Hiroaki Doi and Mayumi Kumagai have come a long way to get lost. After a four-hour bullet-train ride from Hiroshima, the teenagers are lurking amid the neon-signs of a seedy Tokyo alley, seeking a transgressive experience that will rip open the blandness of their days and allow them to escape, at least for a few hours, their part-time jobs, trade-school classes and cramped apartments. The vehicle they believe will help them achieve this temporary expansion of their consciousness: majikku masshurumu- magic mushrooms - shriveled bits of psilocybin-filled fungi that will first make them a little nauseous and then incredibly stoned, their world melting into a visual cacophony of whirls, polka-dots and pixels.
Nervously, the teens ease down a narrow stairway into a dark, dank room where an old man in a tank top sits surrounded by garbage bags full of dried 'shrooms, which he doles out in tiny $4.80 bags. The teenagers say they'll buy 15, hoping to save some for friends back home. They re-emerge on the street, with their stash in a paper bag. Later they'll eat the mushrooms, maybe mixing them with bananas or yogurt to cut the bitter taste. "I'll try anything I don't have to shoot up," says Doi, 18. "I just want a trip."
History of Magic Mushrooms
Early Native American inhabitants of North America probably first found out about mushrooms the hard way--but, then again, centuries ago everybody found out about everything the hard way.
What they found in psilocybin was a natural drug that triggers a bewildering array of hallucinatory effects. It made such a big impression, in fact, that many believed the plant to be divinely-inspired, and incorporated the plant into religious rituals as long ago as 1,000 B.C. The Aztecs also practiced sacramental use of mushrooms, which they called teonanactl, or "flesh of the gods."
Then, with the development of synthetic psilocybin in the mid-1950's, was sparked the first real interest in the drug as a tool in psychotherapy and the treatment of emotional disorders. And while few conclusive results emerged from early psilocybin research, the studies succeeded in superimposing the mantle of "science" onto psilocybin's ancient links with "magic."
Adding to the renewed interest in-and availability of-psilocybin has been mail-order psilocybin kits, which combine legally-available mushroom spores with sophisticated cultivation gear.
Grow-your-own mushrooming is particularly prevalent in and around college campuses since the kits take up little physical space and fit easily into a dorm or apartment closet.
