a few hours.

It felt like I had meditated for years. My deepest hour-long meditation does not come even close. Everything was peaceful. I felt all sorts of emotions, as if a color wheel and tried them out one by one and switched between them: deep sorrow, bliss, intense anger and many more as well as quick transitions and mixes I can't explain.

My life changed after this. I am a more conscientious coworker and husband. I am present. I am there for my loved ones. I love myself and stopped shaming myself for not working. I understood that the point of my life is just living it: no further instructions or expectations. This is something I needed to internalize and the session helped me.

After a few months I felt I had yet to discover more. Based on what I had read online, I knew the substance had the ability to make me feel other important things. I realized the lady just made me feel safe and I had already seen what 150mg-2g did to me, so I decided to do more on my own.

I locked myself up in my apartment, gave my best friend the key and told him to drop by just in case to check up on me. I worked my way up 1g at a time to 7.5g. I felt what many mention online. A quick way to summarize it is 'we'. I felt what it feels to not be myself. My big conclusion was that the only thing I could do was be grateful. I have taken to this feeling daily after that session.

To be clear: I already had a daily meditation practice and a habit of journaling my gratitudes before the trips. The conclusions under the substance may have just been things I had already been exposed and intensely prioritized in my life. But there's something about these experiences that made me feel more intensly and helped me internalize them - I 'felt' the conclusions, not just 'think' about them.

I am scared of the consequences of suggesting others to try this out. The feelings I experienced, the results I have seen in my personal life and the literature we have about this substance make me conclude that the risk is worth taking. Basic precautions can help mitigate the downside: small/trial doses, safe environment and some reading about the substance worked for me.

When I read what is happening with these trials, I can't help but hope we find a way to give this to everyone. I do not claim that what I did is safe or even desirable at scale. There's a chance if 100 people do what I did, some may accelerate or trigger some form of mental illness or harm themselves (I did think 'what if he kills himself?' (thinking about myself) and figured none of my loved ones would want to try shrooms if I did).

A world with more people who can feel 'we' is filled with love and compassion. I believe psilocybin can help us.