In the summer of 1970, I called Vancouver, British Columbia home. It was a great place to live, especially if you were a long-haired, dope-smoking freak. Yep, that was me, a full-fledged, card-carrying hippie.

Vancouver was a kind of Berkeley of the north, able to hold its own against any other stoner mecca anywhere. I lived in the Kitsilano district, a hippie haven comparable to Haight-Ashbury. Most of the homes there were older, even back then, and had a full basement, a ground floor and a second story. In one of those, several of us lived upstairs. The owner of the home, a sweet older lady named Billie, lived downstairs. Upstairs, our group of degenerates would sleep until all hours, then arise and smoke ourselves into oblivion. In the evenings, if we weren’t attending a rock concert, we’d be at home listening to rock music and getting even more stoned into the wee hours. The clouds from all our dope-smoking would waft out of the windows and the terrific balcony that overlooked the quiet street. You’d think that this would make us pretty obvious, that the neighborhood would somehow protest. However, we simply blended into all of the other homes in the neighborhood where the same thing was taking place.

As the summer progressed, one of my partners-in-crime, Dan, came up with the outrageous idea that we should drive in his car down to Mexico and have a good look around. That is a big deal if you live in Canada – with a few side trips to see some of the sights along the way, it’d be a 2,000-mile trip, one-way, just to reach the Mexican border. Nobody but Dan and I were willing to sign up for this, so we started planning. Each of us got a raft of vaccinations against such diseases as cholera, typhus and yellow fever.

Like all good hippies, we were always on the lookout for new ways to get high. Even in the Great White North, we had heard of the legendary magic mushrooms that could be obtained in Mexico, so that was something on our bucket list for the trip. It wasn’t hard to learn where to go to find them, so that became an important destination for our trip. Finally, all was ready. It’s amazing how little luggage we threw into Dan’s 1965 Falcon for the 6-week trip. A couple of other hippies joined us for the first part of the trip to help defray the cost of gas, but soon we found ourselves alone as we motored south. After a few stops along the way, we crossed into Mexico at Mexicali long after dark on the evening of July 19th. Now the real adventure would begin.

Six years earlier, I had finished 3 full years of Spanish in high school, but had never had a chance to use it (there weren’t a lot of Spanish-speakers in southern British Columbia, and I personally knew none). To say that I was nervous as we crossed the border would be putting it mildly. I had kept a daily diary in Spanish during those years, so that probably had kept enough of it fresh in my mind that I could get by.

After 12 days of heading south and after several adventures, we arrived at the city of Oaxaca – it was now July 29th. We saw the normal sights, such as Monte Albán, but it was impossible to forget the main reason we were there. The mushrooms were calling, and loudly. So, on the morning of the 31st, we gassed up the car and headed south on Highway 175.

I need to give you a bit of background on the mushrooms. The reason people consume them is to get the hallucinogenic effects of the drug known as psilocybin that naturally occurs in them. Back home, it was rumored that you could buy pills which contained the drug, but most people were skeptical of the quality, or whether they actually contained any psilocybin at all. Now, the mushrooms which could be obtained in Mexico, they were the real deal. Mushroom season in Mexico runs from July to October, more or less the same as the rainy season. Although they are native to Mexico, the mushrooms are illegal there and are considered a controlled substance by the authorities. They rarely enforce the law, however, because the mushrooms are intimately connected with ancient sacred practices performed by the native inhabitants in that part of the world. Historically, the mushrooms were used to aid healing and to enlighten, habitually in a purifying ceremony called “velada”. The mushrooms can be bought fresh during the rainy season, and either dried or preserved in honey during the rest of the year. So important are they to the local culture that each year, in the village of Cuajimoloyas in the mountains of Oaxaca, a multi-day celebration takes place, known as the Feria de Hongos. In case you haven’t already guessed, the Spanish word for mushroom is hongo.

Our goal today was San José del Pacífico, a hamlet of 500 souls in the cloud forest at 8,000 feet elevation – it was 137 KM from Oaxaca. It was known the world over for its mushrooms. We drove for 3 hours – the road became ever-more-tortuous, until we finally arrived.

The place was socked in, wrapped in a blanket of low cloud. We parked along the lone street and got out to have a look around – since what we’d come for wasn’t technically legal, we were very cautious as to how to proceed.

As we stood there looking around, we noticed a rickety bus parked nearby. Passengers were boarding in order to continue on to the city of Oaxaca. A young man about our age was stepping into the bus when he spotted us – recognizing us as kindred spirits, he stepped back down off the bus and said to us: “Hey Man, this is the place!”, while wearing a huge shit-eating grin. His lips and mouth were stained blue, a well-known effect of the psilocybin in the mushrooms – he was obviously stoned. He may have made a few remarks to us as to how to proceed to get some of our own, I don’t recall for sure, but within moments he boarded the bus, which rolled away into the fog.

There we were, the only tourists to be seen – so obvious! We asked around to see where we might purchase hongos alucinógenos. Someone directed us to a house right by the highway, up a flight of stairs. For some reason, we were leery about buying dried mushrooms – fresh would be the way to go, in order to get the best result, so we thought. We ended up buying 1/4 of a kilo of fresh mushrooms from a man. He was surprised that we were so determined to get fresh. He went out into the woods and after a while came back with them – they had obviously just been picked, they still had dirt on them.

Our business concluded, we drove away with our stash. Far out! We had done it – after a 7,000-KM drive all the way from Canada, we had scored some genuine magic mushrooms. Our friends back home would be jealous, but would also be cheering us on for our cleverness. Here’s a look north back down to the lowlands from near the village.

We drove for another 3 hours to get back down out of the mountains and return to Oaxaca, where we filled the gas tank once again. The mushrooms were still safely on board, nice and safe in a plastic bag and waiting for us. Our plan was to head farther south into Mexico, this time on Highway 190. About an hour out of town, we stopped at a place called Mitla for a poor supper, then continued on our way.

It was now or never. Here was our idea – we’d eat the mushrooms as we drove, and if at any time we felt unable to continue, we’d just pull over at a good spot and wait for things to settle down. We had bought plenty of coca-cola to wash down the mushrooms. The prevalent thinking on how to eat the mushrooms was as follows: eat 3 or 4 of them on an empty stomach, and if after 20 minutes no effects are felt, continue eating slowly and stop when you start to feel effects. So there we were, driving along a twisty mountain road. The mushrooms were disgusting – a rubbery texture, gritty, with a revolting taste. Every bite was disgusting, and the taste was nauseating – it was all we could do to not gag every time we went to swallow. I’ve eaten raw garden-variety mushrooms, the kind you’d buy in a supermarket, and they are quite palatable. Perhaps it was the psilocybin in these, but it was awful. We each ate 5 small mushrooms, gagging each bite down and chasing it with coke to drown the taste. Half an hour after starting to eat them, we started to notice the effects. It was dark by then, and the drug was affecting our ability to see the road clearly. Our pupils became hugely dilated.

The road twisted and turned as it climbed higher into the mountains – we were trying very hard to be alert while driving. The headlights shone on the rocks along the side of the road, and we started to see images on the rocks, hundreds of them. These hallucinations were incredibly distinct, and were appearing non-stop now as we drove. We both felt that they looked “Aztec” in nature because of the clothing they wore, and we talked about how the images were probably those of people who had lived in the area and died. Dan was driving, and he was becoming afraid of going off the road, so he pulled off on the right side, on to the first flat area we came to.

There was some advice out there about how to prepare for the experience of eating the mushrooms. One suggestion was to try and attune the body to the mushroom’s presence, confident that any reaction would be merely natural. To diminish anxiety, the setting should be relaxing and open, with your company wisely chosen, and the resulting journey should be a beautiful one, a glimpse into another world. It has also been said that you don’t take the drug, it takes you. I think it could be safely argued that we were not in a relaxing situation.

By now, we were hallucinating strongly. I remember looking at the car radio in the dashboard and watching it turn into a face with teeth. The car was parked only a few feet away from the paved highway, and trucks, hundreds of them, crawled slowly by as they made their way up the mountain road. The noise was awful, and nobody stopped during the entire night we were stopped there.

The entire experience was incredibly clear and lucid – we knew we were awake and also where we were at all times. Sound and vision were enhanced. Dan has this fascinating recollection of our night:

We talked for hours. I would say something to you and you would ask what I meant. Then, you would say something to me and I would ask you what you meant. We began defining words. We got caught up in a search for word meanings. The definitions would go on endlessly—-until I think both of us started to feel the definitions were taking us to the top of a cliff which we both feared falling from. The long journeys into language were one of the most memorable things about the effects of the psilocybin.

Our experience went on for about 5 hours, and the effects slowly subsided. Only then were we able to fall asleep – we lay in our sleeping bags on the side of the car away from the road, near a drop-off on the mountainside. When we awoke the next morning, it was hard to believe the intensity of our experience from the night before. As we continued driving south, that was all we talked about. It was interesting to wonder how our experience would have been had it happened in the daylight – probably quite different. Through Tehuantepec, then all the way across the isthmus from Pacific to Atlantic, to Minatitlán, and finally to Villahermosa by nightfall. There, we checked into a depressing (but cheap) fleabag hotel. We had intended to eat more mushrooms that night, but when we opened the bag they were in, the smell was too much. The car had no air conditioning and we had no cooler – the heat of the Mexican summer had spoiled them, and there was absolutely no way we were going to eat any of them. Into the trash they went.

For the couple of dollars the mushrooms had cost us, we had enjoyed an experience that still seems vivid today, almost 50 years later.