http://media.www.thejusticeonline.com/media/storage/paper573/news/2004/02/10/Features/Mushroom.Cloud-602647.shtml

The Justice: The Independent Student Newspaper of Brandeis University.

Mass. February 24, 2004

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Mushroom Cloud
by Joshua Adland

Features Posted online at 7:08 AM EST on 2/10/04 / Last updated at 5:57 PM EST on 2/10/04

Lizzy received a call from her friends one Friday afternoon. They had bought some hallucinogenic mushrooms and they wanted to trip with her that night. She didn't really want to take them, as she was tired, and it had been a long day and a long week.

Lizzy's name has been changed to protect her privacy, as have the names of other mushroom users in this article.

In the end, Lizzy took the shrooms, but her stressful thoughts stayed with her. This was the genesis of a terrifying night.

"At first, I got really scared in my room because I thought the walls were closing in, and everything was too small," she said. "Then we went outside, but I wasn't any better off. It was fall, and all of the bare branches on the trees looked to me like sharp knives that I thought were going to fall and cut me."

Lizzy and her friends went back to her room, where they carefully watched her to make sure she was OK. Lizzy said that though she was acting funny, dancing around the room and singing, but she still did not feel happy inside. It wasn't long before her thoughts besieged her again, she said, and fear caused her to lock her friends out of her room.

"I didn't know what to do," Lizzy said. I just wanted my bad thoughts to go away, so I started taking pills. I took a whole box of NyQuil as well. I was convinced that anything I did wouldn't be a problem. I had told myself that the pills, NyQuil and vodka that I took would counteract the shrooms, and make them go away."

Lizzy said that she was embarrassed, so she went back down to an empty bathroom in her building and locked herself in. "The room was spinning, everything was orange and black. I started puking, and then everything turned pink. I passed out on the floor of the bathroom and woke up some time later," she said.

When Lizzy woke up, she still felt sick and took more of the same pills because she thought they would fight off the effects of the mushrooms. Her hallucinations continued through the rest of the night, until she cried for an hour and passed out.

"I could have easily never woken up from that night," Lizzy said. "My lack of fear and inhibition caused me to do things that were very harmful to my body."

When asked if she would take mushrooms again, she said, "I do a lot of lighter drugs like pot on a regular basis, but after that trip, I didn't touch anything for a week. I realized I should never take hallucinogens again, and I have not since."

"Looking back on what I did, that's a crazy person," Lizzy said. "That's a suicidal, maniacal demon that I saw inside of me for just one second. Now, in my sober reality, that is the scariest thing in the world."

Sacred to the ancient Aztecs, who called them "divine flesh," mushrooms are used by everyone from college students in Boston to high school students in Nebraska, who literally poison themselves into a new level of consciousness.



From Spore to Store

It doesn't take much to brew a batch of hallucinogenic mushrooms. At its simplest, the process requires a few mushroom spores purchased from the Internet, dirt, fertilizer and a warm, moist, dark environment-like a dorm room closet. Mix together the ingredients and the mushrooms grow and mature in one to two months.

Though the same mushrooms are present in nature-they commonly grow on cow feces-mushroom users say it's not advisable to "hunt for mushrooms" without proper training. Many wild mushrooms look similar to the drug, but can in fact be fatal if ingested.

Unlike drugs such as marijuana, which can only be grown in certain climates, mushrooms are easily cultivated anywhere. As a result, the distance between producer and consumer is small and mushrooms are readily available.

According to users, mushrooms are not as easy to purchase as marijuana, but they are generally available on campus. When mushrooms are available here, they usually sell at $30 for one-eighth of an ounce.

Taking the Trip

"The best way to eat mushrooms is in a peanut butter sandwich, which masks the pungent, bitter taste better than most foods [do]," Chad said.

There are a variety of other ways to ingest hallucinogenic mushrooms. Popular alternatives include placing them on top of warm pizza, covering them with chocolate or even downing them plain. Making mushroom tea is common as well, though none of the users interviewed followed this practice.

Thirty to 60 minutes after ingestion, your world begins to change, shroom users say. Your pupils dilate, your senses are enhanced and a wave of confusion descends over your mind.

A user named Jerry says that the effects of shrooms often start as a "tingly, light feeling." He said, "Sometimes it just hits you though, and you suddenly can't think or speak."

This is the beginning of what hallucinogenic drug users call a trip.

"A mushroom trip is a journey because you go somewhere else," Jerry says. "When you come back down, your life is different."

Side effects when a trip begins are often limited to an upset stomach and nausea, the users interviewed say. Some people feel sick enough to vomit, but this is usually a one-time affair. Shroom users do not spend all night throwing up like one might after an evening of heavy drinking.

As the drug reaches full effect, a trip becomes very intense. The pupil dilation allows a significantly greater amount of light to enter the eyes. This light, combined with the heightened sensitivity of all five senses, often causes everything to appear, as Chad said, "like a world more beautiful than you could ever expect it to be."

"You might look at your watch and say, 'Wow! This is the most amazing thing I have ever seen,'" Raymond said. "Or, you might look at a picture on the wall and think it is the most beautiful painting in the world. Basically, the effects of shrooms bring us the closest we can get to experiencing the world as an infant again."

For Raymond, shrooms cause an amalgamation of light and color from which versions of the same scene emerge.

"They are changing every time you look somewhere, it makes it look like things are moving. So, what you end up seeing is patterns in everything. You will look at something, and see the pattern in it, and it will move. You will see the same pattern in other things such as the grain of wood or fabric of clothing."

Users say they do not typically see things that do not exist at all, but they do see existing things differently. A bush might seem to be breathing, for example.

Added together with a significant loss in short term memory, every few minutes in this alternate reality seems like hours of a convoluted journey.



A New Dimension

Those interviewed say tripping is always coupled with excitement. These users reported that mushrooms transported them to another dimension.

Raymond said he once visited the Great Sand Dunes National Monument in Colorado. He decided to camp out there and spend the night taking mushrooms and watching the full moon.

"There were these big clouds next to the full moon, and the clouds were not moving. I then watched the cloud form what seemed to be tendrils, which then framed the moon perfectly and grew together. It looked like the clouds just reached out, formed a mouth and swallowed the moon. What I saw was one of the craziest things I had ever seen because it actually happened. I was only amazed, however, because I was on mushrooms," he said.

Mary has also endured some very graphic trips. Her favorite took place with a group of around eight people.

"We were watching a Disney movie that was bright and happy and cheery. We were all so happy that we began dancing around. Then one of my friends started talking to the television, and it happily responded. Unfortunately, none of us remember what it said," she said.

In another instance, Mary got into bed after taking mushrooms a few hours earlier when it seemed to her that her air conditioner started to talk, warning her that the world was going to end soon. "The air conditioner said that the reason for this was that all our laws of physics were incorrect, and it was my task to save the world. I called a friend and she suggested I read a physics book, and when I did, the equations started attacking me. It was a scary night."

The first time Chad used mushrooms, which he dipped in peanut butter, he was talking to a large tree that spilled to him the secrets of life-secrets he no longer remembers. Afterward, he dressed up for Triskelion's Sinderella Ball.

"When I was getting dressed, I put on a pair of wings, and convinced myself that I was a fairy prince. I thought the other people I was with were invaders of my realm, so when they asked me if I was all right, I said, 'Don't talk to me human.'"

Chad continued, "as I walked down the path towards the Shapiro Campus Center from Usdan, it appeared as if all the trees were lit up with fairies and bending in for me -making a walkway for the fairy prince. So, I decided to fly through. While I was actually running, it felt like my wings were flapping and that I was in fact flying to the dance."



The Psilocybin Effect

According to Dr. Zack Spigelman of Parker Hill Oncology and Hematology in Waltham, there are two major types of hallucinogenic mushrooms: those containing psilocybin and those in the amantia muscaria classification.

Psilocybin mushrooms are more common among those interviewed and in general. Spigelman said that upon being digested, the psilocybin breaks down into psilocin, a chemical with similar composition.

As of now, scientists have not conducted substantial research on how psilocin affects the brain, but theories do exist. One idea is that psilocin is very similar to serotonin, a sort of natural anti-depressant in the brain. It is thought that psilocin temporarily replaces serotonin in the brain during a trip.

The effects of psilocybin can also be enhanced when consuming other drugs simultaneously. Mushrooms are hard to lace with additional substances, but some users do prefer to do so. Both LSD and PCP, other hallucinogenic drugs, are possible additives. Smoking marijuana as the mushroom high fades can sometimes increase the length of a trip.

Psilocybin is considered a controlled substance and is illegal in the United States. Each state has its own punishments for its use, possession or distribution. In Massachusetts, that punishment is a fine up to $1000and up to a year in prison.

Director of Public Safety Edward Callahan said that when students are caught with shrooms, a report is instantly filed and the student is referred to the Office of Student Development and Judicial Education for further action. Section 4.5 in the Right and Responsibilities handbook addresses drugs and warns against the "use of illicit drugs or the abuse of legally-obtained drugs."

"There is no place for drugs on this campus," Callahan said. "Students should face the consequences for possession of drugs, which are all treated the same here as far as procedures go."

Due to insufficient research, the medical community does not know if there are long term effects of using mushrooms.

Spigelman cautioned that eating the wrong mushroom could be fatal. "The most dangerous issue becomes when the patient misidentifies the ingested mushroom and poisons him or herself with a poisonous subtype of mushroom. The most common mushroom poison causes liver failure and, periodically, death," he said.

According to the National Drug Intelligence Center, mushrooms are not habit-forming. Though one may develop a short-term tolerance, a physical addiction does not emerge.

"One person's enlightenment can be another person's hell," Brandeis' Drug and Alcohol Counselor Dawn Skop said, when it comes to shrooms.

"Hallucinogens do not mimic psychosis or mental illness, but they can trigger a psychotic experience in a vulnerable person," Skop said. She added that people with a family history of predisposition to mental illness could potentially be harmed by mushroom use.

"Everyone reacts differently to these drugs," Skop said. "Let the buyer beware."



The Cycle of Fear

Users say it is important to keep one's mind happy, clear and relaxed in the days before using mushrooms. Negative thoughts can easily develop into what is a called a "bad trip." This is what happened to Lizzy, who, overwhelmed with anxiety over schoolwork, consumed a potentially deadly combination of NyQuil, pills and vodka while on mushrooms.

This may also be what happened to Eliezer Schwartz '04, who died on Nov. 16 after falling from the third-floor balcony of an apartment building in Gloucester, Mass.

To understand what is happening in the mind of someone during a bad trip, Raymond said that one must consider laughter. A bad trip occurs when one wants to laugh at everything when on mushrooms. The meaning of this laughter, however, is not always clear.

"Laughter is a very strange thing because it straddles the line between confusion, and funny ha-ha, and fear. I mean, think about the things that we are scared of that we just sort of laugh at," he said.

Raymond said emotions felt when using mushrooms can be very confusing. People might laugh about a happy thought one minute, and then the short term memory loss that occurs might cause them to forget the cause of their laughter. Then they get worried that there is something negative going on.

This negativity often produces a cycle.

"You are massively confused, you can't piece thoughts together, you can't remember why you are so upset, your stomach hurts and you get more and more frightened as time passes," Raymond said. "You begin to forget what normal is like, and you get scared that you are never going to go back to normal, whatever it is."

Users say it is really important to constantly remind yourself-or have someone else remind you-that you are on mushrooms.

Otherwise, trippers might think they are going crazy and might do what ever they think is necessary to fight off the things that frighten them.

When this fear of insanity is combined with the cycle of negative thoughts, it can produce a very dangerous experience that can only be remedied by a severe change in environment, or a significant distraction. Sometimes, both of these can break the cycle of fear, and bring the user again back to a stable trip.

"Sometimes, you just have to ride it out," Jerry said.

Coming Down

In the ending hours of a trip, short term memory returns, and users are able to piece together longer trains of thought. At the same time, the effects of mushrooms allow one to connect thoughts they normally would not. The result of this is what can be called a period of enlightenment.

"When you are coming down from a trip, your mind goes places it has never gone before," Jerry said. "You learn things about yourself that you can apply to your life later on."

After contemplating serious, philosophical ideas for a couple of hours, the trip ends. While the world is no longer distorted, psilocin is still stimulating the mind, and users often cannot fall asleep right away.

Later on, after a long sleep, users often are exhausted both mentally and physically. Raymond said it is fun to get back together with your fellow trippers and share stories.

"It is fun to find out why so and so went missing at this time, and what someone else was doing when they were in such and such a room," Raymond said.

Unfortunately, some users do not have the opportunity to reflect on the trip they have taken. Instead, they become so absorbed in their hallucinations that before reclaiming reality, they make mistakes too grave to be corrected. No one ever expects to retain an alternate consciousness forever. Such deaths serve as a warning that the escape from reality is fraught with peril, and that when we choose to let go of our minds, we can't ever count on finding them again.