I was five years old when the labels started stacking up. Bipolar disorder. ADHD. Dyslexia. Alexithymia. The doctor’s name was Dr. Christensen, and I can still see him sitting across from my parents as I played with toys in the corner of the office. He told them I would probably never live a normal life. I remember looking up at their faces, pale and stunned, as if they had just been given a terminal diagnosis. They didn’t understand what it meant, and neither did I. What I felt, even as a child, was fear and disconnection.
From that point on, my life was no longer my own. Pills, patches, blood tests. Every two to six months, something changed. A new side effect, a new chemical adjustment, another attempt to make me “fit.” Instead of growing up with space to learn who I was, my childhood was controlled by constant medication changes and school systems that didn’t know what to do with me.
By high school, I had been pulled out of regular classes and placed into “curriculum assistance.” Later, I was stuck in NovaNET, which felt like the land of misfit toys. Finally, during my senior year, they placed me in an academy for neurodivergent kids. It was so poorly run that it went out of business. Most days, we just watched movies. None of it gave me tools to live. None of it helped me understand myself. It only reinforced the idea that I wasn’t going to make it.
But even then, something in me refused to accept that. If the doctors and schools couldn’t give me consistency, I was going to find a way to build it myself.
Living Like a Lab Rat
By my teenage years, prescriptions ran my life. At one point, I was on seven different medications and a patch every single day. Every two weeks, I went in for blood work, not to monitor my health but to make sure the drugs that were supposed to stabilize me weren’t killing me. Lithium wrecked my thyroid. Amantadine, Remeron, Lamictal, and others, I still cannot pronounce stacked up until I felt like nothing more than a science experiment.
The side effects were brutal. Sweats. Nightmares. Stomach pains. Mood swings. Brain fog so heavy I felt like Gumby, wobbling through life without control of my body or my mind. On the outside, I carried the same blank expression every day. On the inside, I was falling apart.
I knew deep down this wasn’t living. So I made a choice. I started tapering myself off quietly, without telling anyone. Six or seven months of hell. One night I had a seizure and fell down the stairs. The next morning I still got up, went to school, and worked a closing shift at the grocery store like nothing was wrong. Nobody around me knew what I was fighting through.
Slowly, the fog began to lift. Human wants and needs I had almost forgotten crept back in. I wanted connection. I wanted relationships. I wanted to feel alive. The side effects lingered for a year or two, but the real turning point came when I realized I could stay calm in situations that used to set me off. That gave me confidence I could trust myself.
The biggest shift was internal. I stopped hiding from my diagnoses and started owning them. I treated them like a superpower, something I could learn from, understand, and manage naturally. If someone noticed and asked, I would say, “Yeah, this comes with it. But I am good. I am ready to rock. It won’t affect me if it doesn’t affect you.” That mindset freed me and set the stage for what came next.
Julie and the First Signs of Clarity
Around this same time cannabis entered my life. For the first time, my racing thoughts slowed enough for me to actually understand what was happening inside my head. I wasn’t just being managed anymore. I felt human.
We had a cleaning lady named Julie. One afternoon, she noticed the plants I had stashed on the roof of our house. She didn’t scold me. She didn’t shame me. She smiled and started pointing out all the other plants that grew naturally around us. She even gave me a few grow tips.
Julie wasn’t a doctor or a scientist. But she reminded me of something I had been missing all along: Mother Nature had always been my best teacher.
By the time I was seventeen, I was hooked on learning everything I could from nature. That hunger for answers is what led me to say yes when mushrooms first showed up in my life.
The First Trip That Changed Everything
At eighteen, I stumbled into mushrooms by accident. A friend and I were hiking in the Colorado wilderness and decided to trip together. We each took a half ounce. I had no idea that was way too much for a first trip. I didn’t know what microdosing was. I didn’t know about psilocybin therapy. All I knew was that someone told me it could reset the body.
What happened that day is burned into my memory. I remember lying back against a rock, watching the sky breathe. Colors shifted. The whole world came alive in ways I had never seen before.
And in that moment, I realized something no doctor or prescription had ever given me. I wasn’t broken. I was just different. That trip cracked me open and showed me that healing was possible.
Mushrooms Became My Teachers
From then on, mushrooms became my guide. Lion’s Mane. Reishi. Cordyceps. Turkey Tail. Chaga. Psilocybin. One by one they reshaped my body and my mind in ways pharmaceuticals never could. My energy came back. My bipolar swings slowed. For the first time in my life, I felt steady.
Over the last twenty years, I have worked with more than 350 different genetics. I have created hybrids, crosses, and even mutants designed to support mental health. Unlike pharmaceuticals, this was never about stacking side effects. It was about unlocking potential. Everything I know, I taught myself.
Now the research is catching up. Studies show psilocybin microdosing can improve mood and mental health in as little as one month. Another study shows psilocybin can provide rapid relief from depression after just one dose. What mushrooms taught me years ago is finally being confirmed.
Building Fullsend from the Underground
Fullsend Organicks grew out of that journey. Not because I wanted to build a company, but because I wanted to show people that mushrooms and consistency could change lives.
That is why I built the Mobile Mushroom Lab. A lifted, locked truck with refrigerated floors for genetics. A sixty-inch screen for tutorials and live streams. A podcast booth. Outdoor speakers. WiFi. The idea came from Breaking Bad, but instead of cooking meth in the desert, I wanted to show that life always finds a way.
The lab lets me bring mushrooms, education, and connection directly to people. To their front doors. To festivals. To places where thousands of curious minds are waiting. This isn’t about staying underground. It is about making this work visible, accessible, and real.
The Messages That Keep Me Going
The most powerful part of this work isn’t my own story. It is the stories that come back.
A man in Slovenia with early dementia who found focus and joy again. People with bipolar and ADHD who tell me they thought they were the only ones. Students who check in with me every week, sometimes to ask about cultivation, sometimes just to talk about life.
Those messages remind me why I rebuild every time I get banned. I have lost YouTube channels. Social media accounts. Payment processors. Stripe, Square, Venmo, TikTok, Instagram. All of them. I have been banned more times than I can count.
But I always start over. Because the mushrooms don’t stop growing. And neither do I.
Different Means Growth
I have always done things differently. I study common methods, then strip them down until they work for a neurodivergent brain. I simplify. I innovate. That doesn’t always make me popular. Doubt comes fast. Skepticism shows up quickly.
But when I look at my kitchen counter stacked with agar dishes instead of dinner plates, and I watch the mycelium spreading, I am reminded of something simple. Different doesn’t mean wrong. Different means growth.
For me, it was never about building a high-tech lab. I still run everything out of my house. Countertops, cabinets, every corner filled with experiments. And I want people to know that is enough. You don’t need a million dollars. You need curiosity, creativity, and patience.
What Consistency Really Means
What mushrooms gave me was consistency. Not just in my routine, but in my health, my emotions, and my trust in myself. No pill or patch ever gave me that.
Now, with technology moving faster than ever, we are at a turning point. Artificial intelligence and data give us tools to refine what we do in ways we never could before. Combine that with thousands of years of natural wisdom, and we are only scratching the surface of what is possible.
My mission is simple. Make it accessible. Show people that no matter how dark things get, there is another option. Break the stigma. Keep teaching. Keep innovating.
Mushrooms taught me that growth is possible even in the darkest places. If you give them the right conditions, they don’t just survive. They thrive. That is the message I want the world to see, too.
All photos courtesy of Nick Baum.
This article is from an external, unpaid contributor. It does not represent High Times’ reporting and has not been edited for content or accuracy.
