HIGH TIMES

There's an underground segment of B.C.'s mushroom industry: the magic
mushroom seekers, a rare breed looking for even rarer fungi that promise an
LSD-like high.

Psilocybin mushroom, also known as magic mushroom, is a hallucinogen that
can be eaten in its dried form or consumed as a white powder.

Sooke resident and director of the South Vancouver Island Mycological
Society, Richard Winder has been picking mushrooms for more than four
decades, starting as a three-year-old with his father in Pennsylvania.

Mr. Winder, 45, says he doesn't like running into magic-mushroom seekers.

"It's a little bit exasperating," he said of encounters at mushroom
identification workshops or in the field. "I have had people come by asking
if they can get high."

Even with his credentials, he is leery of giving advice, because people
might blame him if they're afflicted with muscle paralysis after eating the
wrong mushroom. "If you're going to play that roulette, you get what you
deserve."

Possession and trafficking of psilocybin mushrooms are criminal offences in
Canada.

Michel Jansen-Reynaud, who has been picking wild edible mushrooms for 34
years, has come across small species from the genus Psilocybe (in the
family).

He says his only vice is red wine, so he ignores the hallucinogens,
particularly since they can resemble deadly Galerina mushrooms, known to
have killed people who were hunting for a natural high.

Psilocybin mushrooms are also abundant in rural settings.

"Wherever there's been a farm and cow shit, you'll find them," said Greg
Klem, a guide and tree-planter from Port Renfrew, a village 75 kilometres
west of Sooke.

Mr. Klem, who says the mushrooms are simply another form of poison, recalled
how several people in Port Renfrew went crazy after a magic-mushroom binge.

"They fried their brains," he said.