Can a 75-Year-Old Do Psychedelics?

Cultivating a beautiful, transporting experience with mushrooms

Illustration: Nan Lee

Lynn and I are fortunate: We are tightly and broadly linked both physically and spiritually. Adventuring together for five years now, at 58 and 75, we seem to have acquired at least a modicum of sense and experience to see us through our escapades. Now we have decided to become psychonauts.

We did not embark on this lightly. Only one of us is psychedelically experienced—that would be me, with a handful of encounters with LSD, mescaline, and mushrooms, the last time being 40 years ago. I did not expect to re-enter the psychedelic realm again, certainly not at the three-quarter-century mark. And even though my previous experiences are among the most significant and positive events of my life, I was not in the least intending or longing to go there again. I was past that. It would scramble my old brain into soup… wouldn’t it?

Two years ago, the topic first entered our conversations. Perhaps it’s the zeitgeist, but our curiosity and desire to explore the underlying bands of consciousness initially appeared on our screens almost simultaneously. After Lynn expressed her interest, I opened up about my previous experiences with psychedelics. Gradually we decided to explore the topic further, at least in principle.