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Tryptamines did hippies take shrooms?

One song's prominence in the sixties will tell you everything you need to know: White Rabbit by Jefferson Airplane. It talks about a mushroom trip essentially, while tying it to Alice and Wonderland as well.
 
Why do you assume that mushrooms were only used in Mexico and only by a few people?

Because that's the only place they've ever found any evidence of their use? Because if you read about Maria Sabina she was the only woman in the village taking them?

It wasn't like some group of hippies all sat round taking mushrooms together and having a laugh. That's not how those cultures worked.
 
You can't tell me that magic mushrooms, and the knowledge of them, weren't available (albeit not widespread), to the layman of the 60's when show's like this were aired in the early 50's:



Anyone with an inclination towards drugs would have found a way to get them when doctors and scientists were boasting their beneficial properties.

As with drugs now days, it's all about who you knew. I know for a fact that magic mushroom use was pretty widespread here in Australia during the 60's and it's ignorant to think that it wasn't moreso in the US.

The knowledge that these existed went mainstream in the 50's.
On May 13, 1957, an article on the cover of Life Magazine written by
a vice president of the Wall Street banking firm J.P Morgan ignited
the psychedelic revolution.

In 1955, R. Gordon Wasson and his wife Valentina, journeyed to
southern Mexico, where they encountered a native woman named Maria
Sabena, who conducted sacred ceremonies employing hallucinogenic
mushrooms. The first non-natives known to participate in these
rituals, the Wassons were pioneers in consciousness exploration
through the use of natural mind-altering agents. Writing about his
experiences with the mushrooms, Wasson penned the now-famous article
"Seeking the Magic Mushroom."

http://sixties-l.blogspot.com.au/2010/11/why-magic-mushrooms-can-be-good-for-you.html
 
This question is like asking do ravers take MDMA

Exactomundo...its a very lame question indeed, and the member of bluelight's crew thinking that mushrooms were only prevalent in mexico at the time is a misunderstanding to say the least, i am quite sure that within certain circles, even if only the antics of such oxford cloth hippies as Leary and terence mckenna, the substance WAS used in its mushroom form. :p
 
god this thread is full of ignorant people who are apparently unable to use a deductive thought process (lets see, mushrooms grow in the united states, even the native americans of the united states used the substance for spirit or vision quests, native americans and whites traded goods, lets say some fire water for your strange laughing mushrooms, fast foward quite a time and suddenly we are in the sixties or seventies whichever you prefer. Even if you don't think this is plausible can you really say that someone hadn't crossed the border to mexico *not sure how much of a border that was at the time* and found evidence of its use, perhaps bringing the then legal substance back) THIS IS TOM FOOLERY. there should be no debate here people.
 
One song's prominence in the sixties will tell you everything you need to know: White Rabbit by Jefferson Airplane. It talks about a mushroom trip essentially, while tying it to Alice and Wonderland as well.

that song was likely about Amanita mushrooms rather than Psilocybin mushrooms, though.
 
god this thread is full of ignorant people who are apparently unable to use a deductive thought process (lets see, mushrooms grow in the united states, even the native americans of the united states used the substance for spirit or vision quests

Nah, that's complete bullshit nature. The native americans in the USA didn't even know about peyote until 100 years ago when a couple of the mexican tribes like the tarahumara and the huichol moved north and showed them peyote. A lot of people have this image of native american indians using peyote for thousands of years but it's a myth.
 
You can't tell me that magic mushrooms, and the knowledge of them, weren't available (albeit not widespread), to the layman of the 60's when show's like this were aired in the early 50's:

I think getting them was the problem tho. Even Tim Leary couldn't get any mushrooms - he was ordering psilocybin pills from Sandoz, when they ran out he had to move to LSD. Now if Tim Leary couldn't source mushrooms tell me who you think could?

The knowledge that these existed went mainstream in the 50's.

You'll note that's knowledge of them existing in Mexico - which is why lots of hippies travelled to Mexico to try them. The question is when psilocybin mushrooms were identified in the North.
 
Wikipedia said:
In 1955, Valentina and R. Gordon Wasson became the first Westerners to actively participate in an indigenous mushroom ceremony. The Wassons did much to publicize their discovery, even publishing an article on their experiences in Life in 1957.[8] In 1956 Roger Heim identified the psychoactive mushroom that the Wassons had brought back from Mexico as Psilocybe,[9] and in 1958, Albert Hofmann first identified psilocybin and psilocin as the active compounds in these mushrooms.[10][11]

Inspired by the Wassons' Life article, Timothy Leary traveled to Mexico to experience psilocybin mushrooms firsthand. Upon returning to Harvard in 1960, he and Richard Alpert started the Harvard Psilocybin Project, promoting psychological and religious study of psilocybin and other psychedelic drugs. After Leary and Alpert were dismissed by Harvard in 1963, they turned their attention toward promoting the psychedelic experience to the nascent hippie counterculture.[12]

The popularization of entheogens by Wasson, Leary, authors Terence McKenna and Robert Anton Wilson, and others has led to an explosion in the use of psilocybin mushrooms throughout the world. By the early 1970s, many psilocybin mushroom species were described from temperate North America, Europe, and Asia and were widely collected. Books describing methods of cultivating Psilocybe cubensis in large quantities were also published. The availability of psilocybin mushrooms from wild and cultivated sources has made it among the most widely used of the psychedelic drugs.

/Thread? The picking of Mushrooms only started around the early 70s and growing them came even later.
 
/Thread? The picking of Mushrooms only started around the early 70s and growing them came even later.

LMAO whoever claimed that wikipedia is actually truthful, historically accurate, and factual? I ate mushrooms in the 60s and early 70s and so did lots of other people, and no it was not LSD sold as synthetic psilocybin, or store bought mushrooms that had LSD on them.

Ismene-Timothy Leary, before he burned his brains out on drugs got his mushrooms from Central America or from where they were grown in North America.
 
/Thread? The picking of Mushrooms only started around the early 70s and growing them came even later.

your quote says "By the early 1970s, many psilocybin mushroom species were described from temperate North America, Europe, and Asia and were widely collected"

if they were widely collected by the early 70s, then the trend must have started in the 60s
 
^Sure, but wouldn't that have been a mycology thing? If that started in the 60s, then people with actual knowledge of funghi would be the ones identifying them and finding out where they grow, not the general hippy population. Especially in those days where information didn't flow as freely as it does now.

And DrunkardsDream, not to offend you or anything, but how are you a better source of information than Wikipedia? If you add information without a source then the factual-data-police revert the article back in a matter of minutes. You're just a dood on the internet who might as well be a 20-something that just really wants to be right (don't think you are, but still)

(That said, Mushrooms being Schedule 1 in 1971 does raise questions)
 
Ismene-Timothy Leary, before he burned his brains out on drugs got his mushrooms from Central America or from where they were grown in North America.

No he didn't drunkard. One of the main reasons he switched to acid was because Sandoz stopped selling him psilocybin pills - he'd only ever used psilocybin pills in the US.

Have we worked out how these hippies identified the mushrooms to pick? Remember there was no internet, they wern't in any ID books. And remember - you make one mistake and you don't just die, you're gonna suffer like you would not fucking believe. You don't think that would make most hippies think "Hmm..maybe I'll wait for the next batch of acid"
 
Have we worked out how these hippies identified the mushrooms to pick? Remember there was no internet, they wern't in any ID books. And remember - you make one mistake and you don't just die, you're gonna suffer like you would not fucking believe. You don't think that would make most hippies think "Hmm..maybe I'll wait for the next batch of acid"

At that point in time, it wouldn't really have been that widely known about the poisonous mushrooms either. Those who went picking knew (or were 2nd gen friends) a mycologist. And then that information spread like wildfire. I can't speak for the US, but if we had a boom of mushie identifying/picking in Australia (which is more cut off than the US) than it's ignorant to believe the same wasn't happening elsewhere.

Even today, magic mushrooms are still classified as poisonous to some people.
 
schutles, leary, wasson, etc all took the mushroom and hofmann isolated psilocybin before the sixties even started. the harvard guys were feeding it to college students in the early sixties. john lennon did a mushroom ceremony with maria sabina in the mid-sixties. after all these guys, including a beatle or two, you dont think that would interest anyone in trying to pick these things? not even talking about growing these things.

i would be incredibly surprised if everyone in the world other than the above mentioned were all taking mushrooms dosed with LSD. i DO think the alice in wonderland imagery in "white rabbit" is referencing the classic red and white amanita mushroom. psilocybin mushrooms became illegal in 1970, the first books about psilocybe mushroom propagation were published around then--i dont think it turned 1970 and people magically were taking mushrooms everywhere, i would bet that while it was actually rarer than the history books suggest, i dont think mushrooms were completely unavailable.

clearly LSD and mescaline were much more prevalent, but these people in the sixties were totally interested in testing out these new substances. the hippies didnt take mushrooms theory just doesnt hold any weight for me.
 
schutles, leary, wasson, etc all took the mushroom and hofmann isolated psilocybin before the sixties even started. the harvard guys were feeding it to college students in the early sixties. john lennon did a mushroom ceremony with maria sabina in the mid-sixties. after all these guys, including a beatle or two, you dont think that would interest anyone in trying to pick these things? not even talking about growing these things.

Remember the only mushrooms taken were in Mexico - Leary was handing out psilocybin pills at Harvard - NOT mushrooms. Once the pills ran out he switched to LSD because he had no access to mushrooms. I'm pretty satisfied that if Tim Leary couldn't pick mushrooms not many 17 year old hippies would.

the first books about psilocybe mushroom propagation were published around then

No, the first book was 1976 and even then it was a tremendous amount of hassle trying to find the equipment and the spores. If you think it's hard growing mushrooms now it was a thousand times harder then.
 
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