Hello Mycopreneurs,

Welcome back to the Mycopreneur Newsletter, your one stop shop for staying on top of the global mushroom innovation space. Here are some of the key developments across the world this week:

A woman named Kacia Julius has been going mega viral this week across platforms after uploading a video testimonial about how microdosing psilocybin wakes up the otherwise entirely dormant nerves in her legs, restoring movement after a prolonged paralysis. A GoFundMe set up for her in November of 2024 reveals she suffered a debilitating spinal cord injury and her social media accounts since then document sustained physical therapy efforts in a bid to return to walking.

“So I wanna show you what happens when someone who is paralyzed takes a microdose. I’m in a wheelchair and I’m paralyzed from here (the midsection) down…

..So it’s been about 20 minutes, and my legs are fired up right now.”

She points the camera at her legs, which are visibly gyrating and moving.

As the video wraps, she shares that she’s documenting her recovery journey and shares the call to action for people to tune in to follow her progress as she works towards regaining the ability to walk.

This video has racked up nearly 5 million views on TikTok and another 2 million on Instagram, and has been uploaded and commented upon by numerous other accounts such as the The Spore Report.

Ironically, when deliberately searching for this video this morning on TikTok after seeing it circulating my feed all week, I was met with a message warning about illicit substances and routed to a substance abuse help page with no results for the video. This is the double edged sword of social media: The AI censors running the show see no difference between a miraculous recovery story and substance abuse, all because the keyword ‘microdosing’ is in practice tied to some federally scheduled substances. Oh well, that’s why we have newsletters!

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While research and news reports about the therapeutic potential of psilocybin have predominantly focused on the potential mental health benefits of mushrooms, there is a mounting body of evidence that these benefits extend to physical health as well.

The most impactful of these stories are ones like Kacia’s shared above, which showcase lived experiences from real people via their own perspectives rather than the ‘golden standard’ of double blind placebo clinical research trials that analyze data collected over years from pilot studies performed on anonymous individuals.

Another powerful testament to the potential of psilocybin mushrooms to restore bodily function after a paralysis surfaced last year with the story of Jim Harris in Outside Magazine. Harris was paralyzed in a snowkiting accident in Chile (sidebar, wtf is snowkiting?! Sounds epic) and had lost the ability to walk until taking a dose of magic mushrooms at a String Cheese Incident concert in Denver and unexpectedly inducing a physical response.

From the story:

“After becoming paralyzed from the chest down, the mountain athlete found an unlikely ally in recovery: psychedelics

…Against all odds, Jim Harris was walking. It was exhausting, and he thought he looked like Frankenstein’s monster—stepping forward with his left leg, then throwing his unresponsive right leg around to meet it. But there he was, at a music festival, getting around with the assistance of a walker, eight months out from a spinal-cord injury that left him paralyzed from the chest down.”

While the continued appeals of regulators for ‘more research!’ into the mental and physical therapeutic potential of psilocybin mushrooms is the institutional approach to potentially overhauling outdated drug policy, Kacia and Jim’s lived experiences outside of the clinic are what move the needle on psilocybin mushroom recognition culturally. As more people than ever embrace the profound potential of mushrooms to improve their lives in myriad ways, we will likely continue to see stories emerge that show clear benefits from different angles — even if the mechanisms which drive these ‘miracles’ are beyond the current understandings of science.

We just wrapped our inaugural mushroom retreat in Jamaica last week — one of the only countries in the world where psilocybin mushrooms are legal. It’s become a hotspot for the emergent psychedelic retreat industry, and our experience there co-hosting a retreat at Coral Cove Wellness Resort alongside Andy Sudbrock of Sacred Path Retreats was extraordinary beyond imagination.

We held one deep dive mushroom ceremony (3-5 gram range per participant) and one ‘mushroom-enhanced play day’ on one gram mushroom chocolate while punctuating the week with swimming in the crystalline Caribbean waters, visiting an OG Rasta cannabis farm with the owner, making pilgrimages to under the radar Bob Marley sites (including his old seaside cottage), swimming in secret mineral springs and eating multi-course farm to table meals every day on a veranda overlooking the stunning natural cove of the property. We even managed to score a lobster, shrimp, and steak dinner with cannabis-infused butter on all of it for our last dinner together.

There’s no way I can do justice to this experience in a few hundred characters, so you’ll have to join us for the next retreat at the property in March of 2027. If you want access to this before then, good news…looks like we’ll be announcing another psychedelic retreat at another 5 star property in another tropical country between now and then, so stay tuned…

Ok, there’s plenty more I’d like to cover today, but let’s put a pin in it here and discuss some of the other trending topics and early positioning for mushroom industry moves at today’s Mycopreneur Incubator. There is no theme for the incubator today, so let’s just hang out and build together. If you haven’t been to an incubator yet, it’s our weekly low-key, cost free online networking and acceleration hub for mushroom entrepreneurs, researchers, and enthusiasts. You’re most welcome to join us and it will be time well-spent. The invitation is below:

Today, Mar 26, 3 pm ET US / 12 pm PT

Join Zoom Meeting
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/87575277676?pwd=w5k1GGlfZ22I3SOtolZbZokYnxpUi8.1

Meeting ID: 875 7527 7676
Passcode: 038704

Thanks for reading today’s Mycopreneur Newsletter, and see you at the Incubator

DW