I left a six figure law career for mushrooms. Here's what happened.

I sat down with Nicki Dennis on Positive Vibes to talk about burnout, intuition, and why I stopped chasing everyone else's formula for healing. 🍄

I recorded an episode of Positive Vibes with Nicki Dennis, and we covered a lot of ground. My years as an attorney. The night I sat sobbing on my couch, convinced this was just what my life was going to look like. How a friend handing me a container of microdosing capsules turned into a business I never planned for.

Let's get into it:

• • •

The night I thought this was just my life now

I don't think I was ever in love with practicing law. I remember sitting in law school unable to open my assigned reading, even though I've always loved to read. Looking back, I think that resistance was trying to tell me something I wasn't ready to hear yet.

But the moment that changed everything happened later, once I was practicing. I was sitting on my couch, sobbing. I had struggled with anxiety and depression most of my life, though I didn't always have language for it since my family never talked about mental health. I had done the therapy, I had tried the medication, and I had gotten off it because it made me feel less of everything. Not less sad. Less of anything at all. Grayscale.

I remember thinking this felt like a death sentence. Like I had done all the "right" things and I was still stuck. 

• • •

Life will keep sending the message until you listen

I think of life as a river. Call it God, the universe, or creator energy, whatever fits for you. You're in that river, and you can either flow with it or cling to a rock like a stubborn little starfish. For a long time, that was me.

I had moved across the country to California, passed the bar in February of 2020, and was set to join a firm's new West Coast office. Then the pandemic hit, the office never opened, and I had no plan B. That's when I heard a woman announce she was starting a coaching certification. I said yes almost instantly, no overthinking, and I've been following that same instinct ever since.

• • •

What psilocybin is doing in your brain

Psilocybin is the active compound in psilocybe mushrooms, and depending on dose, it works on your neural wiring in a few specific ways. It increases neuroplasticity, meaning your brain forms new connections more easily. It increases entropy, the number of connections firing at once. And it quiets activity in the part of your brain responsible for that mean inner voice we all carry, the one telling you you're not enough, not smart enough, not worthy of what you want.

This is why some people can do all the "right" work: therapy, medication, coaching, and still feel stuck. Some brains are rigid. They keep telling you the same tired story until something shakes it loose and gives you room to write a new one.

• • •

Micro-shifts, not New Year's resolutions

When I first started this work, I tried to do everything at once. Every ritual,  framework or piece of advice from every corner of the internet. I ended up doing more and feeling worse.

People come out of a big plant medicine experience with so much clarity that they want to overhaul their entire life overnight. I tell my clients to NOT do that. It's the same reason 75 Hard style extremes rarely stick. You push yourself past what your nervous system can hold, and eventually you crash and reward yourself right back into the old pattern.

Instead, pick one commitment. Stretchy enough to challenge you, not so extreme it dysregulates your nervous system. Once you can count on yourself to follow through, add another. What you'll find is a snowball effect. One small win compounds into several, faster and more sustainably than trying to fix everything at once.

• • •

The client who told me she'd have rated her life a zero

I always ask clients to rate how they were feeling before we started working together, on a scale of one to ten. One woman, someone I'd known socially for months before we started working together, asked if she could answer zero.

I had no idea. She had two kids and had been thinking about ending her life. Her own father had taken his. If you had told me, I would have been shocked, because nothing about how she showed up in the world hinted at what she was carrying underneath.

When I asked her about how she felt now, she rated herself a seven or eight.

• • •

Why integration matters more than the dose itself

That same client tried a much cheaper route first, a PDF guide on how to microdose. It told her the mechanics, the dosing schedule, the basics. What it didn't give her was any integration.

It's a bit like buying a book of gym exercises. You'll know how to do them, but without a real program behind it, pairing the right moves and progressively building, you won't see the results you're after. Plenty of people take mushrooms. Not everyone changes their life with them. The difference is what you do with the experience afterward.

• • •

Intention, my favorite word

I have two favorite words in this work. Integration is one. Intention is the other.

Setting an intention isn't reserved for a microdose or a big journey. I do it before every call, every coffee date, every first meeting. It's the difference between steering your own ship and just letting life happen to you. You don't need plant medicine to practice this. 

• • •

Even a bee sting can be a permission slip

Everything is a story, and your interpretation of it is never fact, it's a choice. I got stung by a bee on a walk recently, which felt especially unfair given how hard I work to protect them. My finger swelled up, and it hurt.

Instead of being annoyed about it, I used it as permission to rest that evening. Iced my finger, ate dinner in peace, watched a show, let myself off the hook from being productive. I could have written the day off as bad luck. I chose to write it as a reminder that I'd been building hard and it was time to stop.

You're always in control of the story, even when you're not in control of what happens.

• • •

What I'd tell my old self

If I could go back to the version of me sitting in that law office, I wouldn't tell her to quit sooner or push harder. I'd tell her she's allowed to get curious about why she's scared instead of holding everything together so tightly. Sometimes you have to burn down what isn't working before you can rebuild something that is.

Alignment was never about having it all figured out. It was about having the courage to listen when something inside kept telling me there was more.

If any of this resonates, or if you've been curious about whether microdosing could be right for you, I made a quick way to figure that out.

You already have everything you need to begin again. 🍄