How often should you trip

How Often Should You Really Take Mushrooms?
By Liddya Plenis — Magic Mushrooms Integration Coach & Contributing Writer at Magic Mush

The Myth of the Mushroom Calendar

Everyone seems to be on their own mysterious timetable.
One friend disappears into the forest for a deep journey once a year, treating it like a sacred pilgrimage. Another swears by their weekly microdosing rhythm, reporting surges of creativity and focus. And then there’s the person who seems to be “meeting the universe” every other weekend, constantly reborn in Instagram captions.

Early in my path, I remember watching all of this and feeling quietly panicked.
Was I falling behind? Should I be going deeper, more often, faster? There’s a subtle cultural myth that hovers in psychedelic spaces — the idea that healing runs on momentum, that more journeys mean more progress.

But what I’ve come to understand, both in myself and with the people I guide, is the opposite:
There is no universal mushroom calendar.

The work is not about frequency. It’s about readiness.
And the time between journeys is not a pause in your healing — it’s where the real transformation actually takes place.

Tripping Isn’t Routine

Deep psilocybin journeys are not wellness routines.
They are initiations.

Each one touches every layer of you — memory, emotion, body, spirit — and those layers do not reassemble overnight. In a single night, you can grieve a childhood, forgive an enemy, shed an old identity, and still wake up unsure how to make breakfast. It takes time for your nervous system to catch up to what your soul just saw.

But the culture around psychedelics rarely acknowledges this. We see people stacking ceremonies back-to-back like gym sessions, convinced that growth lives at the edge of intensity. I’ve done it too — chasing the high of revelation, thinking if I just went deeper one more time I could “finish” healing. Instead, I came out disoriented, emotionally raw, and strangely hollow.

Because here’s what happens when you journey again too soon:
insights blur before they anchor.
The lessons slide off like water on glass because your body hasn’t had time to metabolise them. The nervous system gets flooded and dysregulated. And what could have been medicine becomes noise.

Integration isn’t the afterthought of a trip.
It’s part of the trip.
The unfolding is the work.

Are You Ready for Another Journey?

So how do you know when it’s time again?

Not by counting days or waiting for the moon to be in the right sign.
Not by watching what everyone else is doing.

But by listening inward.

I offer this to my clients as a simple inner check:

If your last journey still feels like an open wound, if you’re hoping the next one will fix what you haven’t processed yet, if there’s urgency or compulsion or even FOMO in your chest — it’s not time.

If you feel settled, steady, curious rather than desperate, if you’ve made peace with what arose and now feel a quiet sense of something new knocking at the edges — you may be ready.

This is subtle work. And it’s not linear.
You are not falling behind if it’s been six months.
You are not doing it wrong if you only go deep once every few years.

There is no “right” frequency.
There is only your nervous system’s rhythm.

And your rhythm will change as you do.

Integration Is the Real Journey

What most people don’t realise is that the trip itself is only the ignition.
The driving — the actual becoming — happens in the weeks and months after.

Integration is not a checklist.
It’s the quiet art of weaving what you saw back into who you are.

It looks like noticing how your body responds differently to conflict now.
It looks like writing down the dream you had about your grandmother and letting it change the way you speak to your mother.
It looks like walking barefoot in the garden because for the first time you actually want to feel the earth.

The more fully you integrate, the less often you’ll feel called to journey.
Because you’re already in motion.

This is the paradox people miss:
the medicine doesn’t need repetition. It needs space.

The time between journeys isn’t dead space.
It’s where the mushrooms keep whispering — if you’re still enough to hear them.

The Microdosing Rhythm

Microdosing lives in a completely different tempo.

Where macrodosing is like a thunderstorm — sudden, immersive, disruptive — microdosing is more like soft rain: gentle, steady, nourishing. It’s not meant to blow your life open. It’s meant to quietly help you rewire how you walk through it.

There are popular structures — Fadiman’s every-three-days rhythm, Stamets’ four-on-three-off cycle, or intuitive dosing when your body feels open. They can all work. What matters is that they remain sub-perceptual, that you take rest days, and that you measure shifts in subtlety, not intensity.

If you’re chasing a “feeling,” you’ve probably crossed the line into dosing too high or too often.
If you’re using it to support gentle daily growth — journalling, emotional regulation, creativity — you’re likely on the right path.

And know this: microdosing doesn’t need to be forever.
For many people, it’s a season — a few months to build new neural pathways and then let them carry you without support.

Your rhythm might be three months on, three months off.
It might be one microdose day every week like a tuning fork.
It might be nothing at all right now.

All of it is valid.
Because the goal isn’t to stay on the medicine — it’s to remember you don’t always need it.

Listening for Your Timing

At some point, you have to stop asking what’s “normal” and start asking what’s true for you.

Have I fully integrated what I’ve already received?
Am I acting from curiosity or compulsion?
Am I seeking expansion — or escape?

You are the only authority on your own timing.
Some people journey annually, some seasonally, some only once in their lives.
Some microdose daily for a while then stop completely.

None of these rhythms are better.
They are simply different migrations of the same soul.

No Rush, Just Rhythm

The medicine works best when you give it space to breathe.

You don’t need to rush toward the next peak.
You don’t need to collect ego deaths like merit badges.

There’s no finish line here — only cycles.
Seasons of going inward, and seasons of simply living what you’ve learned.

There is no mushroom calendar.
There is only your rhythm.
Listen for it.

—

Liddya Plenis is a Magic Mushrooms Integration Coach and a contributing writer at Magic Mush. She supports people in weaving psychedelic insights back into daily life with compassion, grounding, and curiosity.