Aldi’s ‘Magic’ Aisle
Nothing epitomises the modern consumerist culture better than Aldi’s middle aisle. Piled high with a random selection of cheap, plastic goods from China, this aisle is every bargain hunters dream. Unfortunately however, the journey from the Far East to a landfill site in the UK is probably a swift but ecologically costly one. After all, how many uses would you expect to get out of a £4.99 foot spa?
How fitting it is then to discover that within these bastions of the capitalist throw-away culture, a culture of a very different kind has begun to flourish. In their striving to gain the cheapest possible price, disregarding the environmental impact, Aldi and Lidl began to import woodchip and ornamental bark from Canada. They sell this woodchip in bags and also use it to decorate the hedges and borders of their carparks. However, unbeknownst to these supermarkets, the woodchip had a tiny stowaway. The spores of the wavy cap mushroom – psilocybe cyanescens.
The wavy cap, sometimes known as blue-leg brownie, due to the fact that they bruise a blue colour when pinched, is a species with potent psychedelic effects. One of the so-called magic mushrooms, wavy caps contain high concentrations of psilocybin, psilocin and baeocystin – psychoactive chemicals that are also found in our own native liberty caps.
As a magic mushroom, it has quite a few things going for it. It is relatively easy to find, thanks to the widespread use of this woodchip and can be found in gardens, parks, and car parks up and down the country. They are also prolific, one patch on a race-course was said to number over 100,000 fruiting bodies. And unlike the liberty-cap they are also said to be very easy to propagate at home.
The wavy cap does however also have some potentially serious drawbacks. Most notably it has a look-alike – Galerina marginata or the funeral bell mushroom. If you miss-identify a liberty cap mushroom you may receive an upset stomach – make a mistake and ingest a funeral bell, then as the name suggests, the consequences are deadly. Another reported phenomenon with regards to the wavy cap is known as the ‘wood lover’s paralysis’. Apparently, some people, under high doses, can experience the sensation of not being able to move their body at all. While some say this is not too much of a problem and doesn’t last too long, I imagine it could be quite disconcerting.
As is the case with all psilocybin containing mushrooms, once you have correctly ascertained their identity, the problem mainly lies with their illegality. Currently magic mushrooms are a class A drug and absurdly fall into the same bracket as crack-cocaine and heroin. This is clearly a situation based on politics and not one of health, as magic mushrooms are generally considered to be quite safe.
Luckily, however, politics can change and driven by new scientific studies, psilocybin is beginning to be looked at once more as a viable medicine. I have written at length before about psilocybin and how it can treat depression but the latest research also points towards its use in treating Post-traumatic stress disorder. PTSD is a mental health condition often triggered by a terrifying event. Its symptoms include flashbacks, nightmares, and severe anxiety. For many, however, the symptoms are persistent, debilitating, and difficult to treat. Scientists have discovered that psilocybin has the ability to treat these symptoms by creating new synaptic pathways in the hippocampus of the brain, although the exact mechanisms are yet to be understood.
Interesting as these studies maybe, the nature of the mushrooms themselves tend to lead us away from the reductionist nature of the scientific method. Instead of looking at how things work on a microscopic level, Mycologists, studying fungi in forests, have also had to look at the bigger picture and the interactions of the whole ecosystem. This should also applied when studying the effects psilocybin on the brain. We should look at the effects of the mushroom on our spirit, as did the ancient shamans of Mexico, who treated the psychoactive mushroom as a conscious manifestation of pachamama – Mother Earth. And if that is the case, then maybe it is more than a divine coincidence that we now find these mushrooms flourishing inside capitalism’s inner sanctum of the supermarket. Maybe Mother Earth is trying to tell us something.