Review
Introduction
I was nineteen years old when I embarked on my first book, Psilocybe Mushrooms & Their Allies. I was living in a mountain cabin near Darrington, Washington, and progress was slow and frustrating, in part because I was pounding away on a vintage Underwood typewriter whose keys required perpetual cleaning with toothbrushes. And yet, the project became a window into another dimension. Twenty years later, I am still collecting photographs and data on the subject. This book is an accumulation of research, both my own and my colleagues, through generations of experiences.
When my family first moved from a small town in Ohio to Seattle, I was mesmerized by my new horizons, marked by jagged, snow-capped mountains—a stark contrast to the bland scenery of the Midwest. On weekends, I would hike the trails of the North Cascades. I loved the rainforest—its smell, stillness, and sense of life quietly emerging all about me. Hiking up basalt-slotted canyons, fording over thundering waterfalls, or traversing ravines that led deep into the heart of dormant volcanoes, I found mushrooms everywhere. They lined the trails, bordered high alpine lakes, and dotted pristine meadows. Their shapes, sizes, and colors boggled the imagination, demanding recognition. An awakening began within me, one undoubtedly repeated for millennia. Mushrooms symbolized the bridge between life and death, between myself and the woodlands in which I lived. I sensed they were guardians of the sacred forests—conscious and watchful of my presence. Mushroom spirits soon enveloped my daily life, convincing me that they could be vehicles for greater good. I felt I had found my place within a continuum, and shared a sacred bond that spanned from the first paleolithic mycologists through the present, and to generations yet to come.
Against this backdrop of natural wonder, I worked as a logger, setting chokers for a living. The pay was good, and the dangers satisfied a primal instinct. My long hair set me apart from the die-hard, tobacco-chewing men who tried to outdo each other with demonstrations of bravery and stupidity. The job kept me in the woods, strengthened my resolve for self-reliance, was aerobically unbeatable, and provided an escape from the only other source of employment: dusty lumber mills, which I detested. During this tenure as a logger, I was introduced to the startling array of mushrooms that many of my logger friends collected and ate. Their excitement upon discovering each new mushroom patch was infectious. Soon, my mind become a sponge for information about fungi. The subject seemed to have no boundaries—the more I studied, the more I realized how little I knew. My path had been set on a course that continues to this day.
That the psilocybin-containing varieties would be absent from such a mycological paradise seemed impossible. I began searching in university libraries for information on the psilocybin mushrooms, but soon learned that very few books even had Psilocybe listed in their indexes. Those that did had one peculiarity in common: all descriptions, photographs, and otherwise useful information had been torn out, leaving a gaping and depressing testimonial to the eagerness with which others had sought the same information. At this time, the mid seventies, most people seeking Psilocybes would make long treks to Mexico. Few realized that these “magic mushrooms” were commonplace in regions of North America and Europe. The few books available, I soon discovered, had misleading if not outright false information. Many of the authors lacked field experience and simply copied the mistakes of their predecessors.
During the course of my research, I was surprised to discover that active Psilocybes are rarely found in the woods of the Pacific Northwest. Curiously, the potent Psilocybes are scarce in the wild but prolific and secure in their niche in the cities. The woodland Psilocybe, P. pelliculosa, is the one exception—it thrives in wild but disturbed grounds such as trails, abandoned forest roads, and other similar habitats. In twenty years, I have found only one specimen of P. pelliculosa deep within a natural forest. I am continually amazed that the majority of wood-decomposing Psilocybes thrive not in the depths of the wilds but in the disturbed habitats of densely populated areas, such as landscaping around buildings. As the use of decorative wood chips for landscaping became more common, a certain little brown mushroom began appearing with increasing frequency—a phenomenon that caught many off guard. Unfortunately, some of the world’s most poisonous mushrooms also thrive in this habitat. Distinguishing between the groups is not difficult, but a simple mistake can have deadly ramifications.
While researching Psilocybe, I became accustomed to meeting great resistance from professional mycologists, many of whom had an instant distrust of anyone expressing a passion for Psilocybe. There were some mycologists who stated publicly that it would be better for people to die from mistakes in identification than to provide them with the tools for recognizing a Psilocybe mushroom. This bizarre attitude towards Psilocybe mushrooms and the people who used them reflected a chasm between generations.
Some physicians even seemed to take a perverse pleasure in the needless pumping of stomachs of patients who had consumed psilocybin mushrooms. One doctor told me he does so to “teach them a lesson.” Ill-informed doctors, intoxicated with the power of their presumed authority, gave themselves license to espouse anti-mushroom rhetoric that strayed far from the truth. Later, I discovered that the reactions of these doctors and mycologists were often simply a result of ignorance. Since the majority of the psilocybin mushrooms—unlike the common edibles—are rare in conifer forests, most mycologists seldom encountered them during their sojourns. These were the same mycologists whose expertise was relied upon by attending physicians.
Beginning in the mid seventies, a new subculture evolved from the fabric of the counterculture movement of the sixties. In the northwestern and southeastern United States, hunting for Psilocybes approached the status of a national sport. In certain pastures, dozens of mushroom hunters could be seen on a daily basis—stooping, squatting, slowly and methodically walking under the gaze of stupefied cows and sometimes hostile farmers. I once estimated that each day during the fall, several thousand people were hunting Psilocybes in the fields of western Washington. The wave of interest soon became an invasion—a pandemic and a cause célèbre for an entire generation.
Trespassing and illegal-possession cases clogged the courtrooms. Hospitals saw more accidental poisonings and overdoses than ever before. Law enforcement officials, weary of the onslaught, typically prosecuted violators for misdemeanor trespassing rather than felony possession. I attended one packed court hearing where thirty individuals, including a friend, all pleaded guilty to trespassing. Each paid a fifty dollar fine. The entire court proceeding was clouded with a circuslike atmosphere; to be prosecuted for mushroom picking was of course totally absurd.
Ironically, each one of those pickers—knowingly or not—became agents for dispersing spores into more and more habitats. To this day, the grounds around the county courthouse and sheriff’s department remain one of my favorite places to find Psilocybe cyanescens and Psilocybe stuntzii. Other favored sites include college campuses, utility substations, hospitals, office complexes, and ornamental gardens.
By the mid eighties, whole cities were overrun with Psilocybes—from Vancouver, B.C., to San Francisco. The growth of suburbia was expanding the zones of colonization. In particular, the marketing of wood chips (beauty bark) for landscaping continues to drive the Psilocybe revolution. Guerrilla inoculations became commonplace. Legions of Johnny Appleseed types traveled throughout the land carrying cardboard boxes filled with white, ropy mushroom mycelium. Grateful Dead concerts became favorite sites for distributing Psilocybe cultures. Private patches proliferated, as well as “mushrooms-for-the-people” beds in public parks, arboretums, nurseries, zoos…virtually anyplace where sawdust was used. Public domain beds—planted or natural—attracted new enlistees and they, in turn, created satellite colonies. The result is a continually unfolding, exponential wave of mycelial mass. The yearly splitting and expanding of mushroom beds has created mycelial footprints from Washington to New York, from Arizona to Canada. Similar trends in Europe soon followed. Many of the people I’ve met tell me they are on a vision quest; they believe that the world will become a more spiritual and peaceful place with each new mushroom patch. Many feel a deep, ecologically awakened attachment to the Earth, and believe that they are crusaders saving the planet. At any rate, they are succeeding in expanding the domain of psilocybin mushrooms.
About the Author
PAUL STAMETS is the founder of Fungi Perfecti and codirector and founder of the Rainforest Mushroom Genome and Mycodiversity Preservation Project. He is the author of two seminal textbooks, The Mushroom Cultivator and GROWING GOURMET AND MEDICINAL MUSHROOMS, has been published in numerous journals, and is presenting more lectures on mycology than he can keep track of. An advisor and consultant to the Program for Integrative Medicine at the University of Arizona Medical School and the 1998 recipient of the Collective Heritage Institute’s Bioneers Award, Stamets lives in Kamilche Point, Washington with his collection of more than 250 medicinal mushroom cultures.
