MOMMIES Who MUSHROOM

Inside the GROWING-and, to some, CONTROVERSIAL-MOVEMENT in which PARENTS are using PSYCHEDELICS to TAKE the edge off MODERN PARENTHOOD

- ANDREA STANLEY

When I arrive at Vanessa Panzella-Velez's fifth-floor apartment in Brooklyn on a blue-sky morning in January, she's already taken drugs: one-third of a gram of magic mushrooms. A pouch of tan capsules sits on the table-like vitamins, except powdered psychedelics.

Not that you'd know. There are none of the stereotypical signs: no trippy hallucinations or bodies writhing around like you're looking in a fun-house mirror. Instead, there's Vanessa, 38, a freelance social media manager, welcoming me inside with the offer of a warm drink, cacao with almond milk in a bowl-size mug. She's used maple syrup to sweeten it, not honey. “Is that okay?" It's been a busy morning, between trying to fix the internet and schlepping her puppy, Cookie, to the dog park in near-zero temperatures. Later, she tells me, she has plans to help her 11-yearold stepson with his schoolwork, which includes finishing up a woodworking project and studying mixed fractions for math. That night, she's going to a birthday party for her niece.

To put it another way: Vanessa is not high. Getting high is not the point. Vanessa and her husband, Danny, 45-her stepson's father, who is present during my visit and also on one third of a gram of magic mushrooms-have recently begun to microdose with psychedelics two or three times a week every few months. In the past, they've taken higher doses when they've needed to work through something bigger, like a communication issue. It's a practice they say has completely transformed their relationship while radically improving their parenting.

This is a time of psychedelic renaissance, of mushroom mania. It's a time when people are increasingly turning to psychedelics not for recreation but for healing-and many of them are parents.