Psychedelic Support: Psilocybin’s Role In Cancer Therapy

I still remember the first time I tripped on mushrooms—an accidental hero dose swallowed naïvely on what I thought was a weed edible.

Spoiler: it wasn’t.

It was seven months after losing my mom to suicide by way of my living room ceiling fan. I’d rented a creaky little cabin in the woods, thinking I’d spend the weekend crying into a bottle of wine, maybe writing a terrible poem or two. Instead, I found myself on the floor, pupils dilated into black moons, limbs buzzing, mouth dry, heart thudding like a warning bell in a flooded church.

Turns out that innocent little chocolate bar wasn’t laced with weed at all—it was packed with psilocybin. Mushrooms. Magic ones. Hero-dose-level magic. The kind of dose that doesn’t just blur reality—it burns it down.

Common side effects? Nausea. Chills. Time distortion. Visual hallucinations. Spiritual whiplash. A sense of losing your mind while somehow remembering your soul. Check, check, check. Every side effect unfolded like an uninvited guest, dragging me deeper into the underworld of my own consciousness.

One minute I was watching the trees inhale. The next, I was the trees. Then the wind. Then the grief itself. Time? Space? Derelict. I stared at a crumpled leaf for forty-five minutes and felt like I was looking at a PhD thesis from God. I remember whispering to the ceiling, “What year is it?” and weeping when I couldn’t tell you who the president was. Everything felt ancient and brand new.

But then something happened.

The trip softened—like the fever breaking, like the scream turning into a song—and I laughed.

I laughed for hours. I laughed the way toddlers do, from the belly, from somewhere primal and full of light. It was the first time I’d truly laughed with my whole body since the day my mother hung herself in my brownstone. The kind of laughter that rings holy and profane at once. The kind that makes your ribs ache but also makes you believe in something again.

I was visited by God. Not the judgmental, church-stained-glass God I’d grown up fearing, but something stranger and sweeter. This God didn’t scold. This God shimmered. This God told me I wasn’t broken—I was just becoming. That I was going to do something positive with this pain. That my mother’s suicide wasn’t the end of me. That I could live. That I must.

And then, God told me to move to Arizona. I’m not kidding.

The mushrooms gave me marching orders: "Go to the desert. Start over."

So I did.

After the trip, it felt like I’d swallowed a Xanax that lasted six months. I was calmer. I was clearer. I didn’t crave alcohol the way I used to. My coping mechanisms didn’t vanish—but they loosened their grip. I could feel the sun on my skin again without flinching. Food tasted better. Music sounded richer. My laughter wasn’t performative anymore. It was earned.

Psilocybin didn’t erase my grief. It introduced me to it. Gave it shape. Gave it breath. Let it crawl into the light so I could stop being afraid of my own shadow. And in doing so, it gave me back my life.

Somewhere between sobbing into the floorboards and whispering secrets to moss, I saw my mother. Not as she died, but as she once was—before the addiction, before the hospital visits, before the final, fatal surrender.

She was standing in the kitchen of our old house. Laughing. Not that hollow laugh she used toward the end when she was pretending for my sake, but a real one. Her eyes crinkled the way they used to when I made her proud. I could smell her perfume, faint and powdery, mixed with coffee and cigarettes. It broke me.

I didn’t get to say goodbye. That thought had haunted me for months. I used to wake up gasping because I couldn’t remember if I’d told her I loved her the last time we spoke. But there she was. On the trip, I got my goodbye. Not in words—but in presence. In a knowing. She reached for me, and though there were no hands, I felt her. She told me—without speaking—that she wasn’t in pain anymore. That she didn’t want me to follow her down.

You ever feel your soul unclench? That’s what it was like.

And that’s when I realized: psilocybin wasn’t just showing me pretty colors or melting the trees for fun. It was walking me through a reckoning. It cracked open all the places where I had tucked my pain into neat little boxes. The trauma, the shame, the self-blame. All of it came rushing to the surface like floodwaters breaking through a dam. I met every ghost in my house. Every version of me that had been abandoned, abused, forgotten. The one who kept trying to save her mother. The one who thought she failed.

They didn’t need saving. They needed seeing.

I held them. One by one. And I wept and laughed for them all.

Afterward, the world didn’t feel like it was trying to kill me anymore. The air smelled like pine and dirt and the possibility of forgiveness. I sat barefoot on the porch steps, clutching a mug of lukewarm coffee like it was a relic. My mother was still gone. That hadn’t changed. But I no longer felt like I was dying with her. That was new.

Healing Beyond the Mind?

Since that fateful encounter with psilocybin, I’ve worked with a shaman to heal my CPTSD. Routine hero journeys with shrooms became my therapy—an antidote to the multifarious scars left by a toxic legacy and the ceaseless grip of depression and anxiety. Every version of me who had been abandoned, neglected, or told to be the adult too soon came roaring to the surface. That’s what CPTSD is—it’s not one wound. It’s a chorus of them, layered and echoing through your body until you forget what silence feels like.

But here’s the kicker: while the clinical spotlight has largely been on how psilocybin alleviates psychological distress in cancer patients, there’s a growing body of research hinting that its benefits might also ripple into the physical realm.

Cancer Is Inflammation, and Psilocybin Is on the Case

Cancer isn’t just rogue cells on a suicide mission—it’s chronic inflammation unhinged, a kind of cosmic prank played by your immune system when it forgets what team it’s on. Emerging research now suggests that psilocybin may reduce key inflammatory cytokines like tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-α) and interleukin-6 (IL-6), two of the worst offenders when it comes to fueling cancer’s slow, steady takeover. One ScienceDirect study even notes, “a single dose of psilocybin led to immediate reductions in these pro-inflammatory markers”—a finding that may someday be de rigueur in treating the silent inflammatory undercurrents of cancer.

By calming the immune response, psilocybin may be doing more than easing emotional distress—it could be reshaping the body's inflammatory baseline. It also disrupts the feedback loop of chronic stress and cortisol, both of which prime the body for disease by keeping it in a state of red alert.

There’s growing evidence that the emotional regulation brought on by psilocybin translates into reduced systemic inflammation—because when the psyche finds peace, the body often follows. And in a clinical trial now underway through the National Cancer Institute, researchers are examining how these mental and physiological shifts might fundamentally alter the experience—and potentially the trajectory—of cancer itself.

A Review of the Multifaceted Evidence Time magazine recently ran an article titled "Psychedelics Make Us Less Afraid of Death" that celebrates psilocybin’s broader existential healing powers—an essential perspective for those of us who’ve been staring into the void of our own mortality. Meanwhile, Healio highlighted that research into psilocybin’s role in cancer-related depression might just be the tip of the iceberg, suggesting that its anti-inflammatory properties could be a game-changer for the way we treat the underlying conditions of cancer. And as Verywell Mind explains, psilocybin therapy is emerging as a potent intervention—not just for mood disorders but potentially as a modulatory agent in the broader spectrum of human health.

Shattered by my past, yet finding solace in the present, I’ve been a witness to what psilocybin can do for the mind. But let’s not kid ourselves—the cynosure of these studies isn’t to declare psilocybin a miracle cure for cancer overnight. Rather, it’s to point us toward a fascinating interconnection: if we can modulate inflammation (cancer’s very lifeblood) with one compound, then why not explore its full potential? As noted by a study on PubMed Central, psilocybin’s ability to shift our internal biochemical landscape represents a radical departure from conventional treatments. And let’s not forget Charles D. Nichols whose work has been seminal in our understanding of psychedelics—a field where every quark of data could ultimately pivot the future of cancer therapy.

Quark

The smallest known thing. The irreducible. The building block of all that is and ever was. Healing feels like that sometimes. Tiny. Hidden. Unseen—but there. Shifting everything.

In the end, what’s clear is that psilocybin is far from a panacea, but its promise is too tantalizing to dismiss. For a woman who once stood on the brink—grieving, alone, and desperate for a way out—psilocybin was more than just a mind-altering substance; it was the beacon that helped me find my way back to a life worth living. Today, I celebrate the possibility that this same compound might offer others, especially those battling cancer, a multifaceted pathway to healing, both mental and potentially physical.

So here’s to a future where psilocybin isn’t relegated to the fringes of experimental therapy but is embraced as an integral part of a holistic, patient-centered approach to healing. Cheers to the journey—a journey where science, sorrow, and a splash of shroom-induced magic converge to remind us that even in our darkest moments, healing may be just one mind-expanding trip away.

A blog post by Rachel Smak on grief, loss, and lessons from stage 3C rectal cancer