🫠 Psychonaut POV

PRESENTED BY ALTHEA 🤝

Welcome to Tricycle Day. We’re the psychedelics newsletter that forgot to water our plants. Growth is non-linear, okay? 🌱

As an herbalist, Phoebe McPherson should love all her plant children equally, right? Well, after kanna pulled her back from the most intense spiritual crisis of her life, she stopped pretending. Now she's building a company to bring the mood-lifting succulent to the masses.

We asked Phoebe how kanna helped her process trauma when mushrooms couldn't, what she learned visiting kanna farms in South Africa, and which other relatively unknown plant medicines are hiding in plain sight.

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How’d you first get interested in herbalism and plant medicine?

I fell into plant medicine when someone introduced me to microdosing mushrooms. This person told me I should stop drinking and start connecting with my emotions. To their credit, that was a message I needed to hear. That decision changed my entire world and led me to a giant spiritual awakening.

After getting involved in a plant medicine community, I realized that to continue down the path I was on, I needed a deeper understanding of herbalism. That launched me into my own independent studies of Western herbal medicine, Traditional Chinese Medicine, and Ayurveda.

What I found, simply, is that nature knows. As modern human beings, we are deeply disconnected from nature, even though we are nature. We're so disconnected from our bodies that we can't even trust ourselves to know when to drink water. We need an app to tell us we’re dehydrated. One beautiful part about herbalism is it teaches us to start listening to ourselves.

So why did you shift your focus from psychedelics to kanna?

After I sat with ayahuasca for the first time, I was completely wrecked. I had memories of sexual trauma that were repressed come up for the first time in my life, and it completely destabilized me. I couldn't even walk into a dark room or go to a yoga class without freaking out. I was having PTSD episodes multiple days a week.

I didn't know what I was going to do because even a 200 mg microdose of mushrooms would set me off, and at this point in my life, plant medicine was everything to me. My partner at the time and I looked more seriously at kanna, and I started microdosing with it daily. Over time, it brought me back to myself.

Kanna gave me the courage and grounding to meet my emotions while also showing up in the world. We have a lot of medicines that can help us face our trauma, such as ayahuasca, psilocybin, and LSD, but they are so powerful they can be destabilizing. On the other hand, we have options that suppress our feelings, like SSRIs. Before kanna, I’d never come across something in the middle.

Kanna helps you stay calm, brightens your mood, and reduces stress and anxiety, but it doesn’t suppress any of your emotions. You're still feeling your feelings, but the wave that normally pulls you underwater and drags you around feels more like a gentle tide. You're more able to manage yourself. You're still in control, which means you can interact with the world around you.

It's also non-addictive, there's no withdrawal, and it has a reverse tolerance. So many plants can give us relief, but often the trade-off is that you're giving it a piece of yourself. You’re going to be addicted, or you have to take higher and higher doses. Kanna is so beautiful in the way that it offers relief while setting you free to be your own person.

What did your recent trip to South Africa teach you about kanna that you didn't know before?

I had no idea how rapidly the industry is changing. I also didn’t realize the extent to which the United States is responsible for driving the global kanna market. We've really blown it up.

Getting to go onto the farms where I source our kanna was such a gift. The farmers love the plant like it's their first-born child. The way they excitedly brought me around the farm made me feel even more grateful to be working with this plant. The technology for testing and extracting kanna is all very new, and not many people have it. The space is still in its infancy. I feel like it's probably what the cannabis industry was like 15 years ago.

One of the most revealing things was meeting someone who was born and bred in Cape Town and whose sister was an anthropologist working with indigenous groups. This man had never heard of kanna. Sadly, a lot of the local indigenous groups have lost their connection to this plant and its wisdom.

What I do know is that the brands that paint kanna as purely ceremonial are lying. Traditionally, it was used for every part of daily life. It was given to warriors and hunters before expeditions, to teething babies, and to mothers before giving birth. Kanna reminds us that every moment can be special. Every moment can be a ceremony, as long as we open up and trust ourselves.

Kanna has sort of exploded in the past year or two. What other natural plant medicines are hiding under our noses that most people don’t know about yet?

The realist in me is noticing that we're struggling to stay connected to the natural part. I just came back from an ingredients expo, where all I saw was creatine and GLP-1. That made me really sad.

The plight of kratom and kava has been really fascinating to watch. I think both of these plants have incredible potential, but we're seeing what happens when we don't respect a plant with healing properties. In the West, we can’t seem to control ourselves. When a plant becomes popular, the question is always how can we make it even stronger? How can we feel it even more?

There are some beautiful, non-psychoactive plants really having their moments, though. Milk thistle is blowing up for its liver detoxifying effects. Damiana is another plant on the come up. Our culture is waking up to the power of aphrodisiacs. And then there’s bobinsana, a gentle heart opener that’s usually brewed into a tea. It's known as a master plant in Amazonian shamanism and is often used in dietas with ayahuasca. I've given it to herbal clients as they're going through grief. It has a gentle sweetness to it.

What's your take on psychedelics becoming prescription medicine? How do legal consumer products like yours fit into that future?

In the past, I was very anti-pharma, but as I've matured in my own position within psychedelics, I'm recognizing the importance of having that piece. For many people, unless it's in a clinical context, they're not going to feel safe enough to take the first step. But what I do not agree with is the medical route being the only pathway forward.

Where I think Fun Guy fits in is being a “healthy gateway drug.” It gives people a sense of what microdosing feels like, so that they feel safe enough in their body to take the next step. On the flip side, for people who’ve maybe gone too far and want to reel it in, kanna gives them the opportunity to still feel altered and connected without wrecking their systems.

I hope that in the future we have a healthy market of recreational psychedelics and clinical psychedelics with therapists. Maybe there’s still a legacy underground market, too. That would keep the regulated space competitive. It needs to be a multi-pronged approach for everyone who wants access to have access.

Who am I to tell someone how they're going to have their spiritual awakening? It could happen on the dance floor, in a clinic, in an ayahuasca circle in the Amazon, or on a hike while microdosing with kanna. Who are we to control someone else's journey? Perhaps that's the most beautiful part of herbalism, kanna, and healing in general. We build enough security and grounding in ourselves that we no longer feel the need to control anyone else's experience.

Want more from Phoebe?

Try Fun Guy’s kanna products and take 20% off with code TRICYCLEDAY.

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DISCLAIMER: This newsletter is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as a substitute for professional medical advice. The use, possession, and distribution of psychedelic drugs are illegal in most countries and may result in criminal prosecution.