Magic mushrooms are changing the lives of terminal cancer patients
Story time.<p>I recall one afternoon my friend and I picked and took some mushrooms (they grow in abundance at a certain time of year where I live), when I was perhaps 15 years old. We didn&#x27;t take a huge quantity, but enough for a mild, pleasant experience.<p>That same evening I realised that I had to write an essay for school - it wasn&#x27;t like me, but I&#x27;d completely forgotten about it, and now had a single evening to write a whole essay... bah, how could I possibly do that?!<p>I sat down, and... it just flowed. Words, sentences, paragraphs, ideas, characters, just sprang to life on the page - and it was good, really good! My mind felt <i>amazing</i> - like my consciousness had been expanded. I&#x27;d never felt such pure imagination and joy of knowledge before.<p>By the end of the evening I had unquestionably the best essay I&#x27;d ever written, and about twice the target length.<p>A week or so later when I got the results, it was a B, and I was kind of shocked - it was a <i>masterpiece</i>, dammit, and normally I pretty much got straight A&#x27;s in English regardless! The teacher called me back after class - he told me what I submitted was way better than A+ work, more what would be expected at university level, or by a published author. He also asked who wrote it, because &quot;it obviously wasn&#x27;t you&quot; - he didn&#x27;t believe my insistence that I&#x27;d written it. He couldn&#x27;t prove anything, so gave it a B and strongly warned me not to &quot;pull a stunt like this ever again&quot;.<p>Of course, people can have great ideas and do great work without hallucinogenic drugs - that should really go without saying. But the results with such drugs can be utterly incredible - also keep in mind the effect is not only while using the drug, but afterwards too. The first time I k-holed on ketamine (many years later), it felt like I somehow understood the universe itself, and my mind felt incredible for 2-3 weeks afterwards.<p>A cautionary tale though. Later as a 15&#x2F;16 year old again, we took an insane amount of mushrooms one night after something terrible had happened. Hundreds of them. I kept finding myself in the corner of the same room, staring at a troll (an hallucination). It seemed like it had happened a hundred times, and was pretty frightening. It was like being trapped in a never-ending nightmare. I later spent several hours shivering uncontrollably on a bed. It was a long time ago, but I guess the whole thing lasted at least 12 hours. I&#x27;ve never touched mushrooms or any other hallucinogen since, and I doubt I ever will, even if as an adult I wouldn&#x27;t be as irresponsible as I was as a kid.