Party Vibe

@General Lighting 985151 wrote:

that was certainly true for the USA; but my Professor friend sent me a few years ago this magazine one of his friends wrote about the 1960s music and counterculture scene in Cambridge UK (not at all dissimilar to the rave scenes of our generation!) and told me a load of stuff which went on in Europe and the UK around that time; in our continent the problems were caused more through poly drug use (both diverted pharms and psychedelics) by young middle class people causing extra burdens on public health services and similar moral panics to what we have recently seen with NPS which coincided with pressure from Washington to “clean up” global society.

These mushrooms grew on my high school fields and similar fields in SE England and were widely consumed by us during the 80s/90s – I never heard of young people getting poisoned through ingesting poison mushrooms (some picked other species and got ill but nothing fatal) – what did and does still happen more often is non drug seeking older adults (often in middle age) misidentifying horse mushrooms/champignons (the ones you might normally eat) and the death cap (which does look similar).

Gardener dies after making soup with deadly mushrooms – Telegraph

In Southern England (judging by archive posts on here) psilocybin mushrooms appeared to have already become scarcer in the early 2000s (before the commercial sales) due to poor harvesting methods that wrecked the mycelium below the field and more aggressive grounds management using harsh chemicals to kill all “nuisance mushrooms and other weeds”. I am unsure as to whether paranoia over a Council being pulled up for “facilitating drugs use / safeguarding youths” has maybe led to increased use of these chemicals since 2005 in the UK on such places as school fields and Council parks – (next time I see a hippy friend who is a park ranger I might ask him) – I hope this has not happened as such chemicals that also directly attack the mycelium and other stuff below ground which is beneficial for a lot of plant species is clearly bad for the environment as a whole.

I do remember older hippies often warning us that greedy methods of harvesting and/or selling them led to “bad karma” (the last would have also risked arrest for selling class A even during the time when there was a loophole about fresh mushrooms)

I am not a botany expert but remember also reading somewhere that USA variants of psilocybin mushrooms are physically larger and more likely to be confused with some deadly poisonous species found in the region; there does appear to be a toxic mushroom more commonly found in Northern England that might be more likely to be confused with European varieties but to me it also looks a fair bit larger than a “European” psilocybin mushroom.

I think Professor Nutts research paper is open so it would be interesting to see what they used although its not unlikely they used a synthesised version of the chemicals to ensure a standard strength.

Im my country which has kindly admitted me as a refugee, even they know I am also a special type of an Acidic bastard, i know that the psylocibin mushrooms (that we SADLY can’t go picking to offer them for the MOTHER’S DAY due to the dates which doesn’fit with it, (EUUHHHHH, SORRY BEING OFF TOPIC), So, seriously, the psylocibin mushrooms is totally legal here as long the psychedelic compound is not being extracted and put in a concentrated liquid form

the law in CH is the same as it was in UK before 2005. On the NL Wikipedia it did mention that there remained some ambiguity about the legality of naturally growing mushrooms – after all these are native plants to Europe.

I think though another factor that has reduced their (natural) availability is changes in weather patterns across Northern Europe – for the last few years winter frosts have arrived earlier in the last few years (even if the weather subsequently becomes warmer quickly afterwards), limiting the window of opportunity for gathering natural psilocybin mushrooms. CH is in Central Europe and some areas are likely to remain warmer. In Southern provinces frost is apparently very rare!

@tryptameanie 985178 wrote:

Truffles are still legally sold in NL.

legislation about plants/environment/living creatures in NL and DE (TBH most likely the rest of the 27 EU countries as well) is much more precise than the UK – as the law is restricting plants rather than chemicals the legislators have to specify the exact nature of the plant; they simply ommited the truffles from the legislation. I guess these are perhaps harder to grow/more expensive or simply did not cause as many problems.

Other eco-related laws in NL are in fact way harsher than in the UK – it is illegal to keep some small cat hybrids (which are not fierce and popular pets in UK) without a zoo license and dogs are all taxed according to size (which is why the goose paradise has loads of large dogs living in complete peace amongst the cats/birds etc as Trizin went to pick up some geese in a muddy field and found two dumped litters of puppies as well; so he took them back with him in the dierenambulance!)