My name is Michael Griswold, and about 20 years ago, well, 21 years ago now, I proposed to a girl at the top of the Empire State Building and was madly in love with her. I was a very devoted Christian at the time, and she was a virgin when we got married. And of course, she said yes at the top of the Empire State Building, and we got married.
And a few months after we got married, we found out that we were going to have a baby. And at this point, I mean, I was pretty much living a fairytale life. You know, I’d come from a family that was anything but.
My mom was on drugs when I was a child, and meeting Libby and falling in love with her and her falling in love with me was this huge turn of events for me. You know, I felt like I had escaped kind of the white trash and kind of ugly childhood that I’d grown up with. And here I was, married to a beautiful girl.
We’re about to have a baby. And then on the night before our first anniversary, as we were driving to celebrate, Libby was asleep in the passenger seat, seven and a half months pregnant, and I fell asleep behind the wheel. And when I woke up in the hospital, in the emergency room, the chaplain next to my bed said, we only brought back one body from the accident.
So both Libby and her unborn son both died in that car accident. And if you could imagine how difficult that would have been, of course, losing anyone is terrible, and it’d be your own fault. Man, it was devastating.
And for me, especially, you know, the reason I tell you this story about the way that I grew up is because when this happened, it was particularly difficult because I had built my whole life on this Christian faith and this new life that I had found by marrying Libby. And for me to be the one who ruined it was devastating. I felt like I was doomed.
Like God hated me, that I must be such a terrible person for the way that I saw the world then was her dying was the result of some terrible thing that I had done that I wasn’t aware of. And I think that’s what happens sometimes when people, when it’s hard to make sense of life, you know, man, a lot of times we don’t know what the hell is going on. Self-help salesmen out here that try to put everything into a nice little box and make it sound like, oh, well, you know what? It’s this, this, this, and this.
Well, it becomes real confusing to try to make sense of that stuff. And the only thing that you can come away with is, man, I must be a terrible person. And of course, you know, my friends, the people who knew me, they would try to speak sense in me.
Hey, man, you know, it was an accident and accidents happen. But there was no words that were going to shake the feeling of guilt and of depression and of deserving to suffer. And so what happened after that was years of very self-destructive behavior, very terrible behavior.
I went from being this Christian boy who didn’t even cuss, you know, didn’t drink, didn’t do anything, to making out with my best friend’s wife, to coming on to girls that were way too young for me and just being, you know, I felt like a terrible person. And so I became a terrible person. In the midst of it, while I’m doing all these things, inside I’m in turmoil and thinking to myself, man, I don’t know how to get out of this.
It was as if there was this me inside of me that was like running all over the place, like looking for a way out, but I couldn’t find it. And I tried everything that you could think of. I tried to drink myself to death and tried smoking as much weed as I could.
And I even tried talking to a couple of therapists. But I mean, who was going to talk me out of this? I mean, when I went to talk to somebody, who’s going to be able to relate to being responsible for killing your own wife and child? And so I felt very lost and hopeless. And at one particularly low point, I was laying on the floor of my brother’s house because I couldn’t afford to play.
I was a grown man. I was 40 years old and I couldn’t afford a place to live because I just couldn’t get it together. And my brother, thank God, was nice enough to let me stay at his house.
And I was laying on the floor and I remember thinking, man, I don’t know if I’m going to make it. But if I do, I swear to God, I’m going to tell other people how to get out of here, out of this. Because even though the situation I had gone through was so personal and so desperately difficult for me, I knew that I wasn’t the only one who felt that way.
Even though the circumstances were different, there were other people who were in a similar situation as me and who felt just as lost and just as desperate. And I thought, man, if I ever find my way out, I’m going to make sure I tell other people. Turned out, I finally came across psychedelics and it was the strangest thing.
I was, you know, in the movies, it’s always like this. The movies are so often great depictions of life. You know, in the movies, when you’re like, man, when the hero is like, man, it’s at the bottom, you just think, man, he ain’t going to make it.
My man is in trouble. I was online and I read this article about a 15-year-old girl who was suffering from manic depression. Okay.
Now, this girl was so severe that when she was manic, it took four grown men to wrestle her to the ground. And when she was depressed, her dad had to remove everything out of the house that could in any way harm her because he was terrified that he would wake up in the morning and his daughter would be dead. Oh.
So you can imagine this single father, right, of this one little girl and all he’s trying to do is like get through to his daughter, but nothing is like she’s like somewhere in there. Where is she? Desperate, he goes and a doctor recommends that she try a super dose of LSD. Now, look, I grew up in the 1980s and I believe the propaganda that said, hey, this is your brain and they showed you an egg and then they showed you a frying pan and said, this is your brain on drugs and they crack the egg and they make it sizzle.
I believed all that stuff. And so when I thought, when I heard about LSD, I thought, oh man, this is going to make me go crazy or something. Well, here’s what happened.
They gave this girl, this 15-year-old girl, a super dose of LSDs, but they gave her too much. They gave her so much that she ended up in a coma for three days. Oh, wow.
As I was reading this, I was, I was thinking, man, what would it be like to be this dad? I mean, you’re trying to save your daughter’s life and you might’ve just killed her. I mean, I just felt, wow. But it’s what happened when she came out of the coma that, that turned everything around for me.
Because when she came out of the coma, she said three words that changed my life completely. She said, dad, it’s over. And when I read those words, I knew exactly what she meant.
I knew exactly what she meant that this continual hounding and being chased by something that you just can’t get away with, get away from. And God damn it, I don’t know what the fuck is going on, but God, I just can’t get away. Man, I could feel the relief through the screen that I read the story on.
And I thought, man, this, I’ve got to try this. Well, I knew one person, I was living in Cleveland, Ohio, actually. And I knew this one girl who in LA who could probably get it for me.
And I was like, listen, and I was broke. I probably had like $300 to my name. I was like, listen, this is how much money I got.
Will you send me as much LSD as you can find? And she’s like, all right. So she sends it out to me. Now I get like 10 tabs of LSD.
Okay. There were these little pyramids and I had no idea what I was doing. I didn’t know how much the dosage was.
And I didn’t even ask. I just thought, well, I’m going to try to take as many as I can without putting myself in a coma. So I took six of them and she also sent me some DMT.
So I smoked this DMT and then I took six things of LSD. And let me tell you something. The next 12 hours were unlike any experience of reality that I had ever had.
Look up until that point, the grounding achievement of my life and the happiest time that I’d ever had was marrying Libby. Let me tell you something. These 12 hours was the most incredible experience of my life.
Suddenly it was as if everything made sense. Up until that point, my whole life was like trying to take a billion pieces of a puzzle and trying to somehow put all these fucking things together in a way to make sense. And no matter how much I tried, I couldn’t fucking get it to work.
You know how you make a puzzle? And if you put the puzzle pieces together and they aren’t quite right and they lift up a little bit and they aren’t laying flat. My life always felt like that. Like, goddammit, the pieces ain’t just right.
And I don’t know what the hell to do with it. All of a sudden, everything was wow. I was in awe of the mere fact of existence.
And not only that, the things I had spent the better part of 15 years running around in my mind and always coming to these blind alleys where I couldn’t escape. I would come to this thing where this or this has to be true and I couldn’t decide which one it was. And motherfucker, it was just driving me crazy because it seemed like I always had to choose between which is more important and I didn’t know which one it was.
In this trip, life… I learned later that the hippies and all the fucking Buddhist people, they call it non-dualism. You know, this idea that this isn’t this or this, but everything is what it is. And the thing that made it clear to me was, I realized that what made Libby’s death tragic was the same thing that made it beautiful.
And that is that I love the fucking shit out of her. You see, all these years that I was suffering and thought that I deserved to suffer, I thought that I was suffering because I was guilty. And I realized in a way that no words could ever fucking convince me of, I realized in this experience, this some connection to whatever there is, I realized in a way that is undeniable that the reason I was suffering wasn’t because I was guilty, it was because I was sad.
And it was just that simple. All of these years of suffering because I was sure that I deserved to, and it all made sense. And it’s difficult to say this because if you don’t know me or if you hear it incorrectly, you could really make fun of me for what I’m about to say.
But even Libby’s death made sense. I don’t mean to say that it was beautiful, that it was great or anything like that. I mean, in a way, I do mean to say that it was beautiful because because it showed the love that we shared.
But here again, the experience made sense to me in a way that is difficult to convey in words. At any rate, it freed me from this shackle, this mental shackles that had kept me in prison for nearly two decades. Suddenly, you know, when I was a Christian, I read the Bible all the time.
And I was so impressed by all of these miracles and all these displays of power in the Bible and Jesus saying that you need to be born again. And I thought it was so strange that in church, if the way that somebody’s born against raised their hand and fell out of card and say a prayer and nothing really changes about their life. This was what I think Jesus was talking about, because that’s exactly what it felt like.
It felt like I was born again into a new world that was completely different than this black and white, this or that type of linear world that I had been living in. And all of a sudden, I was alive. Now, I mean, I was I still had a bunch of fucking shit to figure out.
But it’s still like it wasn’t like I was somehow, you know, reincarnated as the Buddha or something. I still had to incorporate what I experienced into my life. But the difference was I could see things clearly.
I remember singing in church that old hymn, Amazing Grace. I once was blind, but now I see. Man, I used to sing that shit.
I didn’t know what the hell I was talking about. But after this experience, I knew exactly what it meant. I once was blind, but now I see.
That’s what exactly what it felt like. Right. And after that experience, by a series of incredibly serendipitous circumstances, I found myself on a beach in Costa Rica.
And true to my word, I was leading people through what is called a hero’s journey of magic mushrooms, a hero’s journey being a large dose of magic mushrooms that brings people into this experience with the divine, with cosmic consciousness, with whatever it is that is here before us and is here after us. And the reason I was using magic mushrooms is because I started experimenting with that and really training myself with that because LSD is a much more violent compound and can be frightening to some people. And magic mushrooms being natural seemed like a better alternative.
So I was leading a group of people through this experience after having gone through it myself. I’m here on the beach getting the magic mushrooms from this girl that I get them from. And she says, oh, do you know Judy? And no, hey, Judy, nice to meet you.
And Judy had these micro dosing wafers. If you know what a communion wafer is, if you ever go to the Catholic church, you get the communion wafer. If you can imagine a communion wafer, except it’s smaller in diameter and thicker, that’s what these little magic mushroom wafers were.
And immediately I thought, yo, are these yours? And she’s like, no, no, but I can put you in touch with the person who makes them. I said, oh, man. So I call this guy up from Costa Rica.
I call this guy up from Costa Rica on WhatsApp. I tell him my story and I say, man, look, I told myself that when I was going through this, that if I ever found my way out, I was going to show other people how to do it. Dude, I know that there’s millions of people who if they had access to this would absolutely be so thrilled.
People who are going through depression, people who are going through anxiety, people who are going through PTSD, who are only being force fed antidepressants or being told that they need to spend weeks or months or years in therapy. And they’re driving themselves crazy because they keep thinking nothing is fucking working and they wonder if it’s their fault. But the fact is, they just don’t have the thing that actually works yet.
And if they had the thing that actually works, they would feel better. And I think it would be awesome to make it available to them. And he said, all right.
So when he did, I created a website, interestingly enough. And he said, well, you know, they’re not legal. I said, well, listen, man, I’m not an attorney.
I can’t talk about legal matters. But I tell you what, you just put all the risk on me. Because if you’re going to tell me that to give somebody who is depressed and wondering if life is worth living or even if they’re living below what they could be, they’re just getting through the day.
If you’re going to tell me to give them something that grows out of the ground and that improves their life, makes them feel more full of life, makes them feel more purposeful, makes them love the people that they are close to, makes them feel loved, makes them more clear-headed and more creative. If you’re going to tell me that gives them that, has that effect, is against the law, I’m going to say that law don’t make no sense, man. Interestingly enough, the same week that I had this conversation with the supplier, I read another article on the internet.
There’s a headline that said, top official at the DEA says, quote, the train has left the station on magic mushrooms. In other words, everybody knows that it’s going to be legalized. And so my thinking was, there’s no sense in the people who are suffering to wait around for the jerk-offs in Washington to get their shit together to sign the paperwork when I could just make it available to them now.
And so that’s what we did. And that was in 2000, that was in 2021. And since then, we’ve been making magic mushrooms available for people who suffer from depression, anxiety, and PTSD.
So that instead of dealing with antidepressants and all of those side effects or driving themselves crazy, trying to look for the root of their problems through their past trauma, which is a fucking never-ending rabbit hole that you never emerge from, they can just take something that makes them feel better, that makes them feel normal and reminds them that they’re not screwed up. They just don’t have, they haven’t yet had the thing that they need to make them feel better. The evolution of my relationship with psychedelics went from abject terror to desperate curiosity to awe to a studious inquiry to a certain level of mastery where, you know, in the way that I see the world, life is a series of skills.
And communication is a skill. And even psychedelics, the use of and experience of psychedelics is a skill. You know, you might hear, you know, a lot of times people are worried, oh man, am I going to have a bad trip? Am I going to freak out? This is just not skillful use of what is happening.
You know, after that first LSD trip, I did have another LSD trip before I started using magic mushrooms. And the second LSD trip was absolutely terrifying. I was, I was shot out into outer space and I was the only living creature in existence.
If you can imagine the terror of being the only thing that is alive, the feeling of loneliness. And yet, I mean, the reason I’m trying to tell you this is because it was so terrifying and there was a beautiful, I realized something during it because as I’m completely terrified, I’m laying on a bed with an eye mask on, completely terrified, about to have a panic attack. And I just went like this and I realized, wait a minute, I am absolutely terrified and there is nothing happening to me.
And it was a powerful moment to realize, whoa, okay. There’s a difference between what I’m thinking and what is happening. And I’d become really confused by the whole self-help movement and all these people, you know, what you think about is what you bring about and all this fucking nonsense that just becomes, makes you afraid of yourself, makes you afraid of you.
Well, oh my God, I got to make sure I don’t have any negative thoughts. And then you become self-delusional because you try to tell yourself that you’re not having any negative thoughts because you’re afraid of them. And you just end up acting like a complete and utter moron instead of just being able to recognize, hey man, you don’t have to be afraid of yourself.
And so, and then when I went to Costa Rica, I spent about two and a half years really experimenting with magic mushrooms extensively. And I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of a guy named Alan Watts. I was listening to him quite a bit, partly because the dude’s voice was just, it just got such a great voice.
I mean, just such a great voice. And he’s so clever. And he tells this story one time about the Zen Buddhist monks.
And you know, when you reach enlightenment, there’s nothing for you to do but to have a laugh. And there was something about that, that I knew there was something to it. Like there’s something, the thing about it, there was this beautiful levity exhibited in this story, right? Because all of these would-be monks come to Zen Buddhist temples, and they’re very earnest, and they’re very serious, and they just want to reach enlightenment.
And all these Zen Buddhists are just kind of rascals really. Like they just make fun of you. And there’s some levity there that all of these would-be people, and I was one of those would-be people, I was one of those try-hard, let me go get.
And the last magic mushroom trip I did before I left Costa Rica, this was perfect. This was like the perfect bookend, because I’d spent two and a half years there, and it was a grueling and emotionally cathartic period. And I did like 11 grams of mushrooms, right? And I laughed for an hour and a half.
I mean, I laughed the way that like high school girls laugh during some sort of slumber party. I’ve never been a high school girl, but I’ve seen movies where high school girls laugh at a slumber party. I’m talking the kind of laugh where every syllable that you think is hilarious, and every time you think it, it only makes it more hilarious.
And you just, I mean, look, if anybody was anywhere, I was in the middle of the forest, I was in the middle of the jungle, so nobody was even around. But if anyone was anywhere near me, they would have thought you are a lunatic, because I was just like, and I sent messages, I was sending messages to my friends. I was like, yo, dude, I done figured out the secret of life.
And I swear to God, it was like, it was this moment, this like hour and a half of beautiful clarity, where I was like, hey, little man, I done figured it out. Here’s what it is. Life is pretty simple until you take it too seriously.
And then I would burst into this guffaw of laughter that was so full of mirth, and so full of levity, and so full of the realization. You know, Alan Watts once said that the Zen Buddhists say that life is like a ball floating in a stream. Like it just, and that’s what it was like.
This like beautiful levity, where in so much of my life, even after, you know, my original experience with LLSD, like I was still like, gotta figure it out, gotta figure it out, and this realization of, ah, there is something in this world that is holding me, that is holding this whole world, that is doing something through me. I have no idea what it is. And this whole experience, I remember writing to my journal once, what is the philosophy that guides my life now? And that is to trust life.
You know, the self-help people would say, you need to trust yourself, and you need to trust your intuition, and you need to know that you’re beautiful, and strong, and powerful, and all of that fucking bullshit. Look, there’s times you can’t trust yourself because you don’t know what the fuck is going on. And if you think you can trust yourself all the time, you’re fucking stupid, because you’ve done made mistakes a thousand times.
And if you tell yourself, well, I gotta trust myself, then you become delusional, but you can trust life. Look, I, you, me, everybody, we always mess things up, but you don’t have to trust yourself, because life brought you here, and life is doing something through you, whether you know what it is or not. And this playfulness of, it’s almost as if life is the Zen Buddhist monk playing pranks on us, like really trying to get us all spun up to be like, hey, I mean, do you see how ridiculous this is right now? There’s this, the thing that I have come away from these experiences with is a profound appreciation for the levity of life, even in, boy, even in some of the most difficult, trying, and confusing of circumstances.
I don’t mean to say that, you know, like the self-help gurus, that everything is positive with a pearly white smile. I think that’s a bunch of nonsense. And I don’t think we want life to be like that.
What we want is to be able to enjoy every part of life. When it’s time to be sad, we can be sad. When it’s time to be happy, we can be happy.
And we can ride that wave skillfully without being overcome by it or ground in it.