The popularity of "magic mushrooms" or psilocybin is on the rise. While its use has been decriminalized in very limited contexts in some states, it remains illegal in most of the U.S. Journalist Carmen Marquez reports on Chicago and LA-based Latinas who are raising awareness about the potential of these psychedelics to heal, to nurture, and to connect us with our roots.
100 Latina Birthdays is an original production of LWC Studios. It's made possible by grants from Healthy Communities Foundation, Kellogg Foundation, Woods Fund Chicago, the Field Foundation of Illinois, Pritzker Foundation, and the Chicago Foundation for Women. Mujeres Latinas en Acción is a series fiscal sponsor.
Rocio Paredes: There's actually shrooms right behind you in that bag. You see it? Over there, on top.
Paredes: You see them?
Marquez: It's a typical sunny day in LA. Someone is mowing the lawn, and birds are chirping in Arlington Heights. 33-year-old Rocio Paredes, AKA Enkrypt Los Angeles, is, unusually, home. In her kitchen, she prepares coffee in her fancy Italian espresso machine and pours it in a jack-o-lantern mug. She points at a plastic bag with a 10-gram psilocybin mushroom as she explains how she used to prepare her homemade pills.
Paredes: Grabbing these and putting them in the blender, and I would blend them really thin, and then I would put them in my own capsules. So, I bought capsules from Amazon and started filling them up. That would be a perfect dosage, and I would get my little scale and just make sure that they were all weighted the same, and I started taking one pill every two days, and it did a significant change for sure.
Marquez: Up until 2022, Rocio had been micro-dosing with psilocybin mushrooms, but she wasn't always so thoughtful and intentional and how she incorporated shrooms into her health and lifestyle practices.
Paredes: When I was young, I was just wanting to get high, I think. It was more like, I was just trying to escape my reality. I was just trying to find something crazy to do. Even to this day, I'm the type of person, you talk about something passionately, I want to fucking do it. If I hear something that's out of the ordinary, I want to try it.
Marquez: Psilocybin is a psychedelic naturally found in certain fungi. According to the Department of Justice, the substance is illegal and currently not accepted for medical use in treatments in the United States. Like Rocio, people often use them for recreational purposes or to improve their mental health.
Paredes: I grew up in a very drug-dominated community. When I grew up in Highland Park, shrooms were big, psychedelics were big. I tried LSD really young, like when I was 16. Shrooms, I think I had tried for the first time when I was 15. It all happened within ages 13 to 17.
Marquez: Rocio was born in Lincoln Heights, one of the oldest neighborhoods in Los Angeles, an area where Mexican-American art and culture is visible in murals, the lady selling tamales, and parks and plazas where the Latino community gathers.
Rocio was raised by her mother, who worked two jobs to give her a working-class living. She's a native of Ciudad Neza and surrounded Rocio by her Mexican culture, despite some hardships growing up.
Paredes: I felt like, very young, I already had a pretty open mind and was very desperate to feel change. Since I grew up in a really fucked-up environment and a domestic violent home, a lot of abuse happened in every form, so I was always trying to escape my reality. That's where shrooms came in.
Marquez: In the US, psilocybin is a Schedule One substance under the Controlled Substances Act. For context, heroin and LSD are also classified as schedule one. According to the Department of Justice, drugs like these have a high potential for abuse and serve no legitimate medical purpose.
After a period of using it mainly for recreational purposes, Rocio began micro-dosing it to help her cope with anxiety, depression, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. According to Harvard medical school, there isn't a single clearly recognized definition of micro-dosing for any psychedelic drug, which makes it difficult to research and document their use. One definition of micro-dosing is approximately one fifth to one 20th of a recreational dose, but it's not an exact science. The potency of mushrooms varies a lot, since they're not regulated outside of clinical trials.
Rocio says that the small amounts improved her mood, controlled her ADHD, and alleviated feelings of anxiety and depression. For her, micro-dosing was also a step in weaning herself off other substances.
Paredes: It's very scary. My whole life, I've relied on drugs, even if they're illegal or not. I wanted to stop that. I was like, "There's no fucking way that I'm going to live my whole life always depending on something to get me through," so I started revisiting mushrooms and I started micro-dosing.
Marquez: Drug and substance abuse continues to be a major problem across the United States, with one in four Americans over the age of 12 admitting that they used illicit drugs in 2022. California has one of the highest drug usage rates among teens 13 to 19, with 10% using drugs. Growing up, Rocio saw psilocybin as the least harmful drug and relied on it for recreation.
Paredes: I heard about shrooms, and it was always associated with ancestral shit. I would hear it as a more positive type of hallucinogen where it was more natural and more embedded in our DNA, as being mechica or my parents being from Mexico City. I remember thinking, "Oh, maybe I should just mess with this instead of something that's man-made," sounding a lot more scarier.
Marquez: Her first psychedelic trip with psilocybin happened in her teenage years. She was with her high school friends in an abandoned land where there used to be a home full of debris and rocks that they used as seats. She says she was overwhelmed with a mixture of emotions.
Paredes: I was around 17. I took my first half-eighth, and I'm really small. I'm tiny, and I remember tripping balls, and I didn't want to go home. I felt very cared for. I felt unity, and at the same time I felt anxiety and panic, and I remember it being the first time really trying to control one side of my brain.
Marquez: By then, Rocio had been in therapy since she was six or seven years old to treat her ADHD and depression that came from the hardship she witnessed growing up, and while therapy was helping her, she says the psilocybin experience made a huge difference.
Paredes: I felt invincible after that. I'll be honest with you, it kind of made me feel more in control of my life, something that I never felt before. I was able to take that experience and realize, "Yo, I'm mentally pretty strong."
Marquez: Rocio also felt a longing to reconnect with her Mexican roots. In November 2020, she traveled to Oaxaca to better understand the history of mushroom ceremonies. That visit shifted her motivation around mushroom consumption.
Paredes: Four years ago, I revisited shrooms again, but with a bigger intention and a more educated and grown-up way, where I was like, okay, now I want to really reap the benefits of this substance, and not only that, but embrace more of my roots.
Marquez: Though psilocybin has been life-changing, Rocio decided to stop micro-dosing after a “bad” mushroom trip.
Paredes: People have biased opinions about this. They say one out of seven mushrooms is actually a poisonous one that could give you a bad trip, and I didn't know that. If you get a bunch of different shrooms, you're kind of gambling yourself and being like, "Hopefully this one's good," but then when you blend them all together, they're all poison now.
Marquez: She has been off mushrooms for about two years, as she feels they provided the reconnection and healing she needed in that moment, and assures me she doesn't want to become dependent on any substance.
Rocio recently switched to traditional doctors and healthcare professionals to help with her mental health and substance use issues, and is now taking Zoloft to help with depression, ADHD, and anxiety.
Paredes: Put it this way, I just don't like how my regular brain works.
Marquez: Psychedelic popularity is on the rise. Law enforcement seizures of psychedelic mushrooms tripled from 2017 to 2022, and calls to US poison control centers related to psilocybin use in teenagers tripled between 2018 and 2022. Manoj Doss is a cognitive researcher at the University of Texas at Austin's Dell Medical School. He studies the effects of drugs on the brain.
Manoj Doss: The drugs are becoming more acceptable, whether that's for just recreational uses, or even for trying to treat certain disorders, and so people might do them at home, they might find their local shaman. They might go down to Latin America and find a shaman there.
Marquez: Manoj says the powerful experiences like the ones Rocio described happen because of how psilocybin in mushroom interacts with serotonin receptors in the brain.
When a person takes psilocybin, their body converts it to another substance, psilocin. Psilocin attaches to and activates receptors or binding sites in the brain for serotonin, the body's natural feel-good chemical. Psilocin then starts taking effect based on the, “setting” at the time of its intake. Setting here means a person's personality, expectations, and the environment surrounding the experience. They all play a role in how the user responds to the drug.
Research suggests that psilocybin is psychologically safe and does not lead to dependence or addiction. Also, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, DSM-V, does not include substance use criteria specifically related to psilocybin. Although psilocybin provides therapeutic benefits like the potential treatment for depression, anxiety, PTSD, and addiction, Manoj says there are also many reasons for caution.
Manoj Doss: During the acute effects, while you're under the effects of these drugs, it can definitely be destabilizing, and part of what seems to be therapeutic about these drugs can be a little bit of the destabilizing effects. People will say that they let their defenses down, and this can actually be healing.
At the same time, that can also make you very vulnerable, and there is some psychomotor dysfunction, and you get these kind of racing thoughts that can certainly produce kind of aberrant behaviors. There's a whole plethora of certainly jarring components to these experiences, but at the same time, it seems to sometimes also be part of the therapeutic process, at least when done in a controlled setting.
Marquez: Psilocybin has been decriminalized in a few places and is legal in limited contexts in some states. In 2020, Oregon became the first state to legalize psilocybin for supervised therapeutic use for adults over 21 and older. Colorado has also made it legal to use and possess certain psychedelic substances, including psilocybin. In states where psilocybin mushrooms are illegal, possession, sale, or distribution of psilocybin can carry a minimum of one year in jail and up to $1000 in fines.
Manoj highlights the importance of a controlled environment to lessen the potential negative effects of psilocybin.
Manoj Doss: Preferably a medical environment where you have access to an MD, you know if your heart rate or blood pressure is going too high. This is something else that I think could be problematic. Somebody with a bad heart, for example.
Vilmarie Fraguada Narloch:
Hello?
Marquez: Vilmarie, I'm here.
Fraguada Narloch: The door is open.
Marquez: Vilmarie Fraguada Narloch is the co-founder and director of Sana Healing Collective, a mental health clinic in Humboldt Park, the Puerto Rican cultural center and neighborhood of Chicago where the residents' pride in their community and heritage is everywhere you turn. Puerto Rican flags wave from window and flagpoles, hang in rearview mirrors and around necks, and traditional crafts are on display and specialty shops.
Fraguada Narloch: When we first moved in, we had some vecinos kind of knocking on the door, "What are you up to here? What is this?" Seeing something new, and tell them we're a nonprofit doing mental health work and trying to help the community, and a lot of folks are really happy that we are here.
Marquez: Vilmarie is a clinical psychologist and psychedelic therapist, a mental health professional specialized in psychedelic therapy. She works with a team of psychologists, psychiatrists, art therapists, and a harm reductionists to accompany patients in their well-being. Harm reductionists aim to lessen the negative effects associated with using drugs through a variety of public health interventions. In Chicago, psychedelic assisted therapy is illegal, which means Vilmarie is only able to support her clients before and after the substance journey, not during the trip itself.
Fraguada Narloch: What really brought me to psychedelics as an option, as a tool, was frankly the limitations and the failures of our Western medical system when it comes to addressing mental health and substance use. Oftentimes for people of color in particular who are exhibiting symptoms of trauma, they're often misdiagnosed or mislabeled as having bipolar disorder or borderline personality disorder or some of these other more complex, more stigmatized conditions, when ultimately, often it's trauma.
Marquez: Vilmarie and her colleagues want more patients to have access to alternative paths for dealing with the root problems that lead to substance abuse, and she says some of these alternative healing practices are not a foreign concept for many Latinos.
Fraguada Narloch: People in the Latino community are no strangers to things like herbalismo and botanicas and artias who maybe provide a little tea or a little something, or those sort of connections to our culture that kind of still permeate even in the diaspora, and as folks start to dig deeper into that.
Marquez: The use of complementary and alternative medical therapies, CAM for short, has dramatically increased in the United States over the past two decades. Some patients seek CAM therapies because they're dissatisfied with conventional medicine or because they have heard from others that CAM is beneficial in treating specific disorders.
Fraguada Narloch: When you can seek care from someone who understands your culture, who understands your language, who will listen to what ails you from that place of cultural understanding, it is a lot more accessible, sometimes a lot more accessible financially, culturally, language-wise, to seek healing in those modalities. I see psychedelics as just an extension of that.
Marquez: Latinos may use alternative medicine for a variety of reasons, including cultural beliefs, accessibility, cost-effectiveness, and a preference for natural remedies. A common theme throughout Latino cultures is a holistic perspective on health, where spirituality, physical, and mental-emotional health are equally important and intertwined. Herbal home remedies, a healthy diet, and active lifestyles are among the most important features of Latino health maintenance, and many Latinos resort to these steps before consulting a medical professional.
According to the National Center for PTSD, psychedelics are being increasingly researched as a method of supplementing the treatment of mental health conditions, helping individuals deal with severe trauma. The study from the US Department of Veteran Affairs reported that a single administration of psilocybin, along with a group of psychotherapy, can decrease symptoms of PTSD. Trauma, specifically major depressive disorder, is one of the main reasons why clients visit Sana Healing Collective, with trained staff that guide and support clients through the experience, whether it is psilocybin, MDMA, ketamine, or ayahuasca.
Fraguada Narloch: While we can't sit with them while they're actually under the influence of the substance, we can help support them beforehand to help them understand how it's going to work, what sorts of things they need to have in mind, how they can prepare for it, help them set intentions for those experiences, if they want to have a friend or family member support them during it.
Marquez: Sana Healing Collective wants to help clients understand that the healing aspect does not only come from the medical source, but from the work the individual chooses to do on themselves.
Fraguada Narloch: After they have that experience, they can come to us and we can kind of walk them through what happened, what they experience, what they saw, and help them process, help them make meaning of that.
Marquez: According to Sana Healing Collective, together they allow the medicine to be a catalyst for the healing of PTSD, substance abuse, depression, anxiety, and other mental health conditions. In therapy, clients do at least three two-hour prep sessions to understand the treatment, expectations, intentions, and clear out doubts about the process to be prepared for the intake,
Fraguada Narloch: Sort of get a focus of what it is that they're wanting to work on, help relieve any fears, help understand how they might want to be supported in the process, and making sure that the setting is ready for them, that they are ready for the medicine.
Marquez: After a psychedelic journey, a patient slowly transitions to the busyness of life in different ways. To reap the full benefits, Sana Healing Collective patients are encouraged to do a sort of unpacking, to sit with their experience and reflect on everything they felt during the trip. Vilmarie encourages patients to do this in different ways, such as making art, journaling, meditating, or spending time in nature.
Psilocybin is the most consumed plant-based psychedelic drug in the United States, with more than 11% of individuals aged 12 and older reporting that they have used the drug in 2022. The US Food and Drug Administration has described psilocybin as a “breakthrough medicine.’ That means there's been an increase in knowledge and usage of the drug. The breakthrough designation expedites the development and review of drugs to treat serious conditions. It also means that early clinical evidence shows that the drug has potential in therapeutic use.
But what does the psychedelic experience actually look like? 38-year-old Nina is a Mexican-American registered nurse who has specialized in curanderismo with the University of New Mexico.
Nina: My self-healing journey has taken me to reclaim my roots. Just a year ago I started to do Aztec dance, so Mexica dancing, and so I've been joining the community, a couple calpullis, and we meet in the parks and we are learning how to do dance from our ancestors, and learning more of the indigenous practices, learning how to use yervas, techniques that can help me heal myself, but then also that I can apply with my family.
Marquez: As she brings out her wireless speaker and snacks, Nina shares her love for Wicker Park in her native Chicago, which is only blocks down from where she used to study nursing.
Nina was raised in a Christian conservative home, in a family that would have never allowed her close to psychedelic substances.
Nina: It was a lot of, "Oh, it's from the devil."
Marquez: In 2014, Nina went through a difficult breakup that led her to question some choices and take on a different approach to relationships.
Nina: I saw myself, that I was in a repetitive cycle when it came to relationships, that I felt that I wanted to heal from that.
Marquez: Nina planned a special private ceremony to celebrate her ongoing commitment to love and respect herself. She checked into a nice hotel in downtown Chicago.
Nina: I brought flowers. I took a salt bath, I brought pictures of my grandmothers. I put them in the backboard of the bed. I was on my own, and I wasn't scared of partaking on my own because I just felt that it's what I needed, and I felt that it was going to be very helpful to me. Yeah, I went in and I was crying for hours, sobbing, mucous everywhere. I felt that that was a big emotional release for me.
Marquez: Nina says there's a lack of healthy relationships between men and women in her family. She believes psilocybin mushrooms help her process this intergenerational trauma. She continues to use mushrooms for special ceremonies one to two times a year. As of now, Nina is currently pursuing a career in nursing, but like Vilmarie, she has some concerns about Western medicine's approach to healing.
Nina: We just want to push pills on people, and I want to remove pills. I was about to quit my nurse practitioner program, but I decided to continue, just to get the title.
Marquez: As she considers what life without practicing traditional medicine would look like, she knows she might have to move out of her hometown to work in a state where the use of psychedelic drugs in alternative medicine are legal.
Fireside Project is a nationwide hotline that provides emotional support to individuals during a psychedelic journey. The project is anonymous, confidential, and runs thanks to the work of volunteers, in addition to staff.
Salsedo Bryant: It's an incredibly needed service in the community.
Marquez: That's Cené Salsedo Bryant, a supervisor with the Fireside Project.
Salsedo Bryant: The call comes in, the person says, "Hey, I just took some mushrooms so many hours ago and I'm feeling some kind of way," and we say, "Hey, we're so glad that you found us. You're in the right place and we're here with you. Can you tell us what's going on?" Then it kind of can go really anywhere.
Marquez: Incoming calls range from seeking information on their drug use to micro-dosing, tripping, and trip-sitting, but volunteers are also trained to identify suicidal callers and transfer them to the 988 suicide and crisis line. This kind of, quote, trip-sitting is something therapists, even those trained to assist with psychedelics, are not legally allowed to offer their patients in Chicago, but Cené sees her work as critical.
Salsedo Bryant: Because really, space-holding is just about being with another human in their experience. Sometimes we're just with them and are affirming that, "Yeah, things are really scary sometimes, and we're here with you. You're not alone in this."
Marquez: During the first two years of Fireside Project, they had 11,000 conversations with callers during or after psychedelic trips. According to Fireside, 18% were Latinos. Fireside Project clarified they don't condone the use of illegal substances, including psychedelics, but they encourage safety and awareness in those choosing to partake.
Paula Graciela Kahn is another Latina who is turning to mushrooms to cope with mental healing, and at the same time reclaiming her cultural practices. She's a public health master's graduate from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Her goal is to contribute to psychedelic research.
For Paula's mother, mushrooms were part of their vocabulary.
Paula Graciela Kahn: Tengo que empezar con la primera vez que escuche. The first time I heard about psilocybin mushrooms, and that was actually through my mom, but yeah, we were on our way to visit a curandera, when I was about 11 or 12 years old, and I was kind of like, "What are we doing? Why am I going?" I was at a time where I was becoming introduced to social media, and so I didn't really understand why I had to go with my parents, but my mom was saying about how when I would get older, we would one day sit in a mushroom ceremony in Oaxaca.
Marquez: Paula, influenced by her father's photography, grew up in an artistic environment. Sparked by curiosity, like many adolescents in Los Angeles, was exposed to drugs like cannabis during her freshman year of high school, and later that year took ecstasy at the Coachella music festival, experimenting with other substances in the following years.
Kahn: I was 16. It was so special. It was around the time that the movie Avatar came out, so I had watched Avatar before, I think, and so during my mushroom trip, I was just thinking about the visuals in that feature film and how similar the experiences are comparable, just the visuals, in some ways, and just feeling very far away from technology.
Marquez: Now as an adult, Paula says that her use of psychoactive substances is part of what helped her survive complex PTSD, gender-based violence, and being a sexual assault survivor.
Kahn: I learnt lot from those experiences that happened outside of traditional settings and without mentorship, spiritual guidance, and I definitely pushed my brain to the limit sometimes, experimenting without any guidance, and so I feel very driven to support people that are navigating some of the similar challenges and curiosities and desires to experiment, but from a place that is more connected to traditional knowledges and consciousness over violent histories that continue to affect us today.
Marquez: Paula turned 31 in July, this birthday was different from others.
Kahn: I am in the 10-year anniversary of my mom's last summer with me, and 10 years ago, she threw me a huge birthday party when I turned 21, and she mysteriously prepared a delicious platter of tacos dorados and rellenos de papa, for my birthday party, and she had never done this before. It was a recipe my grandma had, but my mom had never prepared it. I was thanking her for it. It was so good, and she was like, "This might be the last time I ever cook for you for a birthday party." She had this premonition that she said, and it was really ominous and everything, and she said that at my 21st birthday party, and yeah, it was a trip. I've been avoiding it a little bit, thinking about that, but I think that summer was really significant.
Marquez: Seven months later, Paula's mom died of cancer. They never got a chance to carry out the mushroom ceremony in Oaxaca together. Her mom passed away summer of 2014, but her memory lives on, and so does her impact on Paula's life.
Kahn: It was also the summer that there was more media attention on the plight of unaccompanied Central American minors, and so I spent a lot of time that summer crying in my mother's arms because I would get these panic attacks about, "Why is this happening?" She said, "Don't worry. We're going to figure out a way for you to have an impact and to change the world and to change all of these things."
Marquez: The National Council for Mental Wellbeing says overdose prevention and response within Latino populations requires attention to the specific areas being served. From 2010 to 2021, overdose rates grew by 287% among Hispanics compared to 160% for non-Hispanics. Research also suggests that the disproportionate increase in the overdose-related deaths among Latinos is likely related to limited access to harm reduction services.
Today, Paula is an education developer at a harm reduction organization in Los Angeles. Her work aims to minimize the negative consequences associated with substance use.
Kahn: I reflect on this arc, and I've kept my end of the commitment, and I think she's been helping me all along. We're collaborating across realms, and I've really stuck it out with my commitment to advocacy and human rights defense, and yeah, just trying to find new pathways forward to heal.
Marquez: This summer, early August of 2024, Paula finally sat down in a semi-traditional mushroom ceremony in California. Mazatec ceremonies in the mountains of Oaxaca involving psychedelic mushrooms are a profound aspect of the Mazatec cultural and spiritual landscape. These native psychedelic mushrooms are belief to offer a unique blend of healing, spiritual connection, and cultural identity, deeply respected by those who partake. The ceremonies are a testament to the rich spiritual traditions of the Mazatec people and the enduring power of their ancestral knowledge.
Kahn: It's thanks to the Mazatec people and other indigenous groups that maintained these ritual healing practices despite colonialism and despite these structures and systems of extermination, ethnocide, epistemicide, the destruction of culture and knowledge, the actual mass killings of people. I think it's just so powerful that these ritual healing practices are returning to us after experiencing so much forced assimilation.
Marquez: In a world where traditional mental health interventions often fall short, Latinas like Rocio, Nina, and Paula are bravely stepping into a space of healing that blends personal recovery with cultural reclamation. Their quest for relief from trauma, anxiety, and depression has also led to a profound reconnection to their roots.
These courageous voices are challenging the status quo—a testament of the enduring strength of the Latina community. They're raising awareness about the potential of psychedelics to heal, to nurture, and to connect us with our roots. Rocio's transformative path from seeking escape to embracing mindful micro-dosing, Nina's empowering self-ceremonies, and Paula's commitment to incorporating traditional healing methods highlight a significant shift in addressing mental health issues.
These narratives not only shed a light on the importance of culturally informed practices, but also remind us that healing is a shared experience—one that can ignite communities and break cycles of stigma.
Virginia Lora: 100 Latina Birthdays is an original production of LWC Studios. It's made possible by grants from Healthy Communities Foundation, Kellogg Foundation, Woods Fund Chicago, the Field Foundation of Illinois, Pritzker Foundation, and the Chicago Foundation for Women. Mujeres Latinas en Acción is a series fiscal sponsor.
This episode was reported by Carmen Marquez. Juleyka Lantigua is the show's creator, executive producer, and editor. Virginia Lora is a senior producer. Fact-checking by Jennifer Goren, mixing by Anne Lim. and mixing in sound design by Tren Lightburn. Michelle Baker is our photo editor. Kori Doran is our marketing associate. Cover art by Reyna Noriega.
For more information, resources, photos, annotated transcripts of all episodes and Spanish translations, visit 100LatinaBirthdays.com. That's the number 100 Latina birthdays.com.
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