Yamborghini High & Russian Shamans
Mushrooms and Immaturity
Let’s talk about the specific architecture of a woman’s desire to look away from herself, often disguised as a search for enlightenment. The classic story of the psychedelic tourist, the upper middle-class teenager chasing an ego death she learned about on the internet via Hamilton’s Pharmacopoeia. I cultivated an almost compulsive interest in the unknown, specifically, in manufactured altered states: sensory deprivation, mind-altering substances, and the promise of cultural truths revealed only through a chemically-induced lens.
My own iteration began with the predictable, self-serious ritual: a suburban attic, a 3-gram pilgrimage to the land of fungal enlightenment, Adult Swims “Off the Air”, all while looping a track called “Yamborghini High.” The sheer, adolescent earnestness of it is almost painful in retrospect. I was 16, steeped in the VICE-fueled mythology of altered states. I chased the experience not for healing, but for a story, for the validation of having gone there. If I could lose my ego, maybe I could finally shed the endless, exhausting performance of being a teenage girl. We smashed the sacred material into the decidedly profane breading of a Chik-Fil-A sandwich, a truly American sacrament.
The high, when it hit, was almost predictable. The woods started breathing, the pebbles turned into the floor of some imagined, saccharine heaven. The very air around the trees was not blurring, but breaking down into its component colors, like a painted halo surrounding a biblical motif.I found it odd that even as I stood there partaking in experimental drug use, I reverted back to subconscious comparisons of nature to religion. It was all about unlocking “life’s questions,” which, as a rule, means you’ve just momentarily lowered your internal filter and mistake sensory overload for profound truth. I kept this up for years: smallish doses in safe rooms, predictable results. A hobby, really, nothing more.
A Repackaged Tour of the Psyche
Fast-forward to Europe, 2023. I’m doing the classic traveler’s routine: writing for a blog I’d then soon abandon for a man, and dating locals for material. It’s the ultimate female travel cliché: using conversation and sex as a mechanism for cultural immersion. I hooked up with a Roman guy who, after some thought provoking conversation and what I assume was culturally-mandated great sex, invited me to join a “ceremonial retreat.”
Did I ask questions? No. That would have ruined the narrative. I drove out into the Italian countryside, past the point of cell reception, the modern-day surrender to fate. I wasn’t worried about being trapped; I was relieved to be committed to the story.
The venue was, naturally, cinematic. A floor-to-ceiling glass dome, surrounded by the kind of lush, manicured foliage that screams, “Wellness tourism is a lucrative industry.” The shamans, three striking Russian women with silky hair draping down their backs, seemingly all related with piercing blue eyes, and tasteful plastic surgery. They were exactly who you’d hire if you were designing a spiritual experience for the global consumer. The Head Shaman, with her comforting, heavy accent, announced the program: MDMA night one, LSD on day two.
The real cultural dissonance hit when I realized my fellow “seekers of truth” were almost all middle-aged, mostly Russian and Italian professionals who had never done drugs before, and were there to “work through deep trauma.” And then there was me, the privileged American girl, there simply to experiment, like ordering the most obscure item on a tasting menu. I managed to meet two friends the first night who were also in their 20s and spoke English. One guy was a flamboyant Portugese ballet dancer and the other an outgoing Russian model who I found extremely attractive. The MDMA night was just an elaborate icebreaker, a lot of forced intimacy under the influence of manufactured empathy. I went to bed anticipating the main course.
The Drop into the Absence of Guilt
The next morning, we gathered for the ritualized consumption. The organization, the breakfast, the mats, the guided meditation, was a testament to how effectively we’ve professionalized altered consciousness. We returned to the circular room, arranging our mats. I settled between my Italian situationship and the Russian model. The Head Shaman moved gracefully with quiet purpose. When she reached me, she dropped a pure clear liquid onto my tongue. Two drops. I sat there, trying to calculate the dosage, thinking maybe I should tell her about my deep personal history with crumpled tabs of acid and my recreational dabbling of mushrooms.
When the LSD took hold, the room didn’t just warp; the walls started pulsing with the impossible precision of fractals. Visually, the glass-paneled room began to breathe. The lush foliage outside, already beautiful, became intensely geometric. The leaves were no longer static green shapes, but repeating, self-generating patterns. The sound bowl didn’t just make sound; it made a frequency that you could feel in your teeth. I felt every vibration in my cells.The drug stripped away the intellectualized, narrative self, leaving only the animal, atomic connection. The best way I can describe LSD is feeling connected to everything down to the molecular level. It makes you aware of your existence biologically. While others were panicking or purging their demons, a truly cathartic experience for them, I assume, I was experiencing a profound sense of physical honesty.
I saw brief, teasing flashes of my lost past, a glimpse of the person before the masking began. For some reason not still known to me I have a hard time remembering my childhood before the age of 10. During this guided meditative state I saw an unrecognizable foreign body made of light in the darkness open its arms and reveal flashes of my childhood that felt just out of my reach but I knew were real. Then the gong stopped and the memories faded away.
My dress clung to me, sweat rolling down the back of my neck, and for a few hours, the endless, internal measuring tape women carry: Am I too much? Too little? Am I desirable? – was gone. We shed all pretense. The unjudged space was the real product they were selling, and for that moment, it was worth the price of admission. I danced for hours with the friends I had made and felt a deep connection to everyone in the room despite the language barrier. To this day, I won’t forget how euphoric it felt to be in a room where all the people present had mutually agreed to leave all judgement and shame at the door. I remember the feeling of the wet dewey grass under the moonlight, I did cartwheels and felt the lightness of youth like joy that I hadn’t experienced since my forgotten adolescence. We watched our ballet friend dance for us, it was like I had bought tickets to see The Black Swan – but a private showing in a chic hut in the woods where I was tripping balls.
The Drop into the Absence of Guilt
The next morning, we gathered for the ritualized consumption. The organization, the breakfast, the mats, the guided meditation, was a testament to how effectively we’ve professionalized altered consciousness. We returned to the circular room, arranging our mats. I settled between my Italian situationship and the Russian model. The Head Shaman moved gracefully with quiet purpose. When she reached me, she dropped a pure clear liquid onto my tongue. Two drops. I sat there, trying to calculate the dosage, thinking maybe I should tell her about my deep personal history with crumpled tabs of acid and my recreational dabbling of mushrooms.
When the LSD took hold, the room didn’t just warp; the walls started pulsing with the impossible precision of fractals. Visually, the glass-paneled room began to breathe. The lush foliage outside, already beautiful, became intensely geometric. The leaves were no longer static green shapes, but repeating, self-generating patterns. The sound bowl didn’t just make sound; it made a frequency that you could feel in your teeth. I felt every vibration in my cells.The drug stripped away the intellectualized, narrative self, leaving only the animal, atomic connection. The best way I can describe LSD is feeling connected to everything down to the molecular level. It makes you aware of your existence biologically. While others were panicking or purging their demons, a truly cathartic experience for them, I assume, I was experiencing a profound sense of physical honesty.
I saw brief, teasing flashes of my lost past, a glimpse of the person before the masking began. For some reason not still known to me I have a hard time remembering my childhood before the age of 10. During this guided meditative state I saw an unrecognizable foreign body made of light in the darkness open its arms and reveal flashes of my childhood that felt just out of my reach but I knew were real. Then the gong stopped and the memories faded away.
My dress clung to me, sweat rolling down the back of my neck, and for a few hours, the endless, internal measuring tape women carry: Am I too much? Too little? Am I desirable? – was gone. We shed all pretense. The unjudged space was the real product they were selling, and for that moment, it was worth the price of admission. I danced for hours with the friends I had made and felt a deep connection to everyone in the room despite the language barrier. To this day, I won’t forget how euphoric it felt to be in a room where all the people present had mutually agreed to leave all judgement and shame at the door. I remember the feeling of the wet dewey grass under the moonlight, I did cartwheels and felt the lightness of youth like joy that I hadn’t experienced since my forgotten adolescence. We watched our ballet friend dance for us, it was like I had bought tickets to see The Black Swan – but a private showing in a chic hut in the woods where I was tripping balls.
Naked Nerves
The night began to quiet down and people started to return to their cabins. Only a few of us still very awake with our minds and bodies racing remained in the large room. Music still playing, we laid on our sleeping bags staring at the night sky trying to point out every star noticeable to us. The climax, as these things often do, descended into a kind of chaotic intimacy, a final, messy affirmation of the night’s dissolved boundaries.
I sat close to my friend, the Russian model, and we held hands tracing each other’s fingertips. Her touch felt euphoric and sent electricity down my spine. We laughed at the mutual feeling and started to kiss, not with the urgency of lust, but with the cool curiosity of scientists comparing notes under the hood of a microscope. It was a gentle experiment to see how it would feel under the substance, her tongue circling the inside of my mouth. We were, for all intents and purposes, a highly focused research team.
As we started to undress each other under the sleeping bag that gave us little privacy, my Italian situationship (I admire his reliably passionate heart) inserted himself into the scene: a true Mediterranean man, never missing an opportunity to be part of the erotic drama. I moved the back of my body up against his, granting him access to the bare minimum of my attention, all while kissing her passionately. The tableau was absurd: three perfectly uninhibited bodies exploring how deliciously odd the sensation of sex felt under LSD. It wasn’t about love or even true connection; it was a mutual agreement to utilize one another as conduits for pure sensation, an exhausted and perfectly self-aware indulgence. We played with how strange and external the sensation of sex felt, like watching your own limbs move from across the room. After hours the sun arose and we shared light hearted conversation, the pleasantry of post-coital politeness surviving even the highest dose of consciousness altering drugs, before retiring to our beds.
Returning Un-Shamed to L.A.
I flew home with no grand revelation, just an anxiety inducing hangover and a good story. The journey from A$AP Rocky and Chik-Fil-A to Russian Shamans and Communal Sex is the story born of a specific kind of modern privilege: the freedom to pay vast amounts of money, cross international borders, and chemically engineer an escape from the trivialities of a comfortable life. We don’t have demons in the traditional sense; we have anxiety, unexamined trauma, and a soul-deep boredom with our own stable routines. LSD dissolved the cultural shame I’d internalized my entire life. The experience wasn’t about connecting to an unknown higher power; it was about realizing that my body, my desires, my messy, complicated self, did not need to be hidden, curated, or apologized for. I didn’t find God. I found a temporary, chemical window into the beautiful, frantic wiring of the human animal.
I’m not advocating for anyone to drop acid. But I am suggesting that the real lesson isn’t in gazing upon the matrix; it’s in the realization that the thing we’re all so desperately seeking, that moment of uncritical connection, can’t be bottled or sold by a shaman. It’s a choice you have to make every day, in the unforgiving light of sobriety. The challenge, as always, is taking that glorious, temporary permission to be your raw, sweaty, desiring self, and living with it permanently.
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Gigi Trabacchi is a writer, mother, and fluent in digital discourse. An essayist blending personal narrative with cultural critique. Exploring how identity, desire, and self-perception shape the way we move through the world. Her confessions are raw and provocative, each one a fragment of her lived experience as she shapes a voice that is distinctly her own.
