When subscribers of Arizona Highways—Arizona’s “award-winning” travel magazine—receive their October 2013 issue, they’ll be able to turn to page 13 and read all about the edible fly agaric mushroom. The only problem is that the fly agaric mushroom, when consumed raw, has “unpredictable psychotropic and physical effects.” Yet there is no mention of these potential side effects in the “nature factoid” section on the mushroom.

The deranged jerks at Sticky's Finger Joint are now being sued by a former employee, who alleges that her boss tricked her into consuming mushrooms, while asking her to try out a new recipe.

In case you needed another reason to avoid mushrooms, here's the sad case of a Connecticut woman who inadvertently poisoned her whole family with the vegetable, the world's worst. Shah Noor decided it would be a nice idea to make a dish with mushrooms she picked in her backyard. She mixed them with garlic, onions and green chili peppers, and cooked them for her husband and two daughters.

At about 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday night, while standing in the Roosevelt Rotunda at the American Museum of Natural History on 81st Street and Central Park West, my friend Sam and I stuff an eighth of psychedelic mushrooms into egg rolls and eat them. It is time for the 2012 Clio Awards, the advertising world's version of the Oscars.

When I first heard about the lost mushroom foragers, I kind of assumed they'd eaten the wrong kind of mushrooms — or the right kind, depending on your intention. I'll admit this theory was inspired by the completely unsubtle field of poppies scene in The Wizard of Oz. But sometimes a mushroom expedition is just a mushroom expedition, and this family of three simply got lost. The story of how they survived, however, is delightful, as reported by the AP.

Anti-cop sentiment has been bubbling over lately, but here's a story to remind us that police officers can and do save lives — even the lives of people acting like idiots. A sheriff's deputy in the Florida Keys dove into the ocean late Saturday night to save a man attempting to drown himself after bad-tripping on mushrooms.

Looking for new ways to stymy your appetite? Try the FDA's Food Defect Action Levels Handbook, a great new diet book guide for food distributors and inspectors. It details exactly how many maggots a comestible good may contain before it gets banned for "aesthetic" reasons, i.e., "being too icky."

Walterboro, S.C. resident Edward V. Spearman has been charged with trafficking illegal, hallucinogenic Psilocybin mushrooms that he allegedly grows in his secret mushroom laboratory. But Spearman's lawyer says his client's wares are actually flavorful shiitake mushrooms, which are legal even in South Carolina (for now).

An article in Pharmaceutical Journal claims that "reindeer deliberately seek out the mind-bending fungi to escape the monotony of dreary, long winters." Herdsmen then drink their pee to get a secondary high. Explains all that flying, doesn't it? [Sun, via]

While on Letterman to promote Disney's upcoming Sorcerer's Apprentice, Nic Cage gets the ball rolling with a prolific answer about drugs he and his cat did in high school.

[A newspaper clipping from somewhere wonderful in Ohio. via TNR]