Ralph Barbosa Says Dave Chappelle Owes Him Magic Mushrooms

Ralph Barbosa never meant to become a drug dealer to the stars, but the Texas comedian shared how he ended up giving one of his biggest comedy idols a little more than his flowers — accidentally gifting him an ounce of magic mushrooms instead. 

The inadvertent shroom handoff went down after Barbosa spied a vest that Dave Chappelle had left behind at the Hollywood Improv, and took the garment home “so nobody else would steal it.”

While sporting the vest that night, Barbosa said he faced a second unexpected stroke of luck, coming across a whole lot of psychedelics. “Somebody had let me have an ounce of mushrooms,” he recalled during a recent appearance on Vulture’s Good One: A Podcast About Jokes. “I was wearing the vest, and I put the mushrooms in the vest, and I left.”

After returning the vest to Chappelle’s security the next evening, Barbosa realized that his mushrooms were still in the vest pocket, which he attempted to tell the legendary comic during a run-in a few days later. “I was just like, ‘Hey, in the vest, I left mushrooms,’” Barbosa said, which Chappelle interpreted as a gift. 

“I saw him, I don’t know how many months later, in Houston. He’s like, ‘Hey, I got those mushrooms. Thank you for that,’” Barbosa continued. “I was like, ‘Aw, you’re welcome.’ Those mushrooms were gone.”

Several weeks after his story first went viral, Barbosa is still on a mission to get his ‘shrooms back from Chappelle. “After a show in Ohio, everyone was thanking him for letting them be part of the night,” Barbosa said in a new interview with The Latin Times, reiterating that he “didn’t mean to give” Chappelle an entire ounce of mushrooms. “I walked up and said, ‘Hey, don’t forget you owe me one ounce of mushrooms.’” 

Whether Chappelle pays him back or not, I hope that Barbosa can at least one day stop trippin’ about his missing shrooms.