The images were massive, mystical and only appeared two hours after Evan had ingested 1.5 grams of magic mushrooms. With his body splayed like a starfish on the hard-packed dirt in his Oakland backyard, he gazed up at the sky as snapshots of his childhood came back to life before his eyes.
Evan’s first mushrooms trip had become a greatest – and worst – hits film reel, during which he relived memories shoved into the deepest caverns of his mind. He grasped at one memory of his 15-year-old self being taunted by a white classmate during a soccer game. “The guy asked me whether my next family reunion was going to be in a prison. I didn’t say anything back at the time,” Evan recalls.
But during his psychedelic hallucination, Evan altered the memory, screaming in his classmate’s face and calling him racist. The moment was “less about yelling ‘screw you, you racist!’” and more about reclaiming power.