Return to Mushrooms after 35 years

Return to Mushrooms after 35 years
As leaves turned to bronze and gold I waited for the rain. It fell in a single flurry at first and once it cleared right across the road on the village cricket green various ground mushrooms appeared. A light dusting of Liberty caps, perhaps 60, then a further few provided a small harvest for two trips. Over at my other place, a mile or two away the land is far more wild. Hills and valleys of open fields and clusters of woodland where grass is chewed short by cattle and deer. Untainted with nitrogen fertilisers the ground shows dark patches, lines and circles where the mycelium below colour the grass. After the rains an abundance of field fungi of some thirty varieties suggested this place would be abundant psylocibin country. Soon I was finding the odd cream white Liberty cap and soon had sufficient for a few trips. Picking furtively, reluctant to kneel down in the grass to hunt on all fours for fear of puritanical neighbour interference I soon discovered a magical place. The land rolls down to a spate stream ditch where a line of native hardwoods divide two fields. A boggy patch rotovated by cattle hooves keeps all but the most keen walker away and I've still not seen another soul in that field. Sat below the church yard this hidden oasis provides an unhindered view across the valley. I knew I was on sacred ground. Churches were usually built on old pagan sites when Christianity replaced the old beliefs. Here was no exception. Positioned perfectly. The idyllic point in the landscape. The alarmed cry of green woodpeckers informed other creatures of my presence. Jays screeched out continuing the warning. Making my way across the brow of the hill my dog, some twenty yards ahead caught scent of deer and a stag sprang at speed, making for sanctuary in the woodland below as Dook followed in futile chase. Mycologist Paul Sannetts believes mycelium has sentience. As we walk through field and forest, each step we take disturbs debris and mycelium responds to digest the freshly released nutrients. His perspective is given support from numerous clues. Easily the biggest life forms on the planet, mycelium masses below ground in wooded areas can stretch over hundreds even thousands of acres. Their hairlike strands have a visual similarity to neurones and dendrites, the hair like strands that permit communication in the brains of animals including ourselves, forming vast communicative subterranean networks. Mycelial masses are the veins and arteries of forests, transporting nutrients hundreds of feet from one area to another providing sustenance where needed. Pitched between life and death mycelium, fungi, mushrooms face prejudice. Many people feel a natural aversion to these amazing life forms, neither plant nor animal. Yet it is they that make life. Perhaps even brought life to earth through spores brought here on meteorites. Able to grow mycelium strands through rock they break it down in to sand. Feeding on decaying plant matter creating humus that is nutrition for further plant growth. It is mycelium that creates life. Following each of the great extinctions it was mycelial breakdown that created the nutrient soup from which life reemerged. With this in mind it is no big leap to believe there is sentience. Entering the forest we walk upon a subsurface mind stretching throughout, feeling where we tread, aware of us as we are not aware of it. Most of us when walking in woodland will have felt the presence of a singular mind, larger, deeper and greater than ours. Statistically superior to antidepressants in curing our malaise, a walk in the woods, abandonment to the mycelial super being as its scent and moist calming, age old existence, soothes away human riddles and ire.
Soon I was taking walks twice a day across the patchy field. Reeds are a common clue as can be odd thistles and gorse. Close too to deer faeces. Each time I gathered fifty or so.
Though my intent had been to gather mushrooms by Priddy nine barrows due to the chance I'd be picking from the fruit from ancestral mycelium mass where Christ once walked, it was rewarding to find this sacred fungi less than fifty yards from either of my homes. Mycelium, being such vast life forms arguably qualify as higher beings if not as gods. An earlier post on this blog titled Psylocibin Christ explains my quest. During this most pagan time of year, no doubt embedded in to our culture due to being peak mushroom season we still celebrate Halloween. The old pagan festival, now cloaked in later Christian mythologies. Bonfire night. Also a pagan festival on top of which is now superimposed the celebration of the catholic uprising and attempt to blow up the Houses of Parliament. The old wicker man burning ceremony, remodelled around a ritual burning of a guy. The close similarity in names of the Yorkshire born mercenary Guido Fawkes, tortured by the state for his failed act of terrorism. Fawkes was to be hung drawn and quartered before his parts scattered to the remotest corners of the island yet following his torture he succeeded in his bid to avoid witnessing his own disembowelment and castration by leaping from the scaffold, snapping his neck before the authorities could have their horrific revenge. Still this time of year retains the whiff of the wild. By now the nights are longer and cold. The last tatters of leaves. The moist scent of fungi and for most the last outdoor event of the year sees communities gather together round large outdoor bonfires. Fireworks light up the skies, reminders of the unlit gunpowder of Fawkes. And for the pagan mystic; sprites, elves, pixies, hedge spirits are rife. Whether genetic memories hurled up from within or superstitious imaginings from forgotten childhood fairy tails, it is only the extremely desensitised who feel nothing untoward this time of year.
Though life would later find me exploring the possibilities of a variety of substances it is psychedelics that I began with and to where I would finally return in later life sobriety. It is important to recognise that entheogenic plants and compounds are quite separate from other drugs if we should even categorise them as such. The ritual use of mushrooms was integral to Aztec culture and features heavily in what remains of their sacred art. The earliest cave paintings reveal the importance of mushrooms to ancient man. Some believe psylocibin may even have triggered human consciousness. Perhaps it was not an apple in the garden of Eden but a mushroom that triggered mans step away from animals. In my mid teens I used to take many trips during the mushroom season though grew out of it. By my early twenties I never took them, fearing them if anything. Drifting from the mysticism of my youth and rebelling from what I'd grown to see as fantasy, instead seeking material substance. Joining up with the straight world, first as a joiner then later as a furniture maker. Alcohol is the tipple of the mainstream and psychedelics seen as suspicious. Sadly this path led to deep unhappiness. Finally, after two decades of rarely acknowledged depression and self medication to get through, I realised I'd had enough. On discovering the new lysergamides, AL LAD, ETH lad etc my life changed. One particularly strong mystical experience caused me to question all I knew. My depression was swept away as was the habitual substance use I had used to contain it. So having not taken mushrooms for three decades my psychedelic renaissance brought them back to mind. The mystical experience returned a number of hidden memories. The epiphanies of mushrooms that I had once dismissed as the illusions of a teenager were reevaluated. During my teens all trips had at least a sense of the possibility of dark corridors of the mind. Where al lad and family differed was in their being anxiety free. Was this due to their chemistry or my being older? Less scared in general of life's diverse and weird corners or instead due to specifics in the differing chemistry and biology.
Two years ago, not long after discovering the new lysergamides , the most peculiar thing happened. So slim a chance that some might call it the hand of God. Through AL LAD something had reached out and touched me. Though in no way close to any ideas I had previously about the shape or feel of what a god or a consciousness might be like, something, the earth, life, whatever it is, had rescued me. I have written about this often in earlier postings so won't repeat but further strange happenings followed.
Whilst walking the dog through a local churchyard I came upon a rucksack. It was a Wednesday evening, maybe eight or nine o'clock. Looking around to see if anyone was about before picking it up. Then shouting at the night shadows to see if the owner might have slipped into the bushes for a swift wazz. The place was silent. Not a soul turned up for the following twenty minutes I spent throwing sticks for the dog. Only then did I take a peep inside. Two big plastic bags of some green leaves made me think I must have stumbled upon a weed deal gone wrong but after studying more closely the rough herbage had a deeper, almost grey green tone, quite unlike any weed. Unsure what to do and finding no immediate evidence of ownership I took it home. Inside were various entheogenic organic substances. Nothing else. Three large bags, two containing psychotria viridis and one Baanisteria Caapi, three smaller bags of powdered kratoum and a number of small bottles of ground Syrian rue seeds. After some research I realised I'd chanced upon ingredients for ayuashka, the sacred entheogenic beverage used by Amazonian shamans. For two years prior to this I'd been researching shamanism, it appeared this was a gift. What chances are there of someone of such obscure shamanic interests finding this bag? Few would have had a clue what any of it was. I couldn't find any owner and handing it to any authorities would have been wasteful and disrespectful to higher powers. This was meant for me.
The ayuashka experiences from this 'gift from the gods' were powerful indeed. Many messages came through but one in particular that is relevant here hit home. Dimethyltriptamine, the main active ingredient in psychotria viridis is a triptamine, much the same as psylocibin and pcilocin the psychedelic compounds that naturally occur in magic mushrooms. The similarities in experience to each other are far greater than either to the effects of lysergamides. Amazonian shamanism had been among the focal points of my research in recent years. Ayuashka is seen as a being or God. It has a physicality in the Baanisteria Caapi vine. Her presence animates or is the forest. Foodism though an obsession of the middle classes and hence having numerous ridiculous aspects, can also teach us things. We are expressions of our environment much like any other life form. The Christian mindset has strongly affected western culture embedding an unconscious belief in transcendent souls. Through this way of thinking a separation of man from his environment has developed helped along by technological and agricultural advances. Through food transportation human life is possible anywhere on the planet yet this recent phenomenon disguises a truth. We are animals. All animals evolve in context. The environment in which they live provides the exact nutrition required. Take any animal out of context and it will struggle. Place a Western European in equatorial Africa and they soon fall ill. Countless microbial factors come into play. After a time they can come to survive but never so well as those genetically predisposed to live there. We find the nutrition we need from seasonal foods. Vitamins and trace elements specific to coping with the complex detail of time of year and place. We are fine tuned to thrive in situ. But it is not only food that is site and season specific. Naturally occurring herbs, medicines and bacteria ensure the animal can cope with what it faces. Much of this goes unnoticed. It is not often a conscious thought and the complexity in the chemical and biological make up of the air we walk in, water we drink and wash in and in food we eat isn't fully understood though it is undoubtedly crucial for a healthy balanced organism. This idea of the organism in context carries on through to historic shamanic use of entheogenic plants. We may live in a world where a few clicks on the Internet can bring us sacred plants from around the world but should we be taking them out of context? If foods occur naturally providing the relative nutrition required for living in a place, wouldn't it be natural that the same would be true for entheogens? It was during a particularly discordant episode on an ayuashka trip that the idea of mushrooms set in. It had been more than thirty years since I'd last taken mushrooms. My life had gone full circle. Since March this year when I moved to the area I'd been immediately impressed by what perfect land this was for Liberty caps. Now they were here.
It would be a lie if I said that a return to our primary native entheogen held no apprehension. Memories from over three decades can become misty. Often little is left. It should be born in mind that the cells in the body die off and are replaced by new ones. There is no part of me now that was there thirty five years ago. Unless you believe in the soul independent on a biology and body you believe that the self, the personality, love, mystical states and of course memories have a physical biology. We may be still along way from understanding how any of this can emerge from organic grey mush and meat, nevertheless most no believe it true. Memories from that long ago hence must be memories of memories. Replicated neuronal patterns that mimic those that took place at the time. Besides, memory is renowned for being in part fictitious. We write our own histories. The arrogant write themselves heroic histories justifying and ennobling even their most questionable acts. The depressive does the reverse, changing all achievements into failures. I remembered mushrooms as being fast and close, less expansive than LSD. I remember paranoid fears, dark corridors of the mind, stroboscopic horrors and occasional brutal exposure to the truth of my own weaknesses. I remembered it as quite a challenging ride though I also remember deeply profound moments. Times when it really felt as though I had figured out philosophical truth or 'secrets' of life. Ultimately, in my later teens I recall becoming jaded. How many times had I written down these secrets only to find banal or meaningless words the day after? Yet since taking a more serious look at neuropsychology and neuro philosophy in my late forties my outlook had shifted. In accepting a biology of self, in understanding how the brain creates reality, such dismissal may have been premature. Mistaken even. Unless we take the classical Abrahamic religious view that the soul or spirit is a divine gift, an essence, able to transcend death, not an emergent property of our flesh but something of a super nature that uses the flesh vehicle of the body to negotiate reality, then we accept that what we are has a common biology. All our thoughts, dreams, fears and aspirations are the result of hidden electrical, chemical, biological processes of complex neurological origin. Mystical states, falling in love, the reality we experience, all has a biology and all exists only in our minds. There is no physical evidence to being in love that we can detect as yet. As brain scanning technologies improve the physical truth will one day submit to our searches. Knowing our highest states have a biology doesn't make them any less. The images we see, the feelings we have at any time only exist in our heads. To feel in love is no different to being in love. There can be no objective proof of its existence. Similarly there can be no difference between mystical epiphany and the illusion of mystical epiphany. Such things can only exist from within. Everything or nothing is an illusion. Everything we can ever see or feel has no existence beyond our mind. That isn't to say there is no reality only that we have only a workable map of it. Our eyes send data to the brain which constructs the image. To know God or the secrets of life, mystical gnosis can not be told. Like love it can only be known from within. Perhaps the psychedelic epiphanies of my teens should be taken as seriously as anything else I've experienced? It was with this more open approach I decided to take another look at magic mushrooms.
In order to reacquaint myself with what I remembered as being more challenging than other psychedelics I first took a light dose of forty dried Liberty caps. To soften the ascent I drank a bottle of beer that I washed them down with. Before long I was smiling as the familiarity of a returned and long missed friend joined me. The physical aspect to mushrooms was something I'd forgotten. They were the first drug of any kind that I'd explored in any depth so I had nothing with which to compare them. Now as a Middle Aged man I had more life experience. A tight buzz or tingling came over me that, though intense, was not unpleasant. The yawning and tears, not dissimilar to those experienced during opiate withdrawal alongside wind are perhaps the least pleasant effect. These could be termed side effects and may well be, not due to the psylocibin but due to other trace elements. The experience, as I'd remembered, has a closer feel than lysergamides. A closeness to the expansive feel of meth, eth, al or pro lad. The psychedelic patterning tends towards the dmt or ayuashkan, clearly the inspiration for Sufi mosque ceilings, Buddhist sand mandalas and other many religious iconography. It is clear that all these representations are of the same place or state of mind. It felt good to be here again. Where my last psychedelic experience in early summer using 1p-eth lad was awash with Aqua marine, blues and greens; ocean colours, the mushrooms had an earthy feel of reds, yellows, oranges, the opposite side of the spectrum. A few days later, once tolerance had cleared, I took another reaquaintance trip, both to get any anxiety out of the way so as to be able to use the native entheogen in a more sacramental manner. Again I fell just short of full transcendence. If I stared at the wall or floor I could conjure up hallucinatory visions but there was no hope of breaking through. To my surprise I felt no anxiety at all. No dark corners. No fear at all. Often it can be the most intense and challenging trips that deliver the gnosis. The two may well be inseparable or dependant on each other. But this was not my objective here. Now reacquainted and having dismissed any fears or trepidation I felt able to move forward. My aim now to explore the possibilies of liberty caps, our prime naturally occurring entheogen.
One final point I should make regards recent studies I've read. Ben Sessa, David Nutt and others have been taking the path of Richard Strassman and carrying out academic psychology studies using psychedelics. This type of research, common in the 1960s had all but vanished due to the scare stories from the offspin of the hippy era. One study area has been in deep seated depression and PTSD. Addiction has long been known to submit to psychedelics too. I'd felt an unacknowledged anxiety building in me in recent months. Depression even. Yet following these first two trips I felt freed. It is often suggested that the content of thought during trips is what shifts such mental problems. By engaging and working through the problems that have led to depression through the brutal mirror of psychedelics, that these problems are then come to terms with. Yet I didn't really reflect on myself. It felt biological. Molecules of psylocibin and LSD are almost identical to serotonin. It is becoming known exactly which specific serotonin receptors are accessed by psychedelics. My anxiety and depression were swept away leaving a warm afterglow that remains. Clearly no one suggests that untutored or inexperienced use of psychedelics should be encouraged but I'm certain that, for some, in certain circumstances, they are the only real cure. This idea, that psychedelics are able to treat depression biologically and not just psychologically has real possibilities. This scourge of modern life has a cure.


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