Parents in Nairobi have a new drug to worry about. It is not the usual alcohol, bhang or cocaine that worries is keeping them up at night. This one is a bit hard to control as it comes from mushrooms. Yes, mushrooms.
Psilocybin mushrooms, better known as Shrooms is the name of the new drug. The use of these magic mushrooms around the world isn't well known, but they have been used for a long time in spiritual and religious rituals.
The mushrooms are ingested in their whole form by chewing leaving a very bad taste. This is what a section of teenagers are using which sometimes turn them into zombies.
At low doses, users experience an increased intensity of colours and hypersensitivity which allegedly makes music more clear. Users also experience a flashback of old memories and insights. At this stage, users reportedly see things in a fluid nature.
At high doses, the drug is said to make users rather inactive with speech altered and construction of sentences becomes a herculean task.
Regular users also reported experiencing their primitive instincts which were usually suppressed by a sober mind.
Reasons for using the drug according to some teenagers range from self-diagnosed depression, stress, and pressures of life.
The drug is very expensive retailing at a street price of around Ksh 3,000 for one mushroom stick. This is costly compared to the prices of bhang which retails at an average street price of Ksh 50 per roll.
The drug is illegal in Kenya as it has mind-altering qualities as set out in the Narcotics and Psychotropics act of 1994.
Some of the long-term effects of the drug include memory loss, slowed mobility and the risk of a heart attack.
Archaeological evidence from the Sahara desert suggests that humans have been using hallucinogenic mushrooms for over 7,000 years. They are represented in prehistoric art across many different geographic regions.
