It's time to explore another high blessed by Mother Nature
Magic mushrooms are experiencing a cultural boom. Backed by recent studies at Johns Hopkins University and New York University, psilocybin, the active psychotropic ingredient in shrooms, is being more openly credited with relieving depression, curing alcohol dependency and actually doing what every drug wants to do: improve your sex life.
That’s because psilocybin is believed to reduce both self-awareness and the impact of external stimuli on the brain. To the druids, eco-warriors and teenagers who grew up in areas with ample rain, sunshine and good soil, none of this is news. But for the rest of us, especially among the scientific community, this new research is triggering a slow-burning acceptance of the cheapest, most abundant and, according to 2017’s Global Drug Survey, safest drug on the planet.
Thus, mushrooms, a drug often associated with feral dogs, matted beards and Dodge vans, are undergoing an aggressive gentrification, despite still being a Schedule I substance under the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Controlled Substances Act. Everyone from George Clooney and Eminem to Susan Sarandon and Sienna Miller has admitted to eating mushrooms, and populist outlets including the Guardian and Huffington Post have more recently published pieces extolling their therapeutic benefits. Today it’s no longer gauche for wealthy, superficial, career-orientated people to take shrooms, in the same way it’s no longer unusual to hear a banker employ the term mindful. As with all psychedelics, it’s important to have enough information so you can anticipate what might happen during your next great trip. Here’s what you need to know about shrooming, including how much, where and with whom.
Magic mushrooms are surprisingly accessible and so ubiquitous you could say God deals them. In the past, you had to watch for the first rainfall around the change of the seasons, wake up early and then trudge through sodden fields, looking for liberty caps, golden caps and bluebells (species common in the United States, Europe and Australia), all the time hoping you knew your fungi well enough that you wouldn’t pick something poisonous. Nowadays you can order a kit online and trudge no farther than the darkest corner of your kitchen to pick perfectly good mushrooms before your next camping trip or outdoor adventure. The websites behind these kits, like Shayanashop.com or Azarias.net, are based in Amsterdam and work because the Dutch aren’t engaged in a war on drugs. A kit can cost anywhere from $60 to $100 and will give you edible, working shrooms within about three weeks of opening the package—which, incidentally, is normally discreet and not adorned with a sticker of an animated mushroom. That being said, if you do get caught importing shrooms, be warned that the U.S. government can pursue felony charges as it would with any Schedule I drug such as heroin. But mushroom raids are rare, even as the feds keep a lid on modern psilocybin research.
Magic mushrooms are sacred plants. The Aztecs, Incas and ancient Celts based their artistic and architectural designs on visions they had while high on shrooms. They considered mushrooms a teacher from the plant world and every experience a formative, seminal moment on their path to understanding the cosmos. They respected mushrooms. That doesn’t mean you have to, but if you plan to dose while watching TV all day, that’s no different from buying health supplements and then wearing them round your neck. Small doses of shrooms—we’re talking less than a gram—have enough kick to activate the serotonin in your brain and make you feel wonderful. Larger doses— three grams and up—will make you hallucinate. Hallucination can be a positive vacation from the usual paradigms and constructs, but as with all altered states, anxiety often creeps in. In the pantheon of illicit substances, mushrooms rank close to the top in terms of relative safety—only 0.2 percent of 12,000 users ended up in emergency rooms last year—but don’t underestimate your brain’s ability to seek out trouble. Anxiety is a necessary part of a shroom trip, just as it’s part of diving from a great height. Those mental struggles build character; overcoming a little fear during a mushroom trip is paramount if you want to walk away from the experience with some valuable learning.
Whom you trip with is almost as important as where you trip. I recall the time I went into the woods with a bunch of soft souls on shrooms, as well as two macho movie directors who were high on coke. The filmmakers were snorting lines off branches, shouting at each other and putting their arms around women whose only interest was in examining the perfectly translucent veins on oak leaves. Shrooms on a date can be exciting, but digest too much and you risk experiencing the sort of intensity that could only be replicated if you were both kidnapped and thrown in the back of a van mid-meal. Go slowly with your mushroom intake. A typical trip lasts four to five hours, peaking at about the two-hour mark. Having said that, when you know someone a little better, shrooming as a couple is highly recommended. For one, shrooms create new neural pathways in the brain, effectively turning off—or at least stymieing—ego functions momentarily. (If you’ve ever found yourself at a communication impasse with a lover, you know what a brick wall the ego can be.) When your hippocampus is going off like a strobe light, it’s hard to be petty or small-minded, meaning you and your partner will understand each other like never before. This understanding inevitably leads to that grand, time-honored synthesis of human bodies: sex.
When you’re in a fragile, hyperconscious state, you don’t want bad news getting to you, so turn off your phone. Some users champion mixing shrooms with booze to offset the boredom and tension of waiting for a trip to kick in. But once you start tripping, you’ll barely feel the effects of alcohol, so the trick is moderation at the outset. There’s nothing worse than coming down from the most blissed-out, natural state of grace to discover you’re too drunk to walk or hold down your dinner.
If you intend to have sex on shrooms, it’s best to take them in bed, as pedestrian as that sounds. Mushrooms stimulate your interest in the world around you, but they can also leave you with the attention span of a three-week-old puppy. If you’re outdoors, you’ll become transfixed by the natural sights and sounds surrounding you and forget about the concept of sex altogether. And that would be a mistake, because sex on shrooms—while weird and often discombobulating, especially when you forget where your body ends and your partner’s begins—can be a beautiful experience. Know your partner well and don’t take sex too seriously. Perhaps don’t even view climaxing as the goal. The best time to have sex on shrooms is after the peak, but if you can handle it, sex while full-on tripping is wild, albeit a little scary. The most important thing to remember is to be considerate and ask yourself and your partner if sex is what you both want in the moment. Maybe all you want to do is cuddle while tracing your fingers along the wallpaper patterns.
You should never forget to queue up the right music, especially tracks that make you feel nostalgic. I recommend “Plantasia” by Mort Garson, but hold off on playing it. If you listen to it now, you’ll think, Who is this nut job?—and discredit everything you’ve read. Wait until you’re two hours in and then play it softly in the background, with dim lighting and lots of padded seating. Your future self, and your partner, will thank me.