The first trip to last a lifetime
Baby’s first trip… on mushrooms
The summer of 2015 was the first year I tried an 1/8th of mushrooms at Montana de Oro in San Luis Obispo. For those of you who don’t know the landscape, it is a beautiful state park in Central Coastal California with beautiful, mountain like sand dunes that overlook the Pacific Ocean. It’s gorgeous and one of the best places I’ve gotten to experience mushrooms.
During my first trip, I had this out of body experience where I saw myself having a conversation with my parents that I wanted to change career paths and change my degree from biological sciences to something else, after completing my second year at UC Davis. This was something I had never been honest with my parents about and this heart opening experience eventually manifested into a real experience a year later in 2016.
[Back story - Entering my freshman year, I was pressured to do bio sci to satisfy my parents ego of having a child who is a doctor. Their concern was always monetary security and status (big in asian cultures) rather than fulfillment and long term happiness. Luckily, a lot has changed for the better.]
The moment everything pivoted…
At UC Davis, I took an anthropology class spring of 2015 called “Drugs, Society, and Culture” with Professor Joseph Dumit that changed my perception of what it meant if I went the traditional route of medicine. I was fearful that I would be a factor or contributing force to the opioid crisis and/or conforming to prescribing patients to a lifelong long path of pills. Coming from south East Asian immigrant parents who practiced eastern medicine, I just knew there are other methods of healing and receiving health that weren’t considered or were often criticized in western culture.
I had to take a step back and ask myself how do I see myself contributing to the world, if not in health? What degree would I get instead? Mushrooms taught me to really look inward and not follow the path that my parents envisioned for me, even if it took a longer route and more time. I started trusting my intuition and building trust within myself that the journey to the destination is for learning about yourself, your likes, and your dislikes to build the world you want to see for yourself. Mushrooms taught me time is a gift and we have plenty of it (abundance mindset). It’s taught me it’s okay to change the direction you want to go as long as it brings you joy and fulfillment. It doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks, you’re living for you. The more sure you are of yourself, the easier it is to attract like minded secure individuals to build community.
After graduating with my decided degree in Economics, I moved home with the determination of staying for only 1 year. I wanted to take time to be intentional about the person I wanted to become. Shortly after coming home, I decided I wanted to redirect my career pursuits towards medicine again because I still felt aligned with the health and wellness world. (The universe aligned me with Zuda Yoga, my home studio where I practiced yoga for 7 months straight and reset my life.) My best friend Maria showed me how beneficial a post bacc program could be for students who want to change their career paths into medicine. She graduated with a zoology major from UCSB, went to Sonoma State for their post bacc program, and will now finish dental school in 2024. (Follow her on instagram: @thedentalyogi) In April on 2019, I submitted my application to Northeastern, and northeastern only, to complete my pre medical requirements for medical school and receive a certificate.
In the span of 8 years, from my first experience, I have started a company that’s on the rise and changing the perception of psychedelics while pursuing my last degree to become a doctor of naturopathic medicine. I overcame my fears by aligning myself with the path that feels most right to me, knowing there are more than one route or method to medicine. The more I leaned into it, the more I connected with kindred spirits who also believe in the same mission: we are here to help each other heal one another.
