No, but you might get a nasty letter from Customs and Excise, possibly accompanied by a court summons. The legal grey area surrounding psilocybe fungi is long dead - they are unarguably a Class A drug, whether fresh or dried, and will be treated as such by customs. I have no idea whether their sniffer dogs are trained to identify psylocybin, but packages are just as often identified through intelligence. Packages from the Netherlands are singled out for special scrutiny, for obvious reasons.
>>6788 It's not so much "where" as "when", and the answer to that is "autumn". The rest of your post is easily addressed via google, identifying magic mushrooms is really not difficult.
Well, how about the more pressing concerns not easily addressed by google (and indeed, the paranoia that comes with typing queries about class A drugs into the All Seeing Eye at all) such as:
Will the pigs be watching known harvest sites that time of year?
How fucked am I if the rozzers do happen to catch me with a carrier bag full of mushrooms?
And how likely am I, as a total amateur, to misidentify and pick something lethal instead?
>>6790 >Will the pigs be watching known harvest sites that time of year?
Almost zero chance of this happening.
>How fucked am I if the rozzers do happen to catch me with a carrier bag full of mushrooms?
AFAIK, as long as you don't cook them it's not classed as illegal. So just say you are going to munch them raw, and NEVER ADMIT to sharing or intent to share with someone else. They might have changed this loophole by now though.
>And how likely am I, as a total amateur, to misidentify and pick something lethal instead?
Eh, I dunno. My first few forays into mushroom picking were done with an older friend to guide me and show me what to look for.
I'd get a few pictures of them on your phone saved to refer to out in the field if I were you.
>>6790 >how likely am I, as a total amateur, to misidentify and pick something lethal instead?
Psilocybe semilanceata, the classic British shroom seen attached, with the wizard hat shape that you see reproduced in wood carvings by hippies and so on, are remarkable for a few reasons:
They are very easily identified.
They are very common, all over the UK.*
The other types of mushrooms that you might confuse them with are few, uncommon, and aren't dangerous.
This is actually pretty unusual when it comes to mushrooms, but I won't bore you. The bottom line is, if it's the right time of year and you can get to fields with short grass, you probably won't spend too long looking before you find some.
*The answer to "Will the pigs be watching known harvest sites that time of year?" is "only if they're really confident about it being a popular picking destination and only if they have nothing better to do", so, no, for the most part.
>AFAIK, as long as you don't cook them it's not classed as illegal.
Way off. It used to be that they were only illegal if dried, and technically legal if fresh, but when mail order companies and street vendors in Camden etc started selling fresh psilocybe mushrooms the loophole was closed pretty rapidly. So now if you're standing in a field with one in your pocket you're in possession of a Class A substance, which puts it on par with heroin and cocaine. Our drug laws are kind of stupid.
>>6791 >They might have changed this loophole by now though
Yeah, who knows eh, it's not like it was addressed by the second post in the thread or anything.
>>6794 There may still be a difference between selling and picking fresh. The original law about fresh being acceptable I think was to protect people who unknowingly picked them when out looking for just normal non-magic mushrooms.
Only in as much as there's a difference between supply and possession. Inadvertent possession is a defence, but you've got absolutely no chance of making that argument stick if you're found with a pocketful of magic mushrooms. The exceptions in the law exist to protect little old ladies with mushies in their compost heap or foragers who inadvertently pick a couple of magic mushrooms alongside their ceps, chanterelles and wood ears. The law is totally unambiguous - psylocybin mushrooms are a Class A drug like any other, and possession is illegal in any context unless you have a legitimate lawful excuse.
If you go out picking, don't look like a druggie and be discreet. Coppers are trained primarily to look for people who seem out of place, which is generally very effective but has a major vulnerability - they miss smart criminals who can camouflage themselves amidst normal activity.
If you've got a dog, take it with you. Nobody looks twice at someone wandering around a field with a dog, and they'll assume that you're just bending down to pick up after it. There's nothing noteworthy about a loved-up couple taking a stroll in the park and picking daisies. Dress appropriately for the context, especially if you're going out in a more rural location. Don't think you're being clever by sneaking onto a golf course at two in the morning, it may be quiet and dark but it's also blatantly obvious to any curtain-twitcher or nightwatchman that you're up to no good.
So basically if I was to go at a nice mid-morning timeframe, take my dog with me, and dress like as much of a normal person as I can, I should be okay.
>Inadvertent possession is a defence, but you've got absolutely no chance of making that argument stick if you're found with a pocketful of magic mushrooms.
So if I were to pick a bunch of normal edible mushrooms too, I could plausibly claim ignorance and say I was just after something a bit different to put in my stew later on?
>So if I were to pick a bunch of normal edible mushrooms too, I could plausibly claim ignorance and say I was just after something a bit different to put in my stew later on?
Maybe. It's a halfway decent cover story, the problem being that most wild mushrooms prefer woodland, whereas psylocybe mushrooms are generally found in open grassland. To be honest, I don't think that you have much to worry about if you look reasonably normal. All the stories I've heard of people getting nicked have come from the sort of manky hippies who get the rubber glove treatment at Heathrow.
>So if I were to pick a bunch of normal edible mushrooms too, I could plausibly claim ignorance and say I was just after something a bit different to put in my stew later on?
Not really. They're tiny, for one thing - they'd stand out a mile against the mushrooms you might pick for food on that count alone. You could try and claim that you were just picking anything you found with the goal of identifying it all later, but even that stretches plausibility since anyone with even a passing interest in mushrooms should know a liberty cap; they're pretty iconic, and as mentioned before, nothing much else looks like them.
We're substantially over-thinking this, anyway. Just be discrete.
>most wild mushrooms prefer woodland
I'm not sure that's true. There are loads of edible mushrooms to be found in fields, horse mushrooms and, er, field mushrooms being the most common (and both pretty delicious too).
>>6804 You may be able to find porcini in their typical spotsr; my mother found some Boletus luridiformis growing near her workplace and others do seem to be sprouting quite early this year. I'm a complete beginner on mushroom picking though and I'd recommend you ask any more questions about edible/culinary mushrooms in the relevant /eco thread.
>>6805 Seeing as one of the most popular forms of consuming them is the deceptively-named "mushroom tea" then no, it won't destroy the magic sparkles in them. It'll likely taste foul though.
I feel like this thread is becoming a hotbed for that-Japanese-word-for-people-who-ask-questions-without-doing-basic-Googling-first.
>>6804 It will vary depending on where you are, but anyway it's probably not worth the hassle of looking at the moment. Give it another month or two.
Do not use magic mushrooms as an ingredient, they have a strong and obnoxious flavour. They can be eaten with food, preferably something strong-tasting enough to mask the flavour - anything cheesy is good, Doritos or other tangy crisps also work. This is assuming they're dried, if they're fresh they're pretty inoffensive and you can probably just eat them as they are. The traditional approach is to make tea by adding hot water to them but you'll get a less potent effect unless you also eat the soggy mushrooms at the bottom of the pot (which is about as appetising as it sounds).
>>6810 > Do not use magic mushrooms as an ingredient, they have a strong and obnoxious flavour.
All the more reason to mask them in some tasty food. They aren't that bad anyway...
I've had magic mushroom pasta before, and even fried them up with some chips (I used very little oil for frying them and made sure most of it was on the plate to be mopped up with the chips to get any extra stuff that would be in it) and both meals were really quite tasty. That's more to do with the other ingredients than the mushies of course, but I can't recommend cooking with them enough.
Best way I've found for fresh uncooked mushrooms is to chop them up and chuck them in some cottage cheese. The lumpiness of the cottage cheese hides the mushrooms perfectly, so you can just spoon it down like a champ.
This probably won't be much good if you don't like cottage cheese. Not me- I love the stuff.
>>6812 > They make a terrible cooking ingredient if you're using them dried, they will ruin the meal.
Oh, obviously. In the meals I mentioned, I used mushrooms freshly picked that day.
>>6815 Sure, like I said fresh they're not an issue, I never tried cooking with them but I doubt they'd taste of much.
>Try getting high from powdered cactus.
Many years ago a friend procured us a bag of dried cactus nuggets, I forget which particular type, Peruvian Torch maybe. I couldn't do it, the taste was just too bad. Utterly rank.
Liberty Caps are mildly toxic (not the point of being dangerous (or even as bad as the old Hawaiians you used to be able to get in Amsterdam), but to the point of moderate stomach upset when compared to Colombians, Mexicana, Tampanensis, McKennae etc.
I believe that growkits containing mycelium are illegal (as are truffles - more correctly sclerotia) since the Fresh Mushroom ban in 2005 (sclerotia/truffles are essentially compressed mycelium, after all). In other words, if you want to Grow Your Own you need to do so from a spore sample - which is orders of magnitude more difficult.
Long story short, if you can take a trip to Amsterdam, Portugal, anywhere that sells truffles you'll probably have a much better and easier time of it. They're grown in sterile farming conditions and haven't had cats/foxes/members of the travelling community pissing on them.
If you do decide to do that, pick up a 20g box of the Tampanensis. Don't be tempted by the Mexicana for a first trip, and definitely don't go for the Atlantis or god forbid the "Dragon's Dynamite" or whatever else has come out in the year since I've been there. There's a fine line between weaving your way through a room full of three-dimensional fractals while Loving Everything and gibbering behind the sofa for six hours. And until you know where that line is in relation to you and your sanity, it's best to stay safely on the sane side of that line.
