Civilizations throughout our world have used psilocybin as far back as thousands of years ago. One of them is located in Mazatec communities in Mexico and have used psilocybin mushrooms for time immemorial. Psychoactive mushroom cultivation began in the West in the 1980s, over two decades after Mazatec Wise One María Sabina first gave psilocybin mushrooms to amateur mycologist R. Gordon Wasson, as she was instructed to by a town authority. In Mazatec tradition, the mushrooms are used to heal the sick. Years later, ethnobotanists and activists Terence and Dennis McKenna concocted a method for cultivating psilocybin mushrooms at home.
Magic mushrooms (Psilocybe spp.) are considered to be the quintessential psychedelic along with LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide). These psychoactive fungi are still considered illegal in most parts of the world, but the laws are rapidly changing, and many countries are becoming more relaxed on the use of magic mushrooms.
Over the past three years, there have been dozens of clinical studies proving that magic mushrooms are both safe to consume and offer legitimate medical value.
Where It’s Legal:
Most countries still ban magic mushrooms, including the United States and Canada. However, several municipalities across North America have either legalized or decriminalized the use of magic mushrooms despite federal regulations.
For example, Vancouver, Canada, recently passed a bill that decriminalized all drugs — including magic mushrooms. Even before this, the Vancouver police department said they would not be actively targeting possession charges for personal amounts of magic mushrooms or LSD.
In the United States, municipalities including Washington DC, Ann Arbor, Michigan, Denver, Colorado, Oakland and Santa Cruz, California, and the state of Oregon have all decriminalized magic mushrooms.
Decriminalization isn’t the same as legalization, however. You won’t be able to buy these mushrooms legally, but it does mean you won’t receive a criminal charge if caught in possession of them.
Outside of North America, magic mushrooms have been decriminalized in Austria and the Bahamas — and legalized in Brazil, The British Virgin Islands, Jamaica, Nepal, The Netherlands, and Samoa.
In most parts of the world, magic mushroom spores are legal. People use these spores to then grow magic mushrooms at home — which is only legal where mushrooms are decriminalized.
The most common species of magic mushroom is Psilocybe cubensis but there are many other species found in the wild on all continents except Antarctica.