Funny that a Discovery news story on magic mushrooms should pop up in my feed when I just saw a documentary on hallucinogens last night. Collective consciousness, much?
I’ve always dug the edible non-druggy mushrooms.
Even as a kid, I’d get ’em piled on my greasy pizza and drowned in my Udon soup. As for the psilocybin sort? Eh… I may or may not have tried them once and I may have hated them enough to throw up and then throw up the medial half of a peace sign at them ever since.
But the documentary talked about how they can help open your mind up (by inducing a dream-like state and diminishing the ego part of your brain) although not as well as DMT can. And LSD, while helpful in mind-opening (as Steve Jobs and one half of the DNA discoverer dudes have credited it for aiding in their success), is still more of a synthetic lab creation thing. Doesn’t make it bad (duh, it’s spurred genius), just a lil less natural.
Basically, on the “usefulness” level, DMT is considered by many to bring about the kind of awareness of the self and world around you in a way you can apply in reality, while mushrooms induce more of a lucid dream state.
An even though any drug can be abused by bratty college kids wasting their parents’ money (Hi, mom and dad!), psychedelics have proven to cure a bunch of shiz from addiction (ibogaine) to psychological hangups when used properly and monitored by an expert.
“Nah, man… Trust me. I’m a professional…”
While I’ve written about DMT before, I never gave magic mushrooms much attention (the only advice I could offer was – never eat them and then watch “The Cell” in a dorm room that looks like a cell). But just ‘cause they’re not my cup of ayahuasca tea, doesn’t mean they haven’t been useful to others – especially the ancient others who begat us.
Apparently, magic mushrooms have that kind of historical turning-point allure about them. Some say it was thought that what truly happened in the garden of Eden was that man was handed mushrooms of the mind-expanding variety. It’s not total supposition either. Look at this art piece, for instance:
or this:
So, the first drug deal ever was just Morpheus giving Neo-Eve the red pill?
Literally?
’cause the amanita in the pics is red IRL too?
*mind blown*
But, wait! There’s more!
The fungal fun really happens when religion overlaps with science. The aforementioned Discovery piece suggests that perhaps our first ape ancestors came to access a higher realm of consciousness than their animal cohorts by nomming some caps on accident. Could epigenetics have helped monkeys jump a few mental levels? Like they ate some poor portabello’s smart cousin, got brainy themselves, then passed on the genius-gene to their kids like a Hilton inheritance? I adore the idea that something mystical is born out something scientific – especially when it makes sense. I mean, if early man didn’t have the language or understanding to explain what actually happened to Bob (or Bobette, or Neo, or Alice) that fateful night he decided to get creative with his diet, they might turn to mysticism as a provisional stand-in answer. And this mysticism would evolve. Just like religion does e’ry time boredom hits and new thoughts get intro’d.
So, there you go.
Perhaps magic mushrooms are like the formative/undergraduate leg of the chemical cosmonaut’s consciousness journey, DMT is where you can land a graduate degree, and both have lotsa value… or at least a really satisfying answer for where the allegory of Eden and us – as “I think therefore I am”-ers comes from. Meanwhile, how’s about while I think about it, you actually do it – and then report the details back here.
Whereupon I shall lap them up vicariously like a Bufo frog parasite, simultaneously getting high while it gets a free ride.