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Jim Harris Was Paralyzed. Then He Ate Magic Mushrooms.
Key Excerpts from Article on Website of Yahoo News
Posted: December 12th, 2022
https://sports.yahoo.com/jim-harris-paralyzed-then-ate-10305...
Against all odds, Jim Harris was walking. There he was, at a music festival, getting around with the assistance of a walker, eight months out from a spinal-cord injury that left him paralyzed from the chest down. In November 2014, a snowkiting accident in Chile changed how the mountaineering instructor turned adventure photographer moved through the world. His days ... were now filled with rehabilitation exercises. A friend and former physical therapist invited him to the High Sierra Music Festival. "The disability made me feel like an outsider," he says. Then someone offered him magic mushrooms, which are packed with the psychoactive compound psilocybin. He commandeered an acquaintance's padded knee scooter so he could rest one leg at a time and still sway to the music. In the middle of a switch, he discovered that he could pick up his right foot and pull it back toward his butt. He tapped his right hamstring with a finger and the muscle contracted - a muscle that had been completely unresponsive since his injury, even in the low-gravity environment of a pool, despite eight months of physical therapy. With wonder and some degree of hesitation, he showed his physical-therapist friend. They marveled together at what had been impossible for Harris earlier that day. The next morning, Harris woke up afraid he'd imagined the whole thing, or that he'd lost his newfound ability while he slept, but his hamstring was still firing. The neuromuscular connection that had formed the night before wasn't going anywhere.
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