A Minnesota man sits in the Elko County Jail on a $105,00 bond after allegedly shrooming while driving in Wendover.
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Responding to reports of a car accident Tuesday on a dirt road five miles west of two police and emergency crews raced to the seen only to find the car but no accident and its driver Joseph Ferdig, 36, of Blackduck, Minnesota laying on the road obviously intoxicated on something.
Police called for Teke the local drug sniffing dog and when the pup went ballistic they requested a search warrant. Meanwhile Ferdig was allowed to leave the scene. After the warrant arrived police recovered six one pound bags of marijuana with an estimated street value of $6000.00 and tucked away in a back pack 15 grams of psilocybin mushrooms.
Also known as shrooms or magic mushrooms, the fungi have been called nature’s LSD and like the manufactured drug produce hallucinations. Noticeable changes to the audio, visual, and tactile senses may become apparent around thirty minutes to an hour after ingestion. These shifts in perception visually include enhancement and contrasting of colors, strange light phenomena (such as auras or “halos” around light sources), increased visual acuity, surfaces that seem to ripple, shimmer, or breathe; complex open and closed eye visuals of form constants or images, objects that warp, morph, or change solid colors; a sense of melting into the environment, and trails behind moving objects. Sounds seem to be heard with increased clarity; music, for example, can often take on a profound sense of cadence and depth. Some users experience synesthesia, wherein they perceive, for example, a visualization of color upon hearing a particular sound.
As with other psychedelics such as LSD, the experience, or “trip,” is strongly dependent upon set and setting. A negative environment could likely induce a bad trip, whereas a comfortable and familiar environment would allow for a pleasant experience.
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Police later located Ferdig in West Wendover and place him under arrest.
In the department’s press release WWPD Chief credited the arrest to “keen investigative skill” and added that there may be other arrests in West Wendover connected to the incident.
