Free Republic

Picture this: You're enjoying a delicious bowl of mushroom soup, when suddenly you notice hundreds of tiny people dressed in cartoonish clothing marching across your tablecloth, jumping into your bowl, swimming around, and clinging to your spoon as you lift it for another taste. You're not dreaming — you've just experienced the effects of a mushroom known scientifically as Lanmaoa asiatica. It belongs to an entirely different class of Fungi than the more commonly known “magic mushrooms” and remains far more mysterious.

Spanish police said Monday that they had dismantled a group accused of running a "spiritual retreat" that offered hallucinogenic drugs and dangerous frog venom to clients from around the world. The gang is suspected of operating from a villa in the southeastern town of Pedreguer, charging over $1,160 for multiday stays that included consumption of ayahuasca, San Pedro cactus and a frog venom known as Kambo. "The retreats were held in groups of up to twenty participants, who were attended to by six employees of the organisation during the 'astral journeys,'" the Guardia Civil police force said in a statement....

DENVER — The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has blocked a lower court’s ruling that would have returned a barrel of hallucinogenic tea to a New Mexico group that uses the tea for religious purposes. The appeals court’s decision, announced Dec. 23, granted the federal government’s request to put on hold a Nov. 13 order prohibiting enforcement of drug laws in the case. An American branch of a Brazilian religious group argued that enforcement of the law violated its rights under the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act. The Santa Fe, N.M.-based group called O Centro Espirita Beneficiente Uniao do...