Performance Enhancing Mushrooms

What is this, Super Mario Brothers? Honestly that's the first thing that comes to mind thinking about mushrooms being performance enhancing, a chubby plumber munching down on one and then going buck wild. In all seriousness though, mushrooms can be a performance enhancer at the correct dose and with a bit of training. To an extent this can be said of other psychedelics as well, for instance Dock Ellis pitching a no-hitter on LSD.

Terence McKenna floated the theory that mushrooms are responsible for human evolution for precisely this reason. Part of this theory hangs on the boost to visual acuity one gains at lower doses, which has been said to be one of the bigger beneficial traits out on the plains of Africa. Added energy and sexual arousal are also noted as benefits, especially in an evolutionary sense. The more you can do and the more you reproduce, the more you "win".

I do have personal experience that, for me anyway, backs this up completely. However, where McKenna was focused on how performance was enhanced in kind of a Darwinian, survival of the fittest kind of way, my experience is with more conventional realms- games and work.

When playing games (both video and other) I've found that not only is my visual acuity heightened, but so is my reaction time. There is also a certain je nous se qua, a kind of luck that can't be explained, an ability to do things that would seem impossible or highly unlikely, and doing them without even really giving it any thought. Kind of a superman auto-pilot. I've experienced this primarily with video games where the physical realm doesn't intrude as much (obviously I'm not a superman), and the experience is generally along the lines of pulling off moves that I would have assumed to be impossible. However, like I said, it seems thought-less, or rather, intentionless- wu-hsin ("no mind"). It is a lot like watching someone else play.

While I wouldn't recommend working on mushrooms, I've done it, and it was interesting. A couple of times while I was a line cook I worked on lower doses (about 2 grams). The benefit here, aside from the a fore mentioned energy boost, is a kind of mental clarity of everything going on. When you're working as a line cook, you usually have a bunch of things going on at once. There are things cooking, orders coming in, side work to do, etc. A lot of things to keep track of, and harder still, a lot of things that need to coordinate amongst themselves, the timing must be right. While on mushrooms this task actually seemed to be automated for me. It was as if there was a mind of dashboard in my head that I could see almost visually that told me everything that was going on and directing me to what needed to be done next. Again, the idea of an auto-pilot comes to mind.

There is one realm where the performance enhancing aspect, I think, actually makes things more difficult, and that would be driving. I've done this once, again on a lose dose of about 2 grams. I found that all the same benefits apply, and if I were in a race it would actually have been helpful. However, while driving down the highway, there just isn't enough going on to keep your attention. I found it more difficult to focus on driving, and in that way it became distracting and in fact detrimental. It can be done, but it isn't easy and the risks are too high, I can't recommend that anyone, ever do this (understanding of course that sometimes you do what you have to do).

In short, I think there is ample evidence, for me anyway, that shows mushrooms are highly beneficial when used correctly. I guess this begs the question, what's the correct way to use them?