Recent History

The magic mushroom ‘tipped’ on both sides of the Atlantic during the 1970s, having arrived in the wake of LSD. Psychedelic meant that for the first time in Western history the effects of magic mushrooms – the colours and hallucinations, the bodily perturbations, the emotional excitation – had become desirable. Consequently, as the news spread out in waves, mushrooms very quickly went from shunned poison, to academic curiosity, to popular bohemian drug choice. Psilocybin consciousness had truly arrived, it’s flames fanned on by folklore knowledge from intrepid experimenters who had returned from the Mexican mushroom pilgrimage and discovered hallucinogenic species at home, as well as media attention that this new found habit had aroused. But mainly, continued academic interest in the matter of mushrooms ensured that the latest information concerning taxonomy, identification, pharmacology and dosage filtered down into, and circulated freely within, popular culture.

The earliest record of illicit magic mushroom use in North America is from Canada in 1965. A handful of college students were arrested in Vancouver and found to be in possession of Liberty Caps. The records do not tell us who they were, how they made their fortuitous discovery, or whether they had the opportunity to sample the mushrooms, but in all likelihood one or all of the students had made the pilgrimage to Mexico and discovered the properties of Liberty Caps on their return.

From these early ripples, the first proper waves of psilocybin consciousness began washing up in the beach State of Florida. In 1972, students discovered that Psilocybe cubensis grows abundantly there in the summer months, as it does throughout the Gulf States. Anecdotal reports at the time suggested that fraternity parties were being livened up with mushroom omelettes and tea, with perhaps hundreds of people tripping at a time. Two years later, the use of cubensis was being reported from Mississippi, which was being hailed as the ‘mushroom capital of the States’. It was another region, though, that could have more legitimately laid claim to this title, for the Pacific Northwest proved to be absolutely replete with psilocybin-containing species.

Word spread, and popularity grew. 1975 was very good for Liberty Caps, so much so that collectors gathered sufficient numbers to market them. They were found to be on sale in Eugene for the exorbitant price of $75 to $100 a pound wet weight. Local farmers, like their fellows everywhere, were typically hostile to this seasonal inundation of mushroom hunters in their fields, and some complained vociferously to the press. Sensing a marketing opportunity, however, others started charging for access, with prices ranging from $1 - $25 for a day’s picking. One enterprising farmer issued pickers with official blue buckets to show that they had registered.

Of the many psilocybin-containing mushrooms discovered in the Pacific Northwest, the next most important species after the Liberty Cap was the newly identified Psilocybe stuntzii. It was found growing in the landscaped gardens of the campus of the University of Washington, on imported bark mulch.

Almost immediately afterwards a mushroom craze spread through the University and on to other colleges (such as Evergreen State University in Olympia). The mushroom acquired the name Washington Blue Veil.

A combination of word of mouth, academic dissemination and press scare stories meant that the magic mushroom finally tipped in America in 1976.

And while the growing use of wood chips in garden landscaping contributed to the natural spread of psilocybin mushrooms through suburbia, members of the mushrooming underground did what they could to help the process with ‘guerrilla inoculations’ Spawning blocks – wood chips imbued with mycelium – changed hands and were freely shared, most notably at Grateful Dead gigs – and thereafter psilocybin mushrooms started appearing in parks, zoos, arboretums and nurseries across the Northwest. It was, Stamets writes, one ‘ continually unfolding, exponential wave of mycelial mass’.

The spreading waves of mushroom consciousness were not confined to North America. Magic mushrooms were found and used, typically for the first time, in Jamaica, Hawaii, Guatemala, Venezuela, Argentina and Peru.

It was more orthodox waves, however, that carried psilobybian consciousness beyond the Americas, for it seems that it was a surfer who took the knowledge from Hawaii to Australia in 1969, where he or she recognised the distinctive form of Psilocybe cubensis sprouting plentifully from cowpats. A craze soon started and was further fueled by being quickly made illegal in 1971. This only exuberated their popularity, along with alarming newspaper headlines. Underground supply lines opened up to meet the demand in the cities, so that in Hobart in 1972, sales of LSD dropped away to almost nothing because of the abundant availability of mushrooms. The habit amongst surfers was apparently to consume these Golden Tops or Golden Caps in smoothes’, before heading out to sea to ride the waves.(Wow - we can just imagine that (SLF))

Several other psilocybin mushrooms were found in Australia, the most important of which were the extremely potent Copelandia cyanescens, known as ‘blue meanies’ (a reference to the fact that they stain blue when bruised, to their strength, and to the villains of The Beatle’s cartoon adventure, Yellow Submarine. Just a handful of these mushrooms produces an intensely strong trip.

It took longer for indigenous magic mushrooms to be discovered in New Zealand. Yet again it was surfers who recognised blue meanies and another species, Psilocybe Tasmania, this time growing in the sand dunes at Khomenii beach in New Plymouth. An un unknown British botanist apparently found Liberty Caps growing on the Ontago peninsula near the city of Dunedin on the South Island, and very soon the knowledge spread by word of mouth.

By 1980s psilocybin mushrooms were being used in Bali, Indonesia, Samoa, the Philippines, and Thailand. In Samoa, an ‘unknown foreigner’ introduced the locals to the properties of Copelandia cyanescens, which was previously known as Ghost Hat and avoided. Thereafter mushrooms became popular amongst the younger indigenous population. More often then not, however, mushroom use in South East Asia was restricted to remote, coastal tourist areas.

What we have , then is a remarkable spread of an illicit practice taking place in a mere thirty years or so. Propelled by top-down academic inquiry on the one hand, and by gutsy, bottom-up folk experimentation on the other, mushroom-consciousness expanded out from Mexico, to North and South America, and then right round the Pacific rim. How though, did it reach Britain and Europe?

By all extents and purposes – Britain was very slow catching onto the magic mushroom and the discovery by a wider audience that it had it’s own native magic mushroom, the liberty cap, growing throughout this green and pleasant land. Sure the mushroom had been documented throughout history in Britain, but usually as the results of accidental poisonings. Its affects weren't then appreciated as psychedelic, but more life threatening by the unfortunate victims, who surely believed they were being poisoned and about to die!!! As the psychedelic waves permeated across the Atlantic during the 60’s the British seemed blissfully unaware as to this native species' magic qualities. The scene in Britain during the early 60s and 70s in London (being the trend setting city of that time in the UK, was awash with underground youth cultures, driven by music, fashion, art and dance. This underground had clubs and venues, galleries and theatres, squats and crash-pads. It had clothes shops, bookshops, cafés and dope dens. It had advice centres, alternative clinics, schools and even a university. It had it’s own sacred and significant sites. Within these spaces, politicos and journalists hammered out opinions in eagerly devoured papers and magazines, or harangued people on the streets. The ideology was one of the establishment being in it’s death throws and that a new psychedelic era was about to rise from the ashes of this political, cultural, sexual, and spiritual revolution.

Yet despite all this, it is believed that the native British magic mushroom, the liberty cap, wasn’t used until the beginning of the 1970s for recreational purposes. This was when an article in Oz magazine (the leading underground magazine of it’s time) recorded the event. This is strange as mushrooms had been used in Mexico and America, by westerners a decade or so before this time. We know that scientists had positively identified the Liberty Cap as being psychoactive as early as 1963, but that this knowledge was tucked away in scientific research papers, far out of the reach of ordinary people, who may have benefited from this. There were also reports and TV interviews with the major 'movers and shakers' of the time from across the Atlantic, discussing Sacred mushrooms – so we knew they existed – just not yet in our own back yard.

The British also had a cultural exceptance at the time that the only magic mushroom in the UK was the Amanita muscaria or fly agric, a mushroom that has simply never caught on with any western population for it's 'magical properties'. The fact that many leading experts in their field of the time, only sort to drive the message home and endorse this view, highly likely caused us to overlook the liberty cap or to simply not notice it.

Eventually in 1974 the first guidebook to the British psycho-mycoflora appeared – Richard Cooper’s A guide to British Psilocybin Mushrooms (1974). His book, which is still in print today very clearly identified the Liberty Cap, and suggested a dose of twenty mushrooms as a safe starting point for psychedelic experimentation. The booklet was first advertised in the pages of IT magazine, and over the years sold many copies. Yet it’s initial impact was under whelming. A year after its publication, poet and author George Andrews bemoaned the fact that hardly anyone knew about or was making use of the psychedelic treasure growing freely within the hills.

As drug pandemics go, then, the Liberty Cap made an unimpressive start. By the mid 1970s, its use was confined to small numbers of hippies, mainly in London and southern England, who were already turned on to Acid or part of the underground. Cooper’s guide was helpful, but the news seems to have been passed on slowly as a form of folk knowledge, by word of mouth. Yet in the spring of 1976, however, magic mushrooms suddenly made national news, and overnight burst into popular consciousness.