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The Mush Room 🍄

The Mush Room 🍄

By: John Staniszewski
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Summary

Johnny Staniszewski should not be alive. Twenty Norcos a day, two Adderall, a Soma to sleep, and a grief he had no language for. Then four grams of mushrooms sitting in his closet for six months gave him a come-to-God moment that ended two years of opiate dependency overnight.

The Mush Room is what came after.

Part confession, part field report, part manifesto, this show covers the full spectrum of what mushrooms can do: healing addiction and chronic illness, rewiring habits from the ground up, rebuilding the food system, and exposing an entire supplement industry built on mycelium on grain and zero accountability.

Johnny has grown half a million pounds of mushrooms, put them in 150 grocery stores and 50 restaurants, and shipped thousands of pounds of marinara to Chicago public schools. He has sat in ceremony every month for a year and a half and facilitated psilocybin sessions across the country. He built Forgotten Supplements because he got tired of watching people trying to heal get sold garbage.

The mission is food and psilocybin rehabilitation centers all over the world. Ten million Fungitarians is where it starts.

All rights reserved. Alternative & Complementary Medicine Economics Hygiene & Healthy Living Leadership Management & Leadership
Episodes
  • The Mush Room | Episode 9: Plants, Fungi, and the Healing Journey with KK of Flora Funga Podcast

    The Mush Room | Episode 9: Plants, Fungi, and the Healing Journey with KK of Flora Funga Podcast
    Oct 26 2026

    Kaitlyn Kuehn also known as KK is a plant biologist with a thirst for mycology who couldn’t find the nerdy, science-forward fungi content she was looking for, so she built it herself. As the creator and host of Flora Funga Podcast, KK has spent years bridging the knowledge gap between plants, fungi, and humans. She’s also on a personal healing journey using medicinal mushrooms to manage rheumatoid arthritis, and she brings that lived experience into everything she shares.

    This episode covers plant physiology, the fake mushroom product epidemic, autoimmune disease, diet, hydration, sleep, and what it actually takes to build a passion-driven platform from scratch.

    KK shares her origin story from growing up with gardening parents in Ohio to discovering plant physiology at Mankato State, sneaking mycology into every class presentation she could, and eventually launching Flora Funga Podcast out of a lab job at Mayo Clinic where she had a lot of time to listen to podcasts and a clear gap to fill.

    She opens up about being diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis at 26 with no family history, and what it was like to have a doctor at one of the country’s top medical institutions Google her diet plan in front of her. She took her healing into her own hands through elimination diets, sleep optimization, movement, and mushrooms, with Reishi, turkey tail, and chaga becoming her core anti-inflammatory stack.

    Johnny and KK also dig into the fake mushroom supplement market, why big mushroom coffee brands accidentally educated the public while selling an underwhelming product, Tremella as the next breakout mushroom, spring water versus purified water, creatine for women, and why elephants in the wild don’t get arthritis but elephants in zoos do.

    About KK:

    Plant biologist, mycology educator, and creator of Flora Funga Podcast. KK travels to events worldwide covering cultivation, foraging, functional mushrooms, and psychedelics, and is on a personal healing journey using medicinal mushrooms to manage rheumatoid arthritis.

    Connect with KK:

    Website and all episodes: florafungapodcast.com

    Search Flora Funga Podcast on all platforms.

    Mentioned in this episode:

    Forgotten.life — Lion’s Mane tinctures, Cordyceps, Reishi, gummies, and elixirs.

    Tryptomics — lab testing for mushroom and cannabis products.

    Ojai Mushroom Summit — ohmscollective.com
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    52 mins
  • The Mush Room | Episode 8: Serendipity, Mycelium, and the Magic of Community with Omar Dasco-Uribe

    The Mush Room | Episode 8: Serendipity, Mycelium, and the Magic of Community with Omar Dasco-Uribe
    Oct 9 2026
    Some connections are just meant to happen. Johnny met Omar at the Telluride Mushroom Festival and knew immediately this was a conversation worth recording. Omar Dasco-Uribe is an Ojai-based community builder, educator, entrepreneur, and lifelong student of the relationship between people, nature, and fungi. A chef for 14 years, a microdosing coach, and the founder of OHMS Collective, Omar has spent years exploring the intersections of food, mycology, personal growth, wellness, and community. His work is rooted in one simple belief: meaningful change begins with relationship to ourselves, to each other, and to the living world around us.In 2026, Omar founded and is producing the Ojai Mushroom Summit, bringing together scientists, cultivators, farmers, chefs, artists, educators, healers, and the fungi curious for an eight-day event built around learning, connection, and cross-pollination. At the heart of everything he does is a desire to create spaces where people can learn something, meet someone, get a little weird, and leave feeling more connected than when they arrived.This episode covers everything: food, grief, psychedelics, discipline, community activism, and what it actually takes to build something meaningful from the ground up.They open by tracing Omar’s path from growing up in Ohio with a close-knit neighborhood feel, to culinary school in Santa Barbara, to discovering Lion’s Mane forty feet up in a tree and hauling it down with a hundred-foot rope and a lot of determination. His culinary background gave him a deep appreciation for the versatility of mushrooms and eventually led him straight into the medicinal side of things when his girlfriend was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and Lion’s Mane showed real promise in supporting myelin regeneration.Omar opens up about losing his father to stage four esophageal cancer at fifteen and how that loss set him adrift for years, until a group of friends invited him to take mushrooms on the day the world was supposed to end in 2012. What followed were hours of realizations stacked on realizations, a profound shift in how he understood life, death, and his place in it. He and Johnny go deep on how grief and loss can actually open a person more fully to what mushrooms have to offer, and why the medicine seems to come in hardest when you need it most.The conversation moves into microdosing and both Omar and Johnny share how finding a devoted daily practice changed everything. Omar talks about building his microdosing routine into his life as a chef, first experimenting in a high-pressure hotel kitchen and discovering a kind of clarity and flow he hadn’t felt before. He also co-authored a book called The Trip Tracker with therapist Gwen Pelofini of Rooted Ethos, a straightforward intention-setting and somatic journaling guide designed to help people actually get something out of their microdosing practice instead of just taking something and wondering why nothing’s happening.Johnny shares how his Micro Discipline program approaches this from the same angle: preparing the vessel before the medicine, building the habits and the vessel first so that when the window opens, you’re actually ready to walk through it. They both land on the same idea: the mushrooms aren’t the power, they’re showing you your power.They talk about the current state of the mushroom supplement market, why so many products have nothing real in them, and why education is the most important tool for helping everyday people navigate that noise. They also discuss the legal landscape in California, how decriminalization is slowly spreading from Santa Cruz outward, and what’s happening in Illinois with the new psychedelic-assisted therapy bill for veterans and the formation of the Illinois psilocybin committee board. Johnny shares that he and Devin have partnered with Decrim Nature to launch the Chicago chapter and begin working with city council on bringing real change to the state.They close with a full breakdown of the Ojai Mushroom Summit, how it grew from a two-day symposium to an eight-day event, what to expect if you show up, and the honest lessons Omar learned about event production, sponsor outreach, and the importance of prepping like a chef.About Omar Dasco-Uribe:Omar Dasco-Uribe is an Ojai-based community builder, educator, and founder of OHMS Collective. A chef for 14 years and a microdosing coach, he co-authored The Trip Tracker with therapist Gwen Pelofini and produces the Ojai Mushroom Summit. His work lives at the intersection of food, fungi, wellness, and community activation.Connect with Omar:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ojai.mushroom.summit/Website: ohmscollective.comTickets for the Ojai Mushroom Summit: https://events.humanitix.com/ojai-mushroom-summitMentioned in this episode: The Trip Tracker by Omar Dasco-Uribe and Gwen Pelofini, available at ohmscollective.com. Forgotten.life is live now with Lion’s Mane tinctures, Cordyceps, Reishi, ...
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    56 mins
  • The Mush Room, Episode 7: Shannon Pereira: From Ashram Lockdown to Microdose Coaching

    The Mush Room, Episode 7: Shannon Pereira: From Ashram Lockdown to Microdose Coaching
    Sep 29 2026

    Microdosing coach Shannon Pereira was locked in her parents' basement during COVID, in a house where a family member was struggling with meth addiction, when a friend asked if she wanted to join a psilocybin microdosing study. That first dose in a bathtub cracked her open. This week on The Mush Room, John James Staniszewski and Shannon go deep on perspective shifts, the drug war, why every coach needs a coach, and the Changa DMT journey where she felt the whole mushroom life cycle from spore to sporulation.


    IN THIS EPISODE WE COVER:

    🍄 A live microdose: philosopher's stone sclerotia vs. a Golden Teacher blend with L-theanine, saffron and rose

    🍄 How psychedelics quiet the default mode network, and the "6 or 9" lesson on perspective

    🍄 Why mycology was pushed out of the mainstream, and what the drug war got wrong about psilocybin

    🍄 What a microdosing coach gives you that books and forums can't: accountability, reps and pattern-spotting

    🍄 Yoga, Soma and the ancient roots of psychedelic practice

    🍄 Women and psychedelic research: cycles, dosing and why tracking matters

    🍄 "Don't give your power away, even to us": the warning that came from the mushrooms


    KEY TAKEAWAYS:

    Mushrooms don't teach you something new. They help you remember what you forgot. The small shifts count: not snapping at the cop, being more patient with your kids, that compounds into a different person. And the power was always yours. The medicine is a more efficient path back to it, not a replacement for doing the work.


    ABOUT SHANNON PEREIRA:

    Shannon is a mushroom consciousness speaker, writer and microdosing coach behind Powered by Mushrooms Coaching. A certified yoga teacher (Hatha, Yin, Tantra, Kundalini), Ho'oponopono, EFT, meditation and breathwork practitioner, she left a burnout corporate career in Australia to study in ashrams across India and Asia. She's a contributing author in a bestselling anthology and is writing the Powered by Mushrooms Microdosing Coaches Guidebook.


    ⏱️ TIMESTAMPS

    00:00 Intro

    01:14 The live microdose

    03:10 Meet Shannon Pereira

    05:35 Corporate burnout to ashram

    07:31 COVID basement, first microdose

    10:39 How perspective shifts work

    14:38 Mycelium, the grand communicator

    16:33 Why fungi were ignored

    19:01 Ergothioneine, Reishi and TCM

    21:10 Flesh of the gods

    23:33 The drug war lie

    25:33 Why hire a microdosing coach

    30:35 Yoga, Soma and psychedelics

    34:25 Pain, growth and embodiment

    39:14 Microdosing and endurance

    43:03 McKenna and free thinking

    46:06 Becoming a mushroom on Changa

    49:48 The butterfly and the struggle

    54:06 Women in psychedelic research

    55:55 Journaling and tracking progress

    59:03 Don't give your power away

    1:02:27 Mushrooms as ancient intelligence

    1:06:12 The unseen world around us

    1:07:37 Becoming un-f***-withable

    1:08:07 Where to find Shannon


    📚 MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

    How to Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan

    Microdosing for Health, Healing, and Enhanced Performance by Dr. James Fadiman & Jordan Gruber

    Mindful Meds

    Lee Carroll, medicinal mushroom expert

    Dante Liberato's 500-mile run

    Terence McKenna

    The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali


    🔗 CONNECT WITH SHANNON

    Instagram & Facebook: @poweredbymushroomscoaching

    Book a call: https://calendly.com/powered-by-mushrooms-coaching-with-shannon/30min

    🔗 CONNECT WITH JOHN & THE MUSH ROOM

    https://mrfungitarian.store/


    New episodes every Week Subscribe and turn on notifications.


    This episode is for educational purposes only and is not medical advice. Psilocybin and DMT are controlled substances in many places. Talk to a qualified healthcare provider before making changes to your health routine or medications.


    #microdosing #psilocybin #mushrooms


    TAGS:

    microdosing, psilocybin, microdosing coach, magic mushrooms, psychedelics, changa, DMT, mycology, functional mushrooms, reishi, lion's mane, mushroom podcast, The Mush Room, Mr Fungitarian, Shannon Puriya, Powered by Mushrooms, plant medicine, consciousness, ayahuasca, psychedelic integration
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    1 hr and 10 mins
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