sHRoOmS

I don’t like mushrooms. Anyone who has known me long enough would have heard of my close-encounter-of-the-third-kind with mushrooms, and how scarred I was from that experience. I have sworn off mushrooms since I was 12, no offence to the Smurfs and Smurfettes who reside in them.

Mushrooms are a strange breed of “vegetables”, if you want to call them that. They are actually fungi, and honestly, I do not understand people who can ingest fungus. The other gripe I have with mushrooms is, they either have no taste (like Enoki or Portobello) to value-add to the overall dish, or they have an extremely pungent smell (like Chinese Black mushrooms) which can be overwhelming.

There are always exceptions to the rule though. I am particularly interested in one type of mushroom – psychoactive mushrooms, also fondly known as “magic mushrooms” or “shrooms”. Apparently, people who have taken these “shrooms” can experience profound and life-changing insights that they describe as mystical experiences. In fact, Johns Hopkins Hospital has conducted studies that show that these psychoactive mushrooms gave people an experience with substantial personal meaning and spiritual significance. In a particular study, a third of the subjects reported that taking “shrooms” was the single most spiritually significant event of their lives.

How can I, a seeker of meaning, miss out on this?
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