Dee Snider details emotional mushroom ceremony experience

Dee Snider on the Acid For Squares podcast — (Image credit: Acid For Squares)

Twisted Sister frontman Dee Snider has revealed the unusual steps he's taken to address the health issues that led to his recent departure from the band and the cancellation of their 50th-anniversary shows.

Posting on X, Snider thanks fans for their love and concern, and suggests they watch a video to understand what he's going through. The video, an Instagram reel shared by Acid For Squares, finds Snider describing a recent "mushroom ceremony" he took part in to "address wounds he had carried quietly for decades."

Acid For Squares is a podcast that "delves deep into supernatural phenomena, psychedelics, consciousness, spirituality, UFO disclosure, and the metaphysical nature of reality," and is co-hosted by Snider's son, filmmaker Cody Blue.

In the full version of the video, Snider tells viewers that he suffers from degenerative arthritis in his shoulders, hypertension and high blood pressure, and has undergone a hip replacement, while Blue reveals that he was encouraged to undertake the mushroom ceremony with his father after a conversation with Jack Osbourne, son of the late Ozzy Osbourne.

"I feel like it's been very challenging for my father to be facing these health complications, facing his own mortality, while simultaneously having his peers pass away all around him," says Blue. "Hulk Hogan has passed, Ozzy Osborne has passed, Ace Frehley, many others.

"It has been an eerie environment for my dad to stare down the barrel of this proverbial gun. And when we told Jack what was happening with my father and that we were thinking of giving him mushrooms to see if it would help with his heart, Jack looked at us and said, 'You have to do this.'

"He said, 'Mushrooms have saved my life. They healed me of addiction. Healed me in so many ways. And it was my dream to get my father Ozzy to do mushrooms to see if it would help with his Parkinson's [the Black Sabbath frontman was diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease in 2003]. And we never got to do it.'"

Speaking of his experience of the mushroom ceremony itself, Snider, after a lifetime of sobriety, says, "It was very psychedelic, for lack of a better word, very organic, moving." He also reveals that he heard ominous music during the ceremony, which he describes as sounding like "the best Black Sabbath album ever."

A clearly emotional Snider goes on to talk about how he encountered an entity called 'It' during the ceremony, a telepathic guide who helped clarify the nature of his relationship with wife, daughter and father.

"Let me tell you, I have never been more proud of this man in my entire life," says Blue. "He's done so many great things. He's an amazing person. He's an amazing father. And I have never been more proud sitting there and watching him face his trauma, face his pain, face his shadow, and move through it in the name of healing for himself, for his family, being brave and courageous, facing the darkness."

My Father Dee Snider Tries Mushrooms to Heal Himself | E79 - YouTube

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Online Editor at Louder/Classic Rock magazine since 2014. 40 years in music industry, online for 27. Also bylines for: Metal Hammer, Prog Magazine, The Word Magazine, The Guardian, The New Statesman, Saga, Music365. Former Head of Music at Xfm Radio, A&R at Fiction Records, early blogger, ex-roadie, published author. Once appeared in a Cure video dressed as a cowboy, and thinks any situation can be improved by the introduction of cats. Favourite Serbian trumpeter: Dejan Petrović.

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