Hallucinogenic Mushrooms

The tribes of ancient Mexico, India, China and Egypt used hallucination-inducing mushrooms that affected their senses, behaviour, psyche and outlook. These properties of mushrooms were also known to the Vikings of northern Scandinavia, who used them when going into battle to raise their spirits.

The Yakuts, Nenets, Eskimos and Chukchi used these mushrooms when going out hunting, or even in everyday life as an intoxicant instead of alcohol. The Indian tribes of Central America exalted mushrooms so highly that they erected statues and temples to them.

Even today huge mushroom-shaped stone statues stand in Guatemala, beside which, in ancient times, religious rites were performed after eating hallucinogenic mushrooms.

In the Indians' belief, the mushrooms tore them away from the earth and brought them closer to the gods they had created. Even now, in those countries, rites of faith connected with the worship of mushrooms and the hallucinations they induce, which are kept secret, have not only survived in some people's consciousness but are still performed.

Such phenomena also attracted the interest of mycologists and physicians. The French mycologist H. Heim and the Americans R. G. Wasson (a physician) and A. Weil (a physician, neuropathologist and writer) succeeded in identifying the hallucination-inducing mushrooms. They studied the available scientific knowledge about the use of hallucinogenic mushrooms in ritual ceremonies by the Indians of Mexico and South America, ate these mushrooms themselves, took part in their rites, experienced the effects of the mushrooms themselves and described all this in detail in several books.

These are mostly small mushrooms of the genus Psilocybe, which have strong hallucinogenic properties, but their effect manifests itself somewhat differently from that of LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide). In these and in mushrooms of some other genera with such properties, strong hallucinogenic substances have been found: psilocin, psilocybin, ibotenic acid, muscarine, muscarone, muscimol and bufotenine.

In small amounts these substances are widely used in psychotherapy; they activate serotonin activity in the brain and improve a person's condition. For this purpose, to obtain the psychotropic substances mentioned, the Cuban Psilocybe (Psilocybe cubensis), for example, which grows naturally in Cuba, is specially cultivated artificially (in greenhouses) in large quantities.

It is the largest of the Psilocybe species growing in the wild; its cap grows from a few to 10 or even more than a dozen centimetres in diameter.

Such hallucinogenic mushrooms do not grow in Lithuania, but other Psilocybe species growing here, some Amanitas and some other mushrooms have similar, though more weakly expressed, properties.