Psilocybin
It's not magic. It's chemistry. (The Bus 1.25)
Welcome aboard The Bus!
ARCHIVE EDITION - ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED: 30 JUNE 2022
The Stop
In its 13 May 1957 issue, Life magazine published a remarkable - and beautifully illustrated - article as the third instalment of its true-life adventure feature.1 Titled ‘Seeking the Magic Mushroom,’ the article recounted journalist-turned-banker Gordon Wasson’s experience of being the ‘first outsider’ to participate in a sacred mushroom ceremony.2 Accompanied by photographs of the ritual and botanical drawings, the article - read by millions - was the culmination of thirty years’ work by Wasson and his Russian wife Valentina.3
The couple’s interest in mushrooms had begun while honeymooning in the Catskills. One afternoon during a hike, Valentina noticed clusters of mushrooms ‘growing in the woods and ran to pick them’ - and nothing would deter her from cooking them for dinner. After her husband’s fears he’d be a newly-wed widower by morning proved groundless, they discovered a mutual curiosity about the reasons behind her mycophilia and his mycophobia. This interest led to a lifetime’s investigation into how cultural heritages engendered these differences - and led to their controversial thesis that no less than religion itself was the product of ancient humans ingesting intoxicating fungi.
The Wassons’s research eventually uncovered 16th century Spanish accounts of Mexican cults that worshipped a mushroom referred to in the native language as teonanacatl - ‘God’s flesh.’ Though the Catholic conquistadores had considered these practices and visions the ‘devil’s work’ and ‘moved vigorously’ to suppress them, the Wassons found evidence the cults had merely moved underground and began an earnest quest to locate practitioners. Finally, after three long years of ‘follow[ing] rumours, ‘cultivat[ing] sources, and learn[ing] the Indian dialects,’ they were introduced to a curandero4 named Eva Mendez who agreed to guide Gordon in a ceremony.5 One thing led to another,6 and eventually the active compound in these fungi (taking us finally to the location of today’s Stop) was isolated in 1958 by Albert Hoffmann7 as psilocybin.
The active compound in over 180 different species of fungi,8 when ingested psilocybin - itself biologically inactive - is changed by the body into psilocin, which crosses the blood-brain barrier and produces ‘profound and otherworldly’ auditory and visual changes.’ Though this chemical was once (and often still is) referred to as either a ‘psychedelic’ or ‘hallucinogen,’ the preferred term today is entheogen, a neologism meaning ‘something that creates a god or inspiration’ - a deliberate reference to its religious and spiritual influence throughout human history.
Psilocybin’s entheogenic uses and effects are well-documented, but additionally - as laws relax and understanding improves - the chemical and related compounds are returning to medical research. Though a good deal of work had been done prior to psilocybin being made illegal in the late 1960s/early 1970s, after decades which saw little progress, many governments have begun allowing research into the chemical to restart. The result has been scientific confirmation of psilocybin as remarkably useful in treating numerous serious conditions including alcoholism, clinical depression and end of life anxiety.9
A Note: Despite the resurgence of research into its medical use and recent changes to its legal status in some places, possession of psilocybin - in any form - remains generally illegal. Perhaps even more importantly, some psilocybin-containing fungi look very similar to highly toxic (like, DEADLY TOXIC) ones. This is not a mycophobic warning, but common sense: NEVER eat a mushroom unless you know EXACTLY what it is - and that requires knowledge of mycology you can’t get from books - much less mushroom-identifying apps - alone.
The Detour
Today’s Detour is to a short (4:52) video from TED-Ed titled, The Case of the Missing Fractals. Told in the style of a film noir, detective Max Brot tries to ‘save the dame and get the cash’ - by solving three riddles involving the finite, the infinite - and fractals. Brilliantly animated - and very interesting!
The Case of the Missing Fractals (TED-Ed)
The Recommendation
Today’s book is Another Roadside Attraction, the first novel by Tom Robbins.10 Published in 1971, the plot loosely centres around the adventures of John Paul Ziller and his wife Amanda who have opened ‘Captain Kendrick’s Memorial Hot Dog Wildlife Preserve’ - a combination hot dog stand and zoo. The book’s central theme is Robbins’s attempt to question what would happen to western civilisation if it could be proven Jesus wasn’t immortal.
From the back: ‘What if the Second Coming didn’t quite come off as advertised? What if “the Corpse” on display in that funky roadside zoo is really who they say it is - what does that portend for the future of western civilisation? And what if a young clairvoyant named Amanda re-establishes the flea circus as popular entertainment and fertility worship as the principal religious form of our high-tech age? Another Roadside Attraction answers these questions and a lot more. It tells us, for example, what the sixties were truly about, not by reporting on the psychedelic decade but by recreating it, from the inside out. In the process, this stunningly original seriocomic thriller is fully capable of simultaneously eating a literary hotdog and eroding the borders of the mind.’
After first reading this in the mid 1990s, I immediately read everything Robbins had written to that point. It’s a great, fun and mind-bending book which takes full advantage of a non-linear plot. Give it a try!
The Sounds
To accompany today’s Stop and Book, I’ve chosen five classic tracks from the heyday of 60s and 70s psychedelia: ‘The Seeker’ (The Who, 1970), ‘White Rabbit’ (Jefferson Airplane, 1967), ‘Season of the Witch’ (Donovan, 1966), ‘Tales of Brave Ulysses’ (Cream, 1967) and ‘Riders on the Storm’11 (The Doors, 1971). Enjoy!
The Thought
Today’s Thought is a quote from the eminent German philosopher, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831).12 Dense, highly complicated and ‘grounded in his mastery of a fantastic fund of concrete knowledge,’ Hegel’s work is considered the pinnacle of classical German philosophy - he’ll definitely be topic for a future Stop:
“We learn from history that we do not learn from history.”
If you have a thought on this Thought - or any part of today’s issue - please leave a comment below:
And that’s the end of this stop - I hope you enjoyed a brief diversion from your regular journey!
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Until the next stop …
The article can be found on pages 102-109 and the original issue is available in PDF form here: Life Magazine 13 May 1957. It’s worth looking at the file to see a snapshot of 1957 alone. Sources for this Stop also include: Psilocybin, Stevens, Jay. Storming Heaven: LSD and the American Dream, 1987 and Psilocybin.
Wasson disliked the term ‘magic mushroom’ - coined by Time-Life publisher Henry Luce - which almost immediately entered general vocabulary and persists to this day. Though unsure at the time exactly what chemical caused the psychological effects, he knew it certainly wasn’t magic. In fact, it’s all the product of physics, chemistry and biology - a good understanding of which should be ‘magical’ enough.
Both were highly educated: Gordon graduated from Harvard and Valentina was a paediatrician.
Medicine man, shaman, healer, etc.
The result led to their ‘magnum opus,’ Mushrooms, Russia and History - an expensive, limited-print tome that might have been the end of the story had a Time-Life editor not overheard a conversation and invited Gordon to contribute to Life magazine.
This is a complicated history, involving everyone from the CIA and the British intellectual/author Aldous Huxley to the emergent counterculture of the 1960s and figures as diverse as Ken Kesey, Timothy Leary, G. Gordon Liddy and even Richard Nixon - far outside the scope of one Bus Stop. For a very readable account, I’d suggest the Stevens book mentioned in footnote 1.
Having synthesised LSD in 1943, Hoffman was hesitant at first to work on the mushrooms as even at this early point, ‘LSD and everything connected with it were scarcely popular subjects to the top management’ of his laboratory at Sandoz Pharmaceuticals in Switzerland.
Existing somewhere between flora and fauna, fungi is itself a fascinating topic and will definitely be the topic of a future Stop or two.
As an example, a good overview of research at Johns Hopkins can be found here: Johns Hopkins
For a brief biography, see: Tom Robbins (Britannica)
A great song, despite Morrison’s ridiculous rhyme: ‘like a dog without a bone/an actor out on loan.’ Yep, he kind of phoned that lyric in - amongst others.