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Has your consumption of psilocybin mushrooms changed you, and if so, in what way(s)?
It was an LSD trip at the age of 17 that had a big impact on my life. I became very interested in philosophical ideas and consciousness and chose to study philosophy at university as a result. I was a fairly lazy student, and I think if I'd picked another subject that didn't really interest me, I would probably have dropped out. To be honest I think that one LSD trip, and the thoughts it provoked, gave me a bit of insight that helped write essays on the philosophy of mind.
My experience with psychedelics in my teens was very brief, just one mushroom trip and one LSD trip (plus a handful of experiences on ecstasy and speed, one of which gave me vivid CEV for some reason). It was over a dozen years later before I started tripping regularly on mushrooms.

I think mushrooms fulfil a kind of longing for "something more" from life, something magical and mysterious that you sense as a child but then stays out of reach until you try psychedelics and it looms into view. This passage from an article by Matt Cardin titled Autumn Longing: Alan Watts expresses the kind of feeling I am talking about:
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This autumn longing, this sehnsucht, this tantalizing, maddening glimpse of some ultimate beauty and fulfillment and joy that lies perpetually beyond the horizon, this distinct scent or flavor of some infinite bliss that seems to reside half in memory and half in imagination, remaining always distinctly real and yet always just beyond my ability fully to grasp or realize — this is, apparently, a permanent part of my, and our, constitution as human beings, a kind of existential haunting that we as homo sapiens are blessed and doomed to know.

It's not so much that my mushroom trips cause some dramatic process of self-improvement (although I think they have a kind of energizing or anti-depressant effect that helps to keep me feeling engaged and interested in life), but that having access to these amazing experiences means I can get more genuine enjoyment from the simple, normal things in life without wishing for "something more" that is always out of reach.
I've said elsewhere that I'm not really 'spiritual,' but if you can figure out how to enjoy the most basic things in life you are getting a bit closer to the idea of "there is no way to happiness; happiness is the way." I feel happier in myself now that I'm tripping a few times a year, although it doesn't magically stop me getting pissed off or stressed by other people or external events.

One practical effect of shrooms was to get me started writing out a "trip journal" on each trip, which then developed into an interest in writing stories when I was sober. Also it got me interested very interested in "weird fiction," so overall I'm probably reading and writing more than I would have done otherwise (not to mention all the long rambling posts I make on the Shroomery).
Considering that I didn't trip at all during my 20s, it gives me more of a feeling for life with and without psychedelics. Overall my 20s feel like a bit of a lost decade which would have been livened up with some psychedelics. Even after a dozen years I was still haunted by the glimpses of the world I'd seen while tripping, so I guess it was inevitable I'd return to it when I got the chance.
-------------------- I wrote that, but I meant something else
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