Nina Lyon

'Mushroom Season' is a ramble through magic mushrooms, mountains and metaphysics. After heavy sanctions relegated their use to a spell in the stoner wilderness, are psilocybin mushrooms about to help reframe important social and philosophical debates about our minds, and ourselves?

Where do they grow? What do they do to our brains? And why are they eschewed by the bourgois? Nina Lyon introduces us to Liberty Caps and Fly Agarics, the characters she encountered as a student tripper and the differences between home-grown hallucinogens and Mexican export.

Among the anecdotes and observations are chemical facts, etymological revelations and philosophical speculation. Why are mushrooms subject to social stigma? What are the good effects they might have on us? And how does illegalisation damage a culture of free-thinking and experiment? Taking apart the teenage clichés and middle-class prejudice associated with the drug, Nina Lyon provides a wonderfully entertaining history of the magic mushroom.