This is a 4 hour mix of music to be used as the soundtrack to taking magic mushrooms in a therapeutic context.

For years people have been asking me "ARE YOU WORKING ON A 4 HOUR MIX OF MUSIC TO BE USED AS THE SOUNDTRACK TO TAKING MAGIC MUSHROOMS IN A THERAPEUTIC CONTEXT?"

And while the answer has historically been"no", unlikely as it seems the answer has more recently been in the affirmative. After a single and successful intervention in my mood using the rough outline of this mix, I have refined it for public consumption over a period of about 6 months.

As of the end of 2023, there's an accumulating amount of evidence from a bunch of high profile clinical trials coming out of good labs showing that the use of psychedelics in a prescribed format can lead to quite incredible recovery rates from intractable depression and bulimia, as well as milder forms of depression and anxiety and I believe addiction as well but don't quote me on that. With regards to depression the recovery rates are certainly exceeding the efficacy of the standard SSRI drugs commonly prescribed. Repeated use is not necessary, and also note there is no good data on 'microdosing' having any therapeutic effect.

There seems to be a lot of excitement in the mental health and psychiatric fields over all this - but probably not as much as excitement as there is among people that are depressed that have tried everything they can to shake it to no avail.

Unfortunately at this stage it's still illegal in most places and so is professional help with it. So obviously a lot of desperate people will try it out on their own, which provided you follow the guidelines as closely as possible is probably a better idea than waiting around for the law to catch up.

An eye mask to eliminate visual input is an essential aspect, a good set of headphones is really important too. I wouldn't recommend using speakers if it can be helped - you want the sound to be immersive and headphones will do that as well as blocking out noise from the outside world.

The musical sound track and the shape it follows over the four or so hours of a mushroom trip is perhaps the most fundamental external aspect of all. So I figured it would be a social good to create this.

This mix starts off very ambient and goes through a couple of intensity peaks over a 4 hour period, eventually ending in nature sounds. For the peaks I've used vocal music for one and drumming for the second.

I tried to avoid music in languages I could understand - which regrettably isn't hard - but if you speak Russian, Tibetan, or Latin then you're going to cop some words. Mostly instrumental though. There's nothing terribly wrong with words, but the point is the emotional state created by the music and words and their meanings could easily distract from this.

I played around with the overall shape a lot and I've paid very close attention to the transitions between songs to make them as smooth as possible, as those transitions are going to seem huge.

Finally, I split it into 2 parts to reduce the file size, though I'd hoped to make it a single file for ease of use.

For a good but reasonably academic overview of the current state of the research and from which I drew the courage and protocols to try it for myself, see Andrew Huberman's interview with Dr. Robin Carhart-Harris here :

open.spotify.com/episode/1aIpXK0HyrauQIX58jDP2P?si=84019096cfd94faf

and PLEASE ENJOY™