Welcome back to The Drop In, DoubleBlind’s newsletter serving up news, culture, and independent journalism about psychedelics straight to your inbox.

Today’s lead story is an ode to all the psychedelic fathers who have taken the lessons from psychedelic experiences and integrated them into parenthood. Which, according to comedian and writer Dennis Walker, is not something to take lightly. I think most parents would agree! You can read his — and a dozen other trippy dads’ — perspective on how psychedelics have impacted them as fathers.

If you keep scrolling you’ll find an opportunity to help us report a story on combined use of 5-MeO-DMT and ibogaine, a mind bending interview with Rick Strassman, and the psychedelic Boomer experience.

Happy Belated Father’s Day,
Mary Carreón
Editor-in-Chief

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For a growing number of fathers, psychedelics are the medicine that's made them more present, more loving fathers.

In 2008, a Johns Hopkins study revealed that 67% of participants who were dosed with psilocybin for the first time rated the experience as one of the top five most spiritually significant experiences of their life, with some respondents comparing it to “the birth of a child”. 

As a veteran psychonaut by the time my son was born, I inversely compared the experience of becoming a father to the significance of having my mind and emotional constitution blown open for the first time by a macrodose of mushrooms. 

Father’s Day can mean a lot of things to a lot of people – it’s a joyous occasion for many, a complicated and potentially traumatic day for others. For me, Father’s Day is an opportunity to step back from the magic chaos of raising a toddler and celebrate the experience. Psychedelic experiences can catalyze a similar “Bird’s Eye View” of the business of life. And also, because it’s me, this Father’s Day is a time to make some jokes. 

“They grow up so fast!”, everybody says. Those parents aren’t doing enough psychedelics. Time turns elastic. Mushrooms help me as a dad step outside of time and experience reality in an infinite, timeless capacity. I lived through multiple karmic cycles in a single high dose mushroom ceremony in Jamaica a few months ago and had plenty of time to confront my limitations as a father and course correct in real time. 

I had my little microdose of a man sitting in the front row for my keynote comedy show at the Awareness Lectures on Psychedelic Science (ALPS) research conference in Geneva, Switzerland, last year — talk about bringing your kid to work! I even managed to get a few laughs out of him, though he cried during my set when I talked about the time I got kicked out of the world famous Berghain in Berlin. Turns out the DJ deck area is a Prosecco-free zone. 

Being a father and witnessing your child in all their uncoordinated and spontaneous glory might be comparable to how DMT entities view us humans as we break through into their plane — “oh boy, oh boy!! The little human is here, what a beautiful little soul! Look, he’s trying to process multidimensional belonging! Go get ‘em buddy!’

It was actually on a wild mushroom foray about four years ago that I first really connected with the sense that I was "ready" to be a dad. An older German man who had five kids and eight grandkids asked me why I didn't have any of my own yet.

"It's not that big of a deal — it's just a part of life, and one of the best parts of it," he told me.

I can now say he's definitely full of shit and undersold the commitment. It's a huge deal, and one that requires an energetic commitment and willingness to be humbled that cannot be properly understood until it is lived, a container absolutely in line with the psychedelic experience.

When I’m not stepping on Legos or searching in the vegetable drawer for my missing phone, it often occurs to me that this is the greatest gift one could ever be blessed with in this life. 

Fatherhood is a psychedelic experience. It requires a massive stretching out of personal horizons, tapping into energy resources you didn’t know you had, and ongoing self-reflection and surrender to a bigger purpose. It requires integrating all of your previous experiences in life to be a better version of yourself. 

To understand how others have embraced psychedelics to process and embody the role of fatherhood, I asked a number of friends and colleagues for their perspectives on the sacred role of fatherhood. 

***

“Psychedelics didn’t come into my life until a much later age. I was 55 when my awakening happened so by then my kids were much older.. I’ve always loved my children and considered myself a good dad, but psychedelics shifted something. It took me from loving my kids to really seeing them for who they are and for what they mean in my life. The fact that they were older, also gave me the opportunity to have honest, open and objective conversations with them about psychedelics.”

—Cesar Marin of The Summit Within

"Psychedelics have helped me peel back the layers I inherited and carried, giving my children the chance to witness me healing instead of hiding the work from them. After my father passed, 5-MeO-DMT helped me rewrite the story I held around his absence, opening a new relationship with him in spirit and reminding me that raising my children as a single father is also part of my ancestral healing."

—Jonathan "Quest" Brown - Sacred Facilitator & Integration Coach

“Psychedelics help me slow down, be more compassionate, more curious. A sub-perceptual microdose helps me engage with my kids and the world around us. I find myself appreciating nature as if I’m seeing it for the first time. Similar to how my one year old looks at a tree as if he’s seeing the leaves for the first time. I can be in the moment, with my family, and ignore any distractions from the fast paced life we live today.”

—Santiago Ongay of Full Canopy Genetics

“I find that milder potency strains can open up space to see the world through fresh eyes. Psychedelics at low dose can be just as transformational as a hero’s journey, and often more suitable when you’re a father who needs to be present and astute to fulfill your responsibilities to your family.”

—Kevin Sullivan of Serenite Labs 

“Becoming a father and grandfather awakened in me the sacred duties of provision, protection, and legacy. Responsible use of psychedelics has deepened that calling, profoundly expanding my capacity for love, mercy, and grace. These experiences have given me humbling glimpses of humanity through God’s own compassionate eyes and helped restore a childlike heart within me.”

—Clint Kyles of The Psychedelic Christian Podcast 

“For me this was never only about substances. Psychedelics have helped me become a better father on multiple levels.

The first is personal. They made me more aware of myself and more able to trust myself. Sitting with these medicines has helped me face my own wounds and work through them, including the inherited ideas about what a father is supposed to be. That means I am less likely to pass those wounds to my children. The work has made me more present, and more honest about the kind of father I want to become.

The second is collective. I live in an ayahuasca community, and I do not believe these medicines are good in any container or for everyone. Their beauty depends on ethics, integrity, and community. My wife and I sit in ceremony together, as equal partners in raising our children. In the Indigenous communities I work with, women carry knowledge and authority, and children are welcome to the life of the community. Being part of this has given my parenting a meaning it did not have before. The cosmologies of these biocultures and the lineages I learn from ask me to raise my children ethically, and to carry that work alongside their mother rather than leave it to her.

As men, one meaningful way we can begin to take responsibility for the harm caused by patriarchy is through care. That includes caring for children, a form of labor that has historically been placed almost entirely on women. To care is not only to help. It is to redistribute responsibility, presence, and love” Glauber Loures de Assis of Psychedelic Parenthood Community

“After my kids were born, sleep went out the window. Mushrooms genuinely helped me get through those days with more energy when I'd been up half the night. Reishi kept me calmer and more present with my kids. And Lion's Mane sharpened my focus during one-on-one playtime, the kind where I'm building Lego for the fortieth time, and I want to actually be there, not half somewhere else"

—Seth Colchester of Mycogenius

“It’s pretty simple for me personally – psychedelics over time have illuminated what really matters. And to me, that is loving those around us as deeply as we can and keeping that as our anchor through the chaos of life. I think being a parent serves as the most potent form of this cosmic anchor. The love we experience for our children touches the realm of unconditional and everlasting. The only other times I have felt this kind of love is from my father, son, my puppies, close friends, and whatever is on the other end of a DMT pipe telling me that it loves me and everything is going to be okay. I think that being a better parent and earnestly working towards that will prepare you for psychedelics better than almost anything else can.”

—Gabriel Hardie of Amentara 

“Divorce can be a meat grinder for dads. It tears apart families, identities, routines, and often a man’s sense of who he is in the world. Many fathers come through the experience carrying deep emotional wounds that aren’t always visible. In my experience, healing from divorce isn’t about forgetting what happened—it’s about taking the time to fully grieve the deep loss and then putting yourself back together again. Mushrooms saved my life after my divorce and I’m deeply honored to help other men rebuild and thrive in The Sacred Path For Men through coaching, community and the legal ceremonial use of mushrooms on our retreats. Father’s Day can be terribly lonely for many divorced and alienated dads. We walk each other through and lift each other up” 

—Andy Sudbrock of Sacred Path

“Psychedelics have helped me prepare for fatherhood before I even knew I wanted to be a dad. They helped me open my heart and mind, my nervous system, and my energy system so that I could receive more love from the cosmic center of the universe that I could then channel into all of the people around me. I’ve been able to take this love I receive from the divine source of the universe and pour it into my children each and every moment, and I can’t think of a more important intention or purpose than that”

—Daniel Shankin of Tam Integration 

In the mid-'70s, Roger Steffens started shooting double exposures, layering a second image over film he'd already shot to mirror the way LSD changed what he saw. At 84, he's a Vietnam vet turned anti-war lecturer, the world's foremost Bob Marley chronicler, and the patriarch behind The Family Acid, the Instagram account and book series his kids built from 40,000 slides he'd left sitting in a closet. He met his wife while they were both tripping in the Mendocino woods and married her 10 days later. He dropped acid under nine-ton bells on a pacifist's island in the middle of the war.

This Friday, journalist Gregory Daurer talks with Steffens about a life lived in psychedelic color, from pure Sandoz acid in 1966 to the reggae artists who would never touch the stuff.

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THC.THCa. Delta-8. Hemp-derived.

Products with nearly identical names, completely different systems - and most consumers are left guessing what's actually inside.

At EDEN, we're plant-first - and we believe consumers deserve clarity before they buy. That's why we built The THC Decoder: a clean visual guide breaking down the major cannabinoid pathways, what's actually in what you're buying, and why it matters.

View The THC Decoder + Consumer Guide

Here to help you navigate,
–The EDEN Direct Team