Well I spent a good hour and a half today trying to answer your questions. The first time my stupid computer did a time out on me and I had to turn off the computer and I lost the interview.
So I again rewrote it and this time went to hit the submit button and the whole friggin page just disappeared. I then found out the Shroomery was doing some maintenance. Pissed me off. I had waxed poetical for a while and now I had to rewrite the whole interview over a third time.
So it is not as informative or well written as the original one I wrote the second time. So here it is.
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Q. Greetings, MJ. Tell us how you are holding up.
A.Well I am doing fine. I just finished a lengthy paper with Gast?n Guzm?mn and my colleague from Thailand, Dr. Prakitsin Hihanonth on the occurrence of Psilocybe antioquensis from Cambodia, a species previously only knonw of from Brazil and now also from mexico and from Cambodia at Angkor Wat. Also working on incorporating the latest version of the PF Tek into my Cd-Rom Cultivation History (permission to use from PF himself. Plus one large paper on DNA, SEM, chemical analysis and cultivation and occurrence of neurotropic fungi from Southeast Asia. And kinda hibernating at home working intensely on expanding my website.
Q. In whatever capacity seems appropriate, please share with us some background on what you've been up to during the course of your life.
A. Grew up in Chicago and northern Illinois. Spent my summers at Devils Lake State park in Baraboo, Wisconsin.
Joined the army at 17 and then went I got out I lived in Hollywood. Spent about 6 years on and off hitch-hiking across America, Canada and Mexico all the way to Panama. Turned on to pot while I was an extra in the movie, "The Greatest Story Ever Told." Took my sister in 1964 to see the Beattles and recorded my record "Mighty The Squirel Meets the Beables int he summer of 1964 in Chicago. Was in some bands for a few years while working as a graphic arts layout person for the largest Theatre Chain in Illinois. Went back to Hollywood and did some extra work on and off for several years while working at Protone Music and Recording Studio in Hollywood. Had studios at the old KCOP TV station. Was an engineer. Did my first acid trip when two girls turned me on to a hit of Flying Saucer acid in the back of their van after the LA Teen-Age fair of 1964. They got me real naked and showed what a cool thing sex and acid was. Made beads and hung on the street. Worked at the Fifth Estate Coffee House on Sunset Blvd with Al Mitchell and was slightly involved in the LA Teen Riots. Cool thing about Mitchell, he was a friend of the Rolling Stones road manager Derek Taylor and that got me a three day press pass into the Monterey Pop Festival.
Q. Let's get into psychedelics a bit. What are they and who should use them? How should they be utilized?
A. Psychedelics are primarily mind-altering substances which definitely change ones perspective of life and changes everything that one has been taught into new meanings and ideas. Of course, they should be available to anyone who wishes to experience them and learn about theirselves and life in general. They cause you to change your way of looking at everything that you have been taught and told. This is oviously something that the moral right and the establishedment do not want one to do. To think differently means that you do not accept the ways of your peers. Society, as I am, is set in their ways and do not want any change. They feel comfortable where they are and if we think that they are wrong about their attitudes towards those who do do drugs, then they will not allow that to be acceptable in their way of life. Eventually it means that they would have to change. So the far right, christians and such do not like or approve and most drug laws are built based on fear instead of knowledge. Remember that Nancy Reagan said Quote:
"Just Say no."
But of course I say, Quote:
"Just say know."
.
We must never forget that psychedelic plants and chemicals are not for everyone. They are, if used correctly, a great learnign tool in bringing harmony to those who take and share them and their thoughts with others.
Q. Have you ever had a religious-type of experience in conjuction with fungi? What happened if you don't mind me askin'?
A. AS for religion, I have learned from shrooms and other plant and chemical substances that I am very small in the large scheme of progeression, life and learning. No matter how much I learn, it could never be enough. And I sometimes question even that gift.
While I am personally a very religious person, I do not accept organized religion as my salvation.
I have no idea what occurred 2000 years ago and that is an honest answer. What Jesus may or may not have said would be very hard for four people (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) to write word for word what someone said 2000 years ago and King James obviously change the text of the aramaic bible to meet and fit his standards of what he interpreted it to mean. Mushrooms, peyote, LSD, MDA and even pot have taught me to appreciate everything that I come into contact with. To see the trees, the birds, the animals and not get hung up in the plasticity of society, the concrete, the walls the buildings, etc. I have also experienced the creation and the apocalypse in my visions and saw beauty where there was life. Psychedelics definitely changed my concept of the world and the people in it.
Q. Who is the most important and impacting person in the world today where mushrooms are concerned?
A. Probably Jonathan Ott, Mark Hoffman of Entheos. Both are great ethnomycologists who still preserve into print, histories of these mushrooms from their past use. I also will note that although Dr. Andrew Weil is not so much a apostle of the shrooms as he was in the 1970s, it was because of writings of Wasson, Schultes, Steven Pollock and Andrew Weil which led me to become a student of the mushrooms.
Yes a few are studying mushrooms for medicinal purposes, but then again, doctors who use these tools in therapeutic settings are lacking the beliefs of the peasant peoples who seek them for healing and curing ceremonies. In primitive societies, such as the ones in Mexico, the belief that the mushrooms will heal is pure and unadulterate symbiosis which is like a triade. The three participants are the shaman, the seeker and the mushroom. They play into one another in such a way that the impossible is achieved while in western medicine, only a small segment will ever get to experience those healing powers of the shaman as opposed to doing a 200-500 mg dose of mexcaline in a therapeutic session where even the doctor is tired after 6 hours.
Q. For the last several years you have lead and organized a Thailand gathering for your fellow psilosiblings. What are these experiences like? Are there a lot of buddhists in Thailand? How are mushrooms perceived by the locals?
A.The Exotic Forays trips are organized between me and my colleague at the University in Bangkok. Students, affectionados and professional people have joined me over the years on such trips. Thailand is 80% theravada busshists.
Some of my trips have been oprivately financed and other I make a small income for a few months form the cost of the trips to Thailand.
The trips are both mycological and cultural explorations traveling into third world cultures. They are basically both sides of a coin. We spent a good amount of time collecting various mushroom species, storing them in desiccant and at the same time we visit ancient cities and ruins in search of ethnomycological data pertaining to a possible use of these mushrooms in primitive Asian societies. Meeting Cattle tenders and rice paddie farmers from Viet-nam to India and Bali to southern China.
So far I have came across a large image of Shiva holding a mushroom in his hands on the bas relief of the 2nd inner wall into Angkor Wat. Discovered a new species there and also a species previously only known of from Brazil and Mexico.
Came across two giant mushroom stones on Koh Samui, approximately over 200-years-old built alongside a sculpture of a Samui neaderthal type human. One local tourist guide told me it represented ancinet samui man's relationship with the mushroms of the land. The stones could slightly resemple a P. cubensis because they have an umbo on them. But then again, who really knowns what those represent.
Found five new species of mushrooms from Thailand. Still working on those in other forthcoming papers. Getting to meet really friendly people I learned that people who do not know you and have very little, will often invite you into their home and share with you the little they do not really have. Whereas rich people could care less and do not want you in their sight. As for the mushrooms, the Thai and Samui general population will get any foreigner anything they ask for. While shrooms are illegal, there are probably about two hundred resort areas where you can get them in food preparations if you ask for them. And of couorse, other drugs are availabnl;e. If it is personal and you are not making problems for anyone, Thais ahfve a s word, Sanuk, it means have fun. You only have one life. Enjoy it all that you can. makes good sense because most people are not very happy with their lives.
Thai's and Samui folk say they are 'ben ba' (that is they make you go or act crazy) and they also say the mushroms are 'antaray' (dangerous). However, those same people telling you that might also be chewing betel nut or kratom.
They see no wrong in the use of shrooms.
Q. To date, how many different types of active mushroom species have you discovered in your life? Do you get paid somehow for discovering new species or do people help you travel?
A. I have discovered 7 species in my life, or not really discovered but came across them in my travels and pickings. And I have one with my name attached to the end of it and another coming along.
Five are currently being investigated and i have three species I found years ago which were lost over the years. ONe by Guzman.
I have had a few slip away from me because of other people jumping the gun on my research.\
In 1992, Jochen Gartz and I had already spent 3 weeks collecting specimens in Oregon and Washington and then we lectured at Breitenbush in Oregon. The German Scientific Foundation in Leipzig paid me handsomely to cart Jochen Gartz around the PNW collecting mushrooms. WE were even stopped picking byu police and Gartz looks at him and says, "I am gGerman Scientist come to America to collect mushrooms for laboratory research." Shit the cop took a double take.
I first collected P. cyanofibrilosa back in the early 1980s when I picked a large cluster of them and brought them to the annual shroom Myco Media show at Breitenbush.
They were unknown.
Another species, Psilocybe azurescens was known for years in Oregon in Astoria and Hammond as Psilocybe astoriensis. No one named it botanically that is. I was going to do the paper with Gartz and then he and Paul Stamets did so behind my back and named it after Paul's son.
So I lost a species. I also had written Paul Stamets in the early 1990s that Jochen Gartz and I were going to write a book on Psilocybine Mushrooms of the World. Next thing I know, Gartz publishes his book Narrenschwamme in German (in English "Magic Mushrooms Around the World"} and Paul comes out with his own "Psilocybin Mushrooms of the World." with three of my photos for which I was paid. Got a couple of free books.
Some of the chapters in Gartz' book read word for word from my published papers. He has commited other such acts and almost went to jail for selling cultures to Europeans from the University he is in tenure at in Leipzig.
Q. Let's talk about your twenties for a minute. What year was it when you were 28 years old? What was going on in America at that time, especially in relation to psychedelics?
A. The year was probably 1970. I was in Chicago with my first wife and we rallied for the conspiracy 8 by marchees from the downtown Federal building to the Cook County Jail, chanting "free the 7."
MDA just had hit Chicago and I remember seeing the Who, Led Zeppelin, the Animals and others at the Chicago Opera House and at the Aragon ballroom.
Acid was $2.00 a hit and pot was still $10-15.00 an ounce. Mostly Jamaican and Collumbian in the midwest and east coast and the west coast it was all Mexican, even though people were selling Mexican pot as Colombian. I worked for both the Chicago Sun Times and the Chicago Tribune. My partner also smoked pot and we bought it on the sly from older hippies in Old Town on the north side of Chi. Pot and acid were the most popular drugs. Bad drugs were speed and smack. There were still free concerts at Circle Campus and we even had an Alice's Restaurant. Every major city had one back then. Saw harvey Mandel and the Pure Food and Drug Administration Act perform with Sugar Cane Harris and Paul Logos. MDA was very popular sex drug in the early 1970s and was manufactured at the U of Wisconsin in Madison and brought to chicago and passed out just like acid at free conscerts. It was $15.00 a gram. That is a $1.50 a dose in small qwuantity and $2.00-$3.00 on the street. and was earlier popular in the Haight for about 1 year and then disappeared.
Q. Do you feel that psychedelics are abused in more instances than not? If so, in what way are people being irresponsible?
A. Peiople tend to let the drugs control them. I remember one of the early articles I had read of a mushroom experience where the person in a controlled setting made a comment that mushroms are great and harmless and that 6 hours later one could do them again with little ease.
Of course, there were not many burnouts then from mushrooms, but many of us learned that if you did acid three days in a row you did not get off. Same with MDA. Well that is abuse when people continue to do them every two or three days thinking it is cool.
I personally believe that once or twice a month is fine, but professional people who use them do so only once or twice a year. Of course, one could eat a candy bar every week for the rest of his life. maybe his teeth will rot and maybe not. People tend to abuse theirselves. Not the drugs they do.
I do read of people here on this site doing one drug one day and another the next. I read of all the people who want to mix pharmaceuticals with psychedelics, and people who do downers with speed and rave about how great the high is.
Opiates are dangerous drugs and speed kills. Cocaine is just as bad and crack is more addicting than coke, yet I too had a bad coke trip for several years and spent a small fortune feeding people finantially who did not give a shit about me. People you think are your friends. Those are bad drugs and yet they are drugs which people use until they become abused from their daily use. Addiction is bad in any form and drugs are only a small addiction in this world.
Q. What is your religion? Is their a creed you live by?
A. Be honest with everyone you encounter. Learn to respect their world and then your world will be far better. Be polite and couteous towards everyone you encounter, even the assholes. I sometimes go off the wall at some people but then I learn from the experience. I believe something created us all but For what reason, apparently that is not for us to really know. If it was, we would.
Q. Care to give us a few criteria for hunting mushrooms in big cities? How hard is it to find active mushrooms in large cities (growing naturally)?
A. I see mushrooms where there aren't any. I usually find new places when I am not looking for them. Finding them in big cities is really only common in the PNW and the majority of the mushroms in the region can be found in man-made environments. Here we have over 18 varieties of magic psilocybian mushrooms and some grow all year round because Seattle has no snow or just a day or two a year and that is usually in March or April. One only needs to spend a few hours walking in various directions in the big city and eventually you can find them. I find that I really find the most when I just get up and go out and look, rather than relying on someone to drive me aroound, although, every fall I do go picking with a few really cool individuals I have met on the internet or from friends of friends. The latter can be dangerous because you know your friends but do not know the people whom they are friends with. I still see people whom I have gone out with going into places I have shared with them and ask them not to come if I am not there. That is becasue there are some places where I go and have permission to be there and others do not. When others start going to these spots, then eventually I am told not to come back.
Never act suspiciouos when picking mushroms. Do not worry about anything except what you are doing. Since the majority of people who frewquent the shroom websites are only interested in looking for psilocybian mushrooms, I always advise them first on what not to pick.
Eliminate the mushrooms which will damage your chemistry. I teach people to avoid any white gilled mushrooms ( can be confused by their resemblence to the deadly white gilled Amanitas) and avoid oranged gilled mushrooms such as the Gymnopolus and Conocybe species beacause their gills resemble the gills of the deadly Galerinas and Concocybe filaris species. I explain that they can eliminate the toxic blue-staining Boletes becasue they have porous bottoms and no gills. Then i tellt hem to look for black spored shrooms in Cow manure and to look for chocolate to purple colored gills and prints in the genera Psilocybe.
last year I had a cop approach me and ask me my name. This occured after two shroomery members left the area and within five minutes of them leaving a cop pulled up to see what I was doing in the bushes. He claimed someone saw a girl and guy go down in the bushes and were concerned that something may have happened to her. Those were my friends who were in the bushes. So never be paranoid. Just do your thing. If you live away from the coast then I doubt that you will find shrooms in the big cities.
However, on the east coast, from Ohio to the coast, one can find Psilocybe caerulipes growing in man-made environments or places which ahve been disturbed by technology.
Q. Music: Are you a Grateful Dead fan? Why or why not? Was Jerry Garcia a big deal to you?
A. I knew Garcia from the time I lived in the Haight-Ashbury until around the time of his death. I only liked a few of their songs, although their music was homey and catchy. When I lived in Haight-Ashbury, we had 7 music halls which nightly had three bands play from 8 pm until 2 am in the morn. Cost was only $1.50 to $3.00 per ticket and never more than 200-300 people or so in the concert halls.
My favorite groups were Quicksilver Messenger Service, Jeffereson Starship, the Animals, ITs a Beautiful Day, The Doors, Dylan, Mamas and Papas, the Who, The Yardbirds, Lee Michaels, Carlos Santana, Steepinwolf,etc. One of my coolest jobs while in the Haight, besides owning several booths in a head shop co-op was working at the Straight Theatre. In the morning i would come in and clean up the mess from the night before for an hour or two and get free into the concerts in the evening, plus food and drink and free drugs.
many of the groups also passed out acid tot he audience as did the dead. I last saw the dea in Eugen Oregon at the Hlt Center in 1984 or so and then saw Garcia the night Bill Clinton was re-elected president of the USA.
Q. Have you become a vegetarian?
A. No I love meat but eat more vegetables than meat in the long run becaude I cannot really afford steaks every day. I usually cook at least one pot roast a week with potatos, carrots and/or brocolii, brussel sprouts or asparagus. I also eat lots of cheese and drink a lot of milk and juice and bottled water.
Q. Sam Adams or water?
A. Not sure abot Sam Adams. I do not like alcohol, yet I might drink 4-6 beers a year but do not like booze.
Q. Peace to the government or anarchy in DC?
A. Always peace. If there was complete anarchy, then the thieves would still steal out drugs and kill us in our sleep.
Q. Lastly, do you feel this current generation is special in any way? What's in store for us in your mind?
A. Many electronics in this century. Computer technology is taking the world by storm I think we need to take care of our own for a change. We need to spend money on education and health care. Not war and government. It is very sad that we elect people to public office who get to eat three meals a day, live in nice homes in nice neighborhoods and get to send their children to decent schools (Forget the Colombine incident. There will be more of that). It burns me that those healthy eating politicians who run our country eat good and I don't and neither do most of the people who elect them to those offices. They can write a pay raise for themselves but deny the same to the common minimun wage earner, which is probably about 95% of the US work force.
While I heard the Presidents people comment about how generous the American people are (by the fact we gave over 2.4 billion in aid top other countries in 2004, we must never forget that it is only less than a few thousand people in washington who give away those billions of dollars to everyone else except to Americans. And we allow that kinda shit to occur. It is the govfvernment of a few who give it all away to others. And it never really goes to those others who really need it.
The Government blackmails the world with do things are way or you get no funding or money. A good example of such preferential treatment to states is the Ronald Reagan years of either you lower your speed limits to 55 MPH or you get no funds. Then in 1986 it was Either you raise the drinking age to 21 or you get no funds.
Our ancestors left the old world to be free. It can mean to be rid of. No one wants someone else telling them what is good for them or what they can or cannot do. Ours is a country of useless paper jobs which contribute nothing to anyone. IT sanctions creating criminals of their citizens and a good showing of that fact are the drug laws against pot and other drugs. Parking meters are a good example. Some people go to jail on warrants becasue someone forgot to appear in court. No one should be arrested for that offense.
We are suppose tro come together to be one. Devided we are stupid. Did not mean to rant. Better left for a lecture.
now I have to go over this and edit my typos
mj
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