There is a rich history of psilocybin use, possibly first recorded in 10,000 B.C. Archaeologists found cave paintings referring to magic mushrooms in northern Australia. We may never know when the people tried the drug, but we do know that North American European descendants only started using shrooms in the 20th century.

In 1955, amateur scientist R. Gordon Wasson travelled to Mexico with his wife and a few friends. They became the first outsiders invited to the religious ceremony of the indigenous Mazatecs. Wasson brought magic mushrooms home to New York City and began his experiments.

Wasson published a piece in Life magazine about his experiences with mushrooms and their journey with the Mazatec tribe. “As the ritual proceeded, Wasson lost himself in wonderous flights of fancy in which moved him to say afterward, ‘for the first time the word ecstasy took on a real meaning.’” With this magazine’s publishing, the world of psychedelic mushrooms exploded in the United States and Canada. Three years later, the Harvard Psilocybin Project began with two psychologists, Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert. The focus of the study was to see how the drug interacted with the subject’s perception, emotion, and cognition.