Tripping On Mushrooms with My Mum, in Photos

This article appeared on VICE Netherlands.

There are lots of ways to spend quality time with your mum, but none are quite as exciting as tripping on shrooms in the Dutch countryside. That’s precisely what photographer Vinny Vlemmix and his mum did recently, and he has some cute pictures to prove it.

“My mum’s been experimenting with drugs for a while," Vinny tells me over the phone. “It calms her down – she says it’s like mental healing."

One day, the pair were talking about truffles – which contain the same psychoactive compounds as magic mushrooms – and Vinny’s mum decided she wanted to give them a try: “At first we laughed about it, but we quickly decided we were going to do it.” After their chat, Vinny’s mum booked a cabin in the town of Groesbeek, on the border between the Netherlands and Germany.

“I didn’t really know what to expect – I’d never done truffles before. But I thought I'd take my camera and see what happened,” Vinny continues. They started their day with a hike and a picnic, and took the truffles around four in the afternoon. “We ate the truffles with some yoghurt, then we walked into the woods and up a hill, where we had a nice view. The sun was shining right on our faces. We stayed there for hours.”

When I ask him if his experience felt restrictive compared to getting high with friends, he tells me it was quite the opposite. “For me, it felt more liberating, because I completely opened up. Our mother-son relationship was temporarily gone, because the rules about parenting or how you should behave as a son or a mother were irrelevant. It was like we were best friends. It brought us closer.”

His mum also had a good time. According to Vinny, she felt completely free. “She enjoyed how beautiful everything was – she felt warm and connected with me. We were often quiet, and that felt very comfortable.”

During the car ride home, his mum told him she felt happy and proud. “That day, she saw me more like a person and not just as her son. She got to know me better. Same goes for me."

Scroll down to see photos from their trip.