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There I stood, a few years ago in San Francisco, with with my feet spread apart and my arms outstretched against the side of a car. As I was being frisked by a police officer, I realized that he was facing the back of my Mad magazine jacket, the face of Alfred E. Neuman smiling at him and saying, "What, me worry?" And, indeed, this cop was worried. He asked if I had anything sharp in my pockets.

"Because," he explained, "I'm gonna get very mad if I get stuck," obviously referring to a hypodermic needle.

"No," I said, there's only a pen in this pocket"--gesturing toward the left with my head--"and keys in that one."

When he saw the contents of the baggie he removed from my pocket, he asked a rhetorical question--"So you like mushrooms, huh?"--with such hostility that it kept reverberating inside my head. I hadn't done anything that would harm somebody else. This was simply an authority figure's need to control. But control what? My pleasure? Or was it deeper than that?

Recently, the Journal Of Psychopharmacology published the results of a day-long experiment involving psilocybin, also known as "magic mushrooms." Although this psychedelic has been used for centuries in religous ceremonies, it is still illegal. The study, which took place at a Johns Hopkins University laboratory, was funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, and involved 36 male and female volunteers.

Fourteen months later, 64% still felt at least a moderate increase in well-being or life satisfaction, in terms of creativity, self-confidence, flexibility and optimism; 61% reported at least a moderate change of behavior in positive ways; 58% rated the session as one of the five most personally meaningful experiences of their lives; 67% said that the drug had produced one of the five most spiritually significant experiences they'd ever had. Many spoke of being more sensitive, tolerant, loving and compassionate.

According to one participant, "I feel more centered in who I am and what I'm doing. I don't seem to have those self-doubts like I used to have." She referred to "taking off...being lifted up." Then came "brilliant colors and beautiful patterns, just stunningly gorgeous--more intense than normal reality," she added. "I feel much more grounded and that we are all connected. There was this sense of relief and joy and ecstasy when my heart was opened."

Head researcher Roland Griffiths stated, "This is a truly remarkable finding. Rarely in psychological research do we see such persistently positive reports from a single event in a laboratory. This gives credence to the claims that the mystical-type experiences some people have during hallucinogen sessions may help patients suffering from cancer-related anxiety or depression, and may serve as a potential treatment for drug dependence."

Writer Charles Shaw points out that "What was lost in all the derision and urban myths about LSD and other psychedelic compounds like ayahuasca, peyote, psilocybin and iboga--plant medicines thousands of years old--was the fact that they are miraculously powerful medicines, with the ability to effectively treat, and in some cases, cure some of the most debilitating illnesses and disorders plaguing humanity: addiction, obsessive-compulsive disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, and migraine and cluster headaches. They are also effective palliatives for the sick and dying...."

Referring to Doblin's pioneer work, he says, "Western governments had to ask themselves what was more important to them: their irrational and erroneous drug propaganda, or the possibility that the millions of lives they had devasted by war, violence and iniquitous economic policies might actually be repaired. In this, the seeds of a psychedelic renaissance were planted."

As for my psilocybin bust, I got off with a $100 fine and nothing on my permanent record. But I finally understood what that police officer had meant when he sarcastically snarled, "So you like mushrooms, huh?" What was his actual message? Back through eons of ancestors, this cop was continuing a never-ending attempt to maintain the status quo. He had unintentionally revealed the true nature of the threat he perceived.

What he had really said to me was, "So you like the evolution of human consciousness, huh?"

"Well, yeah, when you put it like that, sure I do. I like it a whole lot."