Do you know psilocybin? This is the name of a component magical present in mushrooms that opens the door to living healing experiences such as mushroom therapies. In various investigations , it was determined that this substance together with the therapy facilitates the treatment of depression, anxiety and stress.
This type of therapy should always be an informed decision and guided by experts to avoid bad trips. Therefore, this blog is merely informative.
Join us to see how Laura Gallego, Chef’s area manager, and Kevin Cuartas, Chef’s worker, experienced this therapy.
Why did you make the decision to participate in therapy?
Laura: We were encouraged to do the mushroom thing because (I’m saying it for myself) Maribel and Iván (Chef’s founding partners) told us about the beautiful and cool experience they had. We cannot deny that we were scared at first, but they themselves gave us peace of mind and the truth was that the experience was brutal.
Kevin: I speak the same as Laura, I was also encouraged by Maribel and Iván who recommended it to us and, in the same way, they told us a lot that for these things one needed to have a purpose of trying to give oneself as much as possible and that from the beginning was the intention.
One of the reasons for me was that; carry the purpose and try, after the therapy, to have an emotional change and I have tried to do everything since the day the therapy was done.
What is mushroom therapy?
L: I feel that therapy does not have a common factor for everyone. I wanted to use it, above all, to heal many things that I had in my head and it also helped me a lot to organize many things that I had not organized.
I also did it to get rid of fears, because sometimes I stop to do things for fear of what is going to happen, so for me it was like a challenge. Yes, I was very scared, but the experience is totally different. It helped me, as a person it helped me a lot.
How long have they been involved?
K: About a month and a half, two months ago.
How long is a therapy session?
K: It was from 8 in the morning, they prepare it for you. They sit us down, make us talk, share experiences with each other and we didn’t have cell phones or watches, so when they released us, it was around 8:30 at night.
I don’t know when they gave us the medicine, I just know that when they gave it to us it was daytime and when we woke up it was night. I couldn’t say how long the trip lasted as such.
L: Yes, they took away our cell phones as such, we totally blurred, so I would think it was like 5 hours. We had breakfast, did the activity and we started around 12 noon and, when we took off our masks, it was already dark, it was around 6. It was about 5 hours or I don’t know if it was later, but I would think it was about 5 hours.
Where do you do the therapy?
K: That was in a farm house there in Río Negro, in a natural space.
Who runs it?
K: That is a foundation. Is called Live Foundation and it works with this, it works with psilocybin (a component of mushrooms). They are dedicated to this and do therapy regularly; They are a group of volunteers.
The people who help the foundation are a group of volunteers who have suffered from depression, who have had a reason for therapy, it has served them and they have changed. They are groups of volunteers who, when people go, are in charge of accompanying them.
There are people who get bad or get out of what they want, so the volunteers are accompanying people all the time.
How often do they do it?
L: I understand that they hope to have a group of people to do it, who not only focus on doing the therapy, but also on various other things that have to do with their planning. I understood that they hope to have a group of people to carry it out.
How many people were there?
K: We went with a group of colleagues and there were 8 of us. They told us it was the highest group they had ever had.
Normally they do not do the therapies with this group of people because it is not recommended for what they are looking for with psilocybin and that, with just one person who gets a bad trip, the trip of others can be damaged.
However, since we are a group of people from the same area of the company, we all cheered for each other.
What experience stood out to you the most during therapy?
K: I was very shocked that I, in the middle of the trip, saw many negative things; as in what was failing and the destructive criticism of people towards one. That impacted me a lot because everything was what weighs on one in daily life and so many accusations towards one…
That is what one has to deal with, one has to stop thinking about all those negative things that are affecting him socially. That also left me thinking about prejudiced people, because one is a very different person from what society perhaps wants, different from how they think a person should be for society, for a company, for a lifestyle.
As I said, one leads a lifestyle or is something totally different from what society, family and friends, everyday people usually want, so it struck me that, in the middle of the trip, many people pointed it out to one and the story of my mother, my friends, the mother of my girl. Is that.
L: Giving a little support to what Kevin says, one suddenly leads a very different lifestyle from everyone else. Even so, I felt scared at some point. Since we do the therapy with several people around us, what scared me perhaps was listening to two of the girls, my friends, who were laughing too much at some point.
Even at that moment when I heard them, I silenced them myself. I don’t know why I felt that fright; At some point, when I heard them, I got desperate and what I did was shut them up, that was what scared me a little.
The therapy as such is very cool, you are connected to what is happening, but since I lost concentration a bit, that was what scared me the most.
What did they learn during therapy?
K: I don’t want to say that it hasn’t helped me, but I don’t feel that it has contributed much, rather it made me a little more aware of many things emotionally in my life.
On the one hand, due to the trip, I became a little more human. Because of the very lifestyle that one leads, one is very easy-going in his opinion, so before everything was like “I don’t care, I don’t care” and now, after the trip, I understand my mother much more, the mother of My child, I understand many things that I did not pay attention to.
One remains the same, but now at least tries to land a little more, like “don’t be like that, that’s not the idea.” When people point it out to you, it’s because they know you’re failing, you just don’t allow yourself to see that and this made me a little more aware of my family and my social life.
L: It happened the same way to me. In fact, I had recently gone through the loss of a person, I was very focused on that person and I didn’t even see them on the trip, but later I understood why I couldn’t see them. Maybe I felt that I wasn’t letting her rest, as Kevin himself told me at some point, and then I understood many things.
My relationship with my partner was very bad. With this, remarkably things changed too. I learned to understand her a little more… Same as Kevin was saying, sometimes we are very stubborn and, in this experience we had, you become aware of many things.
What do you think of the taboo around psychedelic mushrooms?
L: We still need a little more to stop being a taboo. Even when I heard about it, I never criticized or judged it, but I did think “oh, this is something strong and you have to know how to handle it”.
I feel that the topic is more about fungi; talk about how important they are, how incredible they are, because it is something that is not everyday for us. We do know that drugs exist and all that, but from there to there that drugs are used is something bad.
If we know how to use mushrooms in a good way, it becomes a very brutal experience, so it is trying to overthrow those taboos by talking more about mushrooms.
K: I agree with Laura, it’s suddenly talking more about it, raising awareness a little more, talking more about the benefits above all; If you only talk about “is that the mushrooms this…” as if it were another drug, then it does not work; Talking more about the benefits would be key, I think.
Would you recommend the therapy to other people?
L: I calmed down when I saw the tranquility with which Iván and Maribel spoke, it gave me a lot of peace to listen to them. For this reason, I would speak to people from my experience and the fears I had before doing it.
When one arrives at therapy, there are some girls who are the caretakers and who are always looking out for us. These girls gave me a brutal reassurance, I felt calm, I felt safe to do it and I felt that everything was going to work out for the very experiences they were talking about.
They didn’t talk to you about everything super cute, they also told you the bad, but the bad was never “you’re going to stay there or you’re not going to come back”, that will never happen; “It can help you to forgive, it can help you to grow”, that is the focus.
So I would also recommend it. If you have a focus, it will help you with that focus, it will help you clarify many things, then I would absolutely recommend it to everyone.
I even told my relatives. My mom told me no (laughs during the interview), but my aunt, who is very religious, began to ask me many things like where is this and how they do it. It was ringing for her a lot.
K: I haven’t really recommended it, but I did get to talk about it with my mom and she told me to stop doing those maric@das (laughs during the interview) . Rather, that she seek more from God that this was the best cure for everything, she is very religious too.
She told me “look for a spiritual retreat, something like that that connects you more with God” and I told her that, if she had a purpose, medicine could help her, she just had to have a purpose.
However, I have not talked about it much with people, because, as one has had their life experiences, I know from me that they are not going to take it in a good way. That’s why I don’t.
How do you see the theme? Always remember to inform yourself and consult a professional before encouraging yourself to try mushroom therapy and any other type of medicinal therapy.
Made with love,
Chef Burger
