Doing Mushrooms with Indigenous Shamans in Mexico

Mexico’s drug culture is famously associated with cartels and gang violence, but there’s a lesser-known, more wholesome story that has emerged from deep in Mexico’s mountainous southern state of Oaxaca.

Humans have been consuming entheogens, or substances that alter our perception, for millenia. In Huatla de Jimenez and other towns in this region of Mexico, indigenous locals have used psychedlic mushrooms as a healing substance for centuries or longer.

In October of 2019, I took a winding journey through the region’s switchback roads six hours north of the city in an attempt to gain insights into the patterns and roadblocks of my own mind by taking psilocybin mushrooms under the tutelage of curanderos (healers) during veladas (traditional healing ceremonies). I participated in two ceremonies under the watchful eye of two shamans.

Shortly afterwards, I visited another town famous for its mushroom culture and took mushrooms again, this time in a less structured format and in the company of a few friends. Below is the historical context underlying these events, guidance on how to do the same, and my honest account of what happened. All names have been changed for privacy.

Historical Context

The indigenous locals of the region refer to psychedelic mushrooms as the ‘holy children’; while they’ve been using them as a medicine for centuries, this part of their culture was not open to outsiders until about 70 years ago, when curandera Maria Sabina of Huatla de Jimenez became the first person to allow foreigners in to experience a velada.

Ethnomycologist and banker R. Gordon Wasson was the first to visit, in 1955; after he published an article about his experiences in 1957, the town’s mushroom culture quickly became commodified, and hordes of tourists from the USA and Europe began arriving to attend veladas.

As one might expect, this change threw the social fabric of the town into dissaray. Maria Sabina became highly critical and regretful of her decision to open the tradition to a wider audience, even going so far as to say that the ‘holy children’ had been ruined and lost their purity.

This discovery did made me feel slightly apprehensive about my decision; however, I’d heard plenty of glowing positive reviews from others who had visited and had great experiences with the mushrooms and the curanderos, and word on the street was that the sharing of mushroom ceremonies had become an accepted part of the economy of Huatla. With only a little bit of tension in my belly, I decided to follow through with it. 

Arriving

Together with my friend Tamar and another acquaintance, our minivan went from nearly mile-high Oaxaca, down through the curvy roads of the jungly lowlands, and wound its way up again through the mountains.

Something strange happens on this journey, about 1 hour before you reach Huautla: The landscape and climate change suddenly to one of cloud forest and Spanish moss and an eerie, otherworldly feeling pervades the air, as though you’ve accidentally driven through a portal into an alternate reality.

Our host was Andrea, and she was the daughter of one of the famous Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers. Upon arrival, we were led to a sparse room with 3 beds, mildew-y pillows, and a window that wouldn’t close. Still, a feeling of coziness and genuine positive regard permeated the house.

Limpia

The next morning we went to see Maria Angela, a shaman who performs what are called limpias (cleanings of the soul and energy field). We had to go there secretly, because Andrea really doesn’t like her. It was funny to see that these shamans are well-regarded for facilitating extremely meaningful transformative experiences, yet they’re also regular people who gossip and harbor misgivings and engage in small-town politics.

In the west, ‘shamans’ are often people with beautiful, minimalist workspaces with singing bowls and meditation cushions. There is an air of peace (sometimes real, sometimes put-on) about them, and you are acutely aware of the separation between you and them–and of the fact that they have some kind of profound spiritual accomplishment, and you don’t.

Maria Angela, on the other hand, was pretty much the opposite of that. She didn’t try to appear as though on a different level from anyone else. Her house was messy and chaotic. When we arrived, she was making tacos to sell at the market later, and we had to wait. We settled into an old sofa as kids darted in and out of the room. There was a dog so matted that it had dreadlocks.

Dreadlock Dog. Image by Author.

When it was time for the ceremony, we went into a small room with a concrete floor, a few wooden chairs, and an alter which contained a mishmash of small figurine statues: Jesus, Guadaulupe (the virgin Mary), various Catholic saints, and a random Buddha.

We each took our turn sitting in a wooden chair in front of her alter. First, she burned kopal (the local incense) and then she read the embers, much like one might read tea leaves.

My embers apparently said that I think too much, I am nervous, I am very sad, and my body is weak.

It was spot on.

I’m not generally sad, but that morning I was very, very sad about something. And she was right-I do think too much, and I am nervous. If I had a penny for every time I’d received that feedback, I’d have had enough to pay a fancy therapist to listen to me talk about it. And, the past months I had indeed grown rather weak, and it had been on my mind a lot.

None of this was anything I didn’t know, but seeing her pick up on it right after meeting me, without talking to me, convinced me that she was powerfully intuitive.

I watched, fascinated, as this unpretentious shaman performed a series of bizarre rituals on me. After reading my Kopal embers, Maria Angela took an egg and rubbed it all over my body. This, I was told, was to suck out all the negative energy inside of me. She would sometimes spit into a bucket; the idea was that she was taking some of my negative energy, too, but she didn’t want to absorb it herself, so she had to spit it out.

I felt vaguely repulsed by the spitting, yet also so fortunate to be granted this rare window into a ritual I couldn’t have imagined in my wildest dreams.

Next she took some fresh oregano branches, put a lot of water in her mouth, and beat me with the branches while spitting the water all over my face and body.

I am serious. You can’t make this stuff up.

This unexpected assault grossed me out a lot more than the previous spitting, which suddenly seemed dainty in comparison to this jet of water that was suddenly directed directed at my eyes, nose, and mouth.

My first impulse was to laugh, as this struck me as peculiar and undignified; however, I’m sure plenty of things I do would also seem strange to the uninitiated, and ultimately I was grateful to have been granted access to this snapshot of culture so different than my own.

Apparently, this part of the ritual is intended to call back a part of the soul which, because of some negative experiences, may have gotten estranged from the body. I was told that I should laugh and say “Estoy aqui” (I am here) while this was happening in order to help facilitate the soul-retrieval process.

Throughout this process she was praying aloud, in both Spanish and the local Mazateca language.

Next, she cracked an egg into a glass, mixed it up, and added coca cola. I was instructed to drink this healing beverage.

Side note: Coca Cola did a big propaganda campaign in the region some decades ago, when they set up shop in Mexico. The campaign was intended to convince the indigenous people that Coke was sacred, and could heal sick people. It worked splendidly. Nowadays Coke is used in a myriad of religious ceremonies and can usually be found on alters and in churches.

I found Coca Cola’s success in this region to be both fascinating and deeply unsettling. On the one hand, it was undeniably remarkable to witness the sheer power of a well-crafted PR campaign, capable of embedding a commercial product into centuries-old indigenous rituals and traditions. On the other hand, it was dismaying and grotesque to see the result of a multinational corporation having infiltrated and commodified spiritual practices in such a way.

This whole process took around 30 minutes. At the end of the procedure, she read my kopal incense embers again and said something like “You must feel much better now”. I felt kind of sleepy, since I had been sitting for awhile, but I didn’t really feel particularly different. I have done a lot of ‘energy work’ type of things, and I never really feel different afterward, though I don’t doubt that it did something on some level which I’m not adept at perceiving.

The mishmash alter at the house of the limpia shaman. Image by author.

Mushroom Ceremony #1

Later that day when it was time for the ceremony, we were led into a basement room in Andrea’s house. The windows were blanketed with thick, heavy curtains, and there were some big, somewhat dingy old mattresses on the floor in front of an altar.

Again, the unpretentiousness of this environment struck me as being in stark contrast to the sleek image of modern-day ‘spiritual’ spaces, like fancy meditation halls and yoga shalas. I liked this better; it felt both more real and more comfortable, and the humility of the space relaxed me.

Andrea greeted us by burning copious amounts of kopal around our bodies and then instructing us to lie down. We were each given plates with different quantities of mushrooms according to what she felt was the correct amount for us as individuals, but she said that we could ask for more.


The plates also included two raw cacao beans with the shells still on. In Central America, cacao is considered sacred, and it has been used as an entheogen for centuries or milennia. Indigenous lore holds that cacao taken together with mushrooms can enhance the experience.

My plate had four little mushrooms-a conspicuously small portion compared to the others. This was exactly what I’d hoped for. Andrea’s ability to gauge my capacity like this made me trust her even more.

She told me to just eat one to start, and see how I feel after that. Very slowly I ate one mushroom, and another 1.5 some minutes later.

I didn’t feel anything for a long time. My two companions began their trips well before I did, and I started to think I’d not eaten enough and nothing was going to happen.

During the ceremony, we lay down on our backs and covered our eyes with clothing or blankets. Andrea stood by, praying, chanting, and singing for us in Mazateca (the local language) and Spanish. In this culture, the curandero’s presence, prayers, and songs are seen just as much a part of the healing experience as the mushrooms themselves.

Despite being a self-professed Catholic, Andrea also prayed to Mother Earth. In her incantations she created a container that felt very safe and protected within which we could conduct our psychedelic-induced self-explorations.

After about 2 hours, I started to get that feeling like when you are in bed with the flu and your body feels all weird and uncomfortable. I’d been thinking a lot lately about the importance of being able to tolerate and feel discomfort without the need to get away, to make it stop. I mused that maybe this experience was about really applying that principle, so I just sat with it and tried not to turn away from the experience.

After some time I noticed that I felt very hot, despite the fact that my companions were cold and were asking for extra blankets.

Now, this is where I should tell you something odd about myself: I have never in my life known anyone who gets cold as easily as me. That includes infants, old people, and other skinny people of my own stature. So it was extremely strange that I should feel hot while my peers (who regulate temperature like normal people) felt cold.

I recalled that a couple of Chinese doctors had told me I had “true heat false cold” — a state in which your heat is trapped in your core, causing anxiety and overthinking, but it doesn’t circulate, which causes one to feel cold. I began to feel that the hot feeling I was experiencing was actually some of that heat leaving my core and finally being allowed to circulate and expend itself.

As I laid there and the flu feeling subsided, a couple of realizations came to me.

They weren’t trippy and technicolor; I had no visuals or vision and I don’t know if these realizations came from being in a very self-reflective container or from the ingestion of the mushrooms. They also are not likely to sound particularly profound to you, but for me they were very meaningful.

The first realization was that if I want to improve my health while feeling more present and less anxious and in my head, I need to breathe in my belly instead of in my chest – a habit that, I could see clearly under the influence of the mushrooms, was keeping my nervous system in a state of perpetual fight or flight. 

The second realization was simply about how exactly I can go about changing the things I want to change.

Some people can make sweeping changes in an instant without looking back, or quit a bad habit cold turkey. Not me. At the time of the ceremony, for example, I’d been working on detaching myself from my ex for the better part of a year. I need time to make things happen, and that’s ok.

Lying there feeling sick and trying to breathe through my belly and not feeling like I was on the brink of some kind of sudden, easy, passionate transformation, I felt deeply my way to make changes is gradual, incremental, and not particularly easy., I understood that my repeated striving to make big, dramatic changes led only to lack of follow through and failure to make any meaningful, lasting changes.

So many times I’ve promised myself that starting RIGHT NOW, I’m going to exercise for x amount of minutes EVERY DAY. That starting today, I’ll really stop binging on sugary treats, for real.

That from now on, I’ll make myself a daily schedule and follow it to a T, upleveling massively in organization and efficiency.

That I’ll gather all my energy and invest it consistently into whatever passion-fueled business idea has been bopping around my brain, starting right away, with full power.

That I’d finally start living up to my optential, for real this time. 

In that moment, however, lying there vaguely ill under the influence of mushrooms, I understood that instead of trying to make myself make big changes in one fell swoop, I have to honor my own way of making changes and reaching towards big goals.

That means small and bit-by-bit, with a focus on celebrating and sustaining small victories, and it also means ditching not only the enthusiastic voice that says “let’s do it all at once and never look back”, but also the overly-critical internal monologue that takes over upon inevitably failing to sustain big efforts. 

Although my trip wasn’t particularly ‘psychedelic’ in the sense one might imagine, Tamar, on the other hand, did have a much more dramatic and stereotypically-psychedelic trip. (Trigger warning: slightly gruesome description to follow.)

Tamar saw burning bodies and morbid images, and came to a feeling of peace with death. She saw herself as a little girl, shy at first, but then she coaxed the little girl out of her hiding place and she hugged her, and realized that she loved this little girl and needed to take care of her better by tuning into what she truly needed instead of habitually putting everyone else’s desires first.

Tamar had come to Mexico at my urging right after having begun the process of leaving a long-term abusive relationship. After the trip, she said she didn’t feel a shred of attachment left to him. This was very important because prior to the trip, she had frequently still felt she wanted to be with him, and in the upcoming days after we returned to Oaxaca, she was scheduled to head back to their place to sell her things and prepare to move overseas for a long time.

Ceremony #2

The next night we went to the house of Juan, the shaman brother of Andrea and another descendant of the same famed indigenous grandmother.

The setup was similar, and he read our kopal embers again. For mine he told me that I am nervous and weak and that my soul is very, very far away from my body.

His assessment felt confronting because I didn’t want to see myself that way, even though there was some truth to it. It felt somehow damning, as though he was equating my entire character to feelings that wax and wane with time. Despite my misgivings about how far-reaching his judgment might be, I was still impressed by his ability to detect something I’d been experiencing frequently as of late.

When we laid down to take the mushrooms, Juan, like Andrea, sang, chanted, and prayed for us in Spanish and Mazateca.

Throughout the ceremony, he kept giving us more mushrooms, and of differing varieties. I ate more mushrooms than I ever have before. I must have eaten at least five or so.

And what happened was…almost nothing! I didn’t feel altered at all, at least not on a conscious level. I just laid down and focused on belly breathing. I stayed very, very still, despite having had the urge to move many times. I just focused on my belly and brought my runaway mind back to my belly time and again. Still, still, still. At the end of the ceremony, I realized that it was the best meditation I’d had in years.

Again I felt very warm, and again the others felt cold.

This time, however, I felt that the warmth circulating through my body was coming from my sustained belly breathing. It didn’t ever feel feverish like it had at some points the day before.

This direct experience of how profoundly breathing can affect physiology helped cement my conviction that breathing the right way is really important, and that if I do this regularly I can really deepen my meditation practice as well — something that might help to get me out of my head.

Tamar also didn’t feel anything psychedelic, despite eating a lot of mushrooms of various types. Some googling years later supported our hypothesis that apparently, one can build up a tolerance to psilocybin very quickly, such that taking them two nights in a row may lead to diminished or no effects the second night for some people. 

Trip #3

My third trip was a few weeks later, in the company of some friends in the idyllic mountain town of San Jose del Pacifico. Overconfident since that 5-mushroom trip had had no effect, I ate even more mushrooms this time.

We also squeezed lemon juice over them, which is said to aid in absorption and make the effect come on quickly and strongly.

I was with Tamar and another friend with whom I felt very comfortable, we were in one of the most insanely beautiful places I’d ever been, and I was a master at this now, so what could possibly go wrong? 

Plenty, it turns out.

A mural in San Jose del Pacifico, Oaxaca, Mexico (another town where visitors come to take mushrooms.) Image by author.

After munching our mushrooms, we decided to hike up away from the hostel in order to be in nature and get away from a well-intentioned but overly-eager group with whom we did not want to trip. 

After walking for some time, I asked the group if we could stop and rest, because my heart was pounding at a zillion miles an hour and I felt breathless.

I also noticed that, for the first time, I was having an actual psychedelic trip, or at least what I typically thought of as one: When I closed my eyes, I could see some defined, dancing geometric patterns, and my body felt…different, somehow, in a way I don’t really have terminology to describe.

What struck me was that the psychedelic part didn’t freak me out at all. As someone who has always been scared of the hallucinatory aspect of psychedelic substances, the idea of seeing things that weren’t there or having my senses altered in any way used to really scare me. At the root of this was a fear that such an experience would render me inept and unable to control and take care of myself.

The geometric lines were not scary, though. The pounding heart rate was. And even though we rested for some minutes, it just wouldn’t slow down.

Now, I’m not great with altitude. The altitude wasn’t that high, but it was high enough to feel it. I couldn’t tell whether my fast heartbeat was a result of a general lack of fitness combined with altitude sickness, or an effect of the rather large portion of mushrooms I’d just consumed.

After a few more minutes, I felt the strong urge to get away from the people I was with, with whom I had felt so comfortable just a few minutes before, and take care of myself by myself. I bid them adieu more quickly than they could react, and left them with expressions of consternation on their faces.

Once back at the hostel, I laid myself down in a hammock, hoping that being horizontal would calm my racing heart. It didn’t, so I consulted Google – a questionable decision. Google informed me that HAPE (High-altitude pulmonary edema) typically sets in after a couple of days at altitude, particularly in cases where someone has over-exerted themselves.

This new information felt like cause for alarm, as I’d already hiked down to town and back up earlier that day, thinking I was already acclimated. I started to really question whether there might be something more serious going on than a reaction to mushrooms, so I walked back down to town and sat down in front of a shop to see if being at a slightly lower altitude might make things better. 

It didn’t, so I actually hitchhiked about 1000 meters down the mountain to a town over an hour away. Once there, I just sat in the bus station for a few hours waiting for my heart rate to calm down and hoping that in case of a medical emergency, being in a public place would mean someone would help me. After a long time, I started to feel somewhat better, so I checked myself into a hotel.

To this day, I still argue with myself about whether this uncanny reaction was from the altitude or the mushrooms, but I suspect it was a bit of both – perhaps the vulnerability and anxiety that comes with being intoxicated while reacting to altitude amplified the effects.

Meanwhile, my heart rate finally returned to normal laying down in the hotel, but I felt totally wrecked and depleted. 

Now, here’s where it gets even weirder: I’d been a strict vegetarian for a number of years at that point, but something in me felt that I absolutely had to eat some meat.

I wandered the streets of Mihuatlan in search of flesh and eventually found ultra-local no-frills place offering something like pork steak. 

It was awful. It was chewy and full of cartilidge and not salty enough. There could have been many delicious ways to break my years-long meat fast, but this was not it. Still, though, I powered through and ate most of it.

When I was finished, I felt reborn. My energy had returned and I felt grounded again.

All in all,his bad trip led me to an empowering realization: I could still take care of myself and get myself where I needed to be, without anyone’s help, even during a psychedelic trip. I could tap into what was best for me, even when it involved something counterintuitive, like eating meat.

The Takeaway

For me, the big challenge was integrating what I’d learned. I left Huautla feeling like I had really had some profound realizations, but with a fear that the effect would wear off and I’d soon just go back to my habitual thought patterns and way of breathing.

I have indeed stopped expecting myself to make bold, sweeping changes and I do remember regularly now that that’s not my way and that that’s ok. However, despite giving it initial attention, I have really dropped the ball on belly breathing. 

As for the trip in the mountains with my friends, even though it was such a scary experience, it really did leave a lasting impact in terms of making me more aware of and confident in my own capacity to handle challenges. Looking back five years later, I’m still grateful for this ‘bad’ trip. The experience left me feeling more confident in my own capacity and less like the nervous and weak person the second shaman had described when he read my kopal embers.

And what of Tamar? Well, she canceled our plan to move to Nicaragua together and went back to her old life, got a job she hated, and got back together with her abusive ex. No more taking care of little Tamar, no more cutting that cord of attachment to a man who doesn’t treat her anywhere close to right.

So, to me, the takeaway is this: Yes, psychedelic mushrooms can indeed facilitate introspection and important realizations, and for this they are truly a powerful medicine. However, sustained transformation only happens if we make it happen.

No substance or therapist or life-changing event can make us make sustained changes. We have to do that by ourselves, through sheer willpower, in the unexciting trenches of everyday life and small moments. No one and nothing is going to do the work for us.

You Essential Tips for Exploring Mushrooms in Huautla de Jimenez and San Jose del Pacifico

If you want to go to Huautla de Jimenez or San Jose del Pacifico and take mushrooms yourself, here are a few tips:

• If going to Huautla, ask around for recommendations for curanderos. If there’s one you become particularly interested in working with, ask around and hear from different people to determine how well-reputed they are.
  
  Take your time to do your homework; spend at least a few days in town drumming up information before you do a velada.
  
• Keep in mind that the person conducting the ceremony is just as instrumental in your journey as the mushrooms themselves. Check out this article for more thought-provoking info on that point.
  
• If you’re in San Jose del Pacifico looking to take mushrooms without the structure of a formal velada, ask around for ‘Rubi’ or ‘The Wizard’. These are two well-reputed mushroom vendors.
  
  ‘The Wizard’ had a little stall on the main road in the village with many varieties, and he could speak at great length about their different effects; I’ve never met Rubi, but she has been recommended as another trusted and knowledgable source.
  
• If possible, buy fresh mushrooms instead of dried ones. Dried ones may not be as potent and could even have gone bad. You don’t know how and for how long they were stored. Nevertheless, carefully sniff and inspect fresh mushrooms as well, checking for mold or nasty odors that could indicate something awry.
  
• Ask lots of questions to make sure you understand what you’re getting and that you trust the person who’s selling mushrooms to you. Don’t buy a psychoactive substance from someone you don’t get a good feeling from or are not sure you can completely trust. 

Good luck and safe travels!