The Black mothers finding freedom in mushrooms: ‘They give us our power back’
Enter a room and notice the scent of wood. Palo santo, a unique bark that stems from the tropical forest of Ecuador, burns brightly. A statue of a dark-skinned African woman sits in the center, sea shells dangling from her body. A facilitator begins the psychedelic mushroom ceremony with music and prayer.
Amanda De Luz, a vice-president of operations at an automotive company by day, is wearing a white shawl and loose-fitting dress. She’s here at a healing center in the heart of Los Angeles with about 10 other Black mothers and women of color, who regularly gather together to take psilocybin mushrooms.
While it may seem unconventional, the mothers believe taking mushrooms has helped them become better parents, deal with stress and anxiety and heal from racial trauma.
“I think Black people need psychedelics. Being a Black person, I’ve realized a lot of the traumas I have are intergenerational,” said Destiny Rok, a 27-year-old stay-at-home mom. “This community is really important because these are women who are not afraid to push the boundaries that have been set in place by non-Black people.”
The group originally connected through the Instagram account The Ancestor Project, a Bipoc-run account that encourages holistic healing, and met in person at the California Psychedelic Conference in May. The community began with 15 and has grown to nearly 45 members, and their first ceremony took place in late June this year.
Rok was introduced to the community at the conference. The following month, the women participated in a 24-hour ceremony at a healing center in Los Angeles. Participants brought journals, crystals, feathers, family photos, and flowers. The ceremony took place in one large room, but separate rooms with mats and pillows were available. The ceremony began with prayer and intention setting. Most ceremonies last over six hours and end with a plant-based meal. After participants sleep, breakfast is offered in the morning, and the ceremony is closed with prayer and any final thoughts.
Rok said she had been taking psychedelic mushrooms for 10 years. The mother of four described how her own mom had been short tempered and impatient. Rok said her mother had given up on her easily and yelled at her frequently. She had started to behave similarly when her first child arrived. Mushrooms had become her saving grace after her second child was born, but not everyone was supportive of her microdosing.
‘We’ve avoided what could help us’
In some Black communities, using mushrooms and other psychedelics can be frowned upon, experts say. But this group of mothers sees themselves as bucking a trend.
“Drugs have been racialized in the US since the early 20th century. Cocaine was an over-the-counter medicine for 50 or 60 years – then it became racialized when Black people started using it,” said Dr Jason Ruiz, an American studies associate professor and department chair at the University of Notre Dame. “When white people use drugs, those media forms tend to frame white people as the victims of the drug rather than the perpetrators of the drug. Black and brown people get framed as the villains in how we narrate the war on drugs.”
Sunumi Jackson, an entheogen educator, wants to change the thinking: “Mushrooms have no race,” she said.
Jackson, 25, is a member of Village of Mothers, an organization dedicated to birth education. On a typical day, she said, she consumes .1 to .2 grams of mushrooms. She primarily uses mushrooms to decrease symptoms of depression. Jackson believes that microdosing should be used to address intergenerational trauma.
The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), found that 5.3 million African Americans above the age of 18 had a mental illness in 2020.
“We’re experiencing this differently than a white woman would because we have a different set of traumas,” Jackson said. “The war on drugs caused the Black community to have a fear towards substances. Because of that fear, we have avoided potential things that could help us, like mushrooms.”
Like many women in the Los Angeles-based microdosing community, Mikaela De la myco, 27, initially thought that “mushrooms were for white hippies”. The mother of a two-and-a-halfyear-old first tried mushrooms when a roommate offered some to her in college. She ate 2 grams and knew she had discovered a new way of living.
De la myco started regularly microdosing mushrooms seven years ago. Her first mushroom trip inspired her to look into the positive effects of using mushrooms. De la myco is not on a strict microdosing regimen, and usually participates during celebrations and gatherings with other parents. The more time she spent with what she calls “the mushroom”, the less shame she felt for microdosing as a Black mother. De la myco believes taking mushrooms has helped her connect with her roots.
“Having a relationship with mushrooms contributes to Black joy,” she said. “It breaks chains of systemic trauma. There is happiness to be found when you know who you are. Especially with Black people who have been so divorced from where we are from.”
Facing deep-seated trauma
Psilocybin, the psychoactive chemical found in psychedelic mushrooms, has been found to produce feelings of euphoria and serenity. For example, last year a study in the New England Journal of Medicine compared the effects of escitalopram (Lexapro) to those of psychedelic mushrooms. Although escitalopram is an antidepressant with no psychedelic properties, the trial did not show a major difference between psilocybin and escitalopram in terms of antidepressant effects.
Studies have shown that microdosing can contribute to better overall mental health and help people struggling with alcohol. In 2020, an international survey in the Journal of Psychopharmacology found that 79% of participants felt improvements in their mental health after microdosing.
According to a study in Frontiers of Epidemiology on racial trends in hallucinogen consumption, African Americans are less likely to use psychedelics compared with other racial groups.
Many African Americans fear western medicine due to the history of experimentation on Black people.
“African Americans are a part of the patient population in mental health that have concerns about being experimented on,” said Thomas Hughes, a child and adolescent psychiatrist and founder of the Cube mental health services. “People still have this concern that they are being studied. The American government pumped a lot of drugs into communities and used the money to fund a war. Having knowledge of our government doing things like that is not something a group of people forgets.” He believes trauma from instances like the Tuskegee experiment has passed down from generation to generation.
Despite the fact that mushrooms are being used to decrease symptoms of depression, it’s easy to forget that there are risks that come with consuming psychedelic mushrooms.
Experimenting with psychedelics poses major risks including hallucinogen persisting perception disorder, in which an individual has prolonged visual hallucinations after previous psychedelic use. Psychedelic use can also cause panic attacks, increased anxiety and nausea.
Despite the risks, these mothers hope to use mushrooms to combat deep-seated trauma.
“I think it’s really important that Black mothers do this healing work because they can find liberation, and a freedom that is not allowed to us in our day-to-day lives. It gives Black women their power back. It reminded me that I’m allowed to be seen and heard,” said De Luz.
Jackson expressed similar sentiments.
“When we make one change in the direction to heal ourselves, we can shift the direction that our legacy is going in,” she said.
Due to the sensitivity of this topic, Amanda De Luz and Mikaela De la myco are using pseudonyms.
There is happiness to be found when you know who you are
Mikaela De la myco