It was on a backpacking adventure with my friends through Southeast Asia in 2022 that I can truly say my life changed forever. Not only because it was this trip that led me to travel full-time- but rather, it was all because of a humble mushroom. 

While visiting Indonesia, there was a certain island that piqued our interest- Gili Trawangan, otherwise lovingly known as “Gili T.” Famed for wild full moon parties and psychedelic mushrooms, it was ravaged by a tsunami in 2019, leaving the island’s tourism to recover. But still, plenty of magic remained in this special little place.

It was June 15th when we decided to take on the journey of magic mushrooms- and to call them magic surely was an understatement. We found the best on the island at Banana Leaf Bungalows, thanks to fellow traveler Travel Tom Tom. Blended with citrus juice and poured into orange juice bottles, the “mushroom shakes” smelled absolutely vile. But we gulped them down anyway, in the comfort of our beautiful villa in the quiet north of the island. 

I didn’t expect much- I was well-acquainted with cannabis, it couldn’t be much different… right? My friends told me that I would “see funny colors.” But I never imagined that this day would mark a distinct separation of who I was then and who I am today. 

We sat by the pool, laughing as the effects began to set in. I looked at my friend’s face, and saw him age from young to old. I focused on the hanging vines around us, watching them grow and melt. We walked through the jungle of towering palms near our place, admiring every detail of it all.

There really was a magic to it- a purplish sort of haze that gently settled over our eyes. It felt like seeing the world for the very first time. It wasn’t a “hallucination;” it was seeing things for what they really are- I had just been too distracted to notice. 

We walked to the beach- it was like being a kid again. I explored the tide pools without fear or hesitation, fixated on watching a little red crab crawl and poke its head out of its shell. Slowly, the effects began to take over.

I cannot properly articulate what I experienced that day. It was something that cannot be explained or understood- only felt. I came to realize how I’ve spent most of my life thinking rather than feeling. And how beautiful it is to feel. I walked further out to the tide pools by myself, leaving the others on the sand.

I stood alone in the pools, staring into the sun and its reflection across the water. I began to cry in a way I haven’t since I was a child, a delicate way- it was a complete release. I felt more human than I have ever felt. I felt welcomed by the earth, by the nature that surrounded me- as if it were calling me home. 

As I stood on that beach crying, I released it all- everything. Past rejections and sadness and depression, the anxiety, the hopelessness, the eating disorders which had all become a part of my life. And I realized that all of these things were not me. All of the hard times I had suffered through, they happened not to me- but for me. For me to become the person I need to be in this world. For me to have the courage to live as my authentic self, to fulfill the dreams of my inner child. 

I looked to the clouds and saw infinite figures- “the sky people” as my friends would later call them. They seemed to dance for me, arranging themselves into kaleidoscopic patterns. They communicated to me, in a way that I cannot really describe- almost as if through energy. I was told that there is no reason to fear- neither life nor death.

It was that day that I came to fully realize that something much greater than us exists out there. The something that religion, science, philosophy, all human pursuits of knowledge try relentlessly to explain. The something which keeps us lying awake at night, full of unanswerable questions. And there is just this “something.” Everything else- the jobs we so highly prize, our political agendas, our division and wars and ego and ego and ego- they are all just a distraction from this… something.

I watched the sun set into a layer of clouds, surrounded by an electric rainbow glow. “Was it all always this beautiful?” I asked myself. And as I stood on that beach, engulfed by that “something,” I knew I was born again, anew.