Pick, Prep, Trip
摘要
This chapter explores the procurement and use of psychedelic mushrooms by a group of former soldiers, highlighting how their internalised military identities shape and define both their drug procurement and use. It investigates the ritualised behaviours surrounding mushroom picking, preparation, and solo consumption, interpreting these acts as modalities for identity and symbolic boundary-negotiation. The chapter analyses the participants’ preferences for intense, solitary psychedelic experiences, framing them as forms of psychological edgework and offering an alternative understanding to mainstream therapeutic models of psychedelic use. The chapter closes by acknowledging how their practices reflect a unique, self-regulated subcultural framework that resists pathologising narratives and instead emphasises autonomy, ritual, and meaning-making rooted in shared veteran identity.