- 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.
