A history of magic mushrooms in Seattle

The short version, 1964 to 2026

This history starts in 1964, when the Puget Sound Mycological Society was founded by a group that included University of Washington botanist Daniel E. Stuntz.⁸¹ A mushroom Stuntz collected on the UW campus in 1973 became the type of a species named for him in a journal issue dated 1976,¹² and Washington hosted hallucinogenic-mushroom gatherings in 1976 and 1977.⁹¹⁰ Psilocybin has been in Washington's Schedule I since May 21, 1971, and still is as of November 2, 2026. Seattle's council declared in 2021 that entheogen-related activities should be among the city's lowest enforcement priorities, but possession remains a crime.^13141816

This entry tells the story in seven dated chapters. The timeline lists each event with its source.

1964 to 1972: a mycological society and a new drug law

The Puget Sound Mycological Society (PSMS) says it was "founded in 1964 by a small group of visionaries including Dr. Dixie Lee Ray, then director of the Pacific Science Center; Dr. Daniel E. Stuntz; and Ben Woo."⁸ Its first bulletin, dated April 1964, told members: "The Society is now an actuality with a Corporate Charter, Members, Officers and Trustees." It reported 108 members, Benjamin Woo as president and meetings at the Pacific Science Center, and said Dr. Stuntz would act as technical advisor on the society's field trips.⁷ Stuntz was a professor of botany at the University of Washington.¹

Federal drug law was changing too. The Drug Abuse Control Amendments of 1965, enacted July 15, 1965, reached drugs with a "hallucinogenic effect" and took effect on February 1, 1966, the first day of the seventh month after enactment; we found no record of when federal regulators first named psilocybin under them.¹² On October 27, 1970, the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act was approved. Its Title II, the Controlled Substances Act, listed "Psilocybin" and "Psilocyn" in Schedule I. The parts that set out the schedules took effect on enactment; the part with the offenses and penalties took effect on May 1, 1971.¹¹

Washington followed three weeks later. Chapter 308 of the Laws of 1971, first extraordinary session, created the state's Uniform Controlled Substances Act. Its Schedule I listed "(15) Psilocybin" and "(16) Psilocyn". The governor approved it on May 21, 1971, vetoing two unrelated sections, and it took effect immediately.¹³ Both substances are in Washington's Schedule I today.¹⁴

1973 to 1980: campus discoveries, from the UW to Evergreen

The species that ties psilocybin to Seattle by name was described from a specimen Stuntz collected on the UW campus in 1973, which became its type, kept in the UW herbarium. According to the paper that named it, students there began eating the mushroom, and "users were admonished by an article in the student newspaper that the mushrooms were 'dangerous.' This warning was apparently ignored." In 1974 use was "even spreading to the campus of The Evergreen State College in Olympia."¹ (We couldn't locate the student newspaper article.)

Gastón Guzmán, of the National School of Biological Sciences in Mexico City, and Jonathan Ott named it Psilocybe stuntzii "in honor of Dr. Daniel E. Stuntz, Professor of Botany at the University of Washington in Seattle." Their paper ran in Mycologia 68(6), an issue dated November to December 1976; Index Fungorum gives 1977 as the year it actually appeared.¹² The authors noted the species had been misidentified in print as P. cyanescens, and they dismissed one name used for it, "Psilocybe pugetensis (a nonexistent entity)."¹

A companion paper by Guzmán, Ott, Jerry Boydston of Evergreen and Steven H. Pollock reported that users in western Washington called P. semilanceata and P. pelliculosa "Liberty Caps"; that "Psilocybe stuntzii has been observed to be in widespread use in the Seattle and Olympia areas"; and, in its own words, that "Psilocybe semilanceata is here reported from Washington for the first time."³

Evergreen researchers stayed in the record. In 1980 three Evergreen authors, Paul Stamets, Michael Beug and Jeremy Bigwood, joined Guzmán in Mycotaxon to describe Psilocybe cyanofibrillosa from a King County collection, reporting psilocybin and psilocin levels that varied widely between collections.⁴ The wild species entry gives each Northwest species' naming history.

1976 to 1978: two meetings, Fort Worden and Teonanácatl

Over Halloween weekend in 1976, about 120 people, most from California, Oregon, Washington and British Columbia, met at a Washington state park for what the PSMS bulletin called "The First Psychotropic Mushroom Foray". Evergreen student Paul Stamets showed scanning electron micrographs, Guzmán lectured, and Ott surveyed human use of psychotropic fungi before introducing R. Gordon Wasson, who recounted the rediscovery of the Mexican mushroom rites with the sound track of a Mazatec ceremony. Dr. Lynn Brady of the UW School of Pharmacy reviewed the ergot story, and a Sunday panel discussed recreational use. The report doesn't name the organizers.⁹

A year later, from October 27 to 30, 1977, the Second International Conference on Hallucinogenic Mushrooms met at Fort Worden State Park in Port Townsend.¹⁰²⁹ Organized by Ott and Preston Wheaton of Olympia, it drew "over 260 registrants". About a quarter came from medicine and universities, and "a smaller group represented the legal community, including lawyers, agents of the Drug Enforcement Agency and even the R.C.M.P."¹⁰ Speakers included Wasson, Harvard's Richard Evans Schultes, Andrew Weil and Albert Hofmann, the Swiss chemist who discovered LSD in 1943. Wasson, Hofmann and the Boston University classicist Carl A. P. Ruck "presented a new hypothesis concerning the ancient Greek Mysteries of Eleusis."¹⁰ (The bulletin prints Ruck's initials as "A.T.") The three published the hypothesis in 1978 as The Road to Eleusis.³⁰

The proceedings appeared in 1978 as Teonanácatl: Hallucinogenic Mushrooms of North America, edited by Ott and Jeremy Bigwood and published in Seattle by Madrona Publishers.²⁹

1975 to 1977: poison warnings and look-alikes

The same years brought warnings. In 1975 a team including Lynn Brady and Stuntz published "Identification of Conocybe filaris as a toxic basidiomycete".⁵ In 1977 Andrew Weil noted that several Galerina mushrooms "contain the same toxins as the deadly Amanitas" and warned that "Species of Galerina present some danger to people looking for psilocybin mushrooms."⁶

Guzmán and Ott had written that use "became very common in western Washington by 1975" with "no reports of adverse effects or hospitalizations".¹ By December 1976 PSMS members were sending in clippings about young people who ate Psilocybe mushrooms and "even needed emergency medical care," and the bulletin urged members to "caution people about using hallucinogenic mushrooms since their long-run effect is not fully known."⁹

At its November 21, 1977 meeting the PSMS board heard that "The genus Psilocybe is especially popular this year", that the Lewis County Sheriff's Office had sent in a sample after "Some young people had been arrested for trespassing", and that identification requests had taken Stuntz's assistants "the equivalent of 40 hours per week since September."¹⁰

Our advice is the same today: don't eat a wild mushroom you can't be certain of, because deadly look-alikes can turn up in the same places.⁶ If someone has eaten a wild mushroom and feels unwell, call Poison Control at 1-800-222-1222 (in Washington it reaches the Washington Poison Center), or 911 in an emergency.

1978 to 2021: Stamets, a book and a strict-liability law

The Evergreen student on the 1976 program went on to write books and start a company. Paul Stamets published Psilocybe Mushrooms & Their Allies with Homestead Book Company of Seattle in 1978³¹ and founded Fungi Perfecti, the Olympia mushroom company, in 1980.³² This almanac names the book as history only. The Stamets stack entry covers the microdosing combination that later took his name.

Meanwhile, the courts read the possession law strictly. In a 1981 decision the Washington Supreme Court held that the Legislature "intended drug possession to be a strict liability felony", so the state didn't have to prove a person knew they had a drug. It repeated that reading in 2004.¹⁷ Initiative 502, approved by voters on November 6, 2012, amended the possession statute for cannabis,¹⁶ and psilocybin stayed in Schedule I.¹⁴

Elsewhere the mood shifted. On November 3, 2020, Oregon voters adopted Measure 109, a psilocybin services initiative "supported by 55.75 percent of the voters."¹⁹ Seattle's council would later note that the FDA had designated psilocybin-assisted therapy "a breakthrough therapy for treatment-resistant depression in 2018 and major depressive disorder in 2019."¹⁸

Then, on February 25, 2021, the Washington Supreme Court decided State v. Blake. It held that RCW 69.50.4013, "the strict liability felony drug possession statute," violates the state and federal constitutions, adding: "it is the only statute in the nation to do so."¹⁷ A temporary 2021 law (chapter 311, Laws of 2021) filled the gap until its amendment to the possession statute expired on July 1, 2023.¹⁶

2021 to 2023: a resolution, a task force and a city ordinance

On October 4, 2021, the Seattle City Council voted 9 to 0 to adopt Resolution 32021.¹⁸ Its title reads:

A resolution declaring that the investigation, arrest, and prosecution of anyone engaging in entheogen-related activities should be among The City of Seattle's lowest law enforcement priorities and stating the Council's support for full decriminalization of these activities.

Seattle City Council, Resolution 32021, 2021

It defines entheogens to include "psilocybin mushrooms, ayahuasca tea, mescaline, and iboga" and leaves out peyote.¹⁸ A resolution sets priorities; it doesn't change the criminal code, as our myths entry explains. Port Townsend's council followed unanimously on December 20, 2021, after the Jefferson County Board of Health passed a resolution in July 2021.²³

The Legislature moved in steps. The 2022 supplemental budget had the Health Care Authority form a Psilocybin Work Group, which issued a preliminary report in December 2022. In 2023 the Legislature passed 2SSB 5263 (final Senate vote 40 to 4), which became law with a partial veto. It created a state task force, effective May 9, 2023, with a final report due December 1, 2023. It also directed UW's Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, "subject to appropriation," to set up a psilocybin therapy pilot by January 1, 2025, for populations including first responders and veterans 21 and older with PTSD, mood disorders or substance use disorders, "through pathways approved by the federal Food and Drug Administration."¹⁹ Jefferson County's commissioners adopted their own low-priority resolution, No. 19-23, on May 1, 2023.²³

The possession law was rewritten that year too, by 2E2SSB 5536 in a 2023 special session. Knowing possession is now a gross misdemeanor, punishable by up to 180 days in jail, a fine of up to $1,000, or both, and by up to 364 days for someone with two or more prior convictions under it since July 1, 2023. The statute adds: "The prosecutor is encouraged to divert such cases for assessment, treatment, or other services."¹⁶ On September 20, 2023, Mayor Bruce Harrell signed Ordinance 126896, adopting that offense and the state's Schedule I list (cannabis excepted) into Seattle's code, with diversion as "the preferred approach". It has no exception for psilocybin or entheogens.²⁰

2024 to 2026: cities, counties, stalled bills and a UW trial

Other councils followed. Olympia adopted Resolution M-2549 on August 13, 2024, making entheogen-related activities "a City of Olympia low enforcement priority,"²¹ and Tacoma adopted Resolution 41609 on January 28, 2025.²² On March 24, 2026, the Metropolitan King County Council passed Motion 16962, 6 to 2, supporting "full decriminalization of the limited, personal, noncommercial use and possession of naturally occurring entheogens" by adults 21 and older in nonpublic places and asking that such cases be among the county's lowest criminal enforcement priorities. It states that nothing in it may "alter, supersede, or limit" state or federal law.²⁴ Pierce County's council followed unanimously on September 1, 2026, with Resolution 2026-177, according to the county's news release, which reported the Undersheriff's view that the activity remains illegal.²⁵

Statewide bills stalled. SB 5201 and HB 1433, both titled "Concerning access to psychedelic substances," were introduced in 2025; SB 5921, the "Washington Medical Psilocybin Act," cleared a Senate committee on February 3, 2026. None reached a floor vote before the session ended on March 12, 2026.²⁶

The UW pilot is being run as a clinical trial. In May 2023 UW Medicine announced that a UW psychiatrist would lead a "state-mandated psilocybin trial" for 30 to 40 veterans and first responders. PsiloStudy (NCT06853912), a phase 2, randomized, placebo-controlled study at UW's Center for Novel Therapeutics in Addiction Psychiatry, began on June 1, 2025, and lists "Washington State Legislation" as a collaborator. It enrolls veterans and first responders aged 21 to 65 with both PTSD and alcohol use disorder, a narrower group than the law named, with about 40 participants planned. As of November 2, 2026, the registry lists it as active, not recruiting, with no results posted.²⁷ The Seattle research register tracks it.

Federal policy moved too. Executive Order 14401, signed April 18, 2026, directs the FDA and DEA to set up a Right to Try pathway for "psychedelic drugs, including ibogaine compounds," and directs the Attorney General to review any product containing a Schedule I substance that has "successfully completed Phase 3 clinical trials for a serious mental health disorder," so that rescheduling, if appropriate, can follow for products the FDA approves.²⁸ As of November 2, 2026, psilocybin and psilocyn remain in Schedule I under federal and Washington law.¹⁵¹⁴