Pagan celebrations in America in 2022 have become increasingly popular and have gained visibility and acceptance in mainstream society. These celebrations, rooted in ancient pagan traditions, attract people from various backgrounds who are drawn to the spirituality, connection with nature, and community that these celebrations offer. One notable pagan celebration is Beltane, which marks the arrival of spring and the renewal of life. In 2022, Beltane celebrations embraced outdoor gatherings, such as bonfires, dances, and rituals to honor the earth's fertility and the changing seasons. Celebrants adorned themselves in colorful attire, danced around maypoles, and participated in rituals to symbolize the union of the divine masculine and feminine energies. Another important pagan celebration in 2022 was Samhain, observed on October 31st and November 1st, marking the end of the harvest season and the beginning of winter.
Celebrate Halloween early in San Francisco this weekend with a spooky movie or attend the new Civic Pride Festival and more.
Follow a handful of mushroom-centric Instagram accounts, and you ll attract the attention of fly-by-night spammers with appeals to legalize nature and promises of discreet shipping. Many people who use them do not know that they can be abused and that there is a serious chance of developing a dependency that can affect their everyday functioning at home, school, or the workplace.
Another important pagan celebration in 2022 was Samhain, observed on October 31st and November 1st, marking the end of the harvest season and the beginning of winter. Samhain ceremonies often include rituals to honor ancestors and communicate with spirits. Many pagans gathered in small groups to hold ceremonies and share stories about their ancestors, creating an atmosphere of reverence, remembrance, and connection to the past.
Cartoon packaging and an ‘inconsolable’ high: when magic mushroom chocolate gets into the wrong hands
I n the fall of 2022, a six-year-old boy was rushed to the emergency room at Mease Countryside hospital in Safety Harbor, Florida, a small city on western shore of Tampa Bay. “He was very lethargic, and very drowsy,” recalls Dr Francois Richer Lafleche, the admitting physician. The child had gobbled down a whole bar of chocolate that he’d stolen from his parents, unaware it was laced with psilocybin – the active ingredient in magic mushrooms.
“His eyes weren’t going from left to right, as you see on common overdoses of hallucinogenics,” Dr Lafleche says. “He was more just overly sleepy. He was fine. There were no complications. But I was just flabbergasted. A chocolate bar? I think it was called something like a Choca-dot bar?”
The brand is actually Polkadot Bar. And they’ve become increasingly common in the psychedelic grey market. As more states open up laws around cannabis, Polkadot Bars and a range of other magic mushroom containing-candies – including One-Up Bars, Holy Grail Bars, Magic Bars and Mushie Gummies – have become common, under-the-counter offerings in cannabis boutiques, smoke shops and corner bodegas. The bars come in a range of flavours, from Ferrero Rocher, Twix and Fruity Pebbles to matcha, blueberry acai and “strawnana”.
Number of US children who accidentally ate cannabis rose by 1,375% in last five years Read moreThe cartoonish Wonka Bar-like packaging may entice the average child, who, as in the case of the Florida six-year-old, may well eat an entire bar without heeding that each package “contains 4 grams of mushroom”.
“I have noticed a disturbing number of social media posts of Instagram profiles, promoting the availability of psilocybin chocolates/candies for sale,” says Dr Daniel Sudakin, a board-certified medical toxicologist working in Oregon, which recently instituted a legal framework for psilocybin therapy clinics statewide. “Similar to cannabis edibles, if psilocybin products look like candy and/or are labeled like candy, and have no protective packaging, it is inevitable that these products will get into the wrong hands.”
Earlier this year, in the heart of Pennsylvania’s Amish Country, a man was charged with child endangerment after a three-year-old in his care consumed the bulk of a psychoactive candy bar, procured from an unattended backpack. Emergency responders noted that the child, who had been vomiting, was woozy, semi-alert and nauseous. Recently, in central Tennessee, several middle-schoolers were sent to a local hospital after ingesting mushroom chocolate.
How do you say to a two-year-old, ‘Yes, you are tasting colours’?
This is hardly a new phenomenon. An early modern account of accidental mushroom poisoning can be found in the reporting of the English physician Dr Edward Brande. In a 1799 letter to the London Medical and Physical Journal, he reported on his eight-year-old son unknowingly consuming a “tea saucerful” of hallucinogenic fungi, and being beset in turn by “a great degree of stupor” and “fits of immoderate laughter”. More contemporary data confirms similar effects: confusion, nausea, lethargy and hallucinations.
“When you’re looking at toxicology you’re looking at how much you’re ingesting compared to the patient’s body size,” says Dr Meghan Martin, a paediatric emergency medicine specialist at Johns Hopkins All Children’s hospital in St Petersburg, Florida. The toxicological risks of overdosing are, thankfully, vanishingly small, but there is danger of risky behaviour when children are unsupervised, and of vivid hallucinations. “Because kids have a smaller body size, the effects that we see on a child are potentially greater.” Martin notes that the effects typically do not require medical treatment beyond observation, except in the event of “significant hallucinations”, in which case the children may require sedation.
“A lot of the times the kiddos are seeing things they’re usually scared of,” she says. “It’s bugs and snakes and monsters. They have very vivid imaginations.”
Jimmy Leonard, assistant director of the Maryland poison control center in Baltimore and co-author of an exhaustive survey of psychedelic incidents across America’s poison control centers explains that children admitted for accidental ingestion can often not be easily reasoned with. “How do you say to a two-year-old, ‘Yes, you are tasting colours?’” he says. “Essentially, if they are incredibly high, they are inconsolable.”
Data provided to the Guardian by the National Poison Data System shows a modest uptick in children under the age of 12 admitted to poison centres for accidentally ingesting hallucinogenic mushrooms: from 12 cases in December 2022 up to 22 in April 2023. (The data does not distinguish between children who consumed whole, dried mushrooms and those who ingested the drugs in candy form.) Of these cases, 91.3% occurred at the patients’ residences. These are not exactly alarming, “think-of-the-children” numbers. (Some may consider 22 cases, in a nation with 50 million-plus children under age 12, “statistically irrelevant”.) None were fatal. Martin notes that psychological risks are actually decreased in children, as their exposure to these drugs is usually accidental and a one-off occurrence. “Generally a limited ingestion, once or twice, would not have significant long-term issues.”
For all their trippy, mind-expanding and (more recently) therapeutic potential, magic mushrooms are relatively safe. In fact, a 2017 Global Drug Survey showed magic mushrooms were “one of the safest drugs in the world”, with only 0.2% of adult respondents requiring medical treatment. Like other psychedelics, magic mushrooms are generally not considered addictive. But even the modest increase in incidence –and the more notable proliferation of these candies more generally – speaks to larger issues in the country’s emerging, normalised-but-unregulated, destigmatised-but-not-quite-decriminalised psychedelics market.
Data shows a modest increase in kids admitted to poison centres after ingesting mushrooms. Illustration: Marta Parszeniew
O n a random, unscientific, midday tour around lower Manhattan, in search of psychedelic chocolates stocked at local retailers, this reporter was met with a variation on a theme: “Sold out”; “Polkadot? What’s that?”; “No.” One cannabis dispensary in Midtown produced a single, Lucky Charms-flavoured candy bar, imbued with psychoactive mushrooms. It was the last in stock. Another clerk was kind enough to explain that there had been a supply shortage. “No more mushrooms,” they explained. “They’re really hard to get now.”
Late last year, the NYPD made four arrests related to psilocybin products being illegally sold out of smoke shops and CBD stores. Officers recovered a trove of psychedelic products: some 1,500 pills, dozens of bags of branded raw mushrooms, and psilocybin-containing gummies and candy bars, recovered in the instantly recognisable, super-colorful wrapping. When I asked a cashier at an East Village smoke shop if these recent busts had put the fear into more audacious shops – those willing to face serious prison time for trafficking a drug that, however “normalised”, is nonetheless illegal in New York state and falls under schedule I of the United States Controlled Substances Act – he shrugged.
This seeming drought has hardly shut down other avenues of supply. On a sunny afternoon in Washington Square Park, dealers post up at folding tables under the statue of the Italian unification advocate Giuseppe Garibaldi. They sell gnarled, purple-blue shrooms from mason jars, completely at ease among the the usual cavalcade of artists, leatherworkers, pot dealers, panhandlers and bleary-eyed beardos hawking tarot card readings.
A few blocks away, on St Mark’s Place, one man moves drugs the old-fashioned way: leaning on a wrought iron fence, fiddling around with a phone, flatly announcing “magic mushrooms, psychedelics …”
In a marketplace with such apparently high demand, mushroom chocolates are tantalising. For one, the flavouring masks the rather pungent taste of uncooked mushrooms, which users have compared to “nutty dirt”, “feet” and “beautiful, magical shit”. For another, when shared in public, these bars are relatively inconspicuous (“It’s just a chocolate bar, officer”). Brands like Polkadot also offer helpful dosage guidelines for neophyte trippers: one to three pieces to “stimulate the mind”; four to nine for a “therapeutic” dose; and 10 to 15 to reach “god mode” (“Walls might melt,” the package advises).
For adults taking them intentionally, the biggest issue (beyond illegality, being caught with one of these bars would, most everywhere in the US, merit the harshest criminal penalties under current drug laws) is quality. Because these products are illegal and unregulated, it can be difficult to verify their authenticity, or if they even contain psilocybin. Knock-offs of Polkadot’s trademark wrappers are sold in bulk, on Amazon and elsewhere, alongside foil wrapping, chocolate molds and other tools for the at-home confectioner.
These pagan celebrations in America serve as a way for individuals to reconnect with their roots, explore their spirituality, and find a sense of belonging within a supportive community. With the rise of social media and online platforms, pagans were able to connect with like-minded individuals across the country, organizing virtual gatherings and sharing resources and traditions. In 2022, pagan celebrations in America were not limited to traditional holidays but also included modern adaptations and localized rituals unique to each community. Some celebrated the summer solstice, winter solstice, or other significant dates tied to personal beliefs or local customs. Overall, pagan celebrations in America in 2022 symbolized a growing acceptance and curiosity about ancient traditions and spiritualities. These celebrations provide individuals with a sense of connection, purpose, and reverence for nature and the cycles of life. They serve as a reminder that in a modern world, people can still find value and connection in practices that have been cherished by our ancestors for centuries..
Reviews for "Ostara: Welcoming Spring with Pagan Celebrations in America in 2022"
1. John Smith - 1 star
I found "Pagan Celebrations in America in 2022" to be incredibly boring and uninformative. The content lacked depth and felt surface-level at best. The book didn't provide any meaningful insights into the topic and failed to make any connections or offer any analysis. Overall, it was a waste of my time and I would not recommend it to anyone interested in pagan celebrations.
2. Sarah Johnson - 2 stars
I had high hopes for "Pagan Celebrations in America in 2022" but was left disappointed. The book lacked a coherent structure and seemed disjointed. It jumped from one topic to another without any clear organization or flow. Additionally, the writing style was dry and lacked any excitement or engagement. I struggled to stay interested and ended up skim reading most of the book. Overall, I would say it was a missed opportunity to explore pagan celebrations in America.
3. Michael Thompson - 1 star
I expected "Pagan Celebrations in America in 2022" to offer a comprehensive and in-depth exploration of pagan traditions and celebrations in America, but I was greatly let down. The book seemed more focused on personal anecdotes and opinions rather than presenting factual information. It was highly biased and didn't offer a balanced perspective on the topic. Furthermore, the editing was poor, with several typos and grammatical errors throughout the book. I would not recommend this book to anyone looking for a well-researched and unbiased exploration of pagan celebrations.