The granny who’s on a magic mushroom mission
From teetotaller to South Africa’s magic mushroom champion. Marianne Thamm charts 71-year-old Monica Cromhout’s incredible journey into psychedelia in episode 2 of the new Kagiso Media podcast series, First Person.
71-year-old grandmother and former nurse, Monica Cromhout, might be an unlikely campaigner for the benefits of psychedelic – magic – mushrooms, but she’s at the forefront of the drive to have South Africa’s drugs laws declared unconstitutional. Mushrooms, she believes, hold the key to solving many of our society’s problems.
How Monica went from conventional, law-abiding teetotaller to passionate evangelist for the benefits of the psychedelic is the subject of the second episode of First Person, the Kagiso Media podcast series launched earlier this month.
Presented by award-winning journalist and author, Marianne Thamm, First Person aims to uncover the extraordinary stories that lurk behind some of the most ordinary-looking South African front doors – in Monica’s case the door of a very normal house in a quiet street in Somerset West.
It was there she had her first mushroom experience during which she was given the message she should open a school for mushrooms. How she did that and how that, in turn, led to her arrest, brief imprisonment and determination to challenge the law is all revealed in the podcast.
“Of course Monica’s story is apparently bizarre, but it is also more than that,” says Marianne. “It’s about being open to new experiences, to whatever comes your way. It is also about standing up for something you really believe in. It takes a lot to fight a system that says you aren’t right, I respect that.”
“Monica is almost the perfect First Person subject,” says podcast producer, Jayne Morgan. “The series is all about people who are not what they seem, who are quietly doing things you’d never imagine if you walked past them in the street or sat next to them in a bar and Monica is probably the most unlikely ‘shroom user you can imagine. Plus she’s an amazing storyteller. We think that this edition will really take listeners on a journey of discovery – in more ways than one.”
Listen below: