Gobbling up psilocybin mushrooms and embarking on a forest excursion turned out to be a bad idea for a group of 20-some-year-old male hikers in New York State. They lost track of where they were and their car keys, thereby resulting in a very bad trip and seemingly hopeless situation.
Thankfully, one of the nature immersion enthusiasts was able to contact Ray Brook Dispatch via a 911 satellite text message after they gave up on finding their way back. An hour and 45 minutes later on Aug. 29, a trio of forest rangers rescued the psychonaut backpackers from the Catskill Mountain range and brought them home.
The guy who sent the text admitted they had taken psychoactive mushrooms and explained that the psychedelic fungi hit one of them harder than the other three.
“One of them was experiencing a debilitating high,” said the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) in a posting on the matter. “The Pine Hill Fire Department assisted the subjects to the trailhead where they were evaluated by Shandaken Ambulance.”
The effects had worn off at that point and they were driven to their lodging location.
The following day, one of the rangers went for a woodland stroll into the area where the hikers found themselves in the predicament. He located a bag one of them had left behind along with the lost car keys under a nearby log.
“We commend our Forest Ranger members in the Hudson Valley for their recent rescue of four hikers who were lost in a state wilderness area while experiencing a debilitating psychedelic mushroom high,” said the Police Benevolent Association of New York State in a bulletin.
The news follows a pair of other New York hikers in the Adirondack Mountains getting so high from magic mushrooms that they called authorities to tell them that their third accomplice had died on their journey. They also became lost due to the psilocybin’s mind-altering properties.
This delusional claim, made on May 24, turned out to be false and there was nothing wrong with their hiking partner.
“The hikers were in an altered mental state,” the DEC explained. They were taken to police for their highly questionable claim, drug use and wasting the time of forest rangers.
Read more: American priest ousted by church for psilocybin advocacy
Read more: Germany becomes 1st EU nation to prescribe psilocybin for depression
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