After a few glasses of champagne (or rather, Lidl’s crémant) at a school mum’s Sunday afternoon drinks party, Melanie* found herself being covertly offered a little brown bottle. Her host urged her to drop a pipette’s worth onto her hand and lick. “It’s mushroom oil,” she was told.
“I’ve heard lots of people talking about taking mushroom oil, but this was the first time I’d done it,” the 37-year-old says. “It felt a bit weird taking drugs while the kids were all running around — but my friend assured me it was just a gentle buzz, a bit like being pissed, but without any hangover the next day.”
She’s now a convert — as are a growing tide of middle-class women, often battling early parenthood. “It’s all anyone talks about at the moment at school pick-up,” says Eleanor, 42, a successful PR who lives in west London. “It’s definitely exploded.” She said she started taking it in lockdown “to help me relax. Now all my friends do it.”
Olivia, a 38-year-old mother-of-three from north-east London, first tried it in the park one afternoon at a friend’s birthday, shortly after her youngest had just turned one. As she left the park, a friend offered her a drop of the golden-brown liquid to send her on her way. “I got home, put my son to bed, then spent the next hour gardening in a gloriously happy, lively state while my partner, who had also had a drop, pulled a three-course dinner out of seemingly nowhere. We had such a joyful energy and focus, which couldn’t have been more different to how I feel after a few glasses of wine.”
It felt a bit weird taking drugs while the kids were all running around
She asked her friend where to get it, and was directed towards a “local connection”, who turned out to be a local school mum. After a slightly awkward school gate chat, where she asked the mum to be her dealer, “we met a week later on the school-nursery run for the exchange”. She’s bought several more bottles from the same mum since, or from Telegram — one bottle tends to last a month or two and costs around £200.
At a New Year’s Eve party this year Elizabeth, 41, was eight months’ pregnant and dreading the moment at which drugs would appear, knowing that would be her signal to leave. “I knew the cocaine would come out around 10pm and everyone would become incredibly annoying to someone who was stone-cold sober.” Instead, she was pleasantly surprised when the host started walking around with the tell-tale brown bottle, putting a drop on everyone’s hands. “I expected it to suddenly turn into a scene of wild tripping and hallucinations but within 45 minutes the atmosphere changed entirely from quite frenzied power-drinking to a really mellow, lovely place to be. I ended up staying till 2am and just had the best time.”
I asked where to get it, and was directed to another mum at my daughter’s school. After an awkward “will you be my dealer” conversation at the school gate, we met a week later on the school run for the exchange
‘Everything feels sparkly’
What is it exactly? It’s a tincture that contains psilocybin, a compound found in some fungi. “Psilocybin is a psychedelic drug that can significantly alter perception, mood and thought, often described as producing a ‘waking dreamlike’ state,” Dr Luke Jelen, from the Psychoactive Trials Group at King’s College London, explains. Alcohol, on the other hand, “tends to dampen brain activity and lower inhibitions”.
Sarah, a 36-year-old mother-of-two from Surrey, has made the switch from alcohol to mushrooms. In early motherhood she found herself reaching for a glass of wine at 5pm — and then a few more. But she gave up drinking two years ago “because I realised it was making me feel more frazzled than I already was feeling”. She said that while she found herself using alcohol “to deaden my emotions and get through the day” mushrooms, in contrast, “really help me see the beauty in the tiny things of life that we often miss”.
With mushroom oil, you have a lovely evening where you laugh until you cry, then the next day you have this lovely afterglow. It’s very different to alcohol, where everything feels a whole lot worse
It’s a sentiment that Rebecca, 40, a writer in Clapton — and mother-of-three — agrees with. “One of my favourite things about it is that you can have this lovely evening, where everything feels sparkly and beautiful and you can laugh until you cry, and then the next couple of days you can still have an afterglow and everything feels better — rather than alcohol, where everything feels a whole lot worse.”
A few years ago, weed pens were the drug of choice for cool east London parents but nobody does that any more, says Dan, 36, who lives in Dalston, as it was often too strong for when the kids are asleep upstairs. Instead, everyone has the little brown bottle. It’s easier to smuggle into festivals too, says Lucie, 34, a new mother from Peckham. “Now that my friends and I have little kids, we have swapped raves for day festivals while the grandparents look after our babies. It means we can have a really fun day mooning around listening to amazing music while a bit high, then as it wears off quite quickly, we can be home and have a good night’s sleep ready to be up early with the kids the next day.”
While it might feel like everyone is jumping aboard the mushroom trend, it’s nothing new. Humans have been experimenting with mushrooms for millennia. Now they are attracting serious scientific interest. Along with Dr Jelen at King’s, Imperial College London has its Centre for Psychedelic Research, and studies have been published around the world. One, in the British Medical Journal, looked into how psilocybin could be used for treating depression. It reported that using the chemical was three times more likely to lead patients into remission than using a placebo.
The reason is explained in part in a separate study, carried out at Washington University in St Louis and published last year in Nature, which looked at brain scans of patients on a high dose of psilocybin (25mg). It showed that the drug “caused profound and widespread brain changes across most of the cerebral cortex”. In essence, it can help “rewire” the brain. In the US, interest is being taken so seriously that the Food and Drug Administration recently awarded psilocybin an “FDA Breakthrough Therapy” designation.
It’s something that Beth, 41, who lives in south London is particularly interested in. She has been experimenting with micro-dosing mushrooms to help manage her mental health, having suffered from long-term anxiety and depression. “I find it gives me a sense of euphoria during the initial evening, but also a strong feeling of wellbeing for a couple of days afterwards. It gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling rather than the sort of cold bleakness that can creep in for me quite easily. It seems to reduce anxiety for a good 48 hours.”
From therapy to bad trips
There are other reported benefits. Sarah finds one drop during the day can help with focus and creativity for her work (“although never if I have to drive anywhere later”). Lara, a 41-year-old who works in finance, is interested in it for supposed longevity benefits to the brain: researchers in a 2022 study suggested psilocybin could potentially be used to help prevent and treat Alzheimer’s.
A further longitudinal study published in Nature, which monitored 98 “micro-dosers” — those who take it recreationally tend to take vastly smaller doses than those on clinical trials — found improvements in mood and reduction of stress.
Dr Jelen warns that “while there is early evidence of therapeutic benefits” it is only “when psilocybin is administered in structured, supportive clinical settings”. Recreational use, “especially in unprepared environments or when mixed with alcohol or other substances, can magnify harms”.
Those could be dodgy trips if you get the dose wrong: too much can leave you feeling “weird and spacey and like you just want to stroke a blanket in the corner,” according to Sarah. But also, unless you produce your own oil in a clinical setting, it’s hard to know what is in each vial. “Because ‘mushroom oil’ is unregulated, its potency and composition remain unknown, increasing the likelihood of unpredictable and potentially harmful outcomes and leaving users vulnerable to unexpected mental states,” Dr Jelen says.
It’s not available to buy over any counter, but sourcing doesn’t seem hard. Sarah gets it from “a guy on Signal”, the messaging app; Rebecca sources hers from “someone who only sells mushrooms — not other drugs — as I’m not comfortable with that.” Eleanor makes her own. “I’ve got my own brand, but I can’t even promote it,” she jokes.
Jokes aside, there’s no denying the serious legal ramifications of getting caught with it. Psilocybin is classed a class A drug under the 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act — the same as heroin and cocaine. Possession of class As can lead to up to a seven-year prison sentence — and up to life for supply and production. Rebecca says that the law feels outdated. “The classification feels unduly harsh when you consider the damage things like heroin and cocaine do. I’d love to see the drug laws revisited on mushrooms — especially in light of the proven therapeutic benefits.”
Even for those without a serious clinical need, users say it makes for happier social functions. For Melanie, parties where people are taking mushrooms “instead of getting hammered, or worse, are just more fun. People are nicer. There are no women crying in the corner, or men getting angry or those people who just can’t stop talking. Ironically, it feels like a return to a more innocent time.”
*Names have been changed
