When in Doubt, Add Mushrooms: A Mississippi Misadventure in Mental Fitness and Mycology

I had come on this walk across America to climb out of a pit of despair. I was chasing catharsis like it owed me money. I wanted transformation, rebirth, some kind of soul-level exfoliation. But instead of rising from the ashes like a phoenix—that would come later—I was just… still ash.

Soggy ash. In a pit. In Mississippi. Somewhere deep in the quiet stretch of road between hurricanes and high fences, wealth and weather, loss and legacy.

The pit, for the record, had only gotten deeper since California. I had walked through California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, and now Mississippi. And I had walked miles and miles—on purpose, no less—hoping each step might shake something loose. My grief. My guilt. My fear. My past.

I had talked to hundreds of people along the way. Not just about death or pain, but about the entire human experience. We talked about love and loss, childhood and ego, abandonment and anxiety. We talked about God and gas prices. About raising kids, losing marriages, starting over, staying soft. There were no small conversations. When you’re walking through your own unraveling, you tend to attract the kind of people who’ve sat in the fire long enough to recognize its warmth.

But still… I wasn’t fixed.

I wasn’t reborn. I wasn’t healed. I wasn’t even particularly hopeful. I was raw and ragged and wondering if the catharsis I had come looking for was just another illusion, like a mirage in the desert or a functional family group chat.

And then Mississippi began to show her layers.

I walked through the path of an old hurricane, and you could see it—see where the wind had touched down like a judgment and tore its way through lives and land. One side of the road looked like nothing had ever happened. Trees stood proud, untouched. Lawns were neat, like time never bent there. But then you’d turn your head just a few degrees, and it was raw earth and roofless homes, reminders of how random devastation can be. The storm hadn’t just hit—it had chosen.

And then—after the wreckage—came the fences.

Massive. Ornate. Stretching along the road with the kind of detail that says, “someone here has never worried about FEMA paperwork.” I saw a deer stand tucked neatly into the tree line, watched the manicured perfection of a compound so pristine it made your breath catch.

I asked someone about it later, and sure enough—it was Brett Favre’s place.

And just across the highway? Mobile homes. Double-wides. Clotheslines and porches, the kind of humble homes that hold loud dinners and soft prayers.

It was jarring—what wealth looks like when it’s placed directly beside survival. What beauty and destruction look like when you don’t blur the edges between them. Mississippi was teaching me something. About extremes. About grief. About what stands after the wind has passed.

And Gertrude—my emotional support chariot, my psychic co-pilot, my wheeled companion through chaos and cacti—had been holding it together like a champ. She hadn’t had brakes since El Paso. Not a squeak, not a complaint, just sheer will and stubborn grace. She had carried me through cracked sidewalks, dirt shoulders, and highways where we were probably illegal but politely ignored.

But the second we checked into that hotel… she let go.

We rolled through the lobby like we owned the place—because we kind of did—and just as I crossed the threshold into stillness, Gertrude let out the most dramatic exhale imaginable.

Pssssssssssssht.

Not a blowout. Just a sigh. A tiny puncture. The kind of slow leak that says, “I’ve done enough today.” And honestly? Same.

She wasn’t left in the parking lot. She came inside, like always. She earns that room as much as I do. She gets a towel for her wheels and a corner to rest in. That night, we both got to breathe.

And that’s when I took the mushroom.

Not before. Not while wandering barefoot through pine needles or collapsed memories. Not mid-walk with no guardrails. I waited until I knew I had 24 hours to be still. To be safe. To let whatever needed to come, come.

I’d like to tell you the journey was beautiful. That I floated through waves of insight, kissed the universe on the cheek, and forgave everyone who’d ever hurt me while lying in a halo of moonlight.

But it was messy.

I cried for hours. I grieved for things I hadn’t let myself grieve before. Childhood wounds I thought I had buried in New Mexico came rushing back with the subtlety of a freight train. I laughed. I ached. I stared at the ceiling like it was God. I met every version of myself I had ever silenced—and not one of them was asking to be fixed. They just wanted to be seen.

And that was the catharsis: not in transcending my pain, but in honoring it. Not in becoming someone new, but in finally loving the parts of me I’d spent a lifetime trying to outgrow.

I didn’t become a phoenix that night.

But I did find the first spark.

Not a blaze, not yet. Just a spark. A gentle, defiant flicker inside me that said: You’re not broken. You’re becoming.

The world didn’t look different the next morning, but I did. I didn’t feel healed. I felt honest. And that was a start.

I’m not sorry for that night. Not for the mushroom, not for the tears, not for needing something unconventional and a little psychedelic to reach something buried. I’m not here to say sorry for the ways I’ve saved myself.

I am here to say: when life drops you in a pit, sometimes the only way out is through the dark, the dirt, the deep. And if it happens to involve a mushroom, a slow leak, and a Mississippi breeze with a whiff of Brett Favre in the distance?

Well… stranger things have led to liberation.