FAR OUT, MAN
VAN HUMPHRIES USED TO BE A WORLD-CLASS RUGBY PLAYER. IN 2010, HE TOURED WITH THE WALLABIES ON THEIR ANNUAL TRIP TO THE UK, PULLING ON THE GOLD JERSEY FOR TWO MIDWEEK GAMES. STANDING OVER TWO METRES TALL AND WEIGHING UPWARDS OF 120 KILOGRAMS, HE LOOKED LIKE A MAN WHO COULD HANDLE JUST ABOUT ANYTHING. NONETHELESS, SHORTLY AFTER HANGING UP HIS BOOTS IN 2012, HUMPHRIES DEVELOPED DEPRESSION AND ANXIETY, BROUGHT ON BY PERSISTENT NECK PAIN, A PAINKILLER DEPENDENCY, LIFE-THREATENING ILLNESS IN HIS FAMILY, AND UNRESOLVED TRAUMA ARISING FROM A CHILDHOOD OF SCARCITY IN THE NORTHERN NSW TOWN OF MOREE.
By 2015, while knowing he needed to act, Humphries was disinclined to sit opposite a GP or psychiatrist to be formally diagnosed. Instead, with his mother, he got into meditation, which helped. But as Humphries tells it, the turning point for his mental health was his first experience with magic mushrooms, the naturally occurring and abundant fungi containing the psychedelic compound psilocybin. After performing due diligence, he ingested a dose in a “loving and spiritual space”.
“The first thing that happened is that I felt, I knew, that everything is connected,” says Humphries, now 45 and living on the Gold Coast with his partner and two children. “I saw the outline of everything. I saw how it all moved and connected. Everything is one. We share this experience [of life].”
Sometime later, he recounts, came an “overwhelming download of understanding of my life journey to that point”, which included a sense of lying on his left side and holding the son whom Humphries and his partner had lost to a miscarriage – father and child wallowing in infinite mutual love. “The journey lasted for between 4-7 hours but it seemed like years,” says Humphries.
“Psilocybin was the bridge,” he adds emphatically.
To what?
“To understanding my own power. It allowed me to sit with some traumatic, deep-level conditioning that I experienced as a child and to start unpacking that in a loving way. I didn’t need to relive those experiences. I could just observe them and heal.”
By self-treating with psilocybin, Humphries went rogue. Then as now in Australia, the only lawful way to use psilocybin – or
