Dear St. Valentine: Can Magic Mushrooms Mend A Broken Heart?

Nope, you’re not tripping — do not adjust your TV set — everything really is pink.

Yup, it’s Valentine’s Day again. The most divisive of all holidays — to some folks it represents blissful love, while to others it represents the worst kind of mawkish commercialisation.

A Modern Way To Valentine’s Day

Like it or not however, Valentine’s Day seems to get bigger and bigger every year; with heart-shaped candies turning up in the store before you’ve even gotten rid of your Christmas tree. But, even if you aren’t into the ooey-gooey romance of it all, the holiday can be a useful opportunity to check in with all the different sources of love in our lives, be it romantic, familial, or friendly. It can be a time to remember who, and what, are important to us.

And wouldn’t you know it — if you need a little help getting to that place of love — magic mushrooms are actually famed for their ability to reinvigorate your passions for life, the universe, and everything!

Valentine’s Heartbreak: It Happens!

However, despite our best intentions, sometimes we find ourselves on the wrong side of the bouquet of roses — munching on the sharp thorns.

Break-ups and relationship endings are always hard, whether you’re the dumped, the dumpee, or even if the end was mutual. A break-up is usually the end of someone’s presence in your life. (A friendship with an ex is a nice idea — but it’s not always possible!) Depending on how significant the relationship, its ending can throw up all kinds of questions: who are you without that person? Who do you want to be? Will you find someone new? Do you want to find someone new? It can certainly be hard on both your self esteem and your sense of identity. 

So How Do You Mend A Broken Heart?

So, how do you mend a broken heart? 

Well, there’s no simple answer. The only thing that will definitely help is time (unfortunately!) However there are things you can do to speed along the process. A good support network of friends and family, self care, and a therapy or meditation regime is essential. Another thing you could add to this mix is magic mushrooms.  

Now, hear us out. We’re not suggesting that immediately after a tearful break-up you take a huge dose of shrooms. When you are feeling emotionally vulnerable or unstable, psychedelics are not a sensible idea. To be honest, neither is drinking heavily or going wild on your social media account. As a magic mushroom trip can be an intense experience, it is key to ensure that you are in a strong and secure mindset — that you are not using it as a means of ‘escape’.

However, shrooms can help with some of the symptoms that can occur as a result of a break-up. Depression, anxiety or even PTSD can occur after a particularly taxing split. Recent scientific study into the effect of psilocybin (the active compound in magic mushrooms and truffles) on these conditions has found that it can both alleviate and treat them. This suggests that psilocybin could indeed, help a person deal with the effects of heartbreak.

Microdosing As A Tool For Healing Heartbreak

If you are still feeling quite fragile, microdosing psilocybin could be an essential tool to get you back on track. Sometimes after a break-up it is hard to motivate yourself to get out of bed, focus, or even just be in the moment — especially if that certain someone is still looming large in your mind.

These are the beneficial effects of microdosing:

• Improved mental health (e.g. a reduction in anxiety and depression symptoms — which can appear or be exacerbated due to heartbreak)
• Improved and eased social interactions (great for getting back out there )
• A release of creativity
• An increase in energy
• Higher focus
• Better concentration

Heartbreak & a Higher Dose: Tripping For Transcendence

If you are feeling like making a larger spiritual splash — a full shake-up of your psyche post break up — you could take a full, higher-dose, magic mushroom trip. It is important that you only do this if you feel mentally strong enough, however. It also helps if you have prior experience with psychedelics. 

Tripping to transcendence certainly beats getting a crazy post-split haircut or an outlandish new wardrobe! 

The great thing about a magic mushroom trip is it is entirely your experience. After a break up, we can get caught in a loop of only thinking about ourselves in relation to our former partner, as opposed to thinking about ourselves as a complete person who existed before we met them, and continues to exist after them. The introspection you can achieve while tripping on psilocybin will give you clarity, and help you process what you have been through. 

It may seem an extreme comparison, but this is why psilocybin is so effective as a tool for end-of-life care. It helps the user gain acceptance and assuage the anxiety of the unknown — hence why it’s being rolled out across countries like Canada as a groundbreaking therapeutic treatment. In many ways a break-up requires a similar form of acceptance — a letting go of what cannot be changed. 

Breaking-Up With Your Ego

Psilocybin is also a hero when it comes to grappling with the ego. The ego, it is true, often sustains the worst injuries in a break-up. Our ego is our sense of self — and if we feel like we have been rejected it hurts. In fact studies show that rejection actually fires up the same areas of the brain that physical pain does. Heartbreak is not just an emotional ouchie! 

So, when our ego suffers this feeling of rejection it can make us question who we are. We end up running round and round in circles of self doubt, which can manifest in unhealthy psychological and behavioural patterns.

What psilocybin can do is loosen the clutches of the ego by temporarily quieting the DMN, (or Default Mode Network). This is the part of your brain that controls your sense of self and self-image, which, if it becomes overactive can cause excessive anxiety and negative thoughts. This quieting can give you the time and space to see past your hurt, and assess things clearly, with a view to move on.  

Connect To A Universe Full Of Love

At high doses psilocybin can give you the most amazing gift of all — ego death (or ego dissolution). This is when you are completely freed from your constructed self. It is comparative to the concept of spiritual Enlightenment. By freeing yourself from the ego’s cage you can separate yourself from your heartbreak and see the bigger picture. A break-up becomes less painful when you realize you are connected a universe full of love.

At the very least, temporarily shushing your ego helps you to take things less personally. All relationships are different, and sometimes they just don’t work — it’s no one’s fault. A magic mushroom trip can help you to see that. 

So, Happy Valentine’s folks! Especially to those out there nursing heartache. We’re sending warm and fuzzy vibes. 

However, you celebrate (or not!) this February 14th is up to you!