Sidebar by Bob Berwyn
Mushrooms – August 2000 – Colorado Central Magazine
INVARIABLY, if you tell someone you’re interested in mushrooms, they’ll raise an eyebrow and ask if you’ve ever found any of the “funny ones.”
Certain species of mushrooms contain psilocybin and psilocin. These little-understood psychoactive compounds cause intense physical sensations, including disorientation and uncontrollable laughter. They can also cause vivid hallucinations when ingested in sufficient quantities.
Different people have different reactions to the chemicals. Some people experience what has been described as a divine euphoria, while others may experience intense visual hallucinations. Most people who have experimented with psilocybin mushrooms say that sensory experience — taste, sight, smell — is intensified while under the influence of the drug.
For centuries, various cultures have used these mushrooms ritually during spiritual ceremonies to induce visions. And more recently, recreational drug users have discovered the so-called magic mushrooms. But it’s illegal to possess psilocybin-containing mushrooms, and in any case, they have only rarely been documented here.
Some dung-inhabiting species of the Psilocybe genus growing in the Rockies may or may not contain the active chemicals. Some species in the Panaeolus genus, sometimes called the Lawnmower or Haymaker’s Mushroom (Panæolus fnisecii), that sprouts more commonly in lawns or grassy fields, may be mildly hallucinogenic, according to several field guides.
And another species, the Big Laughing Gym (Gymnopilus spectabilis) which grows throughout the northern temperate zone, produces varieties in Japan and the Eastern U.S. that are psychoactive. Ingestion of these ‘shrooms reportedly has resulted in uncontrollable laughing fits — hence the name.
But according to David Arora’s authoritative Mushrooms Demystified, the psychoactive compounds are not active in the varieties that grow in the West.
The nearly unmistakable red and white Fly Agaric (Amanita muscaria) is another species whose ritual use has been documented by anthropologists. The psychoactive properties of this species — which is very common in the Rocky Mountains — were first noted by a Swedish anthropologist who observed natives of Siberia ingesting them. But descriptions of reactions to amanita’s active compounds make it sound like a disastrous trip — more comparable to a psychotic rage or an epileptic fit than to a spiritual, consciousness-raising experience. Vomiting, nausea and severe cramps are reportedly among the side effects, and this also holds for the related Panther mushroom (Amanita pantherina).
Other species in the Amanita genus are among the most deadly of poisonous mushrooms, including the Death Cap (Amanita phalloides) and Destroying Angel (Amanita bisporigera) — just discovered in Colorado.
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Historically, ‘shrooms have also had a place in medicine. For thousands of years, the Chinese have used fungi as both a preventative and a treatment. And in an upcoming book, Boulder Dr. Bob Rountree lauds ‘shrooms as both an immune-booster valuable in the treatment of cancer, and as a boon to overall athletic performance. Rountree’s book, Immunotics: A Revolutionary Way to Fight Infection, Beat Chronic Illness, and Stay Well, is scheduled to be released by Penguin Putnam Press this month.
According to mushroom aficionado Art Goodtimes, one recently developed theory on the evolution of consciousness even involves mushrooms. The theory, proposed by the late Colorado-born writer and lecturer Terence McKenna, is that the relatively rapid evolution from ape to human was facilitated by the ingestion of hallucinogenic mushrooms.
THE BASIC PREMISE: Because psilocybin can heighten the senses — including vision and hearing — and stimulate the sex drive, such mushrooms gave a competitive advantage to individuals who ingested them. They basically became better hunters because they could see and hear better, and presumably they produced more progeny because the mushrooms encouraged procreation. As McKenna’s theory goes, the mushroom-eaters may have climbed the Darwinian ladder a little faster by out-competing their drug-free counterparts.
McKenna also concludes that such mushrooms may have subdued the egos of our primitive ancestors, making them more willing to live in communal settings.
And taking his theory a step farther, he even concludes that the chemical structure of the active ingredients in hallucinogenic mushrooms constitutes as likely a place as any for alien intervention in human affairs. Because fungal spores are coated with one of the hardest substances known in nature, McKenna speculates that such spores could have survived a trans-stellar journey aboard a comet or meteorite.
Obviously, there are those who believe that psychogenic mushrooms have played a far more important role in the scheme of things than most of us ever suspected.
But in general, experts warn against experimenting with “little brown mushrooms.” One potentially deadly poisonous species that has been mistaken for an hallucinogenic mushroom is the Galerina autumnalis, the Lawn Galerina. –B.B.
