- What a long, strange fungi-fueled trip it's been.
As it turns out, the use of mushrooms in ancient cultures
is just as divisive as eating a whole eighth by yourself
before going to a family reunion.
Some historians cite North African
and European cave paintings from as early as 9000 BC
that may depict magic mushrooms,
and Aztec rituals used a hallucinogenic substance
they called the flesh of the gods
that very well could have been shrooms.
So while we can assume ancient civilizations
were tripping balls,
we definitely know it spread to the United States
in the 20th century,
thanks to an executive at JP Morgan bank on vacation.
1957, R. Gordon Wasson, successful banker
and major mushroom enthusiast, was traveling through Mexico
learning about shrooms.
In Oaxaca he stumbled into an Aztec ceremony
conducted by a shaman featuring bonafide magic mushrooms.
Now, Gordon claims he didn't partake,
which is the same thing I told my parents
after that String Cheese Incident show in 2007,
but he did write about his experience
in the wildly popular "Life" magazine
with an article entitled "Seeking the Magic Mushroom."
Thus a drug was named
and inserted into the American consciousness.
In the late '50s, in an effort to study the drug,
American scientists enlisted the help of Swiss scientist
Albert Hofmann, commonly known as the father of LSD
and probably a very fun guy to have at parties.
He was the first person to extract the psilocybin
from the shrooms Gordon brought back from Oaxaca
and designate it as the chemical reason mushrooms
make you all zany brainy.
In case you didn't know, when ingested, magic mushrooms
take upwards of an hour to kick in.
So if you don't feel it at first, don't take more.
From there, the trip will come in waves,
lasting about five to seven hours overall.
You can expect euphoria and increased giggling,
intense feelings of wonder and deep thinking,
staring at your hands, a feeling like you're dying,
or maybe you're already dead
and this is what purgatory is like
and you need to find Haley Joel Osment immediately
because he's the only one who can help you cross over
to the world of the living.
So, essentially, intense paranoia.
Anyway, shrooms are powerful and you should mentally prepare
for the potential of a bad trip.
So, in the summer of 1960, counterculture and psychedelia
icon Timothy Leary read the "Life" article on magic mushrooms
and decided to head down to Mexico
to try some magic mushrooms firsthand.
There, he had mushroom-taking experience,
that permanently altered his life,
claiming that he learned more about his brain and self
in the five hours being faced
than he had through 15 years of academia.
There you have it kids, drugs are more effective than school.
Just kidding.
When he returned to Harvard University,
he created the Harvard Psilocybin Project,
which conducted experiments based around psychedelic drugs,
fueled by Leary's beliefs that drugs can lead
to higher states of consciousness.
Beat poet and notorious guy who looks a good time
Alan Ginsberg heard they were giving out free drugs
in Cambridge and linked up with Leary.
He became such a fan of psychedelics,
he told famous friends like writer Jack Kerouac
and jazz musician Charles Mingus,
who quickly spread the word and the fungus
through the cool cliques of the 1960s.
And people really bought into Leary's theories.
Hey, that rhymes.
In the mid 1960s, Leary got sacked from Harvard
but began distributing psychedelics throughout the country
during the height of the hippie movement,
making sure the late '60s ran equally on free love and peace
and a crap ton of psychedelic drugs.
1970, magic mushrooms are made illegal in the US.
The Beatles also break up. This is a very bad year.
1976, in a major breakthrough for shroom lovers, writer
and ethnobotanist Terence McKenna releases his book,
"Psilocybin: Magic Mushrooms Grower Guide,"
in which he states that growing your own shrooms
is only slightly more complicated
than canning or making jelly
and delivers a step-by-step guide on how to do it.
Ever since then, shrooms have become a permanent fixture
in the American hallucinogenic landscape.
So let's fast forward a little bit.
In 2018, researchers from John Hopkins University
confirmed what many out there suspected:
that magic mushrooms can have some major medicinal uses,
including helping people treat PTSD, depression,
and anxiety, and even helping people quit smoking.
In 2019, on the heels of this research
and a larger push for cannabis legalization,
Denver, Colorado, decriminalizes magic mushroom use.
Later in 2019, Oakland, California,
decriminalizes all psychedelic plants and fungi,
and statewide efforts in Washington and Oregon
are now underway to do the same.
Brought to the US by a banker, popularized by beat poets
and 1960s hippies, now on the verge of maybe being legal,
thank you magic mushrooms for making camping trips,
Disney movies, and jam bands way, way, way more fun.