Adventure in the Unknown Part of Mexico

            There is a town in the south of Mexico that like so many other remote communities has been long forgotten.  Its name has been turned into a taboo. The government and some conservative people especially don’t want to remember it and they prefer to keep its existence a secret. This town is called Huautla de Jimenez, which is located in top of the Sierra Mazateca at 2600 meters above sea level in the state of Oaxaca, Mexico. The peculiarity of this town takes root in the strange type of mushrooms that these lands provide, which according to its inhabitants have the properties of curing illnesses and also expanding people’s minds. Motivated by my spirit of adventure, the desire of expanding my mind and the wish to have a psychedelic experience, I embarked upon a journey to this magic town.

            The journey was long. After four hours in a flight from Tijuana to the city of Oaxaca I had to ride a bus that took six hours to climb the sierra.  Finally at midnight I arrived at my destination. Just by looking at the town I knew it was a good idea to travel here. The beauty of the sierra had dazzled my sight. The vivid colors, the dense vegetation and the amazing waterfalls on the road made this landscape a perfect masterpiece created by the hand of god.

            The next morning I found myself in the cabaña of an old woman whose wrinkles revealed the hard and miserable life that she had lived. She was respected by all the people of this town. She was a witch and at the same time she was a shaman. I was amazed and frighten when I stepped into her shelter. Two little girls were there sitting in a couch and this witch “Dona Julia” was rubbing them with weird plants and singing strange prayers in her native dialect. I was standing up at the door just looking at her work. When the session was over Dona Julia grabbed two dead birds and she gave one to each girl, she blessed them and the girls left. What strange beliefs these strange cities have, I thought to myself.

She then came towards me and asked what I wanted, so I responded very respectfully, hoping she didn’t notice I was scared, “I have come in search of mushrooms”. She then went to the kitchen and came back with the mushrooms wrapped in a palm leaf. She then said, “Go to the top of “Cerro de la adoracion” (a mountain) sit down, choose three mushrooms and eat them. You have to show respect for this, this is not a game; you have to treat this act like a religious ceremony because you can have a good trip, a bad trip, or you can remain in the trip forever. The mushrooms are human beings and you better respect them if you want to have a good trip.” After this advice she blessed both the mushrooms and me, wishing us a good trip.

            At the top of this mountain, I found a perfect spot for this psychedelic ceremony. It found a rock behind a big tree in which I could sit down without any distraction. I sat down on the rock, set my mind in a meditative state, ate my three mushrooms and I waited for the trip to begin. After half an hour, the effects of this drug started to become evident. My breathing was profound as if I were very tired, my body felt very heavy and I felt like my soul was leaving my body and traveling anywhere I wanted to go. After a while everything felt perfect, what amazed me is the close relationship to nature the effect of this drug provoked. I realized that everything was alive, the grass was breathing, and even the mountains were breathing. Kaleidoscopic patterns appeared in front of my eyes.  I saw people made of clouds walking up the mountain and I had the feeling of being born again. When I touched the grass I felt how the energy was transferred from the grass to my body. It was a reawakening, a recharge of energies. My mind was sensitive to the point where I could see what I felt, I could smell what I heard, and I could listen to what I saw.

            After a couple of hours of introspective meditation and careful observation of nature I thought I understood everything in the world. Nothing mattered at that time. It was just me and the beauty of the nature that surrounded me. I saw my hands and I could see that life was flowing through them; I could see how my blood was flowing through my veins and that gave me the sense of being alive. It was like finding a light in the dark. I found the ecstasy of life in every pattern that I saw and in every sound that I heard. My five senses were so connected with nature that I felt that everything was part of the same universe.

            As my trip continued my relationship with nature was stronger than ever. At that time I understood the language of flowers. As I was walking through the green vegetation I heard a voice that said hello, it was a beautiful red little flower that wanted to talk with me.  We talked for a long time, I do not remember how long it was, but it was really special. This flower was telling me stories about people that came to this lands looking for psychedelic experiences, people like me that she had known in her short life. She also told me about the goats that went there to eat and that had killed many of her friends and family members, even do she was sad she said that everything has a cycle to accomplish. And that she was happy to have met me and other people too, and to have seen the sun, the rain and the dark of night. My mind was in another reality, I was listening to the words I wanted to hear from the flower. The senses of alertness and sensitivity are highly stimulated by this drug, which makes your eyes work as a magnifying glass. Thanks to this effect I saw how the chlorophyll was flowing through the petals of this flower and also I could feel the pulse of its breathing.

            After that moment of intrinsic communication my mind traveled to other reality, in which I felt the necessity of laughing for no reason. I laughed for a long time. At first it was fun but after a long time laughing started to hurt me. It felt like I was being stabbed in my belly. I could not stop it. And as the time went by this feeling became stronger and stronger until the phase turned from laughing into crying, I cried for a while but not for being sad but for being happy and after that everything was ok. Almost five hours passed since I ate the mushrooms and I knew that my trip was going to its end. I had the feeling that the rock where I was sitting was repelling me, like if she was telling me that it was enough, that she needed time to rest and that it was time for me to go to home. So, after realizing this, I took my backpack and I thanked all the living things that were there for giving me the best trip that I have ever had, and I went away wishing visit soon.

            The psychedelic mushroom that I took is called “San Isidro” its scientific name is Psilocybe (o Stropharia) cubensis and it grows up on the dung of cows. Anthropologists affirm that these mushrooms were used in Mexico, Guatemala and in the Amazonas for rituals and spiritual purposes. According to Doctor Delary, it is known that the consumption of hallucinogenic mushrooms do not cause neither physical nor psychological dependency because each trip is a very intense experience which restricts consumers from eating the mushrooms often.

            I am amazed of the power that human mind has and how a simple organic food can take your mind into many different states in just a couple hours. Under the effect of this drug I experienced different moods. It was like being inside a movie where the beginning was a meditative state, the climax was happy and the end was melancholic. Eating psychedelic mushrooms was a very pleasant experience for me but as the shaman said it has to be treated with a lot of respect and in order to do it the person has to have a strong conscience of his actions and the consequences of them.

            After a psychedelic experience the consumer can remember every detail of the trip with high precision. I agree with Aldous Huxley which in his book, “The Doors of Perception”, wrote that this drug should be legalized because it is less dangerous and less harmful than alcohol and the possibility for dependency is almost null. Moreover, I think that the benefits of a trip with mushrooms are more than its consequences. In a psychedelic trip a person can experience the beauty of nature more closely and after it nothing will be the same, life will be more relaxed and problems will seem to be solved by themselves.

References

1) Huxley, Aldous. “The Doors of Perception”. New York : Harper & Row, 1963.

2) Sabina, Maria. “Maria Sabina: Selections”. Berkeley, Calif. ; London :

University of California Press, 2003.

3) Sandford, Jeremy. “In Search of the Magic Mushroom: A Journey through

Mexico”. Owen. London, 1972.