Where In The World Is Evan?

On a recent trip out of Melbourne with two friends, J and M, I spent a day bushwalking down on the peninsula. Ostensibly we were there to escape the city and get some much needed exercise. Instead our trip soon changed into a mushroom hunting expedition.

Being the height of autumn, mushrooms of hundreds of different varieties abound. We set off looking for Copelandia cyanescens (blue meanies), which are the most common magic mushroom in Victoria. Unfortunately after a whole day of searching we couldn’t find a single one. We did, however, discover an area abundant with Amanita muscaria (left). J and I had both seen photos of these fairy mushrooms before, but were convinced of their extreme toxicity.

After moving house, a couple of weeks later, I mentioned this discovery to my new housemate who’d apparently experimented with Amanitas before. After investigating the multitude of contradictory literature available on this exotic mushroom species—many sources report it as being highly poisonous, whilst others offer gourmet recipes—I decided to give it a go. The following weekend we returned to the location where we’d seen them previously, and within 45 minutes had collected about 6 kilos of mushroom caps. This quantity—three full shopping bags—proved quite a bit of work to process. By the next day, however, we had reduced it all to a small jar of what looked like ground coffee.

Unlike regular magic mushrooms the Amanita muscaria does not contain psilocybin. Instead it contains a mix of several different psychoactive chemicals, predominantly ibotenic acid and muscimol, which produce a rather unique trip. The documented effects of these mushrooms vary quite greatly, which probably has more to do with different processing techniques, and misidentification, rather than supposed toxicity differences across continents. Even many respectable sources provide gross misinformation about the consequences of eating this species.

Having originated in northern Europe the Amanita muscaria has a long history of ritual use as far north as Siberia and as far south as India. Historical use of this mushroom possibly dates back as far as the worlds oldest religious text—the Rig Veda. This text speaks many times about a mythical drug called Soma. One of the distinctive features of this drug is that people would drink the urine of someone who had consumed Soma, to get high themselves. Although I’m not really game to try it, it apparently works for up to five repetitions. As none of the active ingredients are metabolisable they pass out untouched in your urine.

In my first experiment with this mushroom I must admit to being rather impatient and perhaps a little reckless. Due to the two main active ingredients, and their unsynchronised rates of absorption, the onset of symptoms comes in two phases; an initial drowsy narcotic stage, followed by a delirious hallucinogenic stage. After having a cup of mushroom tea with my housemates I soon grew impatient with the mild sedative effect I was feeling, so I dramatically and repeatedly increased my dose over the following two hours. After consuming an unmeasured dose of both tea and semi-dried mushrooms the narcotic first stage became rather overwhelming and I curled up on the couch in a foetal position with some psychedelic trance playing softly in the background.

As the drowsy stage slowly wears off the delirious stage starts to gain momentum, such that by the time you realise stage one is over, you are already feeling stage two in full force. As I lay on the couch I could feel a strong sense of synesthesia. My perception of music changed from pure auditory into a deeply physical sense of vibration and movement. I could feel the music resonating through my body, like a standing wave vibrating through a string, and by focusing my breathing I could shift the frequency and wavelength of my internal music. The more I relaxed my mind and my breathing the stronger this resonance became, until my perception of it changed into something quite different.

Philosophically and religiously I do not believe in the human soul, however, I cannot describe what I felt in any other way. It was as if the intense musical resonance inside me had dislodged the very core of my being and consciousness, and that it was escaping the confines of my body through a valve in my heart. The first time this happened I became rather startled and sat up suddenly, gasping for air—causing my soul to be sucked back into my body with such force that I collapsed back onto the couch.

Some deep seeded part of my consciousness, still operating on a rational level, raised internal warnings about the implications of what I was experiencing. What had began as controlled meditative breathing had quickly slowed down until I was holding my breath for short periods to amplify the resonance effect. Something about the perception that my soul was leaving my body, coupled with a sharp pain in my heart as it passed through, and the necessity to hold my breath to achieve this state just didn’t sit right with me. Despite this I precipitated the situation several times more, however, I always pulled back before my soul had fully left my body.

Shortly after this I succumbed to the drowsiness of the mushrooms and fell asleep. About five hours later I was woken by J, who had gotten up to go to work and found me asleep on the couch. Having been about 8 hours since I had had my first cup of tea I was surprised to find myself still highly affected. Feeling very disoriented and rambling deliriously I staggered about on my feet for a few minutes before crashing into bed. When I awoke another 5 hours later I was still a little high.

Feeling very relaxed, well rested and slightly euphoric I had some more mushrooms for breakfast and sat about listening to music, waiting for a friend to drop around. After a couple of jugs of beer down at my local, we came home and all took mushrooms while sitting around listening to music and talking.

My second trip was much less powerful than the first, and overall I found it rather boring. In low doses it’s too much like being stoned, except without the mental impairment that stops your mind from getting restless and bored. Then again, perhaps tripping for over 36 hours straight had something to do with my increasing boredom.

Whilst I don’t really agree with the characterisation of this drug as the “divine mushroom of immortality” (Heirich von Langsdorf 1918) it certainly is interesting, and worth trying again.

[AUTHOR’S NOTE: One week on, and they’re all gone…]