Psilocybin Mushrooms: Psychedelic Mushroom Types and Their Safe Use - Psilocybin Identification Book (Entheogens) Paperback – November 9, 2020

This is THE BOOK that anyone who is interested in mushrooms should read. It has so much great content, including history, effects, using them safely, using them for spirituality, tips and tricks, what to expect, and much more. It also details what to expect on a mushroom experience, including the good and the bad.But in my opinion, the best part of this book is the photos. They are clear, in color, and plentiful. Great detail has been taken by the author to identify each mushroom. I speak from experience--if you're foraging, this is the book you want. At one time, years ago, I used a guide with drawings (Peterson, I believe), but the drawings were so vague. I could talk myself into believing that the drawing was the mushroom before me, even if it wasn't. Of course, that's not what you want because there are so many poisonous mushrooms out there. You want definitive identification. This book is what you want. I have an e-copy, but I'm also going to buy a paperback, just so I can take it on hikes.

As a medicinal chemist I really liked the chemistry presented in this book but you don’t need to be a chemist to appreciate this book. Perhaps the most useful part, in this day and age of overzealous experimentation by the inexperienced, is the detailed guidelines presented for both the voyager and the guide. These guidelines cover what the voyager and guides need to do and will likely experience over the three days required for a worthwhile trip.The identification details are good. I liked that the author gave most of the identifying information as written structural features of the mushrooms rather than just pictures. The pictures are very good but people need to know what aspects of the mushroom IRL need to be matched to the picture. Thankfully the author seems to understand this critical aspect of mushroom hunting.This is a great book for these that are curious but will likely never try, the seekers who really do want to try, and also writers who want to include realistic hallucinogenic mushroom scenes in their stories. Definitely 5 stars!

The book starts with a description of the effects of ingesting psilocybin mushrooms, quite well done considering it is words instead of one actually experiencing the effects. There is a thorough description of likely types of mushrooms that may have the said chemical in them. The book only falls short in whetting ones appetite, and then leaving one with few sources for the "shrooms," as most in the wild are in countries far from the U.S., are illegal in the US. Regardless, a good read.

I've always been interested in entheogens like Psilocybin mushrooms but I've never had the opportunity to try any. This book gives you all the information you need to find these mushrooms in the wild. Now that there is a growing effort to legalize Psilocybin mushrooms, it might be better to travel someplace where they can be cultivated or used for spiritual purposes. You really need to be careful about what mushrooms you consume.This book also gives plenty of advice on how to use Psilocybin mushrooms for spiritual enlightenment or psychological growth. I've been interested in shamanism for many years and I would like to explore this aspect of "magic mushrooms". However, I don't think the use of entheogens for shamanism is strictly necessary because some people have a natural ability to enter into a trance state. One of the key questions for psychonauts is how an altered state of perception produced by psychedelics compares to what is possible to someone with a natural gift. I've always wondered if it is best to encounter the unconscious mind when the mind is under the influence of a substance.

This book is useful for the total novice wanting to prepare for their first magic mushroom experience, covering topics like dosage, stages of a trip, how to have a safe/positive trip, and research into psilocybin therapy for mental illness. The information lacks depth but covers a lot of useful topics. All the info in this book can easily be found online but it's nice to have it all in one place. The print is large and the entire book can be read in about 45 mins.If you've researched magic mushrooms online or had a real trip before you're probably not gonna get much out of this book though. It's definitely written for those who are totally new to magic mushrooms.I bought this primarily for the ID guide, and there I've got some gripes as this makes a very poor or even dangerous field guide. Unfortunately, the completely inexperienced reader to whom this book is geared probably won't realize just how dangerous it would be to use this book to find psychoactive mushrooms.The descriptions are poor and there's small errors throughout (when compared to more reputable mycology guides). The pictures are black and white, indistinct, and don't show all parts of the mushroom. It's far too easy for a novice to mistake a poisonous mushroom for the one in picture, as novices are unlikely to understand how almost identical even completely unrelated mushrooms can be, especially when dealing with "little brown mushrooms".Furthermore, deadly lookalikes (or any lookalikes at all) receive little to no mention so a novice is unlikely to approach identification with the caution they should. The Deadly Galerina isn't described, and the Destroying Angel isn't even mentioned at all. People literally die every year misidentifying psychoactive mushrooms.The descriptions SEEM detailed and sufficient enough to make identifications, but they very much aren't. But someone totally new to mushroom hunting an using field guides isn't going to realize that, they're going to assume they can make positive IDs based on the info given. The descriptions are detailed enough to inspire false confidence while making it difficult or impossible to know you've got a poisonous lookalike - especially with the many non-psilocybes in the book, many of which even very experienced hunters avoid due to the high level of difficulty in making an accurate identification.The guide describes several psychoactive species (ex: certain inocybes) which have deadly, almost identical relatives (most inocybes are toxic/deadly). Even very experienced forages don't dare try getting high on inocybes - but the book doesn't mention that, it just arms novices with the info that this or that inocybe will get you high... despite the fact that are you're much more likely to die than get high. The first species of inocybe listed doesn't even have a picture of the cap, but only shows the gills of a single mushroom. It's inexcusably reckless and there's just no excuse for it. It's literally putting people's lives in jeopardy.On a less doom-and-gloom note the ID section would benefit from better editing. There's no standard to how the descriptions are laid out, with information in the paragraph-form descriptions coming in a different order for each species. Considering things like cap color aren't in the bullet points, it gets annoying to hunt through two or three paragraphs of text to find very basic details. Most guides give details in the same order in each paragraph-form description so it's easy to jump to where the detail you want is in the paragraph.... it's not like it's hard to lay things out like that. Not doing it is just laziness and makes it more likely novices will miss important identification details.The book does have an excellent visual guide to gill and cap shape term... but doesn't consistently use the terms explained in the diagrams. For example there's a great picture of campanulate, then the description of campanulate species say "bell-shaped" instead - for which there isn't a picture. Also doesn't include an image for plane (which many actives become in age) only flat - but the graphic provided for flat is actually a broad toadstool shape which all my other guides label as "broadly convex".So basically this is a terrible choice for a field guide. Please don't use this for that purpose, and never ingest many of the species listed in this guide under any circumstances. Even among the most expert, experienced, life-long psychoactive foragers it's a rule to only take Psilocybe, Panaeolus, and (with extreme caution) Gymnopilus mushrooms. (And for some people Amanita Muscaria as well, although that isn't in this guide).And fwiw a Google image search is not a guide and shouldn't be used to confirm finds - images it turns up may be a page's example of a deadly lookalike, and many seemingly reliable pages show blatantly misidentified mushrooms in their pictures. Please stay safe - this stuff is no joke and you can die.