Can a 75-Year-Old Do Psychedelics?
By: W Goodwin
Tags: Mind, Life, Psychedelics, Magic Mushrooms, Tripping

Lynn and I are fortunate: We are tightly and broadly linked both physically and spiritually. Adventuring together for five years now, at 58 and 75, we seem to have acquired at least a modicum of sense and experience to see us through our escapades. Now we have decided to become psychonauts.

We did not embark on this lightly. Only one of us is psychedelically experienced—that would be me, with a handful of encounters with LSD, mescaline, and mushrooms, the last time being 40 years ago. I did not expect to re-enter the psychedelic realm again, certainly not at the three-quarter-century mark. And even though my previous experiences are among the most significant and positive events of my life, I was not in the least intending or longing to go there again. I was past that. It would scramble my old brain into soup… wouldn’t it?

Two years ago, the topic first entered our conversations. Perhaps it’s the zeitgeist, but our curiosity and desire to explore the underlying bands of consciousness initially appeared on our screens almost simultaneously. After Lynn expressed her interest, I opened up about my previous experiences with psychedelics. Gradually we decided to explore the topic further, at least in principle.

We consider the choice to indulge in mind-altering substances a private freedom, and the illegality of such actions is a pitiful footnote to society’s penchant for controlling people. The age we are now living in necessitates a reasonable person be something of a scofflaw. Legal prohibition does not particularly concern either of us, and we determined the risk for mushrooms would, at any rate, be minimal.

We could acquire the spores and materials legally in our state, and therefore, we would not have to deal with the hazards of illicit purchases. And so, with eyes open wide, we agreed to proceed. We are now minor-league scofflaws, an amusing waypoint at our ages.

We did our due diligence. First, we assessed our reasons for wanting to do this. We identified the underlying and motivating ideal to be the very human desire to explore. In a more practical vein, we saw psychedelia as a potentially worthwhile adjunct to our artistic creativity, and the extensive literature extolling this alleged virtue of magic mushrooms spurred us on.

We share the point of view that mushrooms are to be respected.

As we progressed, we also became intrigued by the possibilities for quieting the ego, allaying depression, and swimming in the sea of universal connectedness. We decided to do it.

We embarked on teaching ourselves how to grow the fungi. We investigated the various strains and species of Psilocybe mushrooms and eventually acquired the spores and media to grow two types of Psilocybe cubensis. Until the mushrooms appeared, this was a fully legal endeavor by virtue of the simple fact the spores lack psychoactive psilocybin, the Schedule-1 controlled substance (no medical value, an assertion currently under considerable re-evaluation) of magic mushrooms.

We learned about the vegetative part of a mushroom, the amazing and—even to my scientific mind—almost mystical mycelium. Consider this: The largest living organism on the planet is a mycelial colony in the Blue Mountains of Oregon—2,400 acres of mycelium. Underground mycelium are also the source of those fairy rings of mushrooms that pop up after the rains. And as I write this, mycelium are quietly colonizing a dozen sterilized canning jars of brown rice substrate in a temperature-regulated box in one of our closets.

Soon those incubation jars will be ready for “birthing,” at which time we will transfer the mycelium-colonized “cakes” to the high-humidity fruiting chamber where, after a suitable time, small “pins” will appear. Within five days, those pins will become lovely phallic mushrooms. From spore inoculation to harvest took about eight weeks, and Lynn and I shared in every aspect of this mysterious cultivation.

Soon we shall pick our “Little Children,” as the curanderos of Oaxaca sometimes refer to the sacramental mushrooms. We will see the bruises we inflict on the flesh of the ‘shrooms turn blue, a reaction of the psychoactive compounds to oxidation. We will then preserve our Little Children by desiccation to the point of brittleness and store them in airtight Mason jars until the day we are prepared to consume them.