Calling this page “Advocacy” feels extremely aspirational, and possibly a bit inflated. It is too easy to type away on a computer alone in my kitchen and convince myself that this is fighting the fight against the war on drugs. But getting that acknowledgment out of the way, I still want to share these thoughts. This IS aspirational … and sometimes getting where I would like to go in life starts with being bold enough to say what I actually want.

I want to be a part of advocating for legislative change in Texas around our drug policy. Sharing these thoughts, and clarifying what kind of change I’d personally like to see is me inching towards advocacy. I want to join the efforts in Texas to bring about legal, simple, safe access to psilocybin mushrooms and other entheogens in this, my beloved home state. And even though I don’t feel like I understand the most effective place to start, I offer this legislative wishlist as an attempt to join the movement in some small way.

Writing from Texas, and as a relative newcomer to this field, the psychedelic landscape feels complex. I recognize that I am stepping into a current of legislative and social momentum on these topics that I have not created and whose direction I do not control. I am grateful to the people who have been using and studying plant medicines with wisdom and care over hundreds of years, and to the people who have been diligently working to update our state and federal legislation on the topic. I am also grateful to the people in places like Oregon and Colorado who have done so much to bring about regulatory change there. I have had legal, guided psilocybin treatment in both states now which makes me one of the many beneficiaries of the hours and hours of background work it took for those state coalitions to get their rules ready to launch. Thank you, Oregon and Colorado!

There are a lot of things that do not make sense to me in these times, but this is one I have decided to speak up about. I like that this topic seems to cross all kinds of political lines. It makes me feel hopeful, and I like the thought of advocating for something that (a) might actually come to fruition and (b) unites a wide variety of people around goals like helping to reduce suffering and amplifying aliveness. I also feel moved to speak up because I am someone who has needed help with my mental health. I am asking for that help to become available here in Texas, for myself and for others in ways that are practical, safe, simple, and affordable.

Here is one version of my personal lament about our current drug policy in Texas: I don’t like that we give ourselves easy access to things like guns and alcohol, which could be used with the most dire consequences to “address” mental health issues. But we criminalize access to other substances with better safety and efficacy records. It bothers me that we live in a regulatory framework where I can buy a gun at Academy or alcohol at H-E-B without a medical diagnosis or a prescription from a doctor, and without risking a felony conviction. But I cannot access or grow certain plants here in my own state.

I do believe that psychotropic drugs are not right for everyone. But this seems true of many of the items currently sold in places as accessible as corner stores and gas stations. Alcohol, nicotine, energy drinks, and THC extracts come quickly to mind. But this even applies to some of our modern basics — sugar, automobiles, smartphones. There are a lot of risky substances available for purchase out there in the world. I don’t know exactly how to address the personal and societal risks that all kinds of things pose. But when it comes to psychotropic plants, I would prefer laws that allow us to harness the benefits and manage the risks by enabling communities to educate, provide harm reduction, and openly offer support services.

However, I don’t want a purely medicalized model here in Texas. I don’t want doctors to be the gatekeepers of something as fundamentally simple and democratic as a mushroom. Or to be the guardians of my mental health practices or my spiritual experiences. I want the autonomy to make my own informed decisions about how and whether to use plants medicinally, and I want those around me to have this autonomy as well. And — as in Colorado and Oregon — my hope here in Texas is that we will allow psilocybin mushroom facilitators to come from a wide variety of backgrounds.

I would love the right to grow mushrooms myself. I don’t want to be legally required to outsource something so natural and so personal, and I want that kind of deep and fun connection to the process if I choose it. I find it mind-bendingly strange that people are legally allowed to engage in all kinds of risky behaviors that can endanger themselves and me — driving a car, spraying lawns with pesticides, bringing a gun into a public place — but growing a mushroom is prohibited. Or, heck, I’ve heard some comments about my driving over the years so I’ll flip the example! It is mind-bendingly strange that I am legally allowed to do all kinds of risky things that can endanger others like drive, use pesticides, and carry a weapon. But I could go to federal prison for daring to grow a plant in the privacy of my own house. I know I am not the first to note these kinds of disconnects in our legal system — and I know that much more egregious examples exist. Still, I feel frustrated by the mismatches here. How about we create a program kind of like defensive driving for people who want to grow psychotropic plants? You take the online course, register yourself, and pay a fee. This would make more sense to me.

I have been hugely impacted by my own daily ups and downs with mental health, starting with the development of an eating disorder in adolescence. I think some of these struggles have been beneficial — my faith and my interest in Jungian psychology have opened me up to the power of wrestling with the harder parts of life. But I think some of the difficult times have been unnecessarily harmful to myself and others around me. Safe, legal access to psilocybin mushrooms has helped me in ways that other interventions have not. And now that psilocybin mushroom sessions are available aboveground in other states, I feel a heat inside me about wanting Texas to offer the same. If nothing else, think about the tax benefits! I am taking my business to other places, and I know there are incredibly compelling veterans’ groups highlighting the ways Texas veterans are feeling forced to do the same thing. I am asking that we as Texans figure out a way to open up the doors to entheogens here so that those of us who need and want help can get it legally and responsibly and with the proper care and support.

I am excited by the research into psychedelics these days, and am hopeful this can lead to a lot of successful, specific interventions. However, in addition to targeted healing potential, I also want mushrooms and other psychoactive substances legally available as a kind of catalyst for ecstatic experience, separate from any specific diagnosis or precise treatment goal. I wonder if mushrooms and other psychotropic plants have something transcendent to teach us with their composted, connected, earthy origins. Living in the concrete jungle that is Houston, I feel like I could really use a regular dose of soil-based sentience to balance my perspective. Human beings seem to have a natural inclination to seek out plants that offer transcendent states for spiritual purposes and for healing. Traditions and ceremonies related to this can be found across time and cultures. Where we do not allow for these kinds of embodied mystical experiences, it may be that we will find humans seeking out low-grade addictive substitutes that are much more destructive than the original sacred formats. For more on this, people can research the intriguing history of the psychedelically-motivated origins of Alcoholics Anonymous!

It is beyond the scope of this particular piece of writing, and way beyond my scope of expertise, to address all of the shortcomings with drug policy in Texas and in the United States. I see that advocating for improved access to certain substances and not others is a form of psychedelic exceptionalism, and that major issues around racism, classism, colonialism and capitalism are all intertwined here in ways that can perpetuate deep injustice even if we change some of our laws. I want to live in a fair and just society, and I am willing to be educated on the ways we can move in that direction. I also understand that there can be negative consequences to indigenous traditions and their proprietary medicines when those substances are pursued by larger numbers of people from outside those cultures. By speaking up on this one small issue of mushroom access in Texas, I am not meaning to ignore or distract from these and other problems related to drug policy. I am just starting with what I know. I don’t want the vastness of the ripple effects of this topic to stun me into inaction. I get that the drug law system (like so many aspects of life) are messy and complicated. But I still want to try to dip my toe in the water and start somewhere.

I am saying all of this as someone who has voted Republican and Democrat. I have been a teacher and a lawyer. I have a religious faith that matters to me. I live what some might view as a conventional soccer-mom-esque life, and I am the mother of four children. I have degrees from the University of Texas, Rice University, and UT Law. I grew up going to summer camp in the Texas Hill Country, a place and time that is still sacred to me. I have been my kids’ classroom parent, I have long-term volunteer commitments in Houston and I participated in a weekly Bible study for years. I’ve even read the whole Bible cover to cover. I know I’m not the only person who has ever done any of these things. And I am not claiming that any of those institutions would necessarily support my use of psychotropic plants. (Although as a Longhorn, I am especially excited about the Charmaine and Gordon McGill Center for Psychedelic Research and Therapy at UT Austin’s Dell Medical School.)

I list these things because they might be a familiar constellation of associations and activities to some people here in Texas, and I want to explain that this is one profile of someone who has used psychedelics legally for mental health purposes and plans to do it again.

I am just one of the many kinds of people in Texas who are asking for local, non-medicalized and legal access to entheogens including psilocybin mushrooms. I hope that this context and the little bit of my personal mushroom story that follows can help flesh out these thoughts and add to the larger discussion of what kind of people use psychedelic mushrooms and why.

I discovered the therapeutic value of psilocybin mushrooms after reading Michael Pollan’s How to Change Your Mind. I confess this with some embarrassment because I have learned that in certain segments of the psychedelic world, this is considered a pretty shallow entry point into a very deep topic. And that is not to say that the book itself is shallow or unhelpful. It helped me! But because it was so popular in certain subcultures, I guess it is now a bit of a cliche for a middle-aged mom going through a divorce to come across the book and follow its lead without knowing much else about the context of psychedelic use throughout human history.

I was amazed at how psilocybin sessions and my integration work helped me in both esoteric and totally practical ways with some of my most difficult emotions — guilt, shame, despair, and anger. While also expanding my ability to appreciate and handle the fact that joy seems to be marbled together inseparably with grief in so many moments of life.

Mushrooms have not made me a perfect person, nor have they “fixed” my life. They have helped me feel my life more intensely. This has been both a valuable gift and a challenging call to action. Mushrooms have also offered a mysterious and intriguing sense of connection to much larger forces that have helped me feel supported during isolating times. Which was a surprise to me because I already felt what I thought was a strong connection to support through my faith practices. But in my mushroom journeys, the Divine felt more real and more personal than anything I had experienced even in my most impactful moments of prayer.

One time, in a psilocybin journey where some of my deepest despair became the theme of the trip, I was taken down over and over again under a river where a sacred, ancient choir would sing over my individual sorrows in achingly beautiful ceremonies. Nothing was instantly fixed in the outer realm, of course, but having each element of my despair washed and sung over by this holy choir helped me feel less alone in my hardest moments during the mushroom journey and still to this day. Later, as I thought through what had happened, I realized that I deeply wanted to be a part of whatever mystical healing choir that was.

Through a series of synchronicities, dreams, and fun discoveries, I then learned about the possibility of becoming a Licensed Natural Medicine Facilitator in Colorado. In a little plot twist that felt surprising and also completely as it should be, there was actual singing involved. Singing as a group together and being sung over in ceremonies that felt like earthly echoes of the heavenly singing I’d heard in that mushroom journey under the river.

I might be at risk of overstating the connections here. I am only partway through the full certification process and I see that some of my current enthusiasm could come from a need to feel enamored with the program just in order to help me keep going! But for now, this journey through my own mushroom experience and the experience of getting trained in facilitation feels truly fascinating, fun, and meaningful. When I work on these ideas, talk with others about them, or learn something new in class, I feel an actual warmth in my chest. Like a glowing ember from an old fire that still has some heat to it, and I feel like this heat wants to be put to use! So I want to funnel this energy into pursuing my license and speaking up about mushroom legalization in Texas. I will do these things to try to add my voice to the choir … to that sacred choir of divine care that seems to be trying to sing to and through all of us in so many different ways.

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