Patrick Hanly: Yoga teacher avoids jail over magic mushroom supply

As the Black Summer bushfires ripped across NSW, a yoga teacher turned to magic mushrooms as a source of comfort. Now the self proclaimed ‘healer’ has found himself before the courts.

A yoga teacher and “healer” who used magic mushrooms to cope with the climate change anxiety he developed as a result of the bushfire crisis has avoided jail for supply charges.

A judge found Patrick Hanly, 34, was “operating a modest magic mushroom supply” as a “user-dealer” when police discovered commercial quantities of psilocin, contained in a variety of mushrooms, and mescaline, a brown powder similar in effect to LSD, in his Maroubra home.

Some mushrooms and mushroom stems were in a dehydrator on his bedroom floor at the time, the Sydney District Court heard.

During that raid in July 2020, police also found a book related to magic mushrooms, scales, capsules and a phone with an encrypted app on it, which was used to message contacts saved as “clients”, the court heard.

Patrick Hanly. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Bianca De Marchi

Hanly, a trained massage therapist, later told police the scales were for weighing a small amount of mushrooms for microdosing and the capsules were for storing the broken-down mushrooms.

He initially told police in an interview he had developed an interest in wellbeing and plants when he discovered mushrooms had been decriminalised in the US state of Colorado, and “backed away from it” when friends asked him for mushrooms.

He earlier pleaded guilty to supplying a commercial quantity of psilocin and mescaline, and was sentenced this week to a two-year Intensive Corrections Order.

In a letter to the court, Hanly, who now lives in Lurnea, said he had started using magic mushrooms alongside his desire to gain skills in natural medicine and healing, yoga, Zen Thai shiatsu and other kinds of massage therapy.

During his travels in Thailand and elsewhere, he said he had discovered the healing powers of psychocybin mushrooms for anxiety and depression, and when his anxiety was elevated due to a fear for the planet during the NSW bushfire crisis, he turned to mushrooms to deal with his problems.

Patrick Hanly is seen leaving the Downing Centre Courts, in Sydney. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Bianca De Marchi

He harvested mushrooms when lockdown began, the court heard, and supplied them to friends in the Blue Mountains for their “healing properties”, noting he developed a tolerance of 5g and felt clarity of thought and insight when he consumed them himself.

The court heard, since his arrest, he has turned to other healing techniques such as meditation to relax and reduce his fears instead of mushrooms.

A psychologist determined he had an adjustment disorder and fear caused by the bushfires and Covid.

Judge Catherine O’Brien said it was important to deter the general public so that “other members of the community do not take it upon themselves to supply drugs whatever the motivation”.

She said he had a commitment to alternative healing therapies and gaining skills to practice as a healer to many people, saying he was “a man of good character”.

He was sentenced to two years in prison, to be served out in the community through an Intensive Corrections Order.