Molly Young Review for Vulture/NY MAG

The Wild Kindness: A Psilocybin Odyssey by Bett Williams

Memoir, September 1

The Wild Kindness: A Psilocybin Odyssey by Bett Williams

$18

When I have a bonkers reading experience like this, my first instinct is to Google the author and try to figure out what her “deal” is. My second instinct is to wonder: “How is the system going to crush this book?” Let me begin by pleading with you not to judge it by its cover — a very cool cover, but potentially alienating to those opposed to a “hallucinatory” aesthetic. It is a memoir by a woman who lives in the Southwest, owns at least one outdoor bathtub, receives a diagnosis of “high-functioning autism,” battles an internet addiction (don’t we all), and becomes interested in the idea that a handful of fungus could fix or at least rewardingly massage her brain and soul.

Bett Williams combs internet forums and orders mushroom spores and marvels at all the freaks, herself included, who congregate in digital nooks devoted to psychoactive substances. “Growing feels like an initiation into a secret society of people you will never meet,” she writes, “where the only thing you are guaranteed to have in common is that you are now officially about to commit a federal crime.” What follows is a journey through the theatrics of romantic relationships, the intricacies of friendship, and the torture of writing, with bonus snippets about Williams’s morphine-addicted grandmother and a motorcycle-riding tai chi master in Paris who tells her that tai chi was developed by opium addicts because “there needed to be a martial art that stoned people could participate in.” Like any good memoirist, Williams performs surgery on herself and holds up each organ for inspection. (What does this one do? What about this funny-looking one?) There is no psychedelic bloviating. She thinks Michael Pollan is a dork.

This is a timely one in that it makes you wonder if a reasonable and informed use of certain substances might offset the alienating psychological effects of the pandemic. Wouldn’t it be nice to tap into a universal consciousness, harvest abundant love, communicate directly with houseplants, etc.? This is a book that requires you to “go with the flow,” but the flow is awfully inviting.

RIYL: Barbara Browning’s The Gift, Donald Judd, walking barefoot on soft grass, experimenting with supplements that have not been approved by any oversight body