Paul Stamets’s High-Dose Psilocybin Experience

Paul Stamets’s high-dose psilocybin experience at Kenyon College became the turning point he associated both with a dramatic change in his stutter and with his decision to study mushrooms. A spring storm caught him high in an oak tree after he had eaten what he later estimated might have been ten grams of mushrooms. Holding on as the tree swayed, he experienced the tree as a connection between earth and sky, feared that lightning would strike him, and repeatedly resolved to stop stuttering if he survived. The storm passed; the next morning, he spoke without stuttering to a woman he was attracted to. He said he had hardly ever stuttered since.