Bliss your heart

With psilocybin once again in the running to become a legitimate treatment for anxiety, we sent a writer deep into the Mexican jungle to face her fears. Did she find inner peace?

- MICHELLE JANIKIAN

I arrive in a van with six other Americans after traveling on a long, stomach-turning dirt road to the heart of the jungle outside Playa del Carmen, Mexico. The resort is a maze of wooden boardwalks, but the foliage still creeps through and grazes my limbs. We are led, one by one, down overgrown paths that open into large event spaces, including the appropriately dubbed Buddha Hall, where three days of transformative psilocybin ceremonies will take place.

We’re a total of 20 participants. We eat dinner together in a decadent, palace-like setting and play Two Truths and a Lie to break the ice before heading to bed. It’s still early. I lie in my room — a private, nearly square enclosure with wall-length windows overlooking dense greenery — while I patiently wait for daylight.

The next morning is a blur. There’s dosing information, contracts to sign and the group activity of “intentions setting”— a discussion during which almost everyone cries, myself included. I reveal my experiences with drug abuse and depression, the story of a friend’s death and my recovery afterward. It comes out easily because everyone around me is emotional; they have their own reasons for being here.

First-person research for my upcoming book, Your Psilocybin Mushroom Companion, is what has led me to the Buena Vida Psilocybin Retreat in the Yucatán Peninsula’s tropical wonderland. The tag line of this roving retreat is “Embark on a journey of a lifetime with the help of magical fungi.”