nothin Danger: Mushrooms | New Haven Independent

Danger: Mushrooms

Photobucket.

Psylocibin-bearing mushroom.

Goodness gracious!” went out the call of alarm from the pages of the Sept. 28, 1914 New Haven Saturday Chronicle.

The cause of concern: A dangerous, even potentially hallucinatory, new vice, more potent than Demon Rum.

The impending days of the national prohibition of alcohol — by 1917 the do-not-sell-or-distribute-booze language began to be ratified by the states on the way to becoming the 18th amendment — had driven one nervous, if bemused, Yale professor, Dr. A.E. Verrill, to speculate that intoxicating, psylocibin type mushrooms might soon replace the offerings of the soon-to-be-closed taverns.

To get a taste of the mushroom culture,” which in fact did not emerge in the roaring and quite alcoholic 1920, but did surface in the 1960s, click on the audio above or find the show in iTunes or any podcast app under WNHH Community Radio.”

Did you know that only two states in the Union chose not to ratify the 18th Amendment? Rhode Island and, yes, Connecticut. What would our theocratic Puritan founders have made of their descendants’ decision?

Join my regular guest, New Haven Museum photo archivist Jason Bischoff-Wurstle, as we discuss the matter, and offer a toast.

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