Psilocybe Semilanceata - Psychoactive Use

Psychoactive Use

The first reliably documented report of Psilocybe semilanceata intoxication involved a British family in 1799, who prepared a meal with mushrooms they had picked in London's Green Park. According to the chemist Augustus Everard Brande, the father and his four children experienced typical symptoms associated with ingestion, including pupil dilation, spontaneous laughter and delirium. The identification of the species responsible was made possible by James Sowerby's 1803 book Coloured Figures of English Fungi or Mushrooms, which included a description of the fungus, then known as Agaricus glutinosus (originally described by Moses Ashley Curtis in 1780). According to German mycologist Jochen Gartz, the description of the species is "fully compatible with current knowledge about Psilocybe semilanceata."

In the early 1960s, the Swiss scientist Albert Hofmann—known for the synthesis of the psychedelic drug LSD—chemically analyzed P. semilanceata fruit bodies collected in Switzerland and France by the botanist Roger Heim. Using the technique of paper chromatography, Hofmann confirmed the presence of 0.25% (by weight) psilocybin in dried samples. Their 1963 publication was the first report of psilocybin in a European mushroom species; previously, it had been known only in Psilocybe species native to Mexico, Asia and North America. This finding was confirmed in the late 1960s with specimens from Scotland and England, Czechoslovakia (1973), Germany (1977), Norway (1978), and Belgium and Finland (1984). In 1965, forensic characterization of psilocybin-containing mushrooms seized from college students in British Columbia identified P. semilanceata—the first recorded case of intentional recreational use of the mushroom in Canada. The presence of the psilocybin analog baeocystin was confirmed in 1977. Several studies published since then support the idea that the variability of psilocybin content in P. semilanceata is low, regardless of country of origin.