Can Magic Mushrooms Reconnect us with Nature?

Throughout my life, I’ve found myself in moments of peace and oneness in nature. The 8,000 trees at Wellesley College gave me stability, courage, and connection in moments I felt the loneliest. The foreign desert landscape of Joshua Tree National Park reminded me of being wrapped in a blanket crocheted by my grandma. The crisp air, looming fog, and iconic Redwoods of Big Sur felt like the source of all life and love in the world. When I think about what matters most, I find myself back in these moments, existing in an often isolated place but filled with the sense that everything that ever was and ever will be was there all at once. I’ve felt the most at home in moments in the natural world—not when nature was the backdrop but when nature was the occasion and presented the opportunity to slow down and tune in.

I can’t help but think about how nature-focused moments like these are often distinct from most of our everyday lives. Life as most know it pushes us to disconnect from nature, forget where our food comes from, stay inside, and rush past the roses. With urbanization and technological change, our society, culture, and lives have become more human-centered, with most of us spending around 90 percent of our time inside (Klepeis et al., 2001). Even references to nature in everything from songs to Pixar movies have declined in the past 70 years (Kesebir & Kesebir, 2017; Prévot-Juillard et al., 2014).

The reality is that we and our world are worse off for it. Elizabeth Nisbet and John Zelenski (2013), researchers who study the human-nature relationship, claim that this disconnection contributes to human unhappiness and environmentally destructive behavior. This disconnection, in its most extreme form, has resulted in the current climate crisis—the most existential threat of our time, with effects including the displacement of people and other species, degradation of natural landscapes, and human psychological distress. It’s not hard to see how we need a radically new way of engaging with the natural world, a new relationship more conducive to collective human and planetary well-being.

Enter mushrooms—magic mushrooms.

What does it mean to be connected to nature?

First, let’s start with what it means to be connected to nature and why it matters. Because we as humans have distanced ourselves from the rest of nature, many have attempted to conceptualize and understand the human connection to the rest of the natural world.

One such conceptualization of the human-nature relationship is nature-relatedness, a trait-like construct that describes how much an individual feels connected to the natural world (Nisbet et al., 2009). This construct describes a type of connection that goes beyond love or knowledge of nature and includes an awareness and respect for it even when it isn’t useful or aesthetically pleasing. It is evaluated with attention to three categories: self (how an individual includes nature in their sense of self), perspective (how an individual views human-nature interaction), and experience (an individual’s comfort with nature contact; Nisbet et al., 2009).

A connection to nature matters for individual well-being. Research suggests that nature-relatedness is associated with positive affect, autonomy, personal growth, purpose, and self-acceptance (Nisbet et al., 2011). In some cases, it is even associated with life satisfaction—that is, when the individual isn’t subsequently more worried and pessimistic about the state of the world (Zelenski & Nisbet, 2014).

And it matters for planetary well-being. Nature-relatedness also correlates with environmentally responsible behavior (Nisbet et al., 2011). Naturally, people who feel more connected to nature will do more to protect and care for it. When we act in ways that protect the Earth, our collective home, we are tending to true collective well-being.

How psychedelics connect us to nature

A few years ago, I became obsessed with mushrooms, the different varieties and types, and the medicinal aspects of ones like Turkey Tail, Chaga, and Lion’s Mane (if you don’t know about them, you should seriously check them out). And, of course, my interest eventually extended to the magic ones, psychedelic mushrooms, and what new and old psychonauts, mycologists, and plant folk say they could offer—oneness, connection, nonsense, and even environmental care (McKenna, 1993; Stamets, 2023).

I’ve always wanted to believe that nature provided us with the answers to many of our questions and problems from physical ailments to psychological distress. What I now believe to be more accurate is that nature’s plants and fungi are important parts of the story, answering questions we didn’t know we had and prompting us to ask even more. They gesture toward other ways of knowing and being, often ways that don’t align with our industrialized and individualistic tendencies. Robin Wall Kimmerer (2015), scientist, environmental biology professor, enrolled member of the 24 Citizen Potawatomi Nation, and author of Braiding Sweetgrass, believes that plants are our greatest teachers.

Indigenous peoples have worked with naturally occurring psychedelics like psilocybin mushrooms for hundreds and maybe even thousands of years (George et al., 2020; Forstmann & Sagioglou, 2017). While psychedelics are being talked about in the Western context for individual psychological healing, practices involving these plants and fungi in Indigenous settings address relationality, the connection between plants, animals, and the natural world; they function to repair and cultivate these relationships (Celidwen et al., 2023). In this way, psychedelics are central to forming an intimate relationship with nature.

Research investigating the relationship between nature-relatedness and psychedelics has further spoken to this sentiment, suggesting that experience with psychedelics, specifically psilocybin found in mushrooms, reliably predicts nature-relatedness (Lyons & Carhartt-Harris, 2018, Irvine et al., 2023; Forstmann et al. 2023). And it does so whether or not the experience occurred in a natural setting. How can something that ushers us into a different state of consciousness connect us to nature in such a way?

During a psychedelic experience, repetitive patterns emerge, trees seem to breathe into themselves, and ordinary natural scenes take on a new and captivating whimsy—from clover to the lichen on tree bark, nature just seems more amazing. Individuals may notice life in parts of nature usually seen as non-sentient, realize the unity of nature, communicate with plants and animals, and even become them. In one study, a participant recounted their experience: “I became the forest. First the tree, the branches, the leaves, then I went underground and became the roots, the ground, the living beings in the ground. I was everything.” (Irvine et al., 2023, p. 179).

These potent feelings contribute to lasting reframes that include seeing harm to nature as harm to self and more wholly integrating nature into their sense of self. Some change their diets from consuming animal products to not; some change their careers to focus on sustainability (Irvine et al., 2023). Psychedelic experiences help us tune in to the living breathing world around us primarily by helping us to forget ourselves. These experiences decay our sense of self and help us rejoin the whole. A set of processes strikingly similar metaphorically to the role of mushrooms in the physical world as decomposers of natural materials and unifiers through the magnificent mycelial network.

These experiences are known as self-transcendent experiences, temporary mental states that involve ego-dissolution (a decreased sense of self) and an increased sense of connection with one’s social and physical environment (Yaden et al., 2017). Nature on its own often produces one type of self-transcendent experience, awe, a complex emotion that accompanies the perception of vastness and attempts to accommodate it (Keltner & Haidt, 2003)—hence the spiritual experiences I’ve had in nature that have made me feel so connected to everything.

However, psychedelics occasion a more overwhelming and intense type of self-transcendent experience called a mystical experience. In one study, people ranked mystical experiences occasioned by psychedelics among the top- five most meaningful and spiritually significant in their lifetimes (Griffiths et al., 2006).

Awe in nature might make you think, “Wow, nature is amazing, and we need to protect these beautiful landscapes,” but a psychedelic experience can elicit a more intense and holistic response: “I am nature and am connected to this magnificent web of life, and we cannot allow any more destruction to occur.” When our relationship with nature needs to radically change, perhaps it is these overwhelming experiences that are better suited to changing it and dealing with the current state of our collective home. Psychedelic use predicts objective knowledge about climate change, yet decreases worry (Forstmann & Sagioglou, 2023). When psychological challenges like eco-anxiety pose an additional threat, the ability to know about climate change, but not lose hope, is incredibly powerful.

An Outline For Reconnection

While the psychedelic experience can be healing and connecting, it can also be challenging and bring up feelings of dysphoria, anxiety, or panic (Nichols et al., 2016). Because of the intensity of the experience, psychedelics are not for everyone. Proper attention should be paid to set (a person’s mental state and expectations) and setting (the physical environment) to reduce risk and optimize benefits.

What is most magical (yes, magical) to me about the effect of psychedelics on nature-relatedness is it outlines what a new and better relationship with the Earth looks like, without necessarily requiring all to experience psychedelics directly.

The psychedelic experience shows us that a renewed relationship with nature is not just about spending more time outside or visiting a National Park once a year; it’s about rebuilding an emotional connection with all of nature. It’s about integrating nature into sense of self. It’s about prioritizing self-transcendent experiences that take us out of our selfish ways and reunite us with the whole. When so much of our modern lives push us to disconnect, psychedelics ask us to tune in.

The current state of our world can sometimes seem scary and leave us hopeless. It’s easy to find the negative, to spiral into the whys and hows, but as positive psychology knows all too well, optimism is a much better choice. Terry Tempest Williams, environmental writer and activist, writes, “Finding beauty in a broken world is creating beauty in the world we find” (Medaris, 2008, para. 15). What if where we find ourselves is the exact place we need to be to be open to such a radical change in how we relate to the rest of nature? When we can relate to it in a new way—when we can find awe and wonder in not just the Grand Canyon, but the moss of a backyard oak—we can tell new stories. We can tell stories about appreciating all of nature, stories that further inspire slowing down and tuning into this collective home, stories about finding oneness in nature—and that’s what I’m trying to do.

References

Celidwen, Y., Redvers, N., Githaiga, C., Calambás, J., Añaños, K., Chindoy, M. E., Vitale, R., Rojas, J. N., Mondragón, D., Rosalío, Y. V., & Sacbajá, A. (2023). Ethical principles of traditional Indigenous medicine to guide western psychedelic research and practice. The Lancet Regional Health - Americas, 18, 100410. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lana.2022.100410

Forstmann, M., & Sagioglou, C. (2017). Lifetime experience with (classic) psychedelics predicts pro-environmental behavior through an increase in nature relatedness. Journal of Psychopharmacology, 31(8), 975–988.

Forstmann, M., Kettner, H. S., Sagioglou, C., Irvine, A., Gandy, S., Carhart-Harris, R. L., & Luke, D. (2023). Among psychedelic-experienced users, only past use of psilocybin reliably predicts nature relatedness. Journal of Psychopharmacology, 37(1), 93–106. https://doi.org/10.1177/02698811221146356

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About the author | Josey Murray (C’23) is a writer and editor passionate about sustainable well-being for mind, body, and planet. Along with her MAPP degree, she holds a Bachelor’s degree in English and creative writing from Wellesley College. Her writing has appeared in mindbodygreen, Well+Good, Women’s Health Magazine, The Everygirl, and more. She aims to use storytelling to advance the conversation on how to help not just individuals flourish but the collective. When she’s not writing, she enjoys exploring the happiest places in the world with her partner, looking for mushrooms, and hanging out on the beach with her golden retriever. In February 2024, Josey will step in as associate editor of MAPP Magazine.