Book Giveaway: The Psilocybin Handbook for Women
How magic mushrooms, psychedelic therapy, and microdosing can benefit your physical and spiritual health, by Jennifer Chesak.
Hello! It’s time for a book giveaway! Yay! Author and researcher Jennifer Chesak and her distributor Simon & Schuster so kindly gifted me not one, but two review copies of her new book called The Psilocybin Handbook for Women: How magic mushrooms, psychedelic therapy, and microdosing can benefit your physical and spiritual health.
So now, I want to gift one to you!
Even if you think you know everything there is to know about magic mushrooms, you will learn something from this book.
On the back cover, Chesak writes, “Harness the power of psilocybin in a bro-free way. If you’re looking for magic mushroom mansplaining, you’ve come to the wrong book.”
What a fiery setup!
While she believes the book can benefit men and non-binary people, the book is specifically designed for people assigned female at birth, which I will refer to as “women” in the rest of this post, with the acknowledgment that language is always reductionist, imperfect, and evolving.
The back cover:
Give Me the Science!
One thing I loved the most about this book was all the female scientists and researchers she interviewed. Who knew so many brilliant women were studying magic mushrooms, and in so many unique ways!
Despite some of the more detailed neurological material in the book, this work is easy to read and well-organized, designed for a lay audience.
There are also many personal stories and mushroom ceremony tales, some not unlike the ceremony I describe at the beginning of my second novel, Mushroom Honeymoon.
The author is not suggesting that everyone do magic mushrooms, but if you have an issue that Western medicine can’t seem to solve, perhaps keep reading, and if you’re a woman considering taking magic mushrooms or are already engaging with these creatures of the earth, this book is for you. It would also make a great gift for such a woman in your life.
My song pairing for this post and book:
Yes, please! I want this book!
Details on how to enter the giveaway are at the bottom of this post/email.
To learn more about Jennifer Chesak and her work, you can also follow Chesak on IG. She’s written for and worked as a fact-checker for The Washington Post, Healthline, Real Simple, and many other publications. Or, if you can’t wait on my giveaway, grab the book for yourself or a beloved here.
This giveaway is open to my paid Lagoon subscribers (love y’all), but for those of you not ready to commit to a subscription, here is a peek into what this book is about:
Why Women and Psilocybin?
Women report more frequent use of psychedelics than men.
Women report higher rates of depression, anxiety, and PTSD than men and are more likely to self-treat these conditions with psychedelics than men.
Women are more likely to experience chronic pain than men and also do more unpaid labor than men.
Women experience more physical and verbal abuse, rape, sexual assault, and domestic violence than men.
Yet, women were historically studied less in the scientific and medical community than men.
Preliminary research suggests that mushrooms affect women differently than men.
Shroom Out to the Big Picture
Topics covered in the book:
Frequently asked questions and the basics of psilocybin
The history of psilocybin
Sexual health and mushrooms
Mothering and psilocybin
Parallels between women and mycelium
Whitewashing and male dominance in psychedelic for-profit research
The decriminalization of psychedelics
Sexual assault and abuse in the psychedelic community
Microdosing magic mushrooms
Women of color and magic mushrooms
Indigenous female practices with magic mushrooms
The neuroscience of psilocybin
The REBUS model
BDNF: Brain-derived neurotrophic factor
Psilocybin’s effects on the default mode network and limbic system
Trauma and psilocybin as a healing modality
Psilocybin and creativity
Healing from eating disorders with psilocybin
Safe tripping, including info on common health problems, like high blood pressure and diabetes, and how they may interact with magic mushrooms
Sex on shrooms
Anxiety and mushrooms
ADHD and shrooms
Set and setting concerns for women
Managing “bad” trips
The menstrual cycle and psilocybin
Alcohol Use Disorder and psilocybin
Dementia and psilocybin
Depression and psilocybin
Menopause and psilocybin
Postpartum depression and psilocybin
A Shroom of One’s Own, the Women Featured:
Forest psychologist Dr. Suzanne Simard, who first discovered the “Wood Wide Web”
Psychedelic neuroplasticity doctoral researcher Abigail Calder
Neuroscientist and mushroom sex researcher Dr. Michele Ross
Clitoris researcher Dr. Helen O’Connell
Anthropologist Hilary Agro, who researched indigenous women’s breastfeeding and mushroom practices.
To name just a few!
Finally, Chesak offers an incredibly rich bibliography and end notes in the book for anyone who wants to conduct further research on the topics covered.
How to Enter to Win the Book:
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