Mushrooms and San Pedro: two teachers

Tricycle Day is the newsletter tens of thousands of people read each week to keep up with psychedelics, written with more wit than the field usually allows itself. For their August 28 issue, they sent their network of licensed facilitators a reader's question: how do mushrooms compare to San Pedro, and when might one be a better fit than the other?

I sent back the honest version of how I hold it, and it made the issue:

"I think of mushrooms as the Niños Santos—the 'Holy Children.' They can be playful and beautiful, but also unpredictable, direct, and surprisingly challenging teachers. San Pedro feels more like a wise, gentle grandfather: steady, heart-opening, and relational."

A newsletter quote gets one breath. This is the longer exhale.

The Holy Children

The name comes from the Mazatec tradition, where the mushrooms have been called Niños Santos for generations, and I borrow it with respect because nothing else describes their temperament as well. Children are wonderful company and they do not negotiate. A mushroom journey can be tender for an hour and then turn and show you the exact thing you came in hoping to postpone. That directness is the gift. It is also why preparation matters so much, and why I screen the way I do. You do not schedule a session with the Holy Children the way you schedule a massage.

The Grandfather

San Pedro, the mescaline cactus, moves at a different pace entirely. The onset is slow, sometimes a couple of hours, and the experience is long; research cited in the issue puts mescaline around eleven hours against psilocybin's five. What fills that time, for many people, is not fireworks but warmth: an open-hearted, relational steadiness, the world turned up in resolution rather than replaced. Grandfather does not rush you, and he does not let you leave early either.

What I actually offer, said plainly

My licensed work in Colorado and Oregon is psilocybin facilitation under each state's program, and that is what MycoMuse offers. San Pedro is not part of those regulated programs and it is not a service here. I write about it because clients ask, because the comparison teaches something real about how medicines differ, and because an honest guide tells you where the map ends.

Why the metaphor earns its keep

Talking about medicines as teachers is not decoration. It changes how people prepare and how they integrate. You relate to a teacher: you show up rested, you bring your real questions, you expect to be surprised, and afterward you do the homework. That last part is the whole second half of this work, and it has its own essay: integration, the quiet work.

Where to find me, and the other half of my week

Tricycle Day is made by the team at Althea, and my facilitator profile lives on their platform. Oregon clients can also find me in the Portland Integration Network, a directory of integration providers there. The clinical half of my week, psychiatry, ketamine-assisted therapy, and integration therapy, happens at my separate practice, MindMorph, which wrote its own note on this feature and on why the two practices stay deliberately separate.