Magic Mushrooms

 

We had arrived in San Jose del Pacifico, Magic Mushroom country, at noon.

We were on the road, coming to the end of a 15-day working stretch. Oaxaca State; a 15-minute documentary piece, nine 3-min news packages, and a lot of driving.

I had been here once before, on a piece for the Daily Mail, but hadn’t had any of the ‘medicine’ then.

I felt I was ready. I’h had LSD before, and handled it fine. I knew I could handle this. You just remain calm and go with the flow.

I had read about Psilocybin online (the active ingredient in the fungus), and perhaps two people I know have had them.  It helped that one of them was a colleague on the deployment.He told me about his experiences, and I trusted him when he told me there was no reason to be scared.

So I sourced the mushrooms. I did so in a grocery store. I walked in sheepishly, after being told around town that the proprietor sold them.

He most certainly did sir, step right in. He opened a large fridge beside his counter and from the top shelf, pulled a pub beer tray which was filled with mushrooms.

They had been plucked straight from the ground and delivered. The mushrooms grow in what the locals call familias, in essence lots growing together in a bunch. Each stalk has a little elf’s hat cap. There were about 20 familias here.

The man asked me what my experience with psychedelics was and I told him. His finger came up like Il Divino’s, and I watched it all the way as it circled back down into the biggest one of the lot.

“Take the rest of the day easy”, he says. “Eat a good dinner and go to bed. Then tomorrow, get up early, and eat the mushrooms. Then do what you’re comfortable doing.”

“I have to be on the road by about noon”.

“Have them at 6am.”

“Done.”

The next morning the alarm went off. I got up, washed my face, and ate the mushrooms. They tasted of loamy earth, gritty with the soil still around their base. I grabbed my bag and set off for the mountain.

It was a cloud forest setting. The steep, young mountains have been pushed up by the Pacific Plate pushing the North American Landmass. The hillsides are steep and rainy and lush. Green surrounds you, hummingbirds flit through space, the smell is of lush greenery. I walked through this landscape for an hour, until I reached a wide dirt road.

I began to feel a bit strange. My thoughts flicker around, distracted. I sit below a tree and try to feel it. I suddenly felt violently ill, and vomited, but nothing but bile emerged from my stomach. They were in my system.

I stood up to walk, and encountered a man walking up the path. He was a local Zapotec indigenous, and as I spoke to him as he walked, was walking up the roof to do an honest day’s clandestine logging. We bid farewell, and I stood on this road and closed my eyes. I said to myself that this was a chemical in my system, which would soon be gone. The man had said I’d be ready by noon. Relax, feel it.

 

I was calm.

 

I opened my eyes, and the forest floor was purple. Indeed everything was a very bright colour, but always its own. Intense greens, vivid reds, gorgeous purples.

 

I began to think, and intensely. Where was I in life? I had a newborn son, 5 months old. My thoughts turned to him. I thought to myself for the first time about being a father. And to a million other aspects of my whole life. Family, Finances, Career, Friends.

 

I wandered along the mountain footpath thinking and talking. As one point I switched to Spanish for half an hour, trying to perfect it (you never can).

 

And I did it for around two hours. I was having a great time. I would reach the end of the footpath, and think to myself; do I want to go back to town? Not yet? OK, let’s go back the other way.

 

At 10.30am, I was ready. I went down to a small coffee shop where we liked the owner, and had an espresso.

 

My travelling partner showed up (he was clued-in from the time of purchase) and asked me how I felt. I felt fine; ready to go again.

 

Since then I have not had mushrooms, nor have I felt particularly different.

And I write this not as a promontory tale, but as an experience I will never forget.