PSYCHEDELIC PARABLES

Whacked Out on Magic Mushrooms in North Derbyshire

I’m writing this now because I’ve only just remembered the event.

I was in my twenties living in a rathole in Nottingham trying to make a living playing in a band. It worked: rent was cheap, food was cheap, booze was cheap, and drugs were available. Or if not, we went looking for them.

We used to go up into the hills of Derbyshire to get some fresh air and look for mushrooms. On this one occasion, there was me, Bullard, KJ, and Dopey. The freak show cousins of the Seven Dwarves dressed in the stuff we’d worn the day before, and the day before that. Plus a jacket as it was mid-October.

We arrived in our van at our usual spot near an ancient stone circle. In the past, we’d driven up here with a sound system and about 50 others, and got really fucked up. Then the police fenced off the site. So the next week we came up with cutting equipment and took it down.

The stone circle is now a National Trust heritage site, which is weird, as before it was just a pile of rocks no one gave a shit about. Then they realized they could charge £5 an hour parking fees that would pay for the upkeep of Hampton Court in London, 200 miles away.

At that time though it was still free, so we packed up and started walking. It was about ten o’clock in the morning — early for us — but we needed to get onto the moors before it got too warm, and the mushrooms withered.

We were heading to one of our favourite spots, an hour’s walk to a disused farm in a small valley where the fields had been lightly grazed over the summer by another farmer.

Now autumn, the grass had started to grow, and so had the mushrooms. We’d been here before, but we’d never seen anything like this. Stretching out before us towards the derelict farm building, was not just a carpet of mushrooms, but a tapestry of fungus.

We always picked enough for ourselves, and any left over, we sold. At the time, mushrooms were legal in their fresh form, and were only considered a drug if dried. And even then, the penalty, if caught, was negligible. As of 2005, however, all forms of Psilocybe semilanceata are illegal, and it is now considered a Class A drug along with Heroin, Speed, and Cocaine.

We started picking, and as was customary, munched on a few, just like a wine connoisseur tastes the wine before he buys.

These weren’t bad, and they were big.

I asked Bullard — the expert — if we were picking the right ones. He assured me we were, even though he’d never seen anything like them.

‘They are massive!’

They were. Their canopies sagging heavily with early morning dew and psilocybin.

If you’ve never done mushrooms before, imagine all the bullshit in your head slowly being turned off, while all the good stuff is turned on. That nagging chatterbox in your head, replaced by a glistening new world, so clear you want to write your name on it, and start your life again from that exact point in time.

Then things got a bit heavy.

We’d been chomping through them at a rate. Eating more than we were saving. And they were strong.

‘I’m going to sit down over by the farm,’ I told Bullard.

He didn’t hear me. He’d already disappeared off into his own world. Crouched down and staring at something in the earth, a worm perhaps.

KJ had drifted off to the other side of the valley and was having a conversation with the crows snapping overhead. Dopey was still frantically picking mushrooms, and toking wildly on a joint.

I sat down against a wall and stared out at Bullard squatting like a gnome in the grass. I don’t know how long I stayed there. It was a lot warmer when I came to. I guessed it was early afternoon and realized no one was around.

‘Guys?’

So there I was, tripping my tits off alone on the moor. Have you read Hound of the Baskervilles?

Mushrooms didn’t normally induce paranoia in me, but I felt uneasy. Maybe I’d eaten Death Cap. Then again, if I had, I'd already be dead.

I started trudging across the moor. After a mile, I saw a shape. Was that a hound? No, it was Bullard sitting on a stone outcrop.

‘Where the fuck have you been?’ I said.

‘There’s a feeling I get when I look to the west,’ he starts singing Led Zeppelin, and I leave him to it.

I find the van. KJ is slumped in the back.

‘Thanks for waiting.’

‘What?’ says Dopey who’s drawing on his pad. A picture of what looks like a vagina, but is actually a doughnut.

‘I’m hungry,’ I declare.

‘What?’ says Dopey, looking up.

‘Where’s Bullard?’

‘Singing.’

Once we realized no one could drive, we just dozed or looked out across the barren moor. At around seven, feeling pretty normal, we drove back to town, cooked some food, and watched TV for a while before going to bed where we slept like Angels

And that concludes the story.

But before you go, consider this. Magic mushrooms are Class A drugs. Yet, it’s legal to carry a gun while smoking a cigarette and drinking a bottle of whisky.

Thanks for half losing your mind reading this. Want more fucked up stories?