How a trip on magic mushrooms helped decriminalize psychedelic plants in a California city

OAKLAND, Calif. - Carlos Plazola locked himself in a bedroom while his cousin stood guard.

For five hours, he tripped on magic mushrooms, nibbling the fungi and sipping them in tea. He ingested 5 grams - a heady amount that connoisseurs call the "heroic dose."

It was Plazola's first time using the mushrooms, which contain the naturally occurring hallucinogen psilocybin. He started having epiphanies, one right after the other, like lightning bolts.

"I was making connections that I had never made in terms of my understanding of what we are, what the cosmos are, why we're here, where we're going," Plazola said.

That mushroom trip last October by Plazola, the well-connected onetime chief of staff of a former Oakland City Council president, helped make Oakland the first city in California and the second in the nation to effectively decriminalize magic mushrooms.

Plazola co-founded a group called Decriminalize Nature Oakland, which wrote the ordinance and successfully lobbied for its passage.

Psychedelic drugs, once widely derided