Magic Mushrooms Helped Me Build My Garden (Seriously)

Magic mushrooms have been a huge part of my life in ways I never expected. They've helped me get through tough times—whether it was overcoming feelings of nihilism, working through personal growth, or dealing with trauma. But there’s one thing I didn’t expect: they helped me build my garden.

Let me explain.

If you’ve ever worked with psychedelics, you know they have a way of shaking up the way you think and giving you “crazy” ideas.

Imagine you’re driving in a car, and you can only go straight at a steady pace. That’s kind of how my mind worked before I started using psychedelics. But when you take a psychedelic, it’s like your mind shifts gears—you can go sideways, backwards, zig-zag, speed up, or slow down. Everything feels different. Your thinking becomes more creative, more flexible. Suddenly, the world is full of new possibilities.

That’s what happened to me one day when I was trying to figure out how to expand my homestead.

It was fall of 2023, and I had just started homesteading. I had a small garden bed and 11 chickens. Nothing crazy, but I loved the simplicity of it. The idea of focusing on quality over quantity really resonated with me. But, to be honest, it felt too small. I wanted more, but there was a huge issue—money. As a 19-year-old with barely $1,000 to my name, expanding my garden wasn’t exactly in the cards. I couldn’t afford to buy lumber, soil, or new garden beds. And on top of that, I was going through major health challenges at the time, so most of my money was going there.

This is where the mushrooms came in.

I was on a trip one day, and like always, I got hit with the “afterglow”—that post-trip clarity where ideas just start to flow. I was standing outside, looking at the mess of rocks and trees in my yard, and it suddenly hit me: Why not just use what I already had to build the garden beds?

It felt so obvious. I had trees and rocks all around me. For months, I had seen them as problems. Things that blocked sunlight or made digging nearly impossible. But after the trip, I saw them differently. The rocks and trees weren’t obstacles—they were resources. The obstacle became the way. The problem was the solution.

I got to work right away. I used the rocks to build raised beds, stacked the trees to make frames, and filled everything with dirt from the property, kitchen scraps, and chicken manure. It was a huge gamble. What if the soil was bad? What if nothing grew? The whole process was filled with uncertainty, but that’s what made it so meaningful. It connected me to my spirit.

What I learned is that if something truly matters to you, it’s going to be hard. When you’re creating something original, there’s always resistance, fear, and doubt. It’s normal. But the only way through is with courage, love, and vision. Without those, you’ll never have a reason to do original and creative work.

The way you develop courage, love, and vision is for another day, but what I will say is that it can’t be given to you by others. Wanting to be a police officer because your dad was a police officer or because that’s what people say you should do will not produce original and creative work. Because constantly doing what other people say you should do doesn’t require courage, love, or vision, hence you can never develop it from within. Now, this isn’t to say be a rebel for the sake of being a rebel (I know this all too well, lol), but I am saying seek the answers within.

The emotional labor of building that garden was just as tough as the physical labor. There were days when I thought I had no idea what I was doing. But there was something else that kept me going: the belief that this garden meant something to me, something bigger than just growing food.

Working on this garden became my way of engaging with life. I worked 12-hour days for four months lifting rocks, digging up soil, and cutting trees. My hands were destroyed for like 2 months afterward. It wasn’t just about having organic, high-quality food—it was about creating something that felt real and meaningful. And that’s the thing: If you’re not creating, you’re just consuming. Nowadays, it’s easy to get sucked into endless distractions—scrolling through social media, binge-watching shows, or just taking in everything around you. But the more you consume, the more disconnected you become from your own essence. You stop creating. You begin to “suck on society’s tit.”

Now, whenever I get stuck, I turn to low to moderate doses of mushrooms for a little help. I don’t take them to escape reality; I take them to see things from a new perspective. It’s like stepping back and looking at the problem from a higher place. Sometimes, that’s all it takes to find the answer.

Over the last year, my views on “drugs” have shifted a lot. I grew up with a strict “no drugs” mentality, and I still stay away from things like vaping or alcohol. But when it comes to psychedelics and marijuana, I’ve come to see them as tools—tools for creativity, healing, and growth. The key, though, is using them responsibly. Abuse them, and they can mess with your head. But used with intention, psychedelics can help you see things in ways you never thought possible.

The way marijuana and psychedelics differ is not just in their effects but in the ways that they can be abused. This is my biggest fear when recommending plant medicines to people: that they abuse them. I will say psychedelics are much less likely to be abused because if you abuse them, you can be seriously traumatized. Marijuana is a different story. Constantly being high is so immature and stupid. Anyways, this is all a discussion for another day.

Magic mushrooms helped me see a solution I couldn’t see before. They’ve helped me be more creative with my projects, especially with the garden. Without them, I don’t know if I’d have had the same vision or courage to build what I did.

What life requires is a serious degree of open-mindedness. If you’re stuck on a problem or need to work through something, maybe, just maybe, mushrooms could help you think outside the box, too. Now, excuse me, I have more garden beds to build :)

Peace,

Koby