“I dont know if I wanna be a world champion anymore, but I wanna be the best surfer I can be, and where does that take me?” So says Koa Smith in Resurfacing, a powerful story where Koa shares his experiences with psychedelics — psilocybin mushrooms to be exact — and how they helped him rediscover himself and his meaning in life.
Psychedelics can have a powerful effect on one’s life, and they’ve certainly had one on the life of Koa Smith. Growing up on Kauai, Koa has had a wild journey. From surfing competitively as a grom to becoming a world-renowned freesurfer and starting his own business with his brothers, he’s done a lot with the time he’s been on this planet. But it wasn’t all good, and one particularly bad part was getting a traumatic brain injury at Nias.
The TBI plunged Koa into a deep depression that he couldn’t seem to shake. Crazily enough, it took a mushroom trip back home with his brothers to bring him out of it. For more, check out this video, where Koa sits down with Kyle Thiermann and Dorna Pourang, a leading psychedelics expert, to go deeper on the science behind his traumatic brain injury and how psychedelics helped him heal.
