The Two-Year Storm
It was just like a storm. It was like a two-year storm.
I've always been pretty high-functioning. I had a great business. I was a single mom. I was always kinda hustling along in a really successful way.
And in a very short period of time my grandma died. A very close friend, his life was taken in a robbery. My husband — my ex-husband, my child's father — committed suicide. My brother committed suicide. I was diagnosed with breast cancer, and my surgeon got caught up in another surgery, and a resident made an attempt to do a complicated procedure, cut off the blood supply to my chest muscles. So it wasn't that I ended up with just a mastectomy. I ended up with no chest muscles, no use of my arms. It was pretty severe.
My partner of six years left during that experience. My child moved away to college. And consequently I wasn't able to return to my job — I was a hair designer, and with limited use of my arms, I couldn't resume my 38-year career. And I lost my home.
I didn't even know how to think straight in the face of all that. There's big pieces of it I'm still missing. I think my mind just started checking out.
I'd never really done any sort of substances. So at first I started to drink, thinking maybe that'll make me feel better. It just made me vomit a lot. Then I thought, well, maybe I'll try THC. Made me tired, hungry. Then I tried ketamine, and again it kind of seemed like a disconnector — it separated me out from whatever was going on. And I was like, this just isn't sustainable. I've gotta figure out some way to reconnect with a meaningful part of myself, or of life, or of thinking. But I'd lost any sense of meaning. I was super capable. I just didn't really have any.
I had done some research — watched some of Andrew Huberman's work around mushrooms, read about neuroplasticity and what mushrooms do to facilitate new neuron connection. At some gut level, that seemed right for me. And I just happened to think, at that moment, I can't stay here.
I can't stay here.
So I did some research and found Odyssey. It was primarily online. Then I had a phone call with David. He was about the same age, had been this high-functioning, amazing person who seemed pretty driven, like I was, but he also seemed like he'd done some amazing personal work, both on himself and with others. And I thought, why, what do I have to lose. That is how I ended up in Bend.
Gosh, I think a lot of my buy-in happened before I even spoke with David. David was probably the reassurance. But all the research I found — about neuroplasticity, about changing the way we see things, about the ability to absorb information but maybe do something different with it than we normally would. The idea of actually facilitating what may have been severed connections. I'd gone through so much loss. There's a part of me that thinks my brain had started to shut down to protect myself, and it didn't seem to be reconnecting. So I was probably 80% prior to speaking with David, based on research alone.
The thing I loved about Odyssey was this idea of an intimate group, somewhat of a private getaway facility, the fact that somebody else did the cooking, which I never want to do. I appreciated the structure — knowing, okay, at 8:00 we're doing this, at noon we're doing this, we're doing our journeys. I really loved how experienced my facilitators were. I think about our bodies like a pachinko machine — you put something in, and how does that all settle down? For every person that's different. Having facilitators who knew "okay, this is normal" — that was really comforting.
Arriving in Bend
I get to Bend, and I pull up to this beautiful house overlooking the mountains, and all these great people were there. I loved that it was small, and we had this woman who just made outrageous food, and it was such a warm, cohesive group. I loved that probably none of us would have met one another socially. It was really cool to see a bunch of high-functioning people from all different backgrounds and ages, all looking for a growth opportunity, looking to take accountability and responsibility for themselves. We had meditation and hiking and story sharing. It was a tremendous experience. I've actually stayed connected with a couple of people from my group.
The hardest part, honestly, started before the medicine even did. I had had breast cancer, my partner had left, my child had moved out — I was just a mess. I didn't have great use of my arm, so things like driving were a problem. I was home. It was really not a great time. And I get to this place, and everyone is lively and hugging each other. That was too much. I just sort of felt, "you wanna touch me?" I know that sounds goofy, but it had just been a minute, and I'd been by myself for several months. Everybody made it really normal, though — people would say, "can I give you a hug?" Which I thought was really kind. So that was a little difficult at the beginning. Other than that, the only thing that was hard was that my mind panicked during the first journey.
Right Back on That Roof
That was terrifying. My first journey was absolutely terrifying. It was like I was right in the most terrifying moments of my life. I could see it, smell it, touch it, taste it. My mind couldn't tell the difference of actually being there. It was like I would come up for air for a few minutes, and then I'd go back in.
One thing in particular — and it was the first place I went — when I was a single mom, we had a hailstorm here in Arizona, and we'd put these big giant skylights in our house. My skylights shattered, my house started flooding, and I had a two-year-old little girl asleep. Luckily I had an 18-foot ladder outside, somebody was painting the house. So I got up with a tarp and a rope, and I'm in this thunder and lightning storm, on my roof, slick, slipping. I was back in that place. I hadn't even thought about that. I'd never thought about it since I did it. Literally tied a rope around my waist, around my chimney, put tarps over my broken skylights, got out, called a water company, got my kid off to school, went to work, and kind of moved on like nothing happened. I don't even think my mind knew how problematic that had been.
In my journey, it was like I was right in the middle of it. My hairs are all standing up feeling it now. I was right on the roof with the thunder and the lightning and the rain. I don't even think my mind knew what had happened there, or that I had stored it away as something frightening or traumatizing.
My journey started there, and then it went through a number of these high spike moments. I liken it to McAfee software — this shows how old I am. It seemed like my first journey was like running a malware program, and all these really toxic or traumatic or spike moments that might be hindering my progress, holding things up along the line — those all showed up. I didn't expect it, and some of them I didn't even remember.
I told you I wasn't doing that shit again. I told you in the hallway. One and done. You can keep the money, I can go home, we're good.
Dark or Light
I had a choice, and my brain gave me a choice. I cognitively hung on to all the research I'd done about neuroplasticity, about gaining the ability to see and handle material differently, thank goodness. You were very "yeah, you can do it again or not, whatever feels right to you is fine." No one actually encouraged me in any direction. I think someone did say, "gosh, you're pretty cognitively strong, I think if we give you a booster we might get you past this kind of meteorite zone."
Starting the second journey, my mind had a choice. I could go dark or I could go light. And I just remember being like, "oh no, we're going to the light today." That entire journey was beautiful. It really was blissful. It allowed me to tie a lot of things together, things I didn't quite realize prior to that, that were all connected.
As I left that second journey, gosh, I had not felt such a flood of happiness in a very long time. I woke up a few hours before everyone else — I'm a pretty quick processor. I was just blissfully happy, and I hadn't felt that in such a long time.
That thing lasted at a strong concentration for about three weeks, and in a delayed sense for about three months. And it allowed me to make some extremely substantive decisions. I was in the middle of about to launch a business — my website was done, I had my products, everything was good. I did an inventory, got home, and closed it down. Wrote off the whole investment. Something inside me knew I had a different direction, and this was going to hold me from it. I could not have done that without the second mushroom journey, for sure.
Do Two Journeys
That first three weeks to three months — if I could give that gift to every person prior to making a major decision. You wanna start a business? Do two journeys. You wanna get married? Do two journeys. Thinking about being exclusive with this person? Do two journeys. Thinking about getting a dog? Do two journeys. Buying a house, if you have time, do two journeys. The level of clarity and focus I had in the aftermath, for big life decisions, I had not had that level of clarity for maybe 20 years. My mind is able — literally, it's just like a better processor. It's that clear. I will do these journeys again just because I value that level of clarity in my life.
You wanna start a business? Do two journeys. You wanna get married? Do two journeys.
It's led to the fact that I stopped drinking alcohol last year. Not because it was ever a problem, it just never served me. I don't think the amount of consumption is the issue. I think the issue is what the consumption facilitates or prohibits facilitation of. When I had all of my initial loss, I also happened to have all this alcohol sitting around the house, and I was moving. It became very easy to pour a drink and just sip through the day, and I had never done that in my life — I was very much a weekend, couple-of-drinks drinker. There was probably a year where I don't think I could have gone through a day without drinking. I felt like I needed something to soften the anxiety about it.
I wasn't drunk, I wasn't out there having eight drinks. But for me it was an incredibly destructive habit, and I had lost the ability to think I could get through a day without it. I was an athlete, I walked every day, I lifted weights, I was always really committed to my health and fitness. But when so many things dropped at once, I just didn't feel like I had the personal fortitude to move forward without a buffer.
Those journeys gave me so much more clarity to say, "you know what, I can do this." For me, I just stopped. It seemed like an easier way to go. My belief is that the strength of your mind has so much to do with your ability to do that. It wasn't like it took the urge away — I just think my mind was wise enough to know this was no longer serving me. That was a hard decision, it's very social, and I historically had been very social. It really was my own clarity to say, "I think I'm just done." But I don't necessarily think it made it easier. It just gave me the mental fortitude to see that as a beneficial choice.
The Last Shoe Drops
Not terribly long after my first two journeys, the last shoe dropped. Probably the most traumatic thing of all — I'd been getting help from a mental health professional, and it came out that she'd been inappropriately involved with my partner for a couple of years and sharing all of my information. I derailed again. Really derailed. It was a big deal, and I had about eight, ten months, almost a year, where I really struggled to move past that. That was a pretty sacred relationship, and it was a long relationship for me.
I just felt like I needed to access that same level of clarity, and I said, okay, I'm gonna start that journey again.
This third and fourth journey were very different. They weren't really about old trauma. It was much more bird's-eye, higher level — the things I saw about my life and where I was going, and my child's life. It's almost like you're standing above and looking, rather than being inside.
At one point it happened again, but it wasn't my moment — it was someone else's. I could see it for about 45 minutes, in vivid detail. I went back and looked at old notes and police reports, things that had happened in that person's life, and all of those things were there, but it was many years before I knew them. How I saw that moment, I have no idea. While I was in it, I was at least able to say, "okay, I've been here before, it's not happening in this moment," and I continued to have the journey, but my mind was smart enough to know it wasn't happening to me at that time.
In my third journey, I also saw a very specific part of my child's father's life experience when he was a child, and then went back and did the research — did that ever really happen? And it did indeed happen. So what that was about, I'll never know. But it was vivid and detailed. My third and fourth journeys were less personal, more global. I saw much more about energy and larger principles of life, not specific situations.
Less Reactive
Definitely clearer. I think for some people this experience might be a one and done — you come, do two journeys, get what you need, and move forward, and it served its purpose. For me, I feel like I have some cumulative cognitive benefit, and this will be a way of ongoing cognitive support. I think this will be somewhat of an every-few-years thing.
We get so rigid as time goes on, and with the world changing so quickly, I think it's almost dangerous to stay so locked into one way. I feel like I have greater malleability about how I see and process things, and I am committed to doing more of that to maintain it.
Less reactive — that's how I'd describe myself today. I've always worked hard, moved fast, accomplished a lot, done a lot. It's just my nature. But I feel like I have more of a pause in my nervous system that allows me to respond more than react.
Less reactive — that's how I'd describe myself today.
Upgrade Your Operating System
Everyone. Literally. If you value cognitive development, if you've had areas you've been stuck in your life, if you have very rote ways of seeing things, I feel like everyone could benefit from that kind of development. It's kind of like buying a computer and never taking care of it — never clearing out any viruses, never doing anything to maintain it. But with your mind, that's a long-time processor. You're not trading that in. So the ability to access or upgrade your operating system, in my mind, is just the way that we are.
I have a daughter who's 21, and she lost a father to suicide and went through this whole time of loss with me, and I can't wait for her to have this experience. Literally cannot wait. She's such a dynamic, amazing, calm, smart, great person, and still I find there are areas she gets stuck around. We all do. Large journeys that allow our brains to become more connected, more malleable, allow people to move past things that often hold them back for a long time. I wish everyone had that experience.
I wish everyone had that experience.
Why Wait
Oh my God, do it. Sign up. Go tomorrow. We spend so long thinking about making something better, or not doing it because we're afraid, or we're busy. The thing I found is I only wished I had had access to do it sooner, and resource to do it more often, because it gave me the stability and clarity within myself to move past things that, gosh, I think I would've spent years wandering around in. I think so many of us get in these places and sometimes we just can't think our way out. And I think the gift of clarity, reconnection, new ways to think about things — why wait?
Oh my God, do it. Sign up. Go tomorrow.
I just wish I had known about the benefits of mushrooms in general. I really had no idea. I was kind of a no-medication, no-drug, barely-drank kind of person for most of my life. It had no value to me until I started looking for alternatives to move past my own situation. I think there's a lot of taboo, a lot of misinformation — a lot of ideas that you're out there looking for an Alice in Wonderland experience. You can certainly see where those effects can happen in a certain setting, but that's very different from treatment-sized doses aimed at brain regeneration. I wish I would've known more just about natural access in general.
I Don't Know That I'd Be Here Now
Had I not done mushrooms, I don't know that I'd be here now. I don't know that I would've chosen to continue. I had lost so much, and then I moved into this home where I'm sitting now, where my husband had taken his life, and I live in this. I don't know, without it, that I would've stayed. I think my daughter would've had enough resource from the both of us that I knew she would've been fine — she's a strong kid, a smart kid. But I don't think I would've stayed if I hadn't found some reconnection. It's pretty meaningful for me. It's a big deal.
Had I not done mushrooms, I don't know that I'd be here now.
No amount of medication, or alcohol, or THC, or ketamine — nothing was reconnecting me with an interest in life purpose. I don't think I would've kept going. That first and second journey, that was a game changer for me. It was a big deal.
Karie
Karie Gaines, in her own words