🍄 Murky magic mushrooms laws

If the world is experiencing a “psychedelic renaissance,” Brazil might just be its Florence — at least when it comes to hallucinogenic mushrooms. These are the so-called magic mushrooms, containing substances such as psilocybin.

For centuries, indigenous peoples in Mesoamerica have used hallucinogenic mushrooms in both religious ceremonies and healing rituals. When Spanish missionaries arrived in the 16th century, they sought to wipe out all traces of the practice, destroying records and branding the mushrooms as instruments of paganism.

Yet fragments of evidence endured. A Franciscan friar, Bernardino de Sahagún, made passing mention of a sacred fungus he called teonanácatl in his extensive chronicles of the New World. Those notes, largely ignored for centuries, later captivated ethnopharmacologists in the 20th century, sparking a decades-long quest to identify the mysterious mushroom.

The pursuit culminated in 1957, when Life magazine published a photo-essay that introduced the Western public to the ritual use of psychedelic mushrooms — an account that helped ignite modern interest in their mind-altering properties.

Some countries permit the medical use of psilocybin. In the US, the Food and Drug Administration has authorized clinical research and labeled the substance a “breakthrough therapy,” though recreational use remains legal in only a handful of states. In Brazil…

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