A Comedian Who Treated His OCD With Mushrooms Comes to the Coast for Mendocino Mushroom Month
Comedian Adam Strauss performs three times on the Mendocino Coast Nov. 12-15, including his solo show "The Mushroom Cure" and a talk at the Fungi Festival in Caspar.
MENDOCINO, Calif. — A New York comedian who built a solo show out of his attempt to treat obsessive-compulsive disorder with psilocybin mushrooms will perform three times on the Mendocino Coast this week, starting Thursday at the Mendocino Art Center.
Adam Strauss opens with "The Cosmic Laugh: Comedy on Psychedelics" at 5 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 12, at the Art Center, 45200 Little Lake St. The Art Center lists the hourlong show as free with a donation and describes it as a comedic performance about microdosing. Its listing also carries a note for anyone expecting his better-known work: this is not "The Mushroom Cure."
That show comes Sunday, Nov. 15, at 7 p.m. at Matheson Hall, 45096 Cahto St., on the Mendocino High School campus. Tickets are sold through the Art Center's website.
Between the two, Strauss is on the program at the third annual Fungi Festival and Cultural Convergence, the Mendocino Coast Mushroom Club's weekend of talks, workshops, and guided forays at the Caspar Community Center. His half-hour presentation, "The Morel of the Story," is set for 12:30 p.m. Sunday in the North Hall. The club bills it as "psychedelic tales of love, loss and laughter."
The Art Center says it is bringing Strauss to the coast to mark November as Mendocino Mushroom Month.
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Strauss told the story behind "The Mushroom Cure" in an interview with Leslie Krongold, host of the Glass Half Full Podcast, posted to YouTube on Oct. 27. He said he had tried medications, specialists, and group programs for OCD.
"I had very severe obsessive-compulsive disorder, and nothing had helped," he said.
During what he called a particularly intense spiral, he said, he went looking online and found a small pilot study at the University of Arizona on psilocybin and OCD. He said he had little experience with psychedelics at the time.
"I was desperate, so I resolved to try to cure myself," Strauss said. "And that's basically the jumping-off point of the show."
Strauss said he took the piece to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and the New York International Fringe Festival, then to an off-Broadway run at the Cherry Lane Theatre and to The Marsh in San Francisco in 2017 and Berkeley in 2018. The Art Center's announcement says the show won the Overall Excellence Award at the New York fringe festival and Best Solo Show at the Eddy Awards for Bay Area theater, and that it was developed and directed by Jonathan Libman.
Author Michael Pollan saw one of the Berkeley performances, Strauss said, praised it publicly, and wrote to him afterward with some constructive criticism. Strauss said the two became friends and that Pollan is an executive producer on a film of the live show now in the works.
Strauss, who lives in New York City, told Krongold he has never been to Mendocino. He said he hikes Mount Tamalpais and Point Reyes two or three times a week when he performs in the Bay Area and has been looking up trails on the coast.
"When I was a kid, my parents thought I was going to be a park ranger when I grew up," he said.
The Fungi Festival runs 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, Nov. 14 and 15, with most events at the Caspar Community Center. General admission is $10 per person per day, free for children 12 and under with an adult, and covers the presentations, activities, exhibits, and marketplace. Workshops and sauna sessions are $35, and guided forays are $25; each includes festival admission. The club's ticket page lists Saturday's forays as sold out, with space remaining Sunday, and says foray tickets are sold online in advance only.
Other presenters include herbalist Christopher Hobbs, mycologists Noah Siegel and Alan Rockefeller, and a "Black to the Land" panel on foraging. A separately ticketed Forager's Feast with chef Chad Hyatt follows Saturday evening.
The club describes the festival as an all-volunteer fundraiser, with proceeds going to future club events.
Festival tickets and the full schedule are at mendocinocoastmushroomclub.org. Details on both Art Center shows are at mendocinoartcenter.org.