≋̱✺ fungi tings — on calibration
- Kiing Curry
- 7 hours ago
- 4 min read
Healing is not the same as escalation.
There is a point where the work shifts.
≋̱✺ fungi tings — on calibration
There is a language around healing that has become obsessed with rupture.
Breakthroughs.
Hero doses.
Ego death.
Expansion through intensity.
And maybe for some bodies that is useful.
But for neurodivergent Black bodies — especially those already living inside heightened sensing, chronic masking, racialized stress, and emotional overprocessing — I think the conversation needs to become more careful.
More embodied.
More honest.
Because some nervous systems do not need more force in order to feel.
Some of us have been feeling too much the entire time.
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I started back microdosing about a year ago after roughly 2–3 years of working with higher doses.
Never hero dosing.
Never chasing collapse.
Never trying to disappear inside the experience.
And even then, I eventually realized something important.
Healing is not the same as escalation.
There is a point where the work shifts.
At first, fungi helped soften the masking. Loosened the grip of compulsive performance. Allowed buried grief, softness, sensory access, and emotional clarity to rise.
But once masking lowers, sensitivities rise to the surface too.
And this is where I think a lot of psychedelic conversations fail neurodivergent people.
Because nobody talks enough about recalibration.
Nobody talks enough about what happens after the nervous system opens.
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The neurodivergent body already operates a lot like fungi does.
Associative.
Patterned.
Responsive.
Networked.
Permeable.
Signals travel quickly here.
Which means it often takes far less to access altered feeling states than dominant psychedelic culture wants people to believe.
Especially for Black bodies.
I genuinely think many Black people do not require massive amounts of fungi in order to access softness, joy, openness, or emotional movement because so much of our sensory life is already intensified by survival itself.
Sometimes only a light shift is needed.
Anything beyond that can become noise.
Temporary brain scramble.
Not devastation.
Not danger necessarily.
I’m an Aries.
I speak dramatically.
But there have absolutely been moments where I could feel my brain trying to reintegrate information and sensory openness in ways that did not feel embodied or useful for me.
And I no longer think that should automatically be framed as healing.
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Within my own practice, I understand microdosing as roughly .7g or less.
Enough to soften the signal without overwhelming reintegration.
I learned that the hard way after taking a 1g dose of a designer strain that I should have known better than to trust.
The visuals were beautiful.
Truly.
But afterward I could feel my nervous system trying to reorganize itself around an experience that did not fully belong to me.
And that distinction matters.
Because I think there is also an energetic and cultural layer to strain development that people are uncomfortable discussing honestly.
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A lot of modern fungi strains — and cannabis strains too — are being engineered primarily by cis white men inside laboratory and cultivation systems that prioritize novelty, intensity, spectacle, THC percentage, visuals, rarity, marketability, and extremity.
Not regulation.
Not embodiment.
Not Black nervous systems.
And I do think that matters.
Not in some simplistic magical purity way.
But because everything carries the imprint of the conditions and intentions under which it was created.
What is being optimized for?
Who is it being optimized for?
What kinds of bodies are assumed to be able to carry it?
Those questions live inside the medicine too.
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This is why I continue finding myself drawn back toward older strains. OG strains.
Ground-level strains.
Even when cultivated in modern systems, they often still carry a more stable relationship to the body.
Less spectacle.
Less engineered fragmentation.
Less pressure to transcend yourself.
More rhythm.
More earth.
More conversation.
And for me, that conversation matters more now than intensity ever could.
Over time, certain strains continue appearing inside my field notes.
Not because they are universally superior.
Not because they work for everyone.
Because they have repeatedly supported relationship, regulation, embodiment, and deeper listening within my own body and in conversation with other Black bodies moving through similar healing work.
So far, that list includes:
African Pyramid
Toque F9
Tidal Wave
Penis Envy
Golden Teacher
Penis Envy × Golden Teacher
Hillbilly
This list remains ongoing.
These observations are relational.
Field notes.
Patterns emerging through lived experience.
African Pyramid has been particularly significant.
As one of the few fungi strains I have encountered with South African origins, it continues opening questions around diaspora, ancestral memory, and the role African consciousness plants may play within Black healing practices.
I am increasingly interested in what happens when Black people rebuild relationships with plants and fungi through our own observation, embodiment, and communal knowledge.
Not because other pathways cannot help.
But because my ancestors do not know Pachamama in the way she is currently being packaged, marketed, and profited from by the wellness industry.
That does not make those medicines inaccessible to me.
It does mean I am interested in asking different questions.
Questions about ancestry.
Questions about memory.
Questions about what happens when Black people begin restoring relationships to consciousness plants that emerge from the continent and traditions that shaped us.
Those questions live inside the medicine too.
This field note remains unfinished.
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I think healing culture has confused “more” with “deeper.”
But some of the deepest healing I have experienced came from very small shifts.
A softened afternoon.
A quieter mind.
Music sounding warmer.
The ability to sit inside my own body without trying to outrun it.
That is not failure.
That is calibration.
And honestly, for many neurodivergent Black bodies, calibration may be the healing.
≋̱✺ fungi tings — on calibration
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