When I first met Adam, I was going through one of the darkest and most challenging periods of my life.

I was struggling with a severe drug addiction. At the same time, I was watching a business I had spent years building, which had generated millions of dollars, begin to fall apart. So much of my identity and self-worth had become connected to that business and what I had accomplished. As it disappeared, I felt like I was losing not only my career, but my sense of who I was.

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My marriage was suffering. My addiction had damaged trust between my wife and me, and the instability in my professional life only made things worse. I was also carrying years of anger, resentment, and unresolved pain surrounding an extremely difficult relationship with my father.

I felt like everything was collapsing at once.

Working with Adam and psilocybin became an important part of a much larger process of rebuilding my life.

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My first deep psilocybin experience with Adam was one of the most profound experiences I have ever had. It forced me to look at myself with a level of honesty I had been avoiding for years. But instead of finding only shame and judgment, I experienced something I desperately needed: compassion.

For the first time in a very long time, I began to forgive myself.

I began separating who I was from the mistakes I had made, the addiction I had struggled with, the business I had built, and the things I had lost. I started understanding that healing wasn’t about pretending the past hadn’t happened. It was about facing it, taking responsibility for it, learning from it, and deciding who I wanted to become next.

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Most importantly, I began learning how to love myself again.

Eventually, I decided to share this work with my wife.

Our psilocybin experience together became one of the most meaningful and healing experiences we have ever shared in our marriage. We were able to talk about things we had struggled to communicate about for years. Walls came down. Defensiveness disappeared. We were able to see one another’s pain rather than simply reacting to it.

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For my wife, rebuilding trust was incredibly important. I couldn’t simply tell her that things were going to be different. Trust had to be earned through my actions over time. But that experience gave us a powerful place from which to begin.

We came away feeling more connected, more honest, and more committed to one another than we had felt in years.

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That was when I truly understood that these mushrooms could be about more than an individual experience. I experienced their potential to help people reconnect—with themselves, with the people they love, with nature, and with something larger than themselves.

Adam’s role throughout this process was incredibly important.

He didn’t simply give us mushrooms and sit in a room with us. There was preparation beforehand. He helped us understand what we might encounter, helped us establish intentions, and created an environment where we felt supported enough to surrender to the experience.

During the journeys, Adam held space without trying to control where the experience needed to take us.

And afterward came what I now believe may be the most important part: integration.

Adam stayed involved in the days, weeks, and months afterward, helping me unpack what I had experienced and asking me the questions that helped turn profound moments into meaningful changes in my everyday life.

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The experience itself may last several hours. Making meaning from it can take months—or even years.

That understanding has completely changed the way I view psychedelic work.

I don’t see psilocybin as a magic solution, and I don’t believe mushrooms simply erase addiction, relationship problems, or the consequences of our choices. My recovery and rebuilding have required responsibility, difficult decisions, continued personal work, and changes in the way I live my life.

But my experiences with psilocybin gave me something incredibly valuable: a different perspective from which to begin that work.

They helped me see that underneath the addiction, anger, fear, failure, and shame was still a human being worthy of love. Me.

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My experiences were so meaningful that I now feel called to learn more about this work and pursue training in psychedelic facilitation so that someday I may be able to support others responsibly on their own journeys.

I also came away from these experiences with a profound reverence for mushrooms themselves. I no longer see them simply as a substance or something people take to have an experience. To me, they are ancient and sacred, deserving of tremendous respect, intention, humility, and responsibility.

That is one of the reasons I became one of the early members of the Church of the Sacred Mushroom.

The mission resonates deeply with me because I have personally experienced what can happen when these mushrooms are approached not recreationally, but intentionally—as part of a spiritual practice centered around healing, connection, community, nature, and the divine.

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Working with Adam has changed the way I understand myself, my marriage, my relationships, and spirituality.

I would recommend Adam wholeheartedly as a guide and facilitator because I have experienced the care he brings before, during, and after this work. I also believe deeply in the larger mission he is building through the Church of the Sacred Mushroom.

My life didn’t change because somebody magically fixed it for me.

It began changing because I finally became willing to look deeply within myself, forgive myself, take responsibility for my life, and begin again.

The mushrooms helped open that door.

Adam helped me walk through it.

And I will forever be grateful.”

— D.S.