OFFICIAL NAMES: Psilocybin, Psilocybe mushrooms

STREET NAMES: Magic mushrooms, shrooms, boomers, caps, cubes (Psilocybe cubensis), fungus, liberty caps, Mexican mushrooms, mushies, mushrooms, psychedelic mushrooms, psilocydes, purple passion, sillies, silly putty, simple Simon

DRUG CLASSIFICATIONS: Schedule I, hallucinogen

Overview

For thousands of years, Native Americans in Central and South America have used Psilocybe (mushrooms producing psilocybin—pronounced sill-o-sigh-bin) in rare religious rites and ceremonies. The Aztec word for these hallucinogen-producing mushrooms is teonanacatl, which roughly translates as "flesh of god." The shaman (medicine man or woman) and a select group of participants using the mushrooms believed they received special power to talk to the gods, to divine the future, to cure the sick, and to speak with the dead. In 2002, Native Americans in Central, South, and North America still practiced their religious traditions by legally using Psilocybe mushrooms.

In the 16th century, when the Spanish...