‘From LA to Byron to Sydney’: The trippy treat popular among Millennial mums

This story is part of the Good Weekend: Best of Features 2024 editon.See all 12 stories.

Something strange has started happening every time I go out at night, which admittedly is not as often as it was before I had young children. For the past two or so years, whether at a 40th birthday, a gig or a weekend away with friends, someone has turned up proffering magic mushrooms. Almost always, that somebody identifies as female and tends to be a late Millennial or in early middle-age. And unlike the illegal drugs of my youth – those tiny ziplock bags stashed secretly in undies, the contents consumed in pub toilets or covertly inhaled in back lanes – these mind-altering substances are being consumed out in the open. It helps that ground-up, dried mushrooms are frequently cooked into deluxe chocolate and distributed in microdose-friendly blocks that are nibbled incrementally.

Either way, there’s a significant socio-cultural change afoot. For a drug that was nowhere to be seen in most social settings just five years ago, mushrooms, which contain the naturally occurring compound, psilocybin, are suddenly everywhere. Indeed, the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare’s (AIHW) 2023 National Drug Strategy Household Survey reports that twice as many people are using illegal mushrooms compared to 2019, while the use of other illegal substances such as ecstasy and non-medical opioids has decreased. So what’s going on: are the Swinging Sixties back, 60 years later?

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At the end of a quiet cul-de-sac in the Sydney beachside suburb of Bronte, Alexis Hayward* has left her front door open. She’s brewing herbal tea at the end of a long hallway lined with framed family photographs of her husband, four-year-old son and three teenage stepkids, as well as a smattering of tasteful nudes. At 51, Hayward has the air of a former rock star, dressed in chic red tracksuit bottoms by tastemaker Byron label Something Very Special and a wrinkled T-shirt, and sporting a shock of grey-streaked hair. Her kitchen, all exposed brick and jet-black fit-out, looks remarkably well put together considering how many hungry children maraud through it each day.

A marketer specialising in real estate, Hayward consumes small doses of mushrooms regularly. “It’s the difference between getting up and going to the gym or just feeling crappy,” she says, as we take our tea out to the backyard. “And you know, I’ve got a young kid. I’ve got to get up every morning. No sleep-ins.” Hayward, who is from Perth and once managed a bar, says she chanced upon mushrooms in her 40s after a serious health scare made her reconsider what she was putting into her body – specifically, alcohol.

“Any woman my age will tell you that your relationship with alcohol changes when you go through menopause,” she says. “The effects of it aren’t nearly as pleasant and the hangovers are terrible.” Mushrooms, then, were a non-alcoholic alternative. “[With mushrooms] it’s never really like that. Never, ever. I feel great the next day.”

Hayward and others interviewed for this story take mushrooms in a markedly different way to how other users in society generally consume illicit drugs – which is to say, she takes them in small, carefully measured amounts, commonly known as microdosing. This has been famously evangelised by members of the tech community in Silicon Valley, who claim microdosing allows them to function more or less normally, with the addition of subtle shades of a psychedelic event. The aim is never to be obliterated or lose control; users believe microdosing minimises the chance of “bad trips” (a term typically associated with LSD, and which can last for many hours or even days).

While those who take mushrooms often experience euphoria, they can also feel terror. The physical comedown associated with other illicit drugs, specifically synthetic ones like ecstasy or crystal meth (ice), may be less pronounced, but that isn’t to say everyone feels amazing in the morning – or in the following weeks or months. A recent study of more than 600 recreational psychedelics users reporting bad experiences – with magic mushrooms the most prevalent – detailed extended feelings of paranoia, depression and anxiety. Some respondents registered a lasting inability to determine what was real, or worse, an ontological wipeout of their own sense of self. Good Weekend recently reported on rare but terrifying cases of hallucinogen persisting perception disorder (HPPD), a clinical condition triggered by consuming hallucinogens which can persist for months or years.

‘If COVID didn’t happen, maybe they might not have become popular.’

Mushroom microdoser Fleur*

This outcome seems yet to have gained serious currency in the general community, where mushrooms have become trendier – and less overtly stigmatised – than ever. They show up in places and scenarios where other drugs don’t. Hayward mentions a friend, also a mother, who sometimes microdoses “just to get through the drudgery of hanging out the washing”. Hayward herself often takes dried mushrooms or mushroom-infused chocolate to social gatherings. “I always keep a little stash of mushies around,” she says (hidden in the back of her freezer where her son can’t reach them). “And if people drop around and they’re having a drink, I might have a little nibble and a giggle. I quite like doing it when I’m going to see a band; it enhances the music. You don’t get any of that aggression that you get when you’re drinking, or that horrible crap like when you’re taking cocaine, pills or anything else.”

Across the bridge in the similarly sun-kissed northern beaches suburb of Fairlight, Fleur Grabowski*, a gregarious mother of three in her 40s who works as an interior designer, is showing me her latest mushroom-chocolate delivery. “The chocolate is delicious, you could buy it at Haigh’s! Just look at the little sprinkles of flowers and f---ing candied shit on top,” she says with a laugh. Grabowski first dabbled with the drug a decade ago, but a bad trip put her off until she started microdosing in earnest during the pandemic. “I think a lot of people were just f---ing bored. If COVID didn’t happen, maybe they might not have become popular.”

Like Hayward, Grabowski has noticed a shift in her circles towards the recreational use of psychedelic mushrooms. “My mum-friends don’t do hard drugs at all any more and they are all doing mushrooms,” she says. “In the beginning it did seem to be more in the creative industries, but I’ve definitely noticed it proliferating into basically bored mums and dads. When it first started, I was really careful with who I would bring it up with. But then I started noticing that I might mention it to the mums in the school playground and I just wasn’t getting a rise any more. And then suddenly they were asking, ‘Can I get some?’ ”

Though Grabowski still drinks alcohol (“obviously quite toxic in itself”), what she likes about mushrooms is the ability to retain a semblance of control that she feels is absent in other narcotic experiences. “I always take, like, a quarter of what everyone else is doing and I build up. So I never get into any tricky situations; I’m really conservative with how much I take, and to me, it’s like your first glass of champagne,” she says. “Because they come in this chocolate form and I can measure it out, and I just know my limit.”

Of course, nobody knows how much psilocybin is in a block of chocolate aside from those making them. As with all illegal drugs, any user is taking a lot on face value. One such product I encounter as part of my research has a “nutrition guide” stating it has 3.5 grams of mushrooms in it, alongside recommended dosages. More information than you might get with a pill cooked up in a backyard lab, perhaps, but it’s still leaving an awful lot to chance.

Psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms, is added to chocolate and sold illegally. Users nibble at squares to try to control the dose.Credit: Yarno Rohling

Grabowski isn’t the only person preaching what she considers are the benefits of mushroom dosage control. Back in Sydney’s trendy Darlinghurst, Maria Steinfeld*, who is 31, single and works in consulting, has been taking mushrooms near-exclusively by way of drugs and alcohol since New Year’s Eve 2023. “It’s easy, it’s quick, you can nibble at it and the high isn’t that long,” she says. “Either you can go all night and keep doing it or you can just go to dinner and have a little bit and then go to bed. I have decided a quarter [of a square of mushroom chocolate] is mellow, and a half is a good time. I’ve never had three-quarters.”

Unlike her older peers, Steinfeld feels the sting of judgment slightly more acutely when she takes mushrooms, though she feels it’s unwarranted. “What’s the difference between someone having two glasses of wine at a book launch or politely sitting there munching on their little chocolate? Alcohol is the biggest and worst drug we have. And having dated an alcoholic, I now realise how unaware people are of the danger of alcohol. It’s become institutionalised.”

Of the many overlaps between these women, the glaringly obvious one is that they live and work in some of Sydney’s wealthiest suburbs. The AIHW data supports the idea that psychedelics are an upper-middle-class drug, revealing that those who live in areas of the most socioeconomic advantage were over six times more likely to have taken hallucinogens than those living in the least advantaged places. “It’s almost chic to do mushrooms,” Steinfeld says. “It comes in a beautiful paper bag, it’s all branded … gorgeous. Like a luxury item.”

This would make more sense if illegal mushrooms were expensive to purchase or difficult to come by but, by all accounts, neither of these things is true. “I just buy them as individual chocolates and basically, one chocolate is a night out for two people,” says Grabowski. “So that’s me and my husband, hypothetically. And it’s $30 to $40 a chocolate; that’s like two margaritas!” Steinfeld agrees cost factors have influenced her choice. “So these blocks were $200 each, and that’s 10 squares. So that’s, maybe … 40 nights out?” Hayward gets hers for about the same price. “They just put it in the mailbox,” she says of procuring the drugs. “No one cares.”

More curiously, in a shadowy world infamously facilitated by dodgy dudes working for international criminal networks, many illicit mushroom distributors appear to be women. “There’s a girl that I know in Redfern [in Sydney’s inner south] who does it, and there’s a girl in Bondi who does it. So it’s very local,” says Steinfeld. Adds Grabowski: “The three people who have been my dealers are all young, lovely women, right? So that instantly gets rid of that stigma. I think their audience is different; most of the people who are organising it or buying it are the wives, not the husbands. The husbands dabble in it as well because it’s f---ing fun, but I do think this is a bit of a female-led trend.”

Nia Pejsak is an advisory director at Stylus, which provides trends and insight analysis to brands and agencies across the world. It’s been tracking what she calls “the psychedelic renaissance globally” for the past five years, and she puts the surging popularity down to two main factors. “The first is that we are increasingly looking for a change of state,” she says. “Australia, along with the rest of the world, is grappling with a significant mental health crisis. There’s demand for something that’s going to help them change their emotional or physical state … for example, from anxious to calm, or from burnt-out to creative.” She points to the parallel rise of activities like ice baths and breathwork apps. “People are distracted or bored, and they want to feel strong sensations again.”

Pejsak also says women have stronger motivational drivers when it comes to mushrooms over other drugs: “The wellness industry is telling women that they need to be ‘in the moment’ or ‘find the joy in the everyday’, and the ‘mumfluencer’ industry emphasises the importance of being a present parent. Perhaps they see microdosing as a shortcut to actually achieving those ideals.”

There is also, of course, the small matter of what’s happening in the medico-scientific world. About a year ago, Australia’s Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) made global headlines for a highly irregular decision, in which it changed the ranking of psilocybin from a prohibited substance that could only be used in trials to a drug that could be prescribed selectively to those suffering from treatment-resistant depression. The move came against the backdrop of something of a mushroom gold rush across the world, in which cashed-up start-ups and other, more questionable operators seek to capitalise on what is being heralded as a new frontier in mental health treatments.

‘People wouldn’t self-administer chemo on the weekends just because it’s used medically.’

Dr Adam Bayes

Dr Adam Bayes is a clinical psychiatrist with Black Dog Institute who has recently supervised a psilocybin trial and also helped develop a treatment program that uses ketamine to assuage depression, both of which were the result of years of rigorous, ethics-approved and closely monitored research. “I am just kind of gobsmacked that the TGA made the decision because there’s just such limited information on psilocybin,” he says. “It’s bizarre; we’re the first country to take this national approach. It’s quite shocking on my level. We’re normally not at the forefront of anything progressive.”

Bayes says it’s highly problematic to extrapolate what happens in a clinical trial, where patients are supervised in controlled settings with multiple professionals on hand, into the recreational world. Early data from trials may indicate benefits for specific health conditions, but “[lay]people do not actually usually know the quality of the substance, the correct dosage, they are not in a ‘contained’ environment, there is often poly-drug use and alcohol involved, and they may have mental health issues for which these substances are contra-indicated, such as psychosis or ultra high-risk for psychosis.” Bayes says certain people are immediately screened out of such trials for this reason, including anyone with a mood disorder such as bipolar or schizophrenia, and there are still many untold risks in a field of study that is very new. “People wouldn’t self-administer chemotherapy on the weekends just because it’s used medically,” he says.

“My life was suddenly beige, and I guess I did want to be a little bit rebellious again,” says a mother of three of her recreational psychedelics use.Credit: iridescentstreet - stock.adobe.com

Despite their assurances that they are their best selves on mushrooms, many of the women I talk to do have some version of a psychedelic horror story. This usually aligns with the first time they took the drug and didn’t yet know their limit, a bit like a binge-drinking teenager. “It was in Melbourne, probably 15 years ago,” says Grabowski of her bad trip. “It was too wild, like it was pretty crazy. The walls were melting and I kind of got lost in the streets of a foreign city and somehow found my way back.” This certainly sounds more like an LSD trip and far less like the focused mood in which one wants to dream up the next Facebook. Steinfeld has a similar one-off tale: “I was at a party and I took an insane amount, and I turned around and there was this woman in a gold dress, and I was like, ‘She’s on fire.’ Really terrifying. But now I know my dosage,” she adds quickly, “so I never get to that point.” While recounting her story of the melting walls, Grabowski mentions her husband sometimes “sees everybody’s skeletons” when he takes mushrooms, typically at double her dosage.

‘I really am so cautious because you have no idea where it comes from.’

Fleur*

“People who’ve had some horrible experience, like a recreational experience that went wrong, it’s usually because there are some other factors,” explains Bayes. “It’s the mindset and the setting that are most important because psilocybin acts as an amplifier. So some people who take these drugs recreationally, you know they might be in some weird environment where they don’t know people, they might feel a bit uneasy and that’ll just be magnified. It’s also their mindset going in; again in a recreational setting, if they’ve just had a break-up or something, and they think it’s a good idea to go and have a trip? Probably a bad idea for the same reason.”

Psilocybin in its classic form (as opposed to synthesised compounds used in trials) is naturally occurring, part of what makes it so cost-effective. There was a time, Hayward tells me in her Bronte backyard, that her chocolate travelled a well-worn path from America’s west coast to our eastern seaboard, but now much of what she buys is grown and manufactured lo-fi and locally. “You can travel with it because it’s a bit more innocuous; it’s just a block of chocolate. So it’s very unlikely you’re ever going to get done. I’ve got a lot of friends who just flew it over from LA.” Steinfeld’s dealer sources her product from Oyster Bay, the southern Sydney enclave known for its community vibe and riverfront properties. “It looks like they buy the mushrooms from the dark web,” says Grabowski of her suppliers. “I have no f---ing idea; I don’t want to know. It’s another reason why I microdose – like, I really am so cautious because you have no idea where it comes from.”

As far as official tracking goes, a spokesperson for the Australian Federal Police tells me they’ve seized 105 kilograms of illicit psilocybin since 2022. “Of these seizures,” he says, “psilocybin was imported almost exclusively via international mail.”

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To state the obvious, the reason that psilocybin is being hailed as a wonder drug in therapeutic circles is also what makes it so potentially dangerous. “Under the acute effects of psychedelics, there is a rebooting of the brain and the ability of the brain to strengthen new pathways,” explains Bayes. “There is concern for those with psychosis or with a predisposition to developing [it] that these drugs could alter the brain and precipitate psychosis. And once there has been a psychotic episode in an individual, there is always concern that the brain has altered in such a way that it could happen again.”

That’s not to mention issues surrounding the foraging of these drugs for recreational ingestion. The mushrooms that can get someone high – or fatally poison them – often look identical. A few months ago, 53-year-old Victorian woman Rachael Dixon died following cardiac arrest after consuming a shake allegedly containing magic mushrooms at a wellness centre in the regional town of Clunes. It follows the internationally sensational case of a suspected triple homicide during a family lunch in the Victorian town of Leongatha, where multiple family members were killed after unknowingly consuming death cap mushrooms served by their host.

As for its current adherents? Despite the risks both known and unknown, they’ve never been more comfortable spreading the gospel of magic mushrooms. “It’s been a long time since I’ve done anything stronger, and I would never do it ever again,” Hayward says. “Even my friends who were really quite into their drugs, that’s the path they’ve taken now because it’s kind of guilt-free.”

Grabowski reckons boredom also shouldn’t be underestimated, particularly for mothers with young children: “My life was suddenly beige, and I guess I did want to be a little bit rebellious again and shake things up in a middle-class, conservative way. When you have children, having hangovers is really not ideal. This is two, three hours of impact – done.” Hayward labels mushrooms as “100 per cent the parents’ drug of choice”: affordable, seemingly lower-risk and less likely to impede the ability to attend to your kid at stupid o’clock in the morning than many current alternatives. “I don’t know,” she smiles. “I also quite like it for just sitting around having silly conversations.”

‘If legalisation continues, microdosing might be more widely used as part of a self-care routine or even facilitated at-home.’

Trend forecaster Nia Pejsak

As for the gender preference, Steinfeld thinks that might have to do with age. “Look, I have friends of both genders taking them,” she says, “but a lot of my girlfriends are into it right now.” Grabowski adds that the environment around mushrooms generally feels more wholesome and feminine, from the social aspect (“you’re not all crowded into a cubicle”) to the packaging and procurement. “I come back to the point that I’ve only ever purchased from women. They’re not driving around in Maseratis. It’s supplementary income.”

The AIHW points out that magic mushrooms have shown the single largest increase in public approval since its last report in 2019, second only to cannabis, another drug that’s undergone significant rebranding, diversification and commercialisation globally in the past five years. “The legalisation of psilocybin and other drugs for therapy is definitely shifting what’s perceived as a vice,” Pejsak says. That’s certainly true for Steinfeld. She recently offered mushrooms to her 70-something father, who had just finished chemotherapy. “I was like, ‘It makes you feel really good!’ He wasn’t interested.”

It also seems unlikely mushrooms will remain the exclusive province of successful career women or uninspired mothers and their friends. Grabowski believes that like many social trends, magic mushroom use will inevitably spread beyond early adopters like herself. “It went from LA to Byron to Sydney. I do think it will ripple out.” Pejsak seems to agree that this uptake reflects a broader social shift. “If legalisation continues, microdosing might be more widely used as part of a self-care routine or even facilitated at-home,” she says. “People are looking for solutions that provide sociability, empathy, and also focus, in a way alcohol doesn’t.”

As we wrap up our conversations about illegal drugs in remarkably domestic settings, I ask each woman about any risks they worry about with taking magic mushrooms. “It’s one of those things you don’t want to take too much of – like anything, really,” says Hayward. “Also, I have a kid in the house, so I want to be safe.”

In Fairlight, Grabowski has a word of warning for those thinking the risks are non-existent. “My husband’s depressed for days afterwards,” she says frankly. “At first I thought it was a coincidence, but it’s happened a few times now. It’s like a serotonin blackout, a little bit like back in the ecstasy days.”

Steinfeld has no such misgivings. “I wish I could go to work on mushrooms,” she says as she sees me to the door. “I could honestly see myself doing this for life.”

* Names have been changed.

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