the journey that turned pain into purpose
Fifteen years of discipline didn’t save me. A handful of mushrooms and a living room floor started something that did — and then I spent years building the system so it wasn’t luck.
01
HOW IT ACTUALLY WENT.
BEFORE
15 years
DISCIPLINE WAS THE IDENTITY
Fifteen years as a fitness coach. Bodybuilder. MMA practitioner. I wasn’t someone who needed to learn discipline — I sold it. That’s the part people miss: this didn’t happen to someone weak.
THE INJURY
the crack
A BACK INJURY BECAME A PRESCRIPTION
The prescription became dependency. Not in a dramatic weekend — slowly, reasonably, one refill at a time, while I kept performing.
THE LOSS
Grief
GRIEF I DIDN'T KNOW HOW TO FEEL
My mother. My grandparents. Pills kept me numb enough to keep going, which is the same thing as never arriving.
THE FLOOR
one night
SIX HOURS, AND THE WANTING WAS GONE
I took a handful of mushrooms and laid down. What came through I still can’t fully explain. I woke up the next morning and the want for opiates was gone. Not willpower. Not a decision. Gone.
2020
windycity mushrooms
A GARAGE LAB BECAME 50,000 SQ FT
Co-founded one of the Midwest’s largest indoor cultivation facilities, built on closed-loop systems that upcycle agricultural waste into organic mushrooms.
now
the work
TEACHING THE SYSTEM I HAD TO BUILD ALONE
Fungitarian Food & Lifestyle. NAMCO. Micro Discipline. Nobody built the map for me — so I drew it, and now I hand it over.
THE MUSHROOMS DIDN'T FIX ME. THEY OPENED A WINDOW — AND I FINALLY HAD A CHOICE WHERE I USED TO JUST REACT.
john james staniszewski
02
WHAT THIS IS FOR.
the mission
HARNESS THE HEALING POTENTIAL OF FUNGI
Through food, medicine, and community. Not as a trend and not as a shortcut — as infrastructure for the way people actually live, eat, and recover.
the vision
A WORLD THAT GROWS BACK
Where fungi feed people, clean what we’ve broken, and give the ones carrying something a real path through it. Regeneration as the default, not the exception.
03
TO BE A FUNGITARIAN.
It isn’t a diet. It never was.
A Fungitarian is someone who takes fungi seriously — on the plate, in the practice, and in how they treat the ground they stand on. Whether you eat meat or plants doesn’t matter. There’s a place for fungi on every plate.
It means choosing curiosity over demand. Receiving over grasping. Doing the work the medicine can’t do for you.
You belong here. That’s the whole point.
04
THREE THINGS UNDERNEATH ALL OF IT.
01
REGENERATION
Leave the system better than you found it — the soil, the body, the person. Waste becomes substrate. Pain becomes purpose. Nothing is only ever finished.
02
SYSTEMS THINKING
Nothing works alone. Not a farm, not a habit, not a person. Mycelium is a network before it’s a mushroom — build the network and the fruit takes care of itself.
03
CONSCIOUS LEADERSHIP
Say the true thing, especially when it costs something. No hype, no promises the medicine can’t keep. Accuracy over marketing, every time.
READY TO DO THE WORK?
Micro Discipline is the four-week program built out of everything above. Or if you’ve got a farm, a product, or an idea rooted in growth — let’s talk.
the art of not betraying yourself