The art of taking small doses of mushrooms is something that needs to be experienced to be properly understood. For over a decade, I did it often without ever knowing that what I was doing was supposed to be framed in a process-driven and outcome-oriented way. As a dues paying psychonaut for decades, I literally never once heard the word ‘microdose’ until I made an Instagram account for Mycopreneur in 2021. Instead I built a relationship with the mushroom itself, going on deep dives and shallow frolics together over many years. And oftentimes in social situations it was more convenient to not be tripping too hard, so taking a small, always unmeasured dose became the norm.
‘Microdosing’ has been subjected to numerous peer-reviewed studies, embedded in wellness-influencer jargon, and embraced by diverse demographics ranging from suburban moms to octogenarians and everyone else.
But there is one quality to the experience of taking small doses of mushrooms – or any dose, really – that no lab will ever quantify, and that no 6-week coaching program will be able to teach you:
The element of ‘Je Ne Sais Quoi’ , a French idiomatic expression positioned to express an ineffable and charming quality that cannot be properly put into words.
The ‘magic’ in ‘magic mushrooms’.
Recently on LinkedIn, that godforsaken shithole of a professional networking platform, a random interloper with what I assume were smug intentions took issue with my use of the title ‘magic mushrooms’ in the title of a recent Mycopreneur Newsletter.
The critic appealed for people to not use the name ‘magic mushrooms’, because magic is simply ‘science that we haven’t properly understood yet’. The label implies fairytales and goblins, not evidence-based medicine and rigorous standardization. This line of thinking is increasingly common in a field and sector that seeks to integrate mushrooms and other compounds into mainstream medicine by ‘normalizing’ psychedelics.
Current leading psychedelic researchers and brain scientists are still actively split on theories regarding how psychedelics like psilocybin mushrooms work in the brain, with the leading ‘Entropic Brain Hypothesis’ positing that a psychedelic experience shakes up the brain like a snow globe and allows for new neural patterns to be formed in place of rigidly engrained pathways being challenged and debated by neuroscientists in the field. There is a desire to strip psychedelics of their weirdness in order to make them ‘respectable’, and palatable to the medical establishment and investor class.
A lot of discussion around medicinal mushrooms is centered around ‘one drug, one target’ pharmacological thinking; psilocybin for 5-HT2A receptor, etc., and bioactive alkaloid profiles – ‘high cordycepin levels in this cordyceps product’! But what if we went a step further and contextualized medicinal mushrooms within a broader community and ecosystem based approach that looks beyond the individual and considers their environment, social relationships, cultural heritages, and their own unique sensibilities? And what if we situated all of that within a degree of humility in our dealings with the divine?
Yes, I said it: The Divine.
The label “magic” preserves something about the subjective, relational, unpredictable, culturally embedded experience of mushrooms that clinical language tends to flatten. But there is a major, major difference between potentially understanding what a mushroom does pharmacologically and understanding what it means to experience a mushroom.
And if this all boils down to perturbation of neurons and nodes, then how the fuck do you explain what happened to me last night at the Afroman concert without accounting for a little dose of ‘magic’ in my mushroom experience?
Let’s set the scene: It’s 6:51 pm on a Friday night and I’m winding down the day with my wife and one year old son. They’re usually in bed by 7:00 pm, and I stay up working for an hour or two of prime evening focus hours.
“Afroman is playing at the winery tonight,” she reminds me – and suddenly I’m struck with a moment of clarity that I need to go to the show, which is only a 15 minute walk away.
Naturally, I’m not going to the Afroman show without amplifying the experience with a spoonful of magic pixie dust – in this case, three capsules of Enigma psilocybin mushrooms ground up and encapsulated in .2 gram doses by my favorite microdosing providers Serenite Labs.
I swallow the capsules on foot en route to the show, for which I don’t yet have a ticket. The game plan is to buy one on site or shuffle over to the adjacent winery and catch the show from their back patio area, an open secret in the town.
When I approach the entrance and pass security, venue staff ask for my ticket.
“I’m gonna buy one here,” I say.
“Oooo…” the woman at the gate remorsefully intones, letting me know the show is sold out.
She puts her hand over her mouth, leans in to me and says ‘Just go in..shhh’, directing me to the table with wristbands behind her. The magic is kicking in already.
This particular winery just started doing concerts on the large outdoor stage they’ve completed in time for their inaugural outdoor summer concert series, and this was the last show of the year. I hadn’t been to one before as we recently relocated here, and was unfamiliar with the different seating and standing areas that corresponded with different tiers of tickets and wristband colors, leading me to wander around the concourse looking for where I was supposed to be.
It’s 7:30 pm at this point, with the evening program set to kick off at 8. I meander around the venue, staking out potential spots to sit on the parking lot pavement in the back. Didn’t realize I needed to bring a lawn chair for this.
I bumble around the sprawling venue for a bit before deciding to try my luck up in the pit area close to the stage, only to be denied by security. My wristband is for the General Admission standing and lawn chair area in the back. No sooner has the security guard finished saying this when he leans in close to me and tips me off that I’m welcome to hang out in the backstage area, specifically pointing to the stage right wings – effectively on stage immediately to the performers right.
I saddle up to the velvet rope next to a hulking security guard with an ear monitor in, who smiles and makes it clear that I’m welcome in the area even though no one else out of the 1,500 person capacity crowd was around. At this point, the triple microdose kicks in and the opening act takes the stage. I have no idea who is on the bill outside of Afroman and his main opener Luniz, the rap duo from Oakland who have one of the most iconic stoner anthems of all-time in their repertoire: “I Got 5 On It’. You know the song.
By 9:30 PM, a dozen or so underground rappers from surrounding cities had already taken the stage for a song or two each, and Luniz comes on to take the crowd’s energy to the next level.
After they do a tasteful tribute to Bay Area legend Mac Dre as well as classy shoutouts to the winery by bringing out a bottle of the local Champagne (I know, it’s not French, but this is still Champagne we’re talking about) – All the phones come out for ‘I Got 5 On It’, their closer.
A crowd has gathered behind me, filling up the entire sidestage area while I’m so close that I’m basically the third wheel on the hip-hop duo.
By the time Luniz wraps, the crowd was buttered up for the OG reefer smoking Afro motherfucking M-A-N.
30 minutes go by with the house DJ spinning tunes, and the venue management around the backstage area start checking their watches as rumors swirl that he might not show. 30 minutes before the hard sound curfew, a flurry of activity registers and it’s made clear that Afroman has arrived. A stagehand shuffles out and programs a laptop sitting on a table draped in an American flag to queue up the headliners visuals, and in short order the unmistakable baritone voice of the ‘Because I Got High’ singer booms out of the stage monitors as a caricature of him projects onto the stage backdrop.
Moments later, Joseph Edgar Foreman AKA ‘Afroman’ comes waltzing out from stage left dripped out in an American flag suit and rhinestone boots.
He launches right into ‘Wet Tight Energy’ and delivers on the money exactly what the crowd is there for.
He reels off classic tunes like ‘Because I Got High’ and ‘Crazy Rap’, which are sung loudly word for word by the audience 26 years after he wrote them.
The songs still hit like they did when everyone used to ride town in 12th grade hotboxing the Acura while bumping them.
Beyond these well-known comedic classics, Afroman has remained relevant in popular culture for reasons that go beyond his back catalogue: He has become an unlikely champion of the First Amendment thanks to a recent court victory in defense of 13 counts of defamation levied against him by the Adams County Sheriff;s Department stemming from a 2022 no-knock raid on his Ohio compound.
In 2022, Adams County, Ohio police destroyed his property front gate and kicked down the door to his house during a no knock raid under the pretenses of a search warrant alleging kidnapping, drug trafficking and drug possession. Afroman wasn’t home at the time.
Though the cops found no evidence of any of the above, they confiscated over $4600 of cash found in a coat pocket in his closet and caused several thousand dollars worth of damage. They refused to return the money or pay for the damage despite finding no evidence of wrongdoing.
Afroman captured the raid on his home security cameras, including a moment that would turn the raid into a major pay day for the artist: A portly officer with his gun drawn does a double take at the Lemon Pound Cake sitting on the kitchen counter, lingering around it and making unmistakable intense eye contact with the cake.
Afroman turned this clip into the song ‘Lemon Pound Cake’ satirizing the ridiculousness of the raid –
“The Adams County Sheriff kicked down my door
Then I heard the glass break
They found no kidnapping victims
Just some lemon pound cake
Mamma’s lemon pound cake
It tastes so nice
It made the Sheriff wanna put down his gun
And cut him a slice”
The song went viral on TikTok, and Afroman put out a whole EP of songs making fun of the sheriffs department while using the home security camera footage and touching in broader themes of racial profiling and police unaccountability, which racked up over 12 million views on TikTok and tens of millions of streams on Spotify and other platforms, propelling his back catalogue and pushing his total streams to almost 1 billion and counting across platforms. He’s back to selling out shows across the country and appearing in major podcasts and in mainstream media bigger than ever before.
Adams County Sheriffs, rightfully embarrassed, sued him on 13 counts of defamation. Afroman was found not liable on any of them.
On Friday night, October 2nd in Paw Paw, Michigan, Afroman brought his star power to light up a little winemaking village of 3,000 people who received him like a superstar. By the time his set wrapped, I was buzzing in a manner which transcended categorical explanation as being a result of any particular compound. A series of unexpected events all lined up one after the other to create a miraculous experience: From a quiet evening home at 6:51 pm to backstage at Afroman with no ticket at a venue that had booked out fully months before, all tied together with a modest pinch of Enigma mushrooms. Call it what you will, but here’s what I call it:
A combination of luck, fortune, 5-HT2A receptor agonism, mojo, and music left me feeling some type of which which can only be described adequately with one term:
Magic.
