The experiment
Dustin was ready. He took the magic mushrooms — procured with the help of a tattoo artist friend — ground them up, and mixed them with lemon juice, before throwing it all back in a single gulp.
Then he put on some sunglasses, strapped on his headphones, and hit play on one of his favorite albums: Natalia Lafourcade’s “Hasta la Raiz.” He was ready for his trip to begin.
This was Dustin’s first time taking shrooms in 17 years — a last-ditch effort to try to regain his sense of smell, which he’d lost after a bout with COVID-19.
“You start realizing that you can’t smell things that you normally would,” said Dustin, who asked that his last name be withheld for privacy reasons.
He tried to remind himself that losing his sense of smell wasn’t the worst possible outcome.
“You could be in the hospital, you know. You could have died from this,” he said.
But it was hard. He missed smelling things, like the coffee his wife made in the mornings. Or tasting the meals they’d spent hours cooking — one of Dustin’s mental health outlets during the pandemic. Even home didn’t smell like home anymore. FULL ARTICLE
