current vulgarisms, are contemptuous, belittling, pejora- 
tive. How curious it is that modern civilized man finds 
surcease from care in a drug for which he seems to have 
no respect! If we use by analogy the terms suitable for 
alcohol, we prejudice the mushroom, and since there are 
few among us who have been bemushroomed, there is 
danger that the experience will not be fairly judged. 
W hat we need is a vocabulary to describe all the modali- 
ties of a Divine Inebriant. 
These difficulties in communicating have played their 
part in certain amusing situations. Two psychiatrists who 
have taken the mushroom and known the experience in 
its full dimensions have been criticised in professional 
circles as being no longer ‘objective.’ Thus it comes about 
that we are all divided into two classes: those who have 
taken the mushroom and are disqualified by our subjec- 
tive experience, and those who have not taken the mush- 
room and are disqualified by their total ignorance of the 
subject! As for me, a simple layman, I am profoundly 
grateful to my Indian friends for having initiated me into 
the tremendous Mystery of the mushroom. In describing 
what happens, I shall be using familiar phrases that may 
seem to give you some idea of the bemushroomed state. 
Let me hasten to warn you that I am painfully aware of 
the inadequacy of my words, any words, to conjure up 
for you an image of that state. 
[I shall take you now to the monolingual villages in the 
uplands of southern Mexico. Only a handful of the in- 
habitants have learned Spanish. The men are appallingly 
given to the abuse of alcohol, but in their minds the 
mushrooms are utterly different, not in degree, but in 
kind. Of alcohol they speak with the same jocular vul- 
garity that we do. But about mushrooms they prefer not 
to speak at all, at least when they are in company and 
especially when strangers, white strangers, are present. 
[ 145 ] 
