Our ancestors knew the healing power of psychedelics. California must decriminalize

On Oct. 20, 2018, I took five grams of psychedelic mushrooms and experienced the Divine. I was 50-years-old, married, a businessman and a father of three. I felt it was my last chance to climb out of the sense of disconnection and emptiness I’d been experiencing since the death of my mother five years earlier.

I’ve always been a good self-healer. The youngest of three children from a single mother in a Mexican American community, I’d seen more than my fair share of the trauma typical of the struggling communities of America — domestic abuse, violence, alcoholism, economic uncertainty and little to no stability.

Despite it all, I persevered by staying positive, exercising daily and dreaming about the future. I was the first in my family to graduate college and eventually received a master’s degree from Yale. I became chief of staff to an Oakland City Council president and then ran a real estate development company. By all accounts, I’d achieved success.

My mother’s sudden passing in 2013 forced me to see just how much of my childhood trauma had been unprocessed. I was unprepared to hold all the pieces together, and things began to unravel. I fought hard to stay balanced by increasing my exercise regimen, meditating daily and focusing on serving loved ones, yet I was being consumed by darkness and a numbness that disabled me from literally feeling anything. I was empty inside.

I sought answers in physics and philosophy but found only more emptiness. I was about to give up hope and resolve that the rest of my life would be a journey of solitude through the dark void when a friend invited me to a talk by author Michael Pollan on his best-selling book “How to Change Your Mind.” I learned that studies at Johns Hopkins University and other prestigious universities were finding that psychoactive mushrooms and other psychedelics seemed to enable people to find purpose and meaning again.

Soon after, I traveled to a friend’s house, locked myself in the bedroom and took the five grams of mushrooms — a large dose.

The journey started with what is known as the dissolution of the ego. I became pure consciousness. Then the conversations with higher awareness started. I would no sooner ask a question than the answer would appear. The answers were so deeply profound and helpful that to this day I still wonder where they came from. In the end, all the pressing questions that had kept me in the abyss of emptiness had been answered.

I found spirituality and meaning in life again.

I’m not alone in seeking to understand the power of these plant medicines. According to a 2006 press release titled “Hopkins Scientists Show Hallucinogen in Mushrooms Creates Universal ‘Mystical’ Experience,” a study from the university showed that 60% of subjects who ingested psilocybin (the active ingredient found in psychoactive mushrooms), reported “a full mystical experience.” Two-thirds of the total number of participants consider the experience among the top five spiritual experiences of their lives.

A 2018 study by UC Davis researchers titled “Psychedelics Promote Structural and Functional Neural Plasticity” found that, along with other psychedelics, DMT (the active ingredient in a psychedelic brew from the amazon rainforest called Ayahuasca), enters a neuroreceptor in our brains and increases the number and size of neurons, literally amplifying and expanding the amount of communication that occurs between regions of the brain. The effect is lasting.

Soon after my experience in October of 2018, I began researching why these incredibly healing, low-risk plant medicines are illegal. I learned that there is no good reason. Most were made illegal under Nixon’s War on Drugs campaign, designed to create political division and fear for political expediency.

The Tungusic people of Siberia, the Aztec and Mazatec in Mesoamerica and the ancients of China, Greece, Rome and India used plant medicines for thousands of years to heal mental and physical trauma.

In a society where mental health healing options are grossly inadequate and largely inaccessible to marginalized communities, I find it absurd that plant medicines that grow abundantly, all around us and cost next to nothing are not readily available to ease the trauma of millions of people suffering from PTSD, depression, suicidal ideations, cluster headaches, anxiety and many other mental and physical health issues.

I soon came to learn that there is an active underground community of doctors, nurses, scientists and therapists working to heal people with natural medicines. We decided in January of 2019 to create a movement to decriminalize and make these relatively safe and effective ancestral plant medicines accessible.

Today, I am the board chair of a group called Decriminalize Nature whose mission is to remove legal barriers for personal use of entheogens, a term used to describe naturally occurring plant medicines that enable a mystical or healing experience by the user. Since June of 2019, we have successfully decriminalized entheogens in seven cities in the U.S. In just over a year, we’ve grown to over 120 cities and eight countries with activists working diligently to decriminalize these plant medicines. Currently, we’re working closely with state Senator Scott Wiener on Senate Bill 519, which would finally decriminalize these ancestral sacred plants in California.

Our ancestors knew for millennia that these psychoactive plants and fungi not only enable us to heal our relationship with ourselves, but also with our environment, creating a deep sense of connection to the planet. Perhaps it is time to give them a chance and consider that our ancestors knew what they were doing when they co-created these plant medicines, in partnership with nature, for when humanity would need them most.

This story was originally published May 13, 2021 at 6:00 AM with the headline "Our ancestors knew the healing power of psychedelics. California must decriminalize."