🫠 Psychonaut POV

Welcome to Tricycle Day. We’re the psychedelics newsletter with serious mommy issues. Like this one. No, literally, today’s edition is all about mothers and mushrooms. Enjoy. 🤰

Mikaela de la Myco had a relationship with mushrooms long before she became a mother, and she continued to ingest all through her pregnancy. From where she stood, this wasn’t a reckless act; it was a careful decision to trust a traditional wisdom keeper she’d met along the way.

We spoke to Mikaela about an indigenous perspective on mushrooms and motherhood, the data she’s collected around psilocybin use through pregnancy and breastfeeding, and how all people can benefit from centering women’s voices.

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What led you to focus your work on the intersection of sacred earth medicines and maternal care?

I noticed a huge gap at that intersection when I became pregnant with my son in 2019. I’d had a relationship with mushrooms since my early college days around 2013, and I'd received so much benefit as a woman, particularly in balancing my hormonal fluctuations. My experience never really fit with psychedelia and hippie culture. I found benefit sitting in front of a fire in prayer, singing in ancestral languages, and connecting with minimal external stimulation.

When I got pregnant, I started researching whether mushrooms were safe during pregnancy and breastfeeding. I searched forums and Reddit threads, but there was so little information, and what was there was pretty condemning. There was a lot of judgment. So I took my questions to an elder I knew, who came from a community Jalisco, Mexico and who’d spent many years among the Wixárika. She shared that in her culture, the relationship between people and mushrooms isn't broken because of motherhood, and in fact, she'd eaten mushrooms through all her pregnancies. Following our conversation, I was invited to sit in ceremony while visibly pregnant, and I continued to ingest throughout my pregnancy at a variety of doses.

After giving birth and experiencing postpartum depression and anxiety, I ingested another dose at five weeks postpartum while breastfeeding. The mushrooms provided both chemical and emotional support during that huge transition. I realized this was information people needed to know. So I started creating content, running a Clubhouse group called mushWOMB Temple, and eventually wrote a 52-page guide about plant medicines and motherhood. It was very community led—people asking questions, me trying to help, and eventually that led to the Mothers of the Mushroom project with James Fadiman.

Can you tell us about the Mothers of the Mushroom research project? What was your intention, and what are you learning?

I'd been aware of James Fadiman's work and after becoming a contact point for people curious about this topic, I made connections through the Microdosing Institute where he was a consultant. When he was writing a book on microdosing, he wanted to include a section on pregnancy and breastfeeding. Instead of just phone interviews, I suggested creating a survey since I had a platform geared toward this topic. We gathered over 400 submissions, generating both qualitative and quantitative data. It was really a first step in psilocybin mushroom mothers' research.

One of the most interesting findings was around dosing behaviors. I’ve noticed a push to turn microdosing moms into the new “wine mom," but what we learned is that the range of dosing experiences is much broader. Mothers are having everything from microdoses to seven-gram journeys.

We also learned that most dose intuitively rather than following strict protocols, and they still received benefits even with sporadic use. The reasons mothers used mushrooms included anxiety relief, depression support, overcoming overwhelm, enhancing parenting capacity, and personal growth.

Regarding breastfeeding, we observed a range of effects on children. Some became more active and curious, others more drowsy and sleepy. Some mothers adjusted their use based on their observations, just like you might with food or formula.

We have contact information for follow-ups, which is exciting because we now have a generation of "mushroom babies" we can potentially study long-term. Of the 400+ submissions, 210 were from mothers who dosed during pregnancy, with most others starting in the postpartum period.

What new questions has the survey opened up that you’d like to explore in future research?

Looking back, I wish we'd had a data scientist involved from the start to help structure the questions more conditionally and gather harder quantitative data. I really wanted to understand if ingesting psilocybin while pregnant affects things like gestational age, birth weight, length, and Apgar scores. Do these children deviate from national averages in any way? We can only determine if psilocybin is truly safe in pregnancy by looking at developmental milestones and outcomes.

But even without that correlation data, this survey serves an important purpose. What we do know now is that none of these mushroom pregnancies resulted in deaths or serious adverse outcomes. Now women have some dosing guidelines, challenge points to consider, and a place to tell their story.

This kind of preliminary data is often what's needed to justify more rigorous research and secure funding for controlled studies. We started very humbly. This was just phase one of what needs to be much broader research.

What does ‘rematriating entheogens’ mean to you, and why is it important in the current moment?

Rematriation comes from the indigenous land back movement, based on the idea that when women, mothers, and aunties have equal roles, responsibilities, and resources to shape life on earth, we all benefit. In the entheogenic space, it means including more Indigenous women's voices in how we move the psychedelic movement forward—not just including them but centering and acting on their perspectives.

This isn't about identity politics. It's about preserving wisdom around safety and benefit. Traditional protocols and cultural contexts have been refined over generations to help people work with these medicines in the most beneficial ways. When these perspectives are lost, we have to start from scratch, which is especially dangerous at this delicate moment on Earth when these medicines are becoming more widely available.

Rematriation also includes advocating for the legal rights of mothers who use entheogens so they don't lose their children, centering women's voices in research, and addressing survivorship around misuse of power in ceremonial spaces. For me, rematriating entheogens means reprioritizing and redistributing power to belong equitably to women, especially women of color, in the psychedelic community.

Through MA'AT, you're working on accountability and transparency in psychedelic spaces. What changes would you like to see in how these medicines are held?

What I'd really like to see is more upfront conversation around misuse of power, sexual assault, manipulation, and financial ethics as part of training programs. Right now, organizations mostly handle these issues on the back end, after something happens. It would be better to have preemptive education baked into the curriculum about boundaries, dual relationships, and red flags to watch for.

We need to normalize making mistakes and creating meaningful restoration processes. Rather than just throwing people away, we need ways to wrap our arms around each other and say, "I see that you made a mistake. Thank you for trying. Let's continue to be better as a community." At the same time, we need some kind of database of offenses. I get emails daily about harmful experiences, but there's no central place for this information to live. Finding that balance between restoration and accountability is tricky, but it needs to be done for the safety of our community.

Beyond these structural changes, I hope people understand that entheogens exist within a broader context of care and helpful traditional practices. Look back at your ancestry. See what your people might have done, what plants grow in that area, and what instruments are from that region of the world. We're not so far from our ancestry that we can't reconnect and honor it.

Want more from Mikaela?

Dig into her teachings on crafting your own sacred medicines. To learn more about Mothers of the Mushroom, read the full study report or flip through the key findings.

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DISCLAIMER: This newsletter is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as a substitute for professional medical advice. The use, possession, and distribution of psychedelic drugs are illegal in most countries and may result in criminal prosecution.