People across the country are heading outdoors to enjoy the last days of summer, but not all of these excursions are going according to plan. One recent incident in New York’s Catskill Mountains offers an excellent example of what not to do while trekking in the woods.
In a recent weekly recap of events, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation Forest Rangers described an August 29 dispatch to SIide Mountain Wilderness. Located near Woodstock, the popular area is named after Slide Mountain. At 4,200 feet tall, it’s considered the highest peak in the New York Metropolitan Area.
At about 5 PM, park rangers received a 911 satellite text near the Giant Ledge lookout point. A team of three rangers subsequently made contact with a group of four hikers around 6:45 PM, who said that they were stranded in the woods after one of them began “experiencing a debilitating high.” The likely cause of the hikers’ condition: a magic mushroom snack.
Approximately 200 types of fungi contain at least some amount of the psychedelic compound psilocybin. However, the term “magic mushrooms” generally refers to a handful of potent species in the Psilocybe genus, including P. azurescens, P. semilanceata, and P. cyanescens. Ingesting only a few milligrams is enough to induce a range of sensory and perceptory alterations such as visual and auditory hallucinations, euphoria, and a distorted sense of time.
Mounting evidence suggests prescribed psilocybin microdoses may help treat various issues like alcoholism, PTSD, and depression. But while they aren’t considered addictive or life-threatening, the mushrooms’ adverse side effects can include disorientation, paranoia, nausea, and vomiting.
It’s unclear which specific issues plagued the distraught hikers, although rangers noted in their report that, “somewhere along the way, [they] also lost their car keys.” Their rescuers—which by that point included members of the Pine Hill Fire Department—helped lead the visitors back to the trailhead, where they were subsequently evaluated by a medical team. After ambulance workers cleared the hikers, rangers provided them a “courtesy ride” back to their rental lodge. Their rescuers even went back out the following morning to the trail, where they eventually recovered the missing keys in a sling bag hidden amid tall ferns under a log.
Although recreational psilocybin use isn’t currently legal in New York State, it sounds like the forest rangers felt the bad trip was enough punishment on its own.
“Rangers did not issue any tickets,” a Department of Environmental Conservation spokesperson told Popular Science.
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