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11 Odd Facts About 'Magic' Mushrooms

Psilocybin is found in mushrooms such as Psilocybe mexicana.
Psilocybe mexicana, the mushroom from which psilocybin was first extracted.
(Image: © Cactu, Wikipedia)


Psilocybe mexicana, a magic mushroom.

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The mushroom is one of more than 100 species that contain compounds called psilocybin and psilocin, which are psychoactive and cause hallucinations, euphoria and other trippy symptoms. These "magic mushrooms" have long been used in Central American religious ceremonies, and are now part of the black market in drugs in the United States and many other countries, where they are considered a controlled substance.

How does a modest little mushroom upend the brain so thoroughly? Read on for the strange secrets of 'shrooms.

Mushrooms hyperconnect the brain

Mushrooms hyperconnect the brain.

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They can slow brain activity

image of the brain's thalamus.

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'Shrooms act in other strange ways upon the brain. Psilocybin works by binding to receptors for the neurotransmitter serotonin. Although it's not clear exactly how this binding affects the brain, studies have found that the drug has other brain-communication-related effects in addition to increased synchronicity.


Magic mushrooms go way back

Famous prehistoric rock paintings of Tassili N'Ajjer, Algeria.

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Central Americans were using psilocybin mushrooms before Europeans landed on the New World's shores; the fantastical fungi grow well in subtropical and tropical environments. But how far back were humans tripping on magic mushrooms?

It's not an easy question to answer, but a 1992 paper in the short-lived journal, "Integration: Journal of Mind-Moving Plants and Culture," argued that rock art in the Sahara dating back 9,000 years depicts hallucinogenic mushrooms. The art in question shows masked figures holding mushroomlike objects. Other drawings show mushrooms positioned behind anthropomorphic figures — possibly a nod to the fact that mushrooms grow in dung. (The mushroom figures have also been interpreted as flowers, arrows or other plant matter, however, so it remains an open question whether the people who lived in the ancient Sahara used 'shrooms.)

Magic mushrooms explain Santa ... maybe

Poisonous Mushroom. Two Red Amanita Muscaria On Green Moss In Autumn Forest. Scenic Autumn With Amanita Muscaria.

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Rush said that Siberian shamans used to bring gifts of hallucinogenic mushrooms to households each winter. Reindeer were the "spirit animals" of these shaman, and ingesting mushrooms might just convince a hallucinating tribe member that those animals could fly. Plus, Santa's red-and-white suit looks suspiciously like the colors of the mushroom species Amanita muscaria, which grows — wait for it — under evergreen trees. However, this species is toxic to people. [8 Ways Magic Mushrooms Gave Us Christmas]

Feeling like you've just taken a bad trip? Not to worry. Not all anthropologists are sold on the hallucinogen-Christmas connection. But still, as Carl Ruck, a classicist at Boston University, told Live Science in 2012: "At first glance, one thinks it's ridiculous, but it's not."

'Shrooms may change people for good

happy woman outdoors

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Mushrooms kill fear

A man jumps off a cliff with a harness.

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They make their own wind

Close-up of a magic mushroom.

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But mushrooms often live in sheltered areas on forested floors, where the wind doesn't blow. To solve the problem of spreading their spores, some 'shrooms (including the hallucinogenic Amanita muscaria) create their own wind. To do this, the fungi increase the rate that water evaporates off of their surfaces, placing water vapor in the air immediately around them. This water vapor, along with the cool air created by evaporation, works to lift spores. Together, these two forces can lift the spores up to 4 inches (10 centimeters) above the mushroom, according to a presentation at the 2013 meeting of the American Physical Society's Division of Fluid Dynamics. 

There are many mushrooms

Cluster of mushrooms.

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Researchers are experimenting with 'shrooms

A hungover woman in bed.

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Recently, researchers have begun to experiment with psilocybin as a potential treatment for depression, anxiety and other mental disorders. This line of research was frozen for decades and is still difficult to pursue, given psilocybin's status as a Schedule I substance. This means the drug is classified by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) as having no accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse.

In the past, though, psilocybin and other hallucinogenic drugs were at the center of a thriving research program. During the 1960s, for example, Harvard psychologist Timothy Leary and his colleagues ran a series of experiments with magic mushrooms called the Harvard Psilocybin Project. Among the most famous was the Marsh Chapel Experiment, in which volunteers were given either psilocybin or a placebo before a church service in the chapel. Those who got psilocybin were more likely to report a mystical spiritual experience. A 25-year follow-up in 1991 found that participants who got the psilocybin remembered feeling even more unity and sacredness than they said they'd felt six months after the fact. Many described the experience as life altering.

"It left me with a completely unquestioned certainty that there is an environment bigger than the one I'm conscious of," one told the researchers in 1991. "I have my own interpretation of what that is, but it went from a theoretical proposition to an experiential one. … Somehow, my life has been different knowing that there is something out there."

Terence McKenna made 'shrooms mainstream

Hippies at the Reading Music Festival, UK, 27th June 1971.

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Leary's psychedelic experiments are part of hippie lore, but the man who did the most to bring magic mushrooms to mainstream U.S. drug culture was a writer and ethnobotanist named Terence McKenna. He had been experimenting with psychedelics since his teen years, but it wasn't until a trip to the Amazon in 1971 that he discovered psilocybin mushrooms — fields of them, according to a 2000 profile in Wired magazine.

In 1976, McKenna and his brother published "Psilocybin: Magic Mushroom Grower's Guide," a manual for cultivating psilocybin mushrooms at home. "What is described is only slightly more complicated than canning or making jelly," McKenna wrote in the foreword to the book.