Funny Mushrooms in Costa Rica: Part 2

“Do a little bit more,” he said to me as he folded the tinfoil.  

I was sitting on a makeshift bed in an open-air hut about 30 yards from the ocean. A small square place, about 10 feet by 10 feet, with a meticulously organized kitchen and bed. It resembled a patio with half walls. I wondered how many bugs attacked him when he slept. Or if he just sweats the entire time. It was 80+ degrees and 9 pm.  

The night before I took part in a mushroom ceremony. Reluctantly. He was the Shaman. A foreign man with hordes of hair - body, head, and beard. Black hair consumed him. The kind of dude who can sit in the lotus position for hours, unbothered. A man who has been to the other side more times than I have been to the movies.  

The ceremony had gone surprisingly well. The only other times I have ever tried psychedelics were grueling. I am no good at drugs.  

However, I did so well during the mushroom ceremony, I decided to buy some more to try on the beach the next day. Seemed like a great idea… sun, surf, sand, and fungi.  

“Do a little bit more this time,” he said again as he boxed up some magic mushrooms. He personally grows them under a waterfall nearby.  

“Sure,” I mumbled.  

The next day I headed to the beach with the girls around 2 pm. There were four of us, plenty of sunshine, and one of the most beautiful beaches in the world. The girls ate some mushrooms. I ate three, the same as the night of the ceremony, and laid back in my lounge chair. Let the good times roll.  

30 minutes later I was feeling pretty good so I ate three more. When in Rome.  

They say the best place to do mushrooms is in nature. It connects you to nature. Recent studies are showing all kinds of benefits from healing end-of-life anxiety to reducing depression. Paul Stamet, the leading authority on all mushrooms worldwide, damn near overdosed on a bag of mushrooms when he was in high school. Here is a snippet from his appearance on the Joe Rogan podcast: 

During his first interview with Joe Rogan, Stamets retold the story of his first magic mushroom trip, a transformational moment for the mycologist. 

Throughout his life, Stamets had struggled with a stuttering problem. He took his first magic mushroom dose as a young man and described how the psychedelic experience changed his life. 

After eating an entire bag of mushrooms, Stamets climbed a high tree in the middle of a powerful thunderstorm. “I was up there and I felt in touch with Gaia and the universe,” he explained. “My heart opened up I felt one with all. I was like, “Oh my gosh, this is such a powerful spiritual experience.” 

As the storm raged around him, Stamets began to wrestle with his stuttering problem. “I said to myself, ‘Stop stuttering now. Stop stuttering now.’ I said that dozens, hundreds of times. Over and over and over.” 

Once the psychedelic journey had ended, Stamets no longer had a problem with his stutter. Stamets ended the story with an explanation of the healing power of fungi: “It has been medically proven that we can reset the neurology of the human brain through neurogenesis. I believe that experience allowed me to map new neurological pathways.”  

I bet that was one hell of a ride… 

My mushrooms started to take effect and I was feeling good. The colors of the ocean were vibrant and bright. The sun was perfect and warm. The music in my earphones was radiating through my body.  

Then I got the tick. The “oh shit” tick. The tick that started my mind racing. The tick that calls for a walkabout. A walkabout to reduce the intensity of impending doom and avoid people at all costs.  

I got up and walked down the beach doing breathing exercises and reminding myself I wasn’t going to die. Waves of paranoia washed over me. I talked to my inner child, God, my outer child, and the ocean. My mind raced. Breathe in, breathe out.  How many more hours of this?

“Atlanta!” a huge man was pointing directly at me with an enormous index finger as he approached from a distance.  

Here’s the deal. The very last thing you want to do when you are having a hard time on mushrooms is to look another human being in the eyes. Holding a conversation is an even more absurd idea. Meeting someone for the first time is simply unheard of.  

“Atlanta?” He shouted again moving closer and closer to me.   

“What?” I said in pure panic. My mind was spinning. Please lord… 

“You from Atlanta?” he said with a good ole boy smile. I remembered I was wearing an ATL hat. Damn.  

“Yeah?” I forced a word to leave my mouth successfully.

“LaGrange,” he said like we had been best friends since the war. “Down here on vacation. Beautiful place. What part of Atlanta?” he continued.  

“Marietta.” I have no idea why I said Marietta. I live downtown.  

“Yeah, I just changed careers from teaching school to cybersecurity” he got closer and bigger and scarier.  

Small talk gives me anxiety when I am happy and sober. At this point, I was in full panic mode hoping my face wasn’t contorting in a million different ways. His was. Could have been the mushrooms.  

“Ok,” I mumbled proud I had been able to hang on this long in the conversation.  

I looked over his shoulder and could see my safe space, the beach chair off in the distance. My entire soul craved to get to the chair and hide from the world. How could I possibly get out of this conversation without simply saying I am losing my mind right now because I ate a bunch of fungi that generally grows on cattle excrement.  

“Yeah, alright, ok, right, yeah, uh-huh, yeah” I made noises as best I could as he rambled off a million more things I had zero interest in hearing. I tried to focus on his face, the conversation, and staying alive.  

Was this really happening? 

“What do you think places cost down here to rent for a few months?”  He asked peering deeper and deeper into my soul.  

How in the hell was I supposed to figure out math, run a real estate analysis on Costa Rica, speak, and stay alive all at the same time?  

“Sorry, I gotta go.” I cut him off mid-sentence and quickly moved past. 

I got to my chair and could not sit still so I got into the ocean. Then I got back to my chair. Then back into the ocean. Waves of hell washed over me as I floated in and out of paranoia.  

At one point I looked over at the girls and thought they had lost their minds. One was pacing frantically, another talking to imaginary people, and the third staring directly at the ocean. Sensing that there was nothing I could do to save them I grabbed my backpack and walked back to the house. Barefoot.  

A long, rocky, walk from the beach to the road to the dirt road to the house. When I arrived, David was in the pool.  

Damn it. Another human.  

After some terrifying small talk, I finally made it up to my room where I hid for the next two hours. Eventually, it started wearing off and I ate half a cracker. God had saved me after all.  

I carefully snuck back downstairs ready to face the world again. I was certain the girls, who had never tried mushrooms before, had lost their minds and gone to the hospital. I dreaded checking my phone but was worried sick.  

 “Come meet us for a drink. We are at the restaurant on the beach.” – a text from Ilene.  

There was no way they are still alive. I made my way to the restaurant and there they were.  

“Are you guys ok?” I asked wondering what happened to them.  

“Yes! That was so fun!” they all replied.  

Shoot me.  

Trey  

Hollywood Drugs to Costa Rica Love

“I did all the drugs every single weekend,” she said lounging in a sun skirt and tank top on a grey outdoor sofa in her open-air kitchen. 

She used to live in a California penthouse on the beach with a co-founder of Myspace. He was her boyfriend. Until he wasn’t. She found herself lost, gray, and weighing only 90 pounds.  

Emily was born in San Francisco and spent her 20’s in LA. She sold pharmaceuticals in Beverly Hills, did all the drugs, and thought she was invincible. She dated guys who were selling companies and getting rich. Then her world caved in when Myspace boy cheated on her. 

“I met an artist in San Francisco years earlier and for some reason I had the urge to go see him. He was a healer. When I walked in he said I looked terrible.” 

My friend Ilene and I were sitting in her open-air kitchen on the side of a mountain in Costa Rica. Her husband of five years was making a vegan salad. He had arm tattoos, a French accent, and no shoes.

Nobody wears shoes in Costa Rica. The wind was blowing perfectly. The sun danced in and out of the trees as they swayed in the breeze. There was a box of organic fruit in the kitchen loaded with bananas. My kind of people. Sans the vegan part.

“The healer told me I had to find my creativity again. I thought to myself I have never been a creative person.” She continued with her story…

Emily is now an author, women’s coach, surfer, mother of two, and retreat facilitator. She was radiantly pretty in an effortless way. She was glowing actually.  

Two nannies tended to her babies in an adjoining part of the house separated from the area we were in by a small pool. There was a third section behind with a king-size bed and massive glass doors. The entire complex was on the side of a jungle in Santa Teresa, Costa Rica. I couldn’t help thinking how perfectly amazing the place was.

“You ever heard about love?” I asked with a smile. Her book is called The Quest and she helps women believe in themselves and find love. I was positive her story was a doozy. Anyone who becomes a love coach usually went through hell to get there. Love is bananas.  

“You know, for me, I was a perfectionist. I did not know who I was. I was in and out of bad relationships, partying every weekend, and dying on the inside,” she looked back and forth between Ilene and me. 

Ilene had found her on the internet, reached out, and got us an interview. We like to interview odd people with odd stories. She seemed odd enough. We drove our blue rental car up a long dirt road into the jungle where we found her amazing house.  

Her surfer husband continued to build his perfect salad in the kitchen glancing over at us every once in a while. The French are bold people. I never saw him smile. Or laugh.

I learned that once Emily started to lean into creativity her entire life changed. She gave herself permission and started, for the first time, to not judge herself. She found writing, art, and surfing. It saved her life. 

While on vacation in Costa Rica years ago she ran into her now husband, the French guy. They surfed together one time then drove all over Costa Rica for two weeks falling in love. When he took her to the airport to fly home he said, “If you come back, we will make a baby.”

The French are bold. 

She came back and now they have two. 

“We did ayahuasca on our second date,” she said casually smiling at her French husband.

“Dear Lord, that’s intense,” I replied flashing back to the time I did ayahuasca in some hippie’s house in California and blasted into the universe for eight hours. Ayahuasca is one of the most profound psychedelics in the world. I danced with Jesus Christ, talked to an alien, played piano with my dad who died 20 years before. I also almost had a heart attack and thought I was a gorilla for a short period of time.

“He has done many ayahuasca ceremonies,” she said pointing to her French husband. 

“Really?” I replied shifting my gaze to him and his bohemian, MC Hammer pants. 

“Yes, I have some in the refrigerator. Want some?” He said motioning his head to the refrigerator without smiling. 

“No thanks…” I said trying to act cool but trembling inside. 

The French are bold. 

She told me he is a member of a group called The Red Path. These freaks do vision quests where they do peyote all night and then go into the jungle, alone, for four days. Then eight days the next year. Then 13 days the next year. The kicker is they do not eat food or drink liquid the entire time, have to sit under the same tree, and not move over three feet. 

“It is intense,” he said boldly chopping his lettuce. The man was making the most amazing salad of all time.

Fuck that, I thought. I couldn’t imagine starving to death with no water as ants and mosquitoes cover my body just before a jaguar ripped my face off. 

As we wrapped up our conversation I asked Emily what she tells the women she coaches. 

“They have to find their self-worth. I think this starts with giving yourself permission to be a beginner at things. To be creative and find your passions. I start by finding anything, even small, that is great about the person and we go from there.”

Agreed. Life is so much better if we give ourselves permission to try new things, create new art, and stumble until we can walk. Maybe if we do we will end up in love on the side of a mountain in the most amazing place in the world. 

Pura Vida!

Trey

More about Emily: https://www.emilypereira.com/