David Nutt, former head of Britain's Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, amusingly points out that "Francis Crick, who discovered the double helix structure of DNA with James Watson, and Kary Mullis, who invented the polymerase chain reaction (PCR), had both taken [LSD, another psychedelic], and attributed some of their understanding and insights to it". He also notes that "l'Avenue des Champs Elysees in Paris is named after the Elysian Fields in ancient Greece, where people went annually to eat psychedelic mushrooms"
Nutt was removed from his role for suggesting British drug classification needed to correlate more with drug harm. The absurdity is illustrated by the British people having the "ridiculous situation that if you find magic mushrooms in the wild you can sit in the field and munch them to your heart’s content, but if you take them home you could go to prison for up to seven years, and if you give them to a friend you’ll be supplying a Class A drug and you could spend 14 years in jail."
Quick note - Nutt is incorrect. The Elysian Fields were a Greek domain of the dead. He probably means the city of Eleusis, which was the location of the famous mysteries, during which some (1) speculate that the participants did in fact use psychoactive substances, although I believe ergot is the most frequently suggested culprit.
1 - it's by no means universally accepted. E.g, I don't believe Walter Burkert thinks much of the idea.
Nutt was removed from his role for suggesting British drug classification needed to correlate more with drug harm. The absurdity is illustrated by the British people having the "ridiculous situation that if you find magic mushrooms in the wild you can sit in the field and munch them to your heart’s content, but if you take them home you could go to prison for up to seven years, and if you give them to a friend you’ll be supplying a Class A drug and you could spend 14 years in jail."
[1] http://www.amazon.com/Drugs-Without-Hot-Air-ebook/dp/B009KCL... Drugs Without the Hot Air: Minimising the Harms of Legal and Illegal Drugs (2012)