Magic Mushrooms

On a lighter note:

I made this connection a few years about when I was watching my brother play a Lord of the Rings themed video game.  Part of the game mechanics involve collecting mushrooms that heal your character or something.  There may have been a weak connection with a line in the book where someone mentions some mushrooms that might be worth collecting, right before something bad happens.  Anyhow, here is the connection I made.

Before computer games were popular, there was the hippie era.  During that era, drug use was rampant.  One of the more popular drugs (probably due to availability) was "magic mushrooms" which were just poisonous mushrooms diluted to a point where they would not be fatal.  They were rumored to create visions and other interesting things.  Well, these "magic mushrooms" were known of long before they became popular as a drug.  I don't know exactly what the connection is, but they were certainly already known about in the mid 1800s when this next part occurred.

Ironically, the next part happened chronologically prior to the hippie movement.  In 1865, a book featuring unusual mushrooms was written.  This book, Alice in Wonderland, included mushrooms that could change the size of a person (Lewis Carroll was rumored to have used drugs while writing the book, so it is likely he was aware of "magic" mushrooms).  Specifically, one part of the mushroom increases size and the other reduces size.  Now, how does this relate to video games?

Back to the future again, in 1985, the game Super Mario Bros. was released.  It included a game mechanic where consuming a mushroom would enlarge the character, just like the mechanic from Alice in Wonderland, though Alice's mushroom was far more potent.  The game added a second, green mushroom that gave the character an extra life.   In a later Mario Bros. game, another mushroom was added that shrinks or kills the character.

The Hobbit game may have gotten its mushrooms from that brief line in the  first volume of Lord of the Rings, but it certainly did not get the healing mechanics from the book.  Looking at this brief history of mushrooms with magical properties in media, it seems pretty clear that they originated from "magic mushrooms" used as drugs.  It began as a mushroom that made people high (figuratively), then it evolved into a mushroom that made people high (literally), then it entered the realm of video games, where it still increased the size of people but also had live giving properties.  With this rather interesting 150 year history, where are magic mushrooms going to take us next?