620 - Psilocybin and the Mycology of Consciousness

Program Notes

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Guest speaker: Paul Stamets

Lorenzo and Paul StametsOrcas IslandMarch 2019

Date this lecture was recorded: March 21, 2019.

[NOTE: All quotations are by Paul Stamets.]

“As we reach down and we find a mushroom, we have a Eureka moment that as we touch the mushroom we are touching a portal into an underground network of wisdom.”

“In a single cubic inch of soil there can be more than eight miles of mycelium.”

“Mushrooms had their form well before we had ours. These are ancestral organisms. These are not just miscellaneous little fungi growing on the ground. These are elders. These are ancient individuals. These are bastions of knowledge. Encyclopedic in their history of evolution.”

“[Consuming psilocybin mushrooms] would be a shared community experience. And it wouldn’t happen one time. It wouldn’t happen ten times. It would happen millions upon millions upon millions of times over millions of years. Circumstantially, you cannot deny the possibility that the constant ingestion of magic mushrooms would have an impact on the evolution of human consciousness.”
Books by Paul Stamets
Fungi Perfecti
Makers of Host Defense Mushrooms

Mushroom Stones

Paul Stamets’ Mushroom Stones

A young Paul Stamets

Breitenbush Mushroom FestivalHalloween 1999

Lorenzo is on the bus!

Microdosing Foumula

Transcript

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Greetings from cyberdelic space. This is Lorenzo and I’m your host here in the Psychedelic Salon.

00:00:23 ►

This is Lorenzo, and I’m your host here in the Psychedelic Salon.

00:00:37 ►

And before I introduce today’s program, I want to first and a half hour introduction of parts of several chapters

00:00:46 ►

read by such people as Brother David Stendhal-Rost and Dr. Julie Holland. Well, our key producer,

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Kat Lakey, has just finished her summer’s work in the Amazon and is now back on the road and

00:00:58 ►

recording more readings for our project. The other day, Leonard told me that Kat was in London and

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planning on meeting

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my old friend Amanda Fielding for a reading, and may then be on to Marseille for a reading by

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one of the founders of the field of quantum gravity, Dr. Carlo Rebelli, who, after reading

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Leonard’s book, wrote to him and offered to help, as have many other people. It’s a big project,

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and I’m sure that you are going to be well pleased as these episodes come out later this year

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Now, one of the reasons that I’m reminding you about Podcast 609

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is that it is not only the longest podcast from here in the salon

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it is also one that most definitely should be listened to more than once

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as is today’s podcast also, I should add

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So assuming that you aren’t hearing this until you’re driving home from this year’s Burning Man Festival,

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that means you still have a long road trip ahead of you,

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and the Rose Garden Podcast number 609 is going to help make the time fly for you.

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Ah yes, it’s Burning Man time once again,

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and while I don’t miss the expense and all of the preparation required for months ahead of time,

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and I don’t miss that hours-long drive and wait to get onto the playa, but I sure do miss being there.

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One of the people who I know is there right now is today’s featured speaker, Paul Stamets.

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In fact, the last thing that I heard from him last week was that he was deep in preparations to soon leave for the Playa.

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And thinking about Paul and all of my other friends who are there right now

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makes it even more difficult to be sitting on the sidelines these days.

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However, well, we can both put that out of our minds right now, at least for the next hour and a half,

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as we listen to the talk that Paul gave last March at the Convergence on Orcas Island.

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If we had all day here, I would take the next hour or so

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just to give you the headlines about Paul’s amazing accomplishments.

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But since we are here together in the psychedelic salon, let me just put it this way.

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When I think of psychedelic chemicals,

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the first two names that come to my mind are Albert Hoffman and Sascha Shulgin.

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And when it comes to mushrooms, the first two names that come to my mind are R. Gordon

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Wasson and Paul Stamets.

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He’s actually on that level.

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Unfortunately, in the first 60 seconds or so of Paul’s talk, the sound is a little

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bit garbled.

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However, he changed microphones and so it

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clears up in less than a minute. As you’ll hear, Paul uses a lot of photos

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and graphics in his talk. However, with only a few exceptions, you should be able

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to easily follow his discussion without seeing the image itself. And there are a

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couple of short videos that he also played. However, I left in the audio

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portion of them because they

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cover some information I think you’re going to find interesting. And I did try to find links to

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those video clips on the net to add to the program notes, but there must be at least a thousand videos

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of Paul on YouTube, so I just gave up searching for it. However, I did screen capture a couple of

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images that I thought you might enjoy seeing,

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including the slide where Paul shows the stacking formula for microdosing psilocybin.

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And I posted these images with the program notes for this podcast at psychedelicsalon.com.

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As you will now hear, it was my great pleasure to be able to introduce Paul that evening,

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and he requested that before we begin, that he would like to get the audience settled down and in the proper mood by first playing Grace Flick’s recording of

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White Rabbit, which dates back to the days when her band was still called the Jefferson Airplane.

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Well, for what it’s worth, White Rabbit has also been a very important song in my life.

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It got me through many long nights,

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and so I knew right then that this was going to be a magical evening.

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And now, here is Grace Slick. One pill makes you larger

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And one pill makes you larger and one pill makes you small

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And the ones that mother gives you don’t do anything at all

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Go ask Alice when she’s ten feet tall And if you go chasing rabbits

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And you know you’re going to fall

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Tell them a hookah, a smoking caterpillar

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Has given you the call

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To call Alice

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When she was just small

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When the men on the chessboard

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Get up and tell you where to go

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And you just had some kind of mushroom

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And your mind is moving low

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Don’t ask Alice

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I think she’ll know

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When logic and proportion

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Have fallen slowly dead

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And the white knight is talking backwards

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And the red queen’s off to the head

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Remember what the Domo said.

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Feed your head.

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Feed your head.

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Anybody in the mood to hear Paul Stamets tonight now?

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Anybody in the mood to hear Paul Stamets tonight now?

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I will make this introduction mercifully brief.

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The first time I met Paul was 20 years ago, and he had just released a new book.

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It was at a conference like this, but about a third of this size.

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And I bought his book, but I was too shy to get him to autograph it. I was afraid to go up.

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He was such a huge person then, and such a big feature in this community.

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And then 20 years later, he’s done so much more, and I get to introduce him.

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I can’t believe it.

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One of the biggest honors I’ve ever had.

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Now, the next time I met Paul or saw Paul was at a conference that has become known as the last great mushroom conference of the millennium.

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It was over Halloween, 1999.

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It was a big party at Brighton Bush.

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We hunted mushrooms and all and had a costume party.

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But the thing that I really remember most, Paul got together a dozen or more of his friends who were the top mycologists in the world.

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And there was a man there from Thailand.

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I don’t remember his name, but he was very much deferred to, sort of like Albert Hoffman of the mycology field.

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And so Paul introduced him as the world’s leading mycologist.

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And his English was his second language, and so he was very hesitant and all.

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But he smiled and he says, we all know that he’s really the one that’s the top mycologist in the world.

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And I thought, you know, when the top of your peer group says that about you,

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where else can you go?

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There really is nowhere else.

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Well, there is one other thing.

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You can become a cultural icon.

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Besides me, are there any Star Trek fans here?

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I can’t say I’m a Trekkie,

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but I’ve watched a lot of those episodes. And in the new season, Star Trek Discovery,

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the creators of the program actually came to Paul to help get some ideas and get started.

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And a lot of the storyline now are from ideas that Paul gave them. But one of the biggest ideas was he came up with the concept of an astromycologist.

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And so there’s a character in there now who is an astromycologist.

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And guess what name they gave to that character?

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Paul Stamets.

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Can you believe it? So, from being a cultural icon, the only place I can see for Paul to go up is to actually become an astromycologist.

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And I have no doubt he’ll do it. So, welcome, Paul. Well, thank you, Lorenzo, and thanks to all of you.

00:10:13 ►

We did a number of conferences here on Orcas Island

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called the Micromedia Conferences at Camp Orcala,

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and that was in the late 1970s,

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at a time when there was really a revolution in the interest in psilocybin mushrooms.

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But before I jump into my immersion talk on psilocybin mushrooms, I want to acknowledge the Salish indigenous peoples of this area.

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peoples of this area and Paul Chayokan Wagner, respect to you and respect to my most recent ancestor.

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My mother just died.

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And we were by her bedside for the past several weeks.

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And my mother was an evangelical, charismatic Christian.

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She was a wonderful and kind lady.

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We were politically not on the same side of the fence at all. She would watch Fox News a lot and we would come over and say, Mom, watch Rachel Maddow. But she was a kind and wonderful person. And she really believed in what we’ve been doing in the field of mycology and for the common good.

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And my mother was so sweet.

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And she died a wonderful death.

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And she reached up to me and she stroked my beard.

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And she reached up to me, and she stroked my beard,

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and she asked me in the last day that she could speak.

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She said, am I dying?

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I said, yes, Mom, you’re dying.

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You’re dying with grace, dignity, and love.

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You’ve raised a wonderful family.

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You should be very proud of your life.

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You’re a good person.

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You’re a good woman.

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You’re a good soul.

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And my brother Bill and I held her hands.

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And she gripped our hands tightly.

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And when she lost the ability to speak, she had this most wonderful, sweet, spiritual,

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sadly sweet smile.

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And she looked at under our eyes with blessedness.

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And it was a very, very precious moment.

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And so I’m dedicating my talk to my mother.

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Okay.

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Life moves on.

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But we rest literally on the shoulders of our ancestors.

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And what indigenous peoples and First Nations have taught me,

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the importance of the seventh generation concept.

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More and more that I’ve delved into the science of mycology,

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and I see how important this field is,

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it brings home the concept that the consequences of our actions today reverberate downstream through the generations.

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And we should hear the calls of our descendants now, calling from the future back to these times and asking us to wake up.

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Don’t you see? Don’t you know? Do you hear us?

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We are the voices of your descendants and your future

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it is our time to make a paradigm shift

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and so

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I want to bring you some elements

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of actionable solutions

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for the paradigm shift in this talk

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and in my talk tomorrow

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it has been a wild strange trip

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and

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what a long strange trip

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it’s been to come to this

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moment in time it’s time for us to immerse into the microverse and I ask

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you are you on the bus are you off the bus it’s time for the next quantum leap

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in human consciousness so let’s all get on the bus and get on to the paradigm shift.

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So…

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I’m going to be multitasking here.

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I need three arms.

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So I’m going to talk about mushrooms,

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a lot more than just about mushrooms,

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but I think Linnea said it very well.

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We are an underground mycelial network of knowledge

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and we surface in these conferences

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where the body intellect is coming from the fabric of nature.

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Each one of us are capsules of knowledge and experiences.

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We come together and we share

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and become bigger, stronger, wiser hopefully

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and the body intellect of our culture increases.

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So looking at mushrooms,

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mushrooms are the fruit body of the mycelium.

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Typically, mushrooms come up, and they’re highly perishable.

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They disappear in a few days.

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But they surface from the mycelium

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that’s been in existence for months, years, decades, even centuries.

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Before they suddenly flourish and produce a fruit body,

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much analogous to an apple is to an apple tree,

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or more analogous to an apple is to the roots of an apple tree.

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So these underground networks are largely invisible,

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but they’re surrounding us all the time.

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The mushrooms are beacons.

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As we reach down and we find a mushroom, we have that eureka moment.

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But as we touch a mushroom, we are

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touching into the portal,

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into an underground network

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of wisdom that we can tap

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into that knowledge and gain so much.

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So the mycelium

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is growing over

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seven days of psilocybe cubensis.

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It grows, it forks,

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it diverges. Mycelial networks have

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become the largest organisms identified so far in the world. This is a 2200 acre mycelial

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network in Eastern Oregon. 2200 acres. It was published in scientific literature. I

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hired an airplane. I flew down from Boeing Field down to eastern Oregon. One day, we saw these giant patches of dead trees.

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It’s from a honey mushroom called Armillaria astoi.

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And it kills the trees.

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And so we could see these big barren patches of trees on the mountaintops.

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But we couldn’t find this massive, massive colony.

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We went back disappointed.

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We look up in the scientific literature.

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We had the latitude and longitude correct,

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but we realized we were too low in elevation.

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So we flew back the next day, and we went over the same area,

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and then we spiraled up and up and up,

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and we got to about 14,500 feet.

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And I looked out the window.

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I go, there it is.

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I see it.

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And I said, but I think I’m going to faint.

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And the pilot said, me too.

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I said, well, let me get a photograph first, because you go from sea level to 14,500 feet,

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you know, in 45 minutes, you know, you have hypoxia.

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So I was able to take this photograph, which I think is the best photograph anyone’s taken

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of the largest organism in the world, is a mycelium mat.

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And yet it’s only one cell wall thick.

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You have epidermal layers that protect

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you from infection. The mycelium only has one

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cell wall. On the other side of that cell

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wall are hundreds of millions of

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microorganisms per gram.

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And many of which want to consume the mycelium.

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How is it possible that the

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largest organism in the world is a mycelium

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mat, one cell wall thick, buried into the ground, surrounded by all these potential pathogens, and yet achieves such a mass?

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It’s because there’s this constant bioelectrical communication with this ecosystem.

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It’s responsive because of epigenesis, which I’ll talk about later.

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It’s reactive.

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It has a memory, a genetic memory of encounters with individuals that help or try to

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harm it. It has a memory that it can utilize for future expansion. The mycelium, after it grows

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to whatever size, has enough nutrition. It’s then triggered into primordial formation.

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Mushroom formation typically occurs in response to four environmental factors. A sudden influx of

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water, we all know that, rain.

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When you have water, you have evaporative cooling, so you have lowering of temperature.

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And then as the mycelium wicks up, because it has moisture on near the surface, then it exhales

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carbon dioxide, inhales oxygen, so that’s the third one, and then it’s exposed to light. That’s very surprising to most people.

00:19:05 ►

99% plus of mushrooms that are out there that we grow or know how to grow need light in order for the mushrooms to form from the mycelium.

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And so these are the primordia that are forming from the mycelium.

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This is a mycelial mat before light exposure, after light exposure.

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Little hyphal aggregates are forming.

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What it looks like in a petri dish is this.

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These are little baby mushrooms that are forming.

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Very, very quickly, the mushrooms begin to enlarge.

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This is extraordinarily explosive growth.

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Think of Jack and the Beanstalk.

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If you were standing here in real time, it would be surging right past you.

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Millions and millions of cells are subdividing.

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It very, very quickly

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expands and surfaces from the mycelium. Interestingly, this is a big part of our

00:19:52 ►

research, is blue light is critically important for the formation of mushrooms. And we see down

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to about 400 nanometers. And I’ll talk about this in my bee research tomorrow the mycelium is sensitive way

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into the ultraviolet spectra beyond what we can see and then the blue light stimulates the

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primordial form and with psilocybin mushrooms the majority of which blue light stimulates

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psilocybin and psilocin production the absence of which the mycelium is not producing any psilocybin

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or psilocin so especially with the wood decomposers that not producing any psilocybin or psilocin so especially with

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the wood decomposers that would decomposing psilocybin mushrooms you can analyze the mycelium

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if it’s not been exposed to light there’s no detectable psilocybin but once there is even a

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flash of light you know very very temporary amount of light exposure then psilocybin production is

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triggered so very quickly that’s a small primordium of psilocybe cuvensis,

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and very quickly it can go from this stage to this stage in about five days.

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So an extraordinarily rapid, explosive growth.

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And so the mushrooms actually do not have a good immune system.

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They’re not designed to have a good immune system.

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The mycelium is.

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It has to navigate through a hostile microbial environment.

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But the mushrooms are fleshy. Their intention is to be discovered by microvores, animals, and insects,

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to be consumed, to spread their spores.

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So the mushrooms are the proverbial tip of the mycelial iceberg,

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but the mycelium is the immune system of the mushroom.

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So here is a rushula mushroom.

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It’s growing in the old-growth forest in a meadow. It’s past

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its prime. A few days earlier

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it would have been edible. And then I

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come back a few days later and it’s

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rotting and mycelium is growing

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from it. Lots of other organisms are growing on it.

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And then the mycelium then

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goes underground.

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In a single cubic inch

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of soil, there can be more than

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8 miles of mycelium. Think of that. 8 miles of mycelium in a cubic inch of soil, there can be more than eight miles of mycelium.

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Think of that, eight miles of mycelium in a cubic inch.

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My foot is covering about 300 miles of mycelium.

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So as mycelium grows, how is it possible it’s able to navigate

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through these microbially dense and hostile environments?

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It’s because it’s producing extracellular metabolites.

00:22:02 ►

These extracellular metabolites are exquisitely designed

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and extraordinarily complex in their constituents,

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but they produce antibiotics that pre-selectively favors

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the bacterial and the microbiome that gives rise

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and supports the plants that grow to create the canopy above ground of plant material

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that eventually will produce debris fields and detritus that will feed the mycelium.

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So they’re deterministically interested in the survival of the plant communities

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that will protect their progeny by producing debris fields that will feed the mycelium to grow.

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So they have a vision into the future,

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a vision of their destiny of the ecosystem

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that will support the microdiversity and the biodiversity of the ecosystem.

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And this is what they are, truly guardians of the environment.

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I spent many years in the scanning electron microscopist.

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This is some of my electron micrographs.

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And this is a root of a matataki mushroom um and this is out of a douglas fir and the

00:23:10 ►

mycelium there is surfacing so a friend of mine patrick kickey uh when he produced these time

00:23:16 ►

lapse images um of the mycelium these are nuclei streaming through the mycelium there’s hundreds

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of nuclei that are streaming through.

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And before we produced these movies, we didn’t have a good glimpse of this.

00:23:31 ►

This is sped up over about eight hours and a few seconds.

00:23:34 ►

Notice all the nuclei are not going in one direction.

00:23:37 ►

The majority of them are, but they stream.

00:23:41 ►

And in the breadth of my arms spread out, we’ve done the calculation,

00:23:45 ►

there can literally be trillions and trillions of end branchings of tips so as the tips of micellar grow out they forage they encounter new microbes

00:23:51 ►

new microbiomes they are like little scientists at the tips of those with multiple nuclei

00:23:57 ►

and if they encounter something novel or adversarial they have a because of epigenesis

00:24:02 ►

they have a defense response and these two little

00:24:05 ►

scientific nuclei decide to figure out a new enzyme or antibiotic or new defense strategy

00:24:10 ►

what happens well they capitalize on that the mycelium forages out into that ecosystem now

00:24:16 ►

and then is able to expand and then because of that solution that it genetically was able to

00:24:22 ►

encode that’s new because because of epigenesis,

00:24:25 ►

then the knowledge then transfers back into the mother mycelium.

00:24:30 ►

So remote from a point of contact,

00:24:32 ►

the mycelium become educated constantly from trillions of end branches

00:24:35 ►

all around that forages into the ecosystem.

00:24:39 ►

Now, I realize, and because of my work on scanning electron microscopy in the 1970s,

00:24:44 ►

the mycelium looked an awful lot like neurons. I realized, because of my work on scanning electron microscopy in the 1970s,

00:24:48 ►

mycelium looked an awful lot like neurons.

00:24:51 ►

And then with the invention of the computer internet,

00:24:56 ►

it also shared the same archetype of that of mycelium and neurons.

00:25:01 ►

And then looking at the birth of the universe, 13.8 billion years ago was a big bang.

00:25:06 ►

And the universe was formed.

00:25:10 ►

And then from the Max Planck Laboratory, when I saw this, I was just fascinated.

00:25:17 ►

This is a parsec, 3.26 light years, 19 trillion miles. We’ll go back and the largest conceived expanse of the universe

00:25:26 ►

that can be calculated

00:25:28 ►

and visualized by computers

00:25:30 ►

and it conforms also to the same

00:25:33 ►

archetype formed by the mycelium,

00:25:35 ►

by neurons, by the computer

00:25:37 ►

internet. This is the

00:25:39 ►

way. This is the way

00:25:41 ►

of existence. This is

00:25:43 ►

the way of being.

00:25:45 ►

And I suggest to you, many, and my mother and I would have these conversations,

00:25:51 ►

and I’d say, Mom, you believe in God?

00:25:54 ►

Oh, yes, dear, I believe in God.

00:25:56 ►

And you believe that humans’ perception of God is imperfect?

00:26:01 ►

And she goes, yes.

00:26:02 ►

Well, that means our perception of the concept of god is imperfect

00:26:07 ►

will be inadequate to the task of understanding the enormity of the concept of god

00:26:11 ►

now i am not religious but i am spiritual and i ask you to contemplate the concept

00:26:18 ►

is this the face of god we exist in a molecular universe, a network of molecules. We coalesce to become

00:26:29 ►

human beings. We’re all truly built of stardust. We dismantle, we demolecularize, we reform,

00:26:38 ►

we reconstitute into a different form of existence. But we’re a continuum of these molecules as we form throughout the galaxy.

00:26:47 ►

You go out and look at the formation of dark matter as it’s conceptualized.

00:26:52 ►

These are galaxies.

00:26:54 ►

And this is a representation from the Hubble telescope.

00:26:58 ►

There’s 180,000 galaxies in this deep field view.

00:27:02 ►

But the organization of dark matter also conforms to

00:27:06 ►

to the archetype shared by that of the mycelium neurons the computer internet so i want to take

00:27:13 ►

you through a course of evolution and some of this knowledge has only come to light in the past few

00:27:19 ►

years this is something that from my experiences in tripping on mushrooms, I saw.

00:27:27 ►

I had the vision.

00:27:29 ►

Many of you also have had the same vision.

00:27:31 ►

What is amazing to me is that the scientific discoveries of late is reinforcing that,

00:27:38 ►

which so many of what indigenous peoples have also gestaltically knew, experientially knew.

00:27:47 ►

They may not have the same technology words or the same scientific experiments,

00:27:53 ►

but empirically, I think we’re all on the same page.

00:27:57 ►

So we go to the formation of the earth 4.5 billion years ago many of you not may not know that the earth had a huge

00:28:09 ►

collision at its formation 4.5 billion years ago an asteroid a planetoid called a martian-like

00:28:19 ►

planet uh which is called the, crashed into the earth,

00:28:25 ►

and then the debris fields then coalesced and the moon formed.

00:28:31 ►

Many astrobiologists believe the formation of the moon

00:28:34 ►

was the trigger in the formation of life,

00:28:37 ►

because as we formed oceans, then we had tidal pools.

00:28:40 ►

When we had tidal pools, we had fluctuation in the tides,

00:28:43 ►

we had the interface environments,

00:28:46 ►

and that interface of wet and dry

00:28:48 ►

and wet and dry became

00:28:50 ►

an epigenetically rich environment

00:28:51 ►

for the organisms to

00:28:54 ►

become, to form.

00:28:56 ►

So we go to 4.5

00:28:58 ►

billion years ago to 3.8

00:29:00 ►

billion years ago,

00:29:01 ►

and that is from the scientific method

00:29:04 ►

the last universal common

00:29:06 ►

ancestor luca oh hell luca sorry um if you haven’t seen dr strange love you really don’t know what i

00:29:15 ►

was doing there but those of you who have seen dr strange love you you’ll pick up on that but

00:29:20 ►

it was a single-celled organism. It’s the last common ancestor.

00:29:29 ►

So when did multicellular organisms form? Well, we don’t know for sure, but we have evidence now that 2.4 billion years ago,

00:29:35 ►

the first evidence of a multicellular organism was discovered just a few years ago in 2017 in lava in South Africa,

00:29:45 ►

and it is that of mycelium.

00:29:47 ►

2.4 billion years ago,

00:29:49 ►

the first multicellular organism was fungal mycelium.

00:29:54 ►

So we advance forward, and 420 million years ago,

00:29:58 ►

this organism existed, called Prototaxides.

00:30:01 ►

Now, Prototaxides was very controversial,

00:30:03 ►

first found in, I I think 1857,

00:30:06 ►

and no one really could figure it out. It was before vascular plants, before trees, before

00:30:12 ►

flying insects. The tallest organisms on land were ferns. So it was a big controversy.

00:30:19 ►

What was this thing? It was like 35 feet long, lying down about three feet you know broad and so it was a

00:30:27 ►

big mystery until dr kevin boyce published in the journal of geology and about 10 years ago

00:30:34 ►

finally deciphered what prototaxides was prototaxides 420 million years ago the tallest

00:30:42 ►

organism on earth was a giant fungus.

00:30:46 ►

Towering in this artist’s description by Francis Hoover, over 30 feet in height,

00:30:52 ►

it was the tallest organism on land.

00:30:54 ►

Of course, because back then there was a lot more lightning and storms,

00:30:58 ►

it would electromagnetically attract lightning strikes.

00:31:01 ►

Again, that stimulus of electricity we know also would stimulate epigenesis.

00:31:06 ►

These were fertile fungi that when they would rot,

00:31:10 ►

they would select the microbiomes,

00:31:12 ►

they’d become cavity environments.

00:31:13 ►

They would also stimulate another branch of evolution.

00:31:17 ►

We go forward to 250 million years ago,

00:31:20 ►

and we have a giant cataclysmic event,

00:31:23 ►

a major extinction event at the PT boundary,

00:31:27 ►

the Permian-Triassic boundary.

00:31:29 ►

Now, there’s three competing theories,

00:31:30 ►

an asteroid impact, methane hydrate bursts from the ocean,

00:31:34 ►

or volcanoes in Eurasia.

00:31:37 ►

They’re not mutually exclusive.

00:31:38 ►

The asteroid impact could have created the earthquakes

00:31:40 ►

that have opened up the fissures of methane hydrate

00:31:42 ►

that burst into the atmosphere,

00:31:44 ►

and then the volcanoes could have burst, but the earth became shrouded in dust

00:31:48 ►

and we actually have a very good geological record this is why the flat earthers the the people who

00:31:56 ►

are denials uh who deny evolution and have a real problem here because we can see in the fossil

00:32:02 ►

record uh you know there’s the clear division in these barriers

00:32:05 ►

when over 90% approximately,

00:32:08 ►

depending on the flora and the fauna you’re

00:32:10 ►

looking at, the species became extinct.

00:32:12 ►

The earth became darkened,

00:32:14 ►

shredded in dust, and then fungi

00:32:15 ►

took over. In fact, they’ve been

00:32:17 ►

identifying a fungus that was

00:32:19 ►

predominant called Reduvius sphorinides.

00:32:22 ►

Reduvius sphorinides in the fossil

00:32:23 ►

record was a predominant fungus associated with forest lands

00:32:27 ►

that gobbled up the forest debris.

00:32:30 ►

And so we steer forward to the time of Gondwana land

00:32:35 ►

and in Pangea.

00:32:39 ►

And then we had continents form,

00:32:41 ►

we had continental drifts,

00:32:43 ►

and then Gondwana land formed and the continents

00:32:46 ►

became as they were true i still remember when i was in the third grade i raised my hand in geology

00:32:51 ►

class i said teacher it looks like this like a puzzle you could just all put them together she

00:32:56 ►

goes no that’s a coincidence you know and i think we should listen to children more often they

00:33:01 ►

they can see the obvious so we go forward now you know from

00:33:07 ►

guadalajara 140 million years ago 110 million years ago the oldest representation putatively

00:33:14 ►

of a mushroom ever found uh in a sediment layer in brazil mushrooms are very soft so the fact

00:33:19 ►

that it was mineralized to form a fossil is amazing but there is a mushroom 110 million years ago mushrooms had

00:33:27 ►

their form well before we had ours these are ancestral organisms these are not just miscellaneous

00:33:34 ►

little fungi growing on the ground these are elders these are ancient individuals these are

00:33:41 ►

bastions of knowledge encyclopedic in their history of evolution.

00:33:46 ►

So we advance forward to 65 million years ago, and we have another visitor from outer space.

00:33:52 ►

We know about this one for sure. 65 million years ago, above the Yucatan, it strikes. Huge impact.

00:34:01 ►

The earth becomes shrouded in dust, and we have another massive extinction event dinosaurs became extinct after watching Jurassic Park I’m

00:34:12 ►

really glad dinosaurs became extinct and the earth became shrouded in dust and

00:34:17 ►

then fungi reinherited the earth those organisms that paired with fungi tend to

00:34:23 ►

survive our ancestors were voles, little mole-like creatures

00:34:27 ►

who were eating subterranean fungi,

00:34:30 ►

and they were protected from the impact.

00:34:33 ►

But because of the fungal networks, they were able to have food.

00:34:36 ►

And some of the explorations I’ve done with psilocybin mushrooms

00:34:40 ►

and finding them in the woodland sandy areas,

00:34:43 ►

I found burrows of uh where little moles

00:34:48 ►

have gone through and in the the tunnels uh and in these little mole colonies are are covered with

00:34:56 ►

corridors of mycelium and like whoa of course they’re eating roots and things like that they’re

00:35:02 ►

coming to breeze and so the mycelium is running and their air corridors also and moisture and the rodents are pooping in there

00:35:09 ►

so it makes really good sense that these rodents then would pair with fungi and be a mutualistic

00:35:15 ►

relationship so we go forward into the current time and then i was really interested in how many primates consumed mushrooms.

00:35:26 ►

That was a logical question to ask.

00:35:29 ►

Humans consume them.

00:35:30 ►

And so I found this article coming out of Australia, the governor of Australia.

00:35:34 ►

And it turns out that 22 primates consume mushrooms.

00:35:38 ►

23, when you add humans, were primates.

00:35:41 ►

Think of that.

00:35:41 ►

23 primates consume mushrooms.

00:35:44 ►

That speaks to a long Think of that, 23 primates consume mushrooms. That speaks to a long ancestry

00:35:46 ►

of knowledge, looking at the divergence of primates, that the knowledge of primates and

00:35:52 ►

mushrooms goes back a long, long time. The Golgi monkey of Brazil and the Amazon consumes

00:35:58 ►

more than 12 times its body weight, you know, of mushrooms. Now Americans consume about

00:36:03 ►

two kilograms per year, less than 3% of our body weight.

00:36:06 ►

But these monkeys know which mushrooms are edible,

00:36:09 ►

which ones are poisonous.

00:36:11 ►

And think of that.

00:36:12 ►

It’s natural for us and for the people who are uneducated

00:36:16 ►

about mushrooms to fear mushrooms

00:36:18 ►

because some mushrooms can feed you,

00:36:20 ►

some can kill you, some can get you high,

00:36:23 ►

some can send you on a spiritual journey.

00:36:26 ►

But they only come up and pop out of the

00:36:27 ►

landscape for four or five days and they

00:36:29 ►

disappear.

00:36:31 ►

Our impression

00:36:33 ►

and our encounters

00:36:34 ►

with animals and plants

00:36:37 ►

are much longer in our

00:36:39 ►

viewscape. And so we build up

00:36:41 ►

a knowledge of familiarity and that

00:36:43 ►

which is familiar that we understand and we can use, we can pass that knowledge down. But mushrooms that are so potent

00:36:49 ►

that can do all these different things and then disappear, it’s the cognoscente of indigenous

00:36:55 ►

cultures. The ones, the wise elders who knew which ones were good and which ones would kill you or could be useful for other purposes.

00:37:06 ►

That knowledge was eclectic.

00:37:09 ►

So looking at primate evolution, an extraordinary thing happened about 2 million years ago.

00:37:14 ►

There was a sudden doubling to tripling of the human cranium.

00:37:19 ►

Now, Homo sapiens appeared about 200,000 years ago.

00:37:23 ►

Now, how did this happen and why?

00:37:26 ►

Well, it was also a time of rapid climate change.

00:37:31 ►

And so Homo erectus and Neanderthals migrated into Europe well before Homo sapiens.

00:37:37 ►

There was two sort of quote-unquote invasions of Homo sapiens into Europe.

00:37:40 ►

The first one did not work out well.

00:37:43 ►

The second one happened about 40,000 years ago,

00:37:46 ►

but within 4,000 years of contact, Homo sapiens made Neanderthals extinct. Homo erectus became

00:37:52 ►

extinct before that. So with the larger brains, we had the ability of out-competing primate

00:37:58 ►

competitors, and the Neanderthals became extinct. I did 23 meat tests. I’m 2.9% Neanderthal.

00:38:06 ►

You know?

00:38:07 ►

It’s a good thing to know.

00:38:10 ►

So we were interbreeding with other primates.

00:38:13 ►

You know, we all get horny.

00:38:14 ►

So it’s just, you know, don’t have an available mate.

00:38:19 ►

They’re willing and able, so whatever.

00:38:23 ►

So, but as we march forward now there’s an extraordinary concept that terence

00:38:30 ►

mckenna and dennis mckenna presented and terence and i became very good friends especially the

00:38:35 ►

last five years of his life we started making fun of himself i enjoyed that people took him

00:38:40 ►

way too seriously and he thought so also but they came up with a stoned ape theory.

00:38:47 ►

And the stoned ape theory, this is from Louis Schwartzberg and I

00:38:49 ►

who are doing a film together.

00:38:51 ►

It’s coming out soon.

00:38:53 ►

And the hypothesis was, of Terrence and Dennis,

00:38:56 ►

is that their primate ancestors came out of the canopy.

00:38:58 ►

They went across the savannah because of climate change.

00:39:02 ►

And most primates eat grub, eat larvae.

00:39:05 ►

Well, you’re starving,

00:39:07 ►

you’re going across the plain,

00:39:07 ►

you find something going on,

00:39:09 ►

a dung that looks edible

00:39:10 ►

and you eat it

00:39:11 ►

and you, after 20 minutes,

00:39:15 ►

you are, oh my God.

00:39:22 ►

And you’d be sharing that with your clan with your family now you have epigenesis you

00:39:31 ►

have neurogenesis you have the shared spiritual experience it’s something that may well have

00:39:39 ►

triggered the expansion of the human brain now skeptics skeptics are out there, and I love skeptics,

00:39:46 ►

but let’s look at this circumstantially.

00:39:49 ►

You know, the majority of primates eat grub.

00:39:52 ►

Fly larvae grow in mushrooms.

00:39:55 ►

You’re growing across the savannah with your clan,

00:39:56 ►

you’re hungry, you’re tracking animals.

00:39:58 ►

What do you look for?

00:39:59 ►

Scat, poop, tracks.

00:40:01 ►

You find hippopotamus dung, you know, deer dung, whatever. You find these mushrooms coming out of them. You find hippopotamus dung, deer dung, whatever.

00:40:05 ►

You find these mushrooms coming out of them.

00:40:08 ►

You’re hungry. They have grub

00:40:09 ►

in them. You eat them.

00:40:12 ►

You share them.

00:40:13 ►

You suddenly have this amazing spiritual

00:40:15 ►

experience, the floodgates of heavens,

00:40:17 ►

your visual information, and everything

00:40:19 ►

is enhanced.

00:40:21 ►

That would be a shared community experience.

00:40:24 ►

It wouldn’t happen one time

00:40:25 ►

it wouldn’t happen 10 times it happened millions upon millions upon millions of times over millions

00:40:32 ►

of years circumstantially you cannot deny the probability that the constant ingestion

00:40:40 ►

of magic mushrooms would have an impact on the evolution of human consciousness.

00:40:46 ►

And I think there is a lot of merit to that, especially recently.

00:40:50 ►

So, Psilocybe cubensis is the most prolific large psilocybin mushroom growing on dung.

00:40:56 ►

Elephant, hippopotamus, zebra, horse, buffalo, cow.

00:40:59 ►

And another species that grows right with it is Pinulus cyanessens, over there,

00:41:08 ►

also known as Coplandia cyanessens.

00:41:10 ►

Sorry, my laser didn’t fit.

00:41:12 ►

And both of these rot very, very quickly with fly larvae.

00:41:16 ►

So they call it the stoned apiphypothesis.

00:41:21 ►

Now, the prodrug psilocybin, psilocybin actually doesn’t get you high.

00:41:24 ►

It’s a prodrug, a dephosphory prodrug psilocybin, psilocybin actually doesn’t get you high.

00:41:27 ►

It’s a prodrug that dephosphorylates into psilocin,

00:41:32 ►

which then activates serotonin receptors, stimulating neurogenesis,

00:41:34 ►

improving visual acuity and hearing.

00:41:39 ►

So they call it a hypothesis, but I disagree with them.

00:41:41 ►

It’s not a theory.

00:41:42 ►

They call it a theory.

00:41:43 ►

It’s not a theory.

00:41:44 ►

It’s a hypothesis. A hypothesis is an a theory. It’s not a theory. It’s a hypothesis.

00:41:49 ►

A hypothesis is an educated guess to explain an observable phenomenon.

00:41:53 ►

A theory is a hypothesis that’s been actually tested by science and factually supported.

00:42:00 ►

So it is a hypothesis, not a theory, and it needs to be supported by more scientific studies.

00:42:05 ►

However, there are been studies, and some of the researchers are in this room.

00:42:08 ►

I’d like to acknowledge Charlie Grobe in particular is here,

00:42:10 ►

Catherine,

00:42:14 ►

I don’t remember your last name,

00:42:16 ►

sorry, but,

00:42:18 ►

and then, and articles came out

00:42:20 ►

on the psilocybin stimulating

00:42:22 ►

neurogenesis in the hippocampus,

00:42:24 ►

and the extinction of fear conditioning.

00:42:25 ►

Well, that’s interesting.

00:42:27 ►

You’re with your clan. You’re a

00:42:29 ►

primate. You’re fighting off

00:42:31 ►

saber-toothed tigers. You’ve been

00:42:34 ►

wiped out by saber-toothed

00:42:36 ►

tigers or cave bears.

00:42:37 ►

You can’t get into the cave and you have a fear of bears.

00:42:40 ►

You’re freezing in the wintertime.

00:42:43 ►

You

00:42:43 ►

then take magic mushrooms

00:42:46 ►

you heal

00:42:47 ►

and you go

00:42:50 ►

I didn’t know how to do this

00:42:51 ►

and you have the extinction of fear

00:42:54 ►

response

00:42:55 ►

you’re able to overcome your fear

00:42:57 ►

well

00:42:59 ►

it turns out that low doses of psilocybin

00:43:02 ►

in this study

00:43:03 ►

facilitate an extinction of the fear response,

00:43:07 ►

conditioned fear response, far better than that of high doses.

00:43:11 ►

So that’s very, very interesting.

00:43:14 ►

So psilocybin, we know, stimulates neurogenesis.

00:43:18 ►

So we can conclude from this,

00:43:20 ►

well, psilocybin induces courage and kindness

00:43:25 ►

well those are leadership skills folks

00:43:30 ►

and I know of many leaders in this world right now

00:43:35 ►

that could really benefit all of us

00:43:37 ►

as they start tripping on psilocybin mushrooms

00:43:40 ►

and since this is going out to the web

00:43:48 ►

and no doubt the government is watching this

00:43:50 ►

please take note

00:43:51 ►

so that means we become better citizens

00:43:57 ►

more productive citizens

00:43:58 ►

so I think this is really important for us

00:44:01 ►

to then look at our society

00:44:03 ►

and the mental health of our society as a whole.

00:44:08 ►

So an extraordinary connectogram, and bless you, Nancy Reagan,

00:44:13 ►

but this is your brain not on mushrooms, and this is your brain on mushrooms.

00:44:22 ►

Which brain do you think is going to be better facing the challenges

00:44:27 ►

of today? Well, obviously many neuro connections, lots of better ideas, better reaction times,

00:44:34 ►

et cetera. So let’s look at the history of the use of mushrooms by humans. This is a,

00:44:42 ►

the first image you’re going to see is the actual pictograph from northern

00:44:47 ►

algeria 7 000 years ago of what’s called the b-man shaman now mushrooms were banned from beer

00:44:57 ►

in the bavarian beer purity act of 1516 so here is that’s the original pictograph in the cave i think cat

00:45:08 ►

mckenna cat harrison and a friend of mine jonathan meter we drew this and that’s true to form and

00:45:15 ►

this was consistent or is consistent even today with putting magic mushrooms into honey

00:45:22 ►

so the idea way back then because mushrooms were wrought so quickly putting magic mushrooms in the honey. So the idea way back then, because mushrooms were rot so quickly,

00:45:28 ►

you put them in the honey, you could preserve them,

00:45:30 ►

and that could lead to psychoactive meads.

00:45:33 ►

And a good friend of mine, George Walker, part of the Merry Pranksters,

00:45:37 ►

and I’m a Merry Prankster.

00:45:38 ►

I have been on the bus.

00:45:44 ►

Ken Kesey and I were friends. And actually, Ken Kesey and I were friends.

00:45:46 ►

And actually, Ken Kesey and the Merry Prankster sent me a plaque saying,

00:45:49 ►

Paul, you’re a Merry Prankster.

00:45:51 ►

And they all signed it.

00:45:53 ►

So that may tell you a lot.

00:45:56 ►

But the idea, but he was telling me that, yeah, back in the 60s,

00:46:01 ►

they put magic mushrooms into honey and they let it ferment ferment for two weeks, and it all foamed up.

00:46:08 ►

And then they ate it.

00:46:10 ►

I go, you’re kidding.

00:46:11 ►

How was it?

00:46:12 ►

He goes, great.

00:46:12 ►

So anyhow, those little Mary Prankster experiments still reverberate today.

00:46:19 ►

But the concept of the magical meads is important

00:46:22 ►

because the Bavarian Beer Act was largely pushed by the Catholic Church

00:46:25 ►

wanted to dismantle pagan

00:46:27 ►

European religions and they

00:46:29 ►

restricted it only to be able to

00:46:31 ►

use yeast and hops

00:46:33 ►

and

00:46:35 ►

banned henbane

00:46:37 ►

and mushrooms specifically mentioned

00:46:39 ►

and they could not use it

00:46:41 ►

so that I think is a

00:46:44 ►

struggle between polytheism and monotheism.

00:46:47 ►

And the churches, because of the institutions they created

00:46:49 ►

and centralized control of money and power,

00:46:52 ►

went on an extermination campaign against indigenous European peoples as well.

00:46:58 ►

So in Mesoamerica, in the Pacific slopes of Guatemala,

00:47:02 ►

are these mushroom stones.

00:47:04 ►

There’s about 200 of them known in the world that were associated, we think, like the coat of arms of a family,

00:47:11 ►

of a sacred mushroom patch, maybe to invoke rain because rain was so important in Mesoamerica.

00:47:18 ►

And that’s where mushrooms will come up and help them experience the magic mushrooms in their ceremonies. And I’m really super honored

00:47:25 ►

that I am now the custodian of 23 of these Mesoamerican Mayan mushroom stones that I have

00:47:34 ►

acquired over 40 years, several of them given to me by estates before they went up on auction,

00:47:39 ►

because my stated intention is to return them to the Mayan people and the Mayan culture.

00:47:45 ►

And I just heard this past week of a Mayan indigenous people museum being constructed.

00:47:53 ►

And so I’ve made my first reaching out to them saying,

00:47:57 ►

I want to return these Mayan mushroom stones to the indigenous people of Guatemala.

00:48:02 ►

However, I’ve also been warned by two people

00:48:05 ►

associated with the Guatemalan government

00:48:07 ►

not to return them

00:48:08 ►

because there’s so much corruption

00:48:10 ►

inside the Guatemalan government

00:48:11 ►

that they’d likely just be sold again.

00:48:14 ►

And so if I give them back,

00:48:15 ►

they have to be protected.

00:48:17 ►

But this is really important to me.

00:48:20 ►

I had them up on a mantle,

00:48:22 ►

but I’m so worried there’s an earthquake

00:48:23 ►

that’d fall and break.

00:48:25 ►

2,000-year-old mushroom stones.

00:48:27 ►

The one in the center is 2,500 years old.

00:48:30 ►

And so I didn’t want that to break on my watch.

00:48:33 ►

And so a shaman came over, and I had a long-established mushroom stone.

00:48:36 ►

He said, yes, and I have them all in these boxes with bubble wrap around them.

00:48:39 ►

And he goes, they don’t like it there, Paul.

00:48:43 ►

And so I didn’t want to stand them up because they’d fall down.

00:48:46 ►

So I laid them down and I made this arc, this circle, this mandala.

00:48:52 ►

And then I’m walking by and I look at them.

00:48:54 ►

And I go, oh, my gosh, I have all these Mayan elders, the lineage of Mayan mushroom shamans.

00:49:03 ►

And so this is what I walk by every day

00:49:06 ►

going in and out of my bedroom.

00:49:09 ►

I feel the elders

00:49:10 ►

of the Mayan mushroom shamans

00:49:12 ►

supporting me in my

00:49:14 ►

research. And I hold this

00:49:16 ►

responsibility sacredly

00:49:18 ►

and it is my full intention to return it

00:49:20 ►

to a safe place in

00:49:22 ►

Guatemala where they can be returned to the Mayan

00:49:24 ►

people under the right conditions.

00:49:26 ►

But it’s my job and my duty to protect them,

00:49:29 ►

and I’ve had, thankfully, several indigenous shamans tell me,

00:49:33 ►

you are the one to protect them in this lifetime.

00:49:35 ►

And so…

00:49:36 ►

Thank you.

00:49:43 ►

So, Life magazine, 1957, May 13th, in the middle of the Cold War.

00:49:50 ►

You know, the front page.

00:49:52 ►

R. Gordon and Valentina Wasson published an article called Seeking the Magic Mushroom.

00:49:58 ►

Life Magazine coined the term, the elders, the editors coined the term magic mushrooms.

00:50:05 ►

The Wasson said, we’ll write this article, but editors coined the term magic mushrooms. The Wassons said

00:50:06 ►

we’ll write this article but you cannot

00:50:08 ►

change anything in it.

00:50:10 ►

And so they wrote this amazing article

00:50:11 ►

with a complete field guide

00:50:13 ►

of how to identify them.

00:50:16 ►

Maria Sabina is

00:50:18 ►

featured here and there’s a

00:50:19 ►

Mazatec mushroom ceremony. There’s R. Gordon Wasson

00:50:22 ►

with a mushroom stone.

00:50:24 ►

So it’s very interesting because when Maria Sabina was given R. Gordon Wasson

00:50:29 ►

philosophy, I think, seriolescence, well, look how she’s presenting it.

00:50:35 ►

And there’s my brother John holding a mushroom.

00:50:38 ►

And there is Demeter giving Persephone a mushroom in Greece,

00:50:43 ►

500 years BCE, you BCE, basically BC.

00:50:49 ►

But the mushrooms are presented not like, here, take these mushrooms.

00:50:52 ►

No, it’s presente.

00:50:54 ►

Look, this is a sacrament.

00:50:57 ►

Respect it.

00:50:59 ►

And I think that gesture of importance saying, I’m giving to this with intention and respect this is important

00:51:08 ►

and that gesture i think crosses it’s not something taught people to do this is something that you

00:51:14 ►

just know is important to do so my brother john is a huge influence in my life. I grew up in a small town in Ohio. He went to Yale and I’m the youngest

00:51:26 ►

one in my family. And when I was 14 years old, my brother John was already a sophomore in Yale

00:51:33 ►

and he brought back this book during vacation and it’s called Altered States of Consciousness.

00:51:40 ►

My brother John was totally into, into mushrooms. He went to Mexico and Columbia,

00:51:45 ►

ate magic mushrooms, came back,

00:51:47 ►

and I’m like, oh my gosh,

00:51:48 ►

I was so excited about my brother John and learning.

00:51:50 ►

I was a little bit too excited for him,

00:51:52 ►

a little worried about me.

00:51:53 ►

But I said, John, can I borrow your book?

00:51:55 ►

And he said, sure.

00:51:56 ►

And I said, but I need, I’m going back to Yale

00:51:58 ►

in about two weeks,

00:51:59 ►

so I need to give it back for my class.

00:52:02 ►

And so I brought my brother John’s book and had it

00:52:04 ►

and I voraciously read it. And my class. And so I brought my brother John’s book and had it,

00:52:06 ►

and I voraciously read it,

00:52:10 ►

and my best friend, Ryan Snyder, was hanging with me,

00:52:12 ►

and Ryan and I would share a lot of things,

00:52:14 ►

and he saw the book, and he wanted to read it.

00:52:16 ►

And I had kind of gone through it enough, and I said, Ryan, I’ll lend it to you for a few days,

00:52:19 ►

but you have to give it back to me.

00:52:21 ►

And he said, Ryan, no problem.

00:52:22 ►

So Ryan borrows the book, and then he doesn’t return it, and I go, well, my brother. So Ryan borrows the book and, and then, um, he doesn’t return it.

00:52:26 ►

And I go, well, my brother’s going back to Yale. He wants his book. Ryan kind of avoided the

00:52:30 ►

subject. That was weird. I see him a few days later. I said, Ryan, my brother needs his book.

00:52:35 ►

He’s going back. He’s asking me for it. He lent it to me. It’s important to him. And Ryan like,

00:52:40 ►

you know, hesitated. And finally it was like the third time I said, Ryan, I need that book back.

00:52:44 ►

My brother’s all over me. Give me the book back. And Ryan sheep like the third time, I said, Ryan, I need that book back. My brother’s

00:52:45 ►

all over me. Give me the book back. Ryan sheepishly looked at me and said, I can’t.

00:52:51 ►

I said, why not? He said, my dad discovered it and burned it. I said, your dad burned my book?

00:53:01 ►

My brother’s book? I couldn’t believe it. Of course, I was very apologetic to my book, my brother’s book, and I couldn’t believe it.

00:53:05 ►

And, of course, I was very apologetic to my brother,

00:53:07 ►

who was extremely disappointed, like, I’ll never lend you anything again.

00:53:11 ►

You know, but then I thought, you know, wait a second.

00:53:15 ►

If this book had knowledge in it about use of mushrooms and hypnosis

00:53:20 ►

and, you know, getting high, If this book had such potent knowledge in it

00:53:26 ►

that inspired Ryan’s father to feel so threatened to burn it,

00:53:31 ►

I think I found a subject I wanted to explore.

00:53:35 ►

So I was always trying to impress my brother, John.

00:53:38 ►

He was the alpha older brother, and I admired him enormously.

00:53:43 ►

So John kept on saying, well, Paul, your science is interesting, and John and I had all enormously. So John kept on saying,

00:53:46 ►

well, Paul, your science is interesting.

00:53:48 ►

And John and I had all these trips together

00:53:49 ►

and we came up with the phrase,

00:53:51 ►

a family that trips together stays together.

00:53:55 ►

So John and I would trip a lot together

00:53:59 ►

in the mountains and great settings,

00:54:01 ►

you know, under volcanoes

00:54:02 ►

and cascading waterfalls and glaciers

00:54:05 ►

and had amazing times.

00:54:07 ►

But John goes, well, Paul, you need to be serious.

00:54:10 ►

You’re a serious scientist.

00:54:11 ►

You’re going to really impress me, you know.

00:54:14 ►

And basically he said that in so many words.

00:54:16 ►

So I was appointed by AAAS,

00:54:19 ►

the American Association for the Advancement of Science,

00:54:22 ►

as an invention ambassador.

00:54:24 ►

I went through about two weeks

00:54:26 ►

vetting process, a gauntlet of

00:54:30 ►

other scientists, and they wanted to find inventors

00:54:32 ►

and scientists who could communicate

00:54:34 ►

science and inspire people in the

00:54:36 ►

public. So it was an

00:54:38 ►

extraordinary vetting process,

00:54:40 ►

and I made it through.

00:54:41 ►

There were seven of us appointed

00:54:43 ►

as invention ambassadors,

00:54:45 ►

including the other person in my class of seven,

00:54:49 ►

invented digital photography.

00:54:51 ►

And so it was a hugely prestigious achievement for me.

00:54:54 ►

I got really excited.

00:54:56 ►

And so I’ve been vetted, and I got the letter.

00:54:59 ►

I go, okay, John, I’m going to show you, right?

00:55:02 ►

And so I got the letter, and I’m really excited,

00:55:05 ►

and so I called my brother and said, you know,

00:55:08 ►

and the phone didn’t answer.

00:55:09 ►

And I was so excited to say,

00:55:11 ►

I’ve been vetted by the most prestigious scientific organization in the world,

00:55:14 ►

and I called, and I called, and he didn’t answer.

00:55:17 ►

He didn’t answer because that night he had a heart attack and died.

00:55:21 ►

And so John was enormously influential in my life. He was a well-known photographer in

00:55:27 ►

Seattle. Many people in Seattle know of him and his career there at the University of Washington

00:55:32 ►

School of Architecture. So anyhow, another person enormously contributed to my life,

00:55:40 ►

as well as these individuals. And this is Dr. Michael Bugue in the upper left, Dr. Alexander Smith in the right, Dr. Daniel Stuntz, University of Washington, lower left, and Catherine Skates from Post Falls, Idaho, on the lower right.

00:55:54 ►

Well, I met these mycologists, and these are some of the most prestigious mycologists in the world.

00:56:03 ►

Alexander Smith being the father of American mycology, Daniel Stuntz the most premier mycologist on the world, Alexander Smith being the father of American mycology,

00:56:06 ►

Daniel Stunson, the most premier mycologist

00:56:08 ►

on the West Coast of North America.

00:56:10 ►

And they sort of adopted me when I was about 19 years of age

00:56:14 ►

when I first approached them

00:56:16 ►

because of my interest in psilocybin mushrooms.

00:56:17 ►

I spent a lot of time in the University of Washington library

00:56:19 ►

studying and gathering and writing taxonomic keys

00:56:24 ►

trying to figure out the taxonomy of psilocybe mushrooms.

00:56:28 ►

And it was extraordinary that they took me under the wing

00:56:30 ►

because two of them were really conservative politically,

00:56:33 ►

and this is what I look like.

00:56:39 ►

Your suspicions are now confirmed.

00:56:44 ►

So that then ended up Michael Bug, the guy with the basket there in the upper left,

00:56:51 ►

he ended up getting a DEA license, a Drug Enforcement Administration license,

00:56:54 ►

for possession of psilocybin and cultivation.

00:56:56 ►

I went to the Evergreen State College.

00:56:59 ►

We got a psilocybin license, and so I was able to grow and possess psilocybin mushrooms

00:57:05 ►

at the Evergreen State College.

00:57:06 ►

I figured everyone who approached me was a DEA agent.

00:57:10 ►

I came up with a mantra long ago, still abide by it.

00:57:13 ►

Nature provides, I don’t.

00:57:16 ►

And I don’t provide magic mushrooms to people for lots of reasons,

00:57:20 ►

but one of my primary reasons is I’m responsible for that person’s trip.

00:57:26 ►

If I just give somebody psilocybin mushrooms and they go away and they have a bad trip, wow, that was really

00:57:30 ►

irresponsible of me. You know, if you’re going to sit with somebody, you know, that that’s cool,

00:57:35 ►

but I’m not going to take on somebody else’s karma. I’m not a therapist, you know? So I,

00:57:39 ►

I restricted myself, self-discipline, no one ever one ever told me. But I never got in trouble with the DEA or the government because I just can’t be corrupted.

00:57:48 ►

You know, I just won’t go there.

00:57:51 ►

But we launched on an amazing tour of the west coast of North America.

00:57:56 ►

Dr. Gaston Guzman, Gary Menzer, there’s Stephen Pollack, there’s myself at our classes, and Dale Leslie.

00:58:04 ►

Now, Michael Bugue ended up having three students, Jonathan Ott, Jeremy Bigood, and myself.

00:58:10 ►

Between the three of us, I think we’ve written 17 books.

00:58:14 ►

Extraordinary.

00:58:14 ►

He’s such a nerdy guy.

00:58:16 ►

I love him.

00:58:17 ►

But he ended up getting the DEA license because he wrote the protocol for analyzing psilocybin, separating it from other dimethyltryptamines.

00:58:25 ►

protocol for analyzing psilocybin, separating them from other dimethyltryptamines. He was called in as a defense witness, getting people out of jail or not being convicted because the

00:58:31 ►

DEA’s protocols were imperfect. Mike wrote the correct protocols, then submitted for a DEA

00:58:38 ►

license, and then shepherded us. And then Jonathan Ott, many of you know who he is. He’s a legend. And then Terrence McKenna, Andy Weil, Gary Mentzer, and Stephen Pollock,

00:58:49 ►

four great psychonauts that were involved.

00:58:52 ►

And Lorenzo mentioned the fantastic Millennium Mushroom Conference

00:58:56 ►

with Sasha Shulgin, Andy Weil’s there, Sasha Shulgin, Gary Linkoff,

00:59:04 ►

Satit Taitakun, my friend from Thailand, David Aurora, et cetera.

00:59:08 ►

And this led to a whole bunch of psychoactive mushroom conferences.

00:59:12 ►

A whole bunch of books were coming out in the 70s.

00:59:15 ►

There’s four of mine on the right.

00:59:17 ►

And I love the one, The Hallucinating Plants of North America.

00:59:21 ►

What every third grader should learn.

00:59:23 ►

Teach them while they’re young.

00:59:25 ►

That was a one-off edition.

00:59:28 ►

Hippie inherited the golden guide, and he put out this thing,

00:59:32 ►

and then the PTAs of America got really upset,

00:59:35 ►

and they banned the book immediately.

00:59:38 ►

But that led to the Solosomy Convinces Scholarship Fund, as I called it.

00:59:42 ►

People in colleges all over the United States and in Europe would go psilocybe comensis in jars in their closets.

00:59:49 ►

Basically, to put money back into the local economy, pay for tuition, food, gas, you know.

00:59:55 ►

But it was a massive number of people growing in college campus dorms psilocybin mushrooms.

01:00:02 ►

I went on to publish four different psilocybe mushrooms, psilocybin azurescens,

01:00:06 ►

liniformis variety maracana,

01:00:09 ►

cyanofibrillosa,

01:00:10 ►

and psilocybin wilii.

01:00:12 ►

So I have several

01:00:14 ►

other species I have not yet published,

01:00:16 ►

but I’m going to show you a short

01:00:17 ►

little clip, and

01:00:20 ►

I hesitated to show

01:00:21 ►

this until last year or so.

01:00:24 ►

I’m 63 years of age.

01:00:27 ►

I have no criminal record yet.

01:00:32 ►

And after a while, I just don’t give a shit.

01:00:35 ►

So anyhow, here you go.

01:00:38 ►

Greetings, and meet psilocybe azurescens.

01:00:41 ►

Psilocybe azurescens is probably one of the most potent mushrooms in the world.

01:00:46 ►

It contains psilocybin and psilocin up to 2% of its dried mass.

01:00:50 ►

Now think of that. 2% of the dried mass of this mushroom are psychoactive crystals.

01:00:55 ►

Why would a mushroom produce so much? We don’t know, but it certainly has attracted the interest of humans.

01:01:00 ►

The bluing that you see here is a bruising reaction.

01:01:03 ►

It’s indicative of psilocin as it degrades.

01:01:06 ►

And the more bluing you see, the more psilocin there once was.

01:01:10 ►

Now psilocybin dephosphorylates into psilocin,

01:01:13 ►

and when you ingest these mushrooms, psilocin becomes a serotonin antagonist.

01:01:17 ►

It means that the psilocybin or the psilocin becomes a temporary neurotransmitter,

01:01:22 ►

opening up the floodgates of the senses.

01:01:24 ►

Now this mushroom is sinuous.

01:01:26 ►

It’s got a sinuous stem, which means it bends back and forth.

01:01:29 ►

It’s bluing very, very strongly.

01:01:31 ►

And it has a very indicative spore color here on the annular zone.

01:01:37 ►

And the spore color is purple-brown, and the mushrooms are bluish.

01:01:40 ►

Those two features in combination pretty much de facto determines a psilocybe. Now look

01:01:46 ►

how bodacious the rhizomorphs are at the base of the stem. This is a large psilocybe, by far the

01:01:52 ►

largest one that I know that grows on wood chips in the Pacific Northwest. It is now a popular one

01:01:58 ►

to have in your backyard. It’s just fun. It’s just naturalized in the woods here. And this is a beautiful fruiting of them.

01:02:06 ►

And the psilocybes, many of the woodland psilocybes have this chestnut brown to caramel color.

01:02:16 ►

This one is unique in that it’s got these umbos.

01:02:20 ►

And it’s a broad umbo.

01:02:22 ►

And the cap is very circular.

01:02:26 ►

The bruising reaction is just from impact of rain, perhaps.

01:02:30 ►

This mushroom is one of the most fascinating and interesting ones to grow.

01:02:37 ►

Those who choose to partake of this mushroom should be warned.

01:02:41 ►

These are exceptionally potent, and oftentimes they can cause temporary paralysis, loss of muscle control. So that is not a good thing. It seems

01:02:52 ►

that most people who boil this mushroom in hot water, those symptoms seem to be alleviated.

01:02:58 ►

But this is clearly a sacred species and I love just personally touching it. This is not a mushroom that I enjoy eating.

01:03:05 ►

It’s almost too potent for me. But it is a species that I greatly admire. I love touching it. I love

01:03:12 ►

handling it. I love seeing it. And it’s a great indicator of the habitat in my magical mushroom

01:03:19 ►

forest that is very conducive to spiritual experiences. And this mushroom also grows on this island here.

01:03:28 ►

So it grows all up and down the West Coast now, back and also in New England.

01:03:33 ►

It’s been transported by many people, and they grow it in their backyards.

01:03:38 ►

Now, other species, it’s a fascinating, it’s lots to be Baocistus in the center there.

01:03:40 ►

It’s fascinating.

01:03:43 ►

It’s lost to be Baocystis in the center there.

01:03:54 ►

And Baocystis is really important because of compounds that are analogs to psilocybin and psilocin called Baocystin and neurobaocystin.

01:03:58 ►

Now, I don’t have time to tell you what I would love to dive deeply.

01:04:03 ►

I will with other researchers,

01:04:05 ►

but mark my words, pay attention to Baocystin.

01:04:10 ►

There is a very big developing story that I don’t know of any other researchers

01:04:16 ►

who have discovered what we have discovered.

01:04:18 ►

So it’s an extraordinary potential breakthrough, and time will tell.

01:04:23 ►

But Baocystin, coming from Psilocybe baocystis,

01:04:27 ►

and there’s the norabaocystin and baocystin, there are baocystins as a methylated form

01:04:32 ►

of psilocybin. Psilocybin dephosphorylates into psilocin. So there’s Psilocybe baocystis,

01:04:40 ►

Psilocybe cyanescens, Psilocybe stuncii, psilocybe alenei.

01:04:50 ►

And you should be careful picking these psilocybe mushrooms because I found this collection on the right where the deadly Galerana adamnalis marginata is growing so close to psilocybe stuncii that they’re touching.

01:04:59 ►

And I was extremely concerned when I wrote my first book in 1979, Psilocybe Mushrooms and Their Allies,

01:05:04 ►

I was extremely concerned when I wrote my first book in 1979, Psilocybe Mushrooms and Their Allies,

01:05:12 ►

and I put it in there because I was worried about people mistakenly identifying or grabbing deadly poisonous mushrooms and their enthusiasm for finding psilocybin mushrooms.

01:05:15 ►

And indeed, that has occurred.

01:05:18 ►

And a woman, a young lady near Everett, Washington, consumed galerinas, became extremely sick,

01:05:30 ►

and did not go to the hospital because the hospital physicians had a reputation,

01:05:35 ►

as well known, of confiding with law enforcement.

01:05:39 ►

And kids that were tripping on mushrooms were taken to the hospital,

01:05:43 ►

and when they asked them what they had consumed and they gave the person asking them what they consumed, it wasn’t a doctor alone.

01:05:50 ►

It was a doctor and a policeman.

01:05:53 ►

And they had bussed them on the hospital bed.

01:05:56 ►

She did not want to go to the hospital.

01:05:57 ►

As a result, she died.

01:05:59 ►

So that’s an unfortunate true story.

01:06:03 ►

Psilocybe semelanciata. Also a psilocybe pelliculosa.

01:06:08 ►

Semelanciata has a nipple on top.

01:06:10 ►

It grows in grasslands.

01:06:11 ►

Psilocybe pelliculosa is very common.

01:06:13 ►

It grows here also in Orcas Island.

01:06:15 ►

It’s a wood chip psilocybe.

01:06:16 ►

And here is another little short video.

01:06:19 ►

Throughout the temperate regions of Europe and the Pacific Northwest,

01:06:23 ►

one of the most interesting psilocybes

01:06:26 ►

to collect is one that grows near ponds in the grass. And this field has not had cows on it for

01:06:34 ►

more than 10 years. So cows and sheep can help, but they’re not necessary. And this is psilocybe

01:06:40 ►

simulansiata, the famed liberty cap. It’s exquisite little fruiting here.

01:06:47 ►

It’s got a translucent striate margin.

01:06:49 ►

You can see the striations, they’re actually the gills showing through the cap.

01:06:53 ►

And the cap also has a separable gelatinous pellicle.

01:06:57 ►

So here is one over here that we can look at.

01:07:01 ►

And as you tear the cap, there is a film that’s clearly visible, and you can say,

01:07:07 ►

whoa, that’s a really big one. That film stretches and then breaks. So these mushrooms have purple

01:07:13 ►

brown spores, a separate gelatinous pellicle, and they typically have a sharp umbo, or a nipple,

01:07:19 ►

at the very, very top of the cap, and this papilla, or nipple, is not always in every specimen, but

01:07:28 ►

it’s quite characteristic of the species in general. So, Salosapis simulansiata. Many

01:07:34 ►

people, when they pick simulansiata, they don’t realize that the stem is so long. I

01:07:39 ►

think it’s a mutualistic species with the rhizomes of grass, almost like a pseudo-micro-rhizome relationship,

01:07:47 ►

which means it’s not obligatory, but it benefits from it.

01:07:51 ►

And the stems often are picked because people don’t realize that the stem length is way, way down.

01:07:58 ►

So be careful.

01:08:00 ►

Always try to get the base of the stem if you can.

01:08:01 ►

Always try to get the base system if you can.

01:08:09 ►

And this is the great thing about knowing how to identify and harvest philosophy.

01:08:11 ►

Mushrooms is part of your journey.

01:08:13 ►

You go out on vision quests.

01:08:15 ►

You’re looking for the philosophies.

01:08:18 ►

You have the eureka experience of encountering them.

01:08:20 ►

You know, you’re discerning them from lookalikes.

01:08:22 ►

You’re learning Latin binomials.

01:08:23 ►

You’re with friends.

01:08:26 ►

It’s like an Easter egg hunt or a magical mushroom easter egg hunt and um then you journey and so it’s a continuum of experiences

01:08:32 ►

that brings you directly in contact as opposed to taking a pill in a clinic in a hospital you know

01:08:38 ►

with doctors with suits and going down corridors you know it’s a really different mental ecosystem

01:08:46 ►

when you’re collecting these mushrooms in the wild.

01:08:50 ►

So a lot of you have seen this.

01:08:53 ►

I’m going to summarize some of the research

01:08:54 ►

from Johns Hopkins here.

01:08:58 ►

And KPAC, Catherine mentioned this

01:09:02 ►

in her great talk earlier.

01:09:04 ►

The mystical-like experiences 14 months later.

01:09:08 ►

Many people describe it as one significant experience,

01:09:11 ►

spiritual experience of their life, similar to that,

01:09:13 ►

and the significance of the birth of their children.

01:09:16 ►

I love this next study.

01:09:19 ►

480,000 people surveyed,

01:09:22 ►

and psilocybin use was associated with 27, this is with prisoners, HHS,

01:09:28 ►

and did a survey to see what their drug use was associated with their criminal activity in history.

01:09:34 ►

And those people who used psilocybin mushrooms had a 27% decreased odds of past year larceny or theft,

01:09:41 ►

a 22% decreased odds for property crime, 18% decrease in

01:09:46 ►

odds for a violent crime.

01:09:48 ►

Well, doesn’t that benefit society?

01:09:51 ►

Reducing court costs, making law enforcement able to focus better on other activities that

01:09:58 ►

are more deleterious to us, you know, as a community?

01:10:05 ►

Absolutely.

01:10:06 ►

Psilocybin mushrooms reduce crime.

01:10:10 ►

What Republican would oppose that, you know?

01:10:15 ►

Don’t answer the question.

01:10:16 ►

I think this microphone is going dead, by the way.

01:10:21 ►

Okay, so, and then, interesting,

01:10:24 ►

1,2666 community members aged

01:10:26 ►

between 16 to 70 a negative relationship between psychedelic use and intimate partner violence

01:10:33 ►

now interestingly it was primarily i think solely associated with men that men who tripped on

01:10:42 ►

mushrooms were not violent to their partners.

01:10:46 ►

Statistically significant.

01:10:48 ►

Think of that.

01:10:52 ►

If you have a male partner who trips on mushrooms,

01:10:54 ►

you’re going to have a happier relationship.

01:10:57 ►

Okay, I think we can live with that.

01:11:04 ►

So then emotional responsiveness and depression,

01:11:05 ►

able to reconnect.

01:11:13 ►

The reset mechanism is proposed, and then the disconnection of the amygdala is part of the fear response.

01:11:18 ►

And the big news is, of course, using psilocybin for treatment of resistance to depression.

01:11:22 ►

Lots of studies are involved in coming out with that.

01:11:25 ►

Psychiatric disorders, and this is one i love the most those individuals who are associated with eating magic mushrooms

01:11:30 ►

add a decreased authoritarian political views

01:11:34 ►

and so if you trip on mushrooms you’re less likely to um endorse, you know. So the psilocybin mushrooms are a direct threat to dictatorial regimes.

01:11:51 ►

Okay, so I can think of, again, a lot of governments could benefit,

01:11:56 ►

or the people in those societies could benefit,

01:11:59 ►

and they would be a direct threat to the tyrannical regimes.

01:12:03 ►

Okay, I’m going to show,

01:12:07 ►

Louis Schwartzberg and I are coming up with a movie called Fantastic Fungi,

01:12:09 ►

The Magic Beneath Your Feet.

01:12:13 ►

And this is from Johns Hopkins,

01:12:16 ►

with permission of the Johns Hopkins researchers

01:12:19 ►

and the patients.

01:12:21 ►

And I’m going to, this is about five minutes long,

01:12:24 ►

and then we’ll come to the conclusion of my talk.

01:12:26 ►

And what we do, so can I get better batteries in this?

01:12:29 ►

Because this is definitely going bad.

01:12:31 ►

Okay, so here we go.

01:12:34 ►

Oh, by the way, that mushroom stone there, I made it.

01:12:39 ►

I made 12 of these.

01:12:41 ►

Actually, Dusty, my wife and I, my ex-wife and I made these.

01:12:45 ►

And so when I went to meet Roland Griffiths at Johns Hopkins,

01:12:50 ►

I couldn’t believe they had the mushroom stone in there.

01:12:52 ►

I said, where did you get that?

01:12:53 ►

Oh, someone gave it to us.

01:12:54 ►

So I was physically, the physical embodiment of my work

01:12:59 ►

was present in over 700 Soul Simon sessions, you know.

01:13:04 ►

So here we go.

01:13:10 ►

Anyone who’s had one of those experiences

01:13:12 ►

in a country where it’s not legal to have them

01:13:14 ►

is stuck in this position where something really precious

01:13:18 ►

and really giving a great gift to you

01:13:21 ►

is not understood by the culture at large and furthermore puts you or

01:13:26 ►

other people or and other people at risk of prosecution. And one response to that is to get

01:13:34 ►

angry and to want to fight that. And another response to it is to say, we just got to explain

01:13:40 ►

to people what’s going on here. And when people understand it, then there will be accommodation and respect.

01:13:52 ►

I’ve been diagnosed with prostate cancer.

01:13:56 ►

My diagnosis was so bad that my…

01:14:01 ►

It was, you know, they weren’t giving me any chance whatsoever.

01:14:06 ►

My diagnosis was kidney cancer.

01:14:09 ►

Finding out that you may want to get your affairs in order.

01:14:15 ►

I first found out about the study when my oncologist gave me a pamphlet.

01:14:20 ►

He said, here’s something that might be able to help you with the anxiety.

01:14:25 ►

And I was accepted into the study.

01:14:28 ►

The most important thing is to remember that you’re always safe.

01:14:33 ►

And a recommendation is that whatever is coming up, that you allow it, that you don’t have to like it, but you say, okay, rather than trying to run away from it.

01:14:45 ►

Once a volunteer is enrolled in the study, they’re with us for the preparation, the psilocybin sessions, and the integration follow-ups after.

01:14:55 ►

I have been a guide for around 350 psilocybin sessions and then about 1,000 of the preparatory and integration meetings.

01:15:04 ►

All right.

01:15:05 ►

Go.

01:15:07 ►

Okay, lift your head up.

01:15:08 ►

It’s really just about experiencing what comes up as psilocybin takes effect. In the intense part of this journey,

01:15:36 ►

this world and things that matter to most people,

01:15:39 ►

family and all that,

01:15:41 ►

that wasn’t even what it was about.

01:15:44 ►

They say anything mystical can’t be

01:15:45 ►

explained it’s something like that it’s it’s it’s it’s a feeling of such immense power

01:15:52 ►

that you can’t even imagine i’ve never felt anything like it before

01:15:58 ►

it was about being in a place of infinite space and just being there.

01:16:13 ►

There’s an experience of positive mood, sometimes open-heartedness, love,

01:16:19 ►

transcendence of time and space, and then finally it’s thought to be ineffable.

01:16:26 ►

People say, I can’t describe that experience.

01:16:35 ►

In my mind, I said, okay, hold it. If I give myself over to you,

01:16:40 ►

can you promise me that I will be in at least as strong a shape?

01:16:47 ►

It was when I entered this room.

01:16:50 ►

And I felt a voice that I needed to heed.

01:16:55 ►

Do you think I would disrespect my own handiwork?

01:17:02 ►

This is the voice from on high saying, do you think I would disrespect my child?

01:17:09 ►

And I felt so beautiful. I felt like I have never felt before. My sense of being loved,

01:17:20 ►

of being worthy, of love, of being cared for, of being worthy of love, of being cared for,

01:17:26 ►

of being important

01:17:28 ►

to someone.

01:17:34 ►

It’s huge.

01:17:40 ►

You’re going into it.

01:17:43 ►

Don’t give up.

01:18:08 ►

One third of individuals in the study said it’s the single most spiritually significant experience of their lives.

01:18:17 ►

About 70% say it’s among the five most personally meaningful experiences of their lives. And you say, well, so what does that mean?

01:18:21 ►

And initially I thought, I wonder if they don’t have pretty dull lives

01:18:26 ►

but you know people would say you know when my firstborn came into this world I’ll never

01:18:35 ►

forget that and life has never been the same since or my father passed away that was deeply

01:18:42 ►

moving to me I’m different now in the world.

01:18:45 ►

I say, you know, it’s kind of like that.

01:18:50 ►

The most glorious part was that it made me feel more comfortable with living,

01:18:58 ►

you know, because you’re not afraid of dying.

01:19:05 ►

Frankly, I’m just a laboratory scientist,

01:19:08 ►

and I wasn’t prepared for that.

01:19:11 ►

From the memory of the transcendental state of consciousness,

01:19:15 ►

many people report less anxiety, less depression,

01:19:20 ►

less preoccupation with pain,

01:19:23 ►

closer interpersonal relationships

01:19:26 ►

and perhaps most impressive

01:19:28 ►

they claim to have a loss of the fear of death

01:19:31 ►

it recalibrates how they see death

01:19:35 ►

it’s been amazing hearing them talk about this

01:19:38 ►

idea of love

01:19:39 ►

many of them have spoken about how nature itself is something like

01:19:44 ►

a substance called love

01:19:46 ►

and having touched that

01:19:49 ►

they’ve recalibrated and shaped how they die differently Thank you.

01:20:18 ►

How many people here have read Michael Pollan’s book, How to Change Your Mind?

01:20:26 ►

here have read Michael Pollan’s book, How to Change Your Mind. So Michael Pollan’s done a great service in making a bridge between those people who are psychedelically naive or have not

01:20:32 ►

tripped on mushrooms and other substances and building a bridge of familiarity to help people

01:20:40 ►

understand that these substances have benefit. Now, it’s not a dangerous question for you to answer,

01:20:48 ►

but how many people in this room have not tripped on mushrooms?

01:20:52 ►

Can you raise your hand?

01:20:55 ►

Oh, my.

01:21:00 ►

I count maybe seven out of 300.

01:21:12 ►

Well, welcome to the tribe.

01:21:23 ►

Okay, I’m going to go about ten minutes over, but I want to just go through. Another lasting effect of tripping on mushrooms is a pro-environmental behavior

01:21:33 ►

and understanding of the importance of the ecosystem.

01:21:35 ►

One feels connected.

01:21:37 ►

My research tomorrow, which I believe is paradigm shifting,

01:21:41 ►

and other people also have said that,

01:21:47 ►

is a direct consequence, I believe believe of my tripping on mushrooms and it has changed my mind so truth be told you’ll see this tomorrow

01:21:56 ►

in silicon valley microdosing is uh extremely popular uh groups of coders are getting together to solve complex computer challenges

01:22:07 ►

in writing computer code

01:22:10 ►

by taking doses of mushrooms,

01:22:12 ►

micro and macro, by the way.

01:22:15 ►

But microdosing is believed by the coders

01:22:18 ►

to give them a competitive edge

01:22:20 ►

and new insights

01:22:22 ►

into very complex algorithms

01:22:24 ►

in creating shortcuts and new ways of being able

01:22:28 ►

to crunch data. An extraordinary, extraordinary article published by Roland Griffiths and his team

01:22:35 ►

is recommending that psilocybin be removed from a Schedule 1 drug, which putatively means that it has no medical benefit and a high potential for abuse,

01:22:48 ►

to a Schedule IV, which is like asthma medicine.

01:22:54 ►

So it’s so safe.

01:22:57 ►

So the FDA is now looking at this and removing it to a Schedule IV state.

01:23:03 ►

And FDA researchers and scientists have said they’ve never seen a drug

01:23:07 ►

that had such a good safety profile with so low abuse potential.

01:23:12 ►

For those who have not eaten soul-side mushrooms,

01:23:15 ►

when you trip on a big dose of soul-side mushrooms,

01:23:18 ►

the next day you look at the mushrooms and you go,

01:23:21 ►

No way.

01:23:23 ►

I’m not going there for a while.

01:23:27 ►

So it’s not like, you know, a cocaine addict who wants to snort, you know, the next day.

01:23:31 ►

So anyhow, just announced in the past week, USONA Corporation, a nonprofit led by Bill Linton,

01:23:44 ►

extraordinary individual.

01:23:46 ►

Eighty individuals are being recruited for a Phase II trial for major depressive disorder,

01:23:51 ►

recruiting in the fall of 2019.

01:23:55 ►

Extraordinarily interesting.

01:23:57 ►

So I’m going to zoom through these for the sake of time.

01:24:00 ►

But let’s look at azurescence, sinenscence.

01:24:02 ►

And azurescence, you can see, is much larger than psilocybe sinensins.

01:24:07 ►

Many of you know psilocybe sinensins.

01:24:09 ►

It’s the wavy-capped one.

01:24:11 ►

Azurescins is much more robust.

01:24:13 ►

But I discovered something which is really counterintuitive.

01:24:17 ►

And I like going against the grain.

01:24:19 ►

It’s just my nature.

01:24:21 ►

So I discovered how to make blue juice. You take fresh philosophy mushrooms and you chop

01:24:30 ►

them up. Very counterintuitive to chemists. I talked to several chemists about this and they

01:24:35 ►

said they never would have thought of this. Usually when you want to extract a substance from

01:24:40 ►

a plant or a mushroom, you know, you use very intense solvents and accompanied

01:24:47 ►

by heat.

01:24:47 ►

That tends to get out the constituents a lot better into solution.

01:24:54 ►

But I found that if you let ice cubes on chopped mushrooms slowly melt in a refrigerator at 2 degrees Celsius, 34 degrees,

01:25:10 ►

you end up extracting the psilocybin and psilocin into the water and not pulling out the polysaccharides and all this other stuff,

01:25:14 ►

and you end up with this beautiful blue fluid.

01:25:18 ►

And then you can put it into ice cube trays, make ice cubes,

01:25:23 ►

and go to Burning Man, right?

01:25:21 ►

and put it into ice cube trays,

01:25:22 ►

make ice cubes,

01:25:24 ►

and go to Burning Man, right?

01:25:30 ►

Okay, so,

01:25:33 ►

I want you to know about another mushroom called lion’s mane.

01:25:36 ►

Lion’s mane has extraordinarily powerful

01:25:38 ►

nerve growth factors,

01:25:40 ►

herbicinones and aranasins.

01:25:41 ►

Herbicinones comes from the fruit bodies,

01:25:43 ►

aranasins come from the mycelium.

01:25:45 ►

It’s probably the strongestenerative factors ever discovered.

01:25:48 ►

Two clinical studies showing improvement in mild cognitive deficits.

01:25:55 ►

There’s an ongoing clinical study in California that we have supplied with lion’s mane mycelium for Alzheimer’s patients.

01:26:09 ►

mycelium for Alzheimer’s patients. And lion’s mane mushrooms have a significant effect on improving the ability of cognition in the elderly. Now, what lion’s mane mushrooms do is the

01:26:16 ►

aranasins is the active constituent. It’s like aranasin A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, there’s a bunch of them. The cyathane derivatives, extraordinarily expensive.

01:26:27 ►

Five milligrams cost $25,000.

01:26:32 ►

So the mushrooms are a much better and easier source for them than getting the pure substance.

01:26:40 ►

So another example of a natural product is a lot more beneficial to people

01:26:43 ►

than trying to have a pharmacologically purified individual molecule.

01:26:49 ►

And what Lyon’s main constituents do is they cause a regeneration of myelin,

01:26:55 ►

which is the conductive sheath on the axons of nerves.

01:26:58 ►

And with Alzheimer’s patients, you have a buildup of amyloid plaques.

01:27:03 ►

Now, there’s a number of studies that have come out,

01:27:05 ►

and the studies that are most extraordinarily interesting are with mice.

01:27:09 ►

And it shows that with a group of mice that have been grown in the laboratory,

01:27:14 ►

they do a controlled experiment with a maze and also a T-test.

01:27:20 ►

Basically, the T-test, they go down a corridor.

01:27:22 ►

To the left, they get food.

01:27:23 ►

To the right, there is no food.

01:27:24 ►

They figure out, go left, they’ll get food.

01:27:26 ►

They inject them with a cyclopeptide that induces amyloid plaque formation and demyelination.

01:27:32 ►

It basically causes Alzheimer’s-like symptoms and neuropathy.

01:27:36 ►

And so when they inject the mice and they’re faced with the Y-test or the T-test, left or right, they then randomize. They don’t remember which way to get the food as this Alzheimer’s-like disease symptomology progresses

01:27:50 ►

and demyelination occurs, neurotransmission is interfered with, amyloid plaques form.

01:27:56 ►

And then when they took those fully diseased mice and they started feeding them lion’s mane mushrooms,

01:28:01 ►

the amyloid plaques were removed, remyelination occurred,

01:28:05 ►

lion’s mane mushrooms, the amyloid plaques were removed, remyelination occurred, and then when they put them in that t-test again, they re-remembered which way to go to find the food.

01:28:10 ►

Upon resecting the mice and looking at their brains versus the mice that were not given the

01:28:15 ►

lion’s mane, they could clearly see, systologically, that the mice benefited from taking the lion’s

01:28:21 ►

mane. There’s other tests, too, that won’t get involved, but basically they were able to, through a behavior test

01:28:26 ►

and then through resection, to prove that behaviorally

01:28:29 ►

and also through resection,

01:28:31 ►

they could see that the lion’s mane mushrooms helped.

01:28:35 ►

So there’s a number of lion’s mane mushrooms.

01:28:36 ►

Hubris semiobiotis is one.

01:28:38 ►

So psilocybin costs $7,000 per gram.

01:28:43 ►

Wow.

01:28:43 ►

That’s about $70 for, like, a one-gram dose of Cubensis,

01:28:50 ►

you know, 10 milligrams.

01:28:51 ►

So it’s expensive.

01:28:52 ►

And you’re in a clinical setting

01:28:54 ►

with all those doctors in a hospital,

01:28:56 ►

you know, and they step on that

01:28:59 ►

and multiply the expensive.

01:29:01 ►

Psilocybin treatment can become very expensive.

01:29:04 ►

So I came up with something.

01:29:07 ►

And before I show this, I’d like to ask the group here, the show of hands,

01:29:12 ►

how many people remember in the 60s and 70s and the 80s that you heard

01:29:17 ►

if you had a bad trip on psilocybin or LSD, if you took niacin,

01:29:23 ►

you would come down from a bad trip?

01:29:27 ►

How many people heard that? One, two,

01:29:33 ►

three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. About ten people raised their hand. It was very common knowledge in the 60s and 70s. Well, it turns out that there’s no evidence of that,

01:29:38 ►

but it was conventional wisdom that that was the case. But I think the opposite.

01:29:46 ►

Since niacin doesn’t counteract the effects of psilocybin,

01:29:50 ►

it actually enhances it.

01:29:51 ►

So I propose this, a stacking formula for epigenetic neurogenesis.

01:29:57 ►

Stacking psilocybin, aranacines, and vitamin B3, niacin.

01:30:04 ►

Now, that also means psilocybin mushrooms have 1% psilocybin by weight,

01:30:10 ►

the natural form, the mushrooms.

01:30:12 ►

That’s 10 milligrams.

01:30:14 ►

Aranacines are very expensive, so the mushrooms are better.

01:30:17 ►

Nicotinic acid causes vitamin B3, causes the red flushing.

01:30:23 ►

The reason why I think this formula is a good one is the neurogenesis in the hippocampus

01:30:28 ►

that’s been shown causes proliferation of the nerve tips.

01:30:33 ►

Aranasins in lion’s mane mushrooms causes remyelination on the axons of the nerves.

01:30:39 ►

And the idea of neuropathy, many neuropathies present themselves as a deadening of the fingertips

01:30:43 ►

and the toes.

01:30:44 ►

You lose sensation.

01:30:47 ►

And so because niacin excites the nerve endings, you get a red flush.

01:30:51 ►

Why not stack these three so you can drive the neurogenic benefits of psilocybin and

01:30:58 ►

aranasins or the psilocybin mushrooms and their lion’s mane mushrooms to the endpoints

01:31:02 ►

of the nervous system as a driving mechanism.

01:31:06 ►

Now, admittedly, the vascular system needs to be intact in order to bring these to the endpoints,

01:31:11 ►

you know, of your fingers and your toes.

01:31:13 ►

But I think this is well worth exploring.

01:31:16 ►

And so I think this is something that could be very helpful for microdosing.

01:31:21 ►

So I’m showing you here a microdosing formula.

01:31:24 ►

At 10 milligrams or one

01:31:27 ►

gram of sloss, you have liftoff. You can feel it. So I thought one-tenth of a gram would be good.

01:31:35 ►

And most people don’t feel anything at one-tenth of a gram. But a Mary Prankster friend of mine,

01:31:40 ►

who are very experienced, we did one-tenth of a gram. It was a very potent strain, I admit.

01:31:45 ►

In about an hour and 20 minutes, we both looked at each other and go,

01:31:48 ►

I can feel this.

01:31:49 ►

But we were super sensitive and tuned into it.

01:31:52 ►

Most people, it’s like the first time you smoke marijuana,

01:31:54 ►

you don’t even know you’re high.

01:31:56 ►

So I reduced it to one-twentieth of a gram in this formula.

01:32:01 ►

But anyhow, one-tenth to one-twentieth of a gram of psilocybe comensis,

01:32:05 ►

and then with several grams of lion’s mane mushrooms

01:32:10 ►

and 100 to 200 milligrams of niacin.

01:32:13 ►

Now, why the niacin is also good, it becomes like an antabuse.

01:32:17 ►

People, if you have this as microdosing, over-the-counter,

01:32:21 ►

if you stack it with niacin, it’s going to limit abuse

01:32:24 ►

because they try to take 20 times, 20 capsules.

01:32:29 ►

They’ll end up with such a horrific niacin flush.

01:32:32 ►

And so adversarial, they won’t take it.

01:32:34 ►

And actually, there is already a drug that has been stacked with niacin for that very purpose.

01:32:50 ►

purpose. So I present to you as a DIY formula here that people are experimenting with, and there’s always several reports on the internet over the very, very positive results. So this is something

01:32:56 ►

I hope we have a clinical study in Canada be funded in the next two years, and so we’ll see

01:33:02 ►

where it goes. But I think this makes a lot of sense.

01:33:08 ►

We’re all going to suffer from dementia on some level.

01:33:13 ►

And think about the loss of the body intellect to our culture and to our economy.

01:33:17 ►

In fact, think about intelligence agencies.

01:33:18 ►

They have elders. They’re losing knowledge that are essential for national defense.

01:33:25 ►

It seems to me that our intelligence agencies would benefit by being more intelligent.

01:33:31 ►

I await the counter-argument to that proposition.

01:33:38 ►

Anyhow, okay.

01:33:39 ►

So the other thing I wanted to point out, which I don’t know of any other researchers besides these individuals,

01:33:46 ►

it was the low doses of psilocybin with mice that extinguished the fear condition response,

01:33:54 ►

more so than the higher doses.

01:33:57 ►

So doses do make a difference.

01:34:00 ►

For a spiritual journey to fight depression, for a clinical setting, for a weekend or a few days and coming out a new person, yes, right, I think so.

01:34:13 ►

But what about the steady state decline as you get older?

01:34:18 ►

Think about the Einsteins we’re losing every day due to dementia.

01:34:24 ►

What’s the economic loss, the competitive loss of our society?

01:34:29 ►

This is something I think we can address.

01:34:32 ►

And if you can take microdoses to a level where it does not get you high,

01:34:37 ►

if the FDA is being petitioned to move it to a Schedule IV at clinically high doses,

01:34:44 ►

wouldn’t they think they’d be more favorable at one-tenth

01:34:47 ►

to one-twentieth of a dose stacked with niacin? I think so. So I would hope that this would be

01:34:53 ►

approved in the future as an over-the-counter, non-prescribed, nootropic vitamin that could

01:34:59 ►

help improve the body intellect and preserve the intellectual capital of our societies worldwide

01:35:05 ►

okay i have three more slides here i think or and so here’s a weird one here’s a soul side mushroom

01:35:20 ►

gymnopolis luteofolius well Well, it grows on alder trees.

01:35:25 ►

It bruises bluish at the very base of the stem.

01:35:29 ►

It’s not a purple-brown mushroom, but it’s very difficult to identify,

01:35:33 ►

but I might as well show this to you.

01:35:36 ►

I didn’t want to show it for years, but I’ll tell you why,

01:35:40 ►

and you’ll see why in a second, but this is just crazy.

01:35:46 ►

Okay, this is July 8th, 2011, and it’s just hard to believe that Paul Stamps’ boat will be growing a psychoactive mushroom,

01:35:55 ►

but it’s true. I know it’s not the best specimen right now, but this is Gymnopolis luteofolius.

01:36:02 ►

It is unique to alder. It’s a very rare species.

01:36:06 ►

In fact, most mycologists would not be able to identify it.

01:36:09 ►

I just happen to have a specialty in this area.

01:36:11 ►

And it is so weird because my friend Clay here, hey, Clay.

01:36:19 ►

He said he found a mushroom going off of a boat,

01:36:21 ►

and he brought it to me from your friend, right?

01:36:24 ►

At Harstein Island boat launch.

01:36:27 ►

And it was also a Gymnopolis luteofolius.

01:36:30 ►

So it begs the question now, is this mushroom indigenous to Northwest boats?

01:36:36 ►

And I’ve never found this in the wild.

01:36:38 ►

I’ve seen it at a mycological society, but go figure.

01:36:42 ►

Now, I’m not going to pick it, so I guess I’m not breaking the law.

01:36:46 ►

Or am I breaking the law because it’s growing here and I know what it is.

01:36:48 ►

I don’t know what to do.

01:36:49 ►

Anyhow, how bizarre.

01:36:52 ►

Gymnopolis luteofolius on Stamets’

01:36:54 ►

boat, and we’ve had more than one

01:36:55 ►

sighting of this on this boat, and more than

01:36:57 ►

one boat now, two boats.

01:37:00 ►

So, go figure.

01:37:03 ►

So,

01:37:04 ►

so, So go figure. So to be clear to any law enforcement, I sold the boat, okay?

01:37:15 ►

I didn’t tell the people who bought the boat what was on the boat because there wasn’t any mushrooms on the boat at the time. Okay, so the science of psilocybin is straying into the bazaar, into the science fiction.

01:37:29 ►

When this article came out on cicadas, cicadas every 17 years, I grew up in Ohio, come out in huge quantities.

01:37:37 ►

And as they get old, they get a fuzzy butt.

01:37:40 ►

Well, it turns out that fuzzy butt is mycelium packed full of psilocybin.

01:37:46 ►

And the cicadas, when they come out from underground, as they get older, most of them get this fuzzy butt.

01:37:53 ►

The mycelium actually rots off their genitalia.

01:37:57 ►

And the male cicadas, even though they don’t have any genitals, then adopt feminized behavior to attract non-infected males.

01:38:08 ►

And so they seduce them with their dance so the males that are not infected will get close to the now feminized genitalia-reduced males.

01:38:24 ►

So they get infected with the spores. so it alters the insect’s behavior.

01:38:30 ►

So, wow.

01:38:32 ►

Where is this going?

01:38:35 ►

It just speaks to the fact that the mycelium is in constant biomolecular communication with the ecosystem.

01:38:42 ►

constant biomolecular communication with the ecosystem.

01:38:48 ►

It controls and adapts and influences animal behavior,

01:38:50 ►

insects and people being animals.

01:38:54 ►

And it does so in order to perpetuate itself.

01:38:58 ►

We know that the majority of psilocybe mushrooms are debris followers,

01:39:01 ►

the woodland ones, rare in the woods,

01:39:05 ►

but they are associated with human activities of building houses,

01:39:06 ►

chopping wood.

01:39:15 ►

The invention and use of beauty bark around buildings has caused a huge surge in psilocybin mushrooms, which were not seen in the 1950s and 60s until landscaping bark was being used

01:39:21 ►

around buildings.

01:39:23 ►

Some of the best places to find psilocybin mushrooms

01:39:25 ►

have been around courthouses, jails,

01:39:28 ►

other institutions of higher learning,

01:39:33 ►

around Apple and Google and headquarters and Microsoft.

01:39:39 ►

I mean, is this accidental, incidental,

01:39:43 ►

or is it directed evolution?

01:39:46 ►

And I present you the concept that these fungi are far smarter.

01:39:51 ►

They are the elders.

01:39:52 ►

They go back millions of years.

01:39:54 ►

They’re very clever in how they can seduce and entice us to propagate them,

01:39:59 ►

and maybe they are creating a change in consciousness necessary for us to save the ecosystems because

01:40:07 ►

it protects the plurality and the biodiversity of us all.

01:40:11 ►

And us being the premier species that can inflict damage, creating the greatest catastrophes

01:40:18 ►

on this planet.

01:40:19 ►

They’re enlisting our help now at a time critical to cause a paradigm shift in evolution of human consciousness.

01:40:29 ►

So here is a two-minute closer, and then I’m done.

01:40:50 ►

Mushroom mycelium represents rebirth, rejuvenation, regeneration. Fungi generate soil that gives life.

01:41:19 ►

The task that we face today is to understand the language of nature. My mission is to discover the language of nature of the fungal networks that communicate with the ecosystem.

01:41:25 ►

And I believe nature is intelligent.

01:41:31 ►

The fact that we lack the language skills to communicate with nature does not impugn the concept that nature is intelligent.

01:41:38 ►

It speaks to our inadequacy for communication.

01:41:43 ►

If we don’t get our act together and come in commonality and understand it

01:41:46 ►

with the organisms that sustain us today, not only will we destroy those organisms,

01:41:50 ►

but we will destroy ourselves. We need to have a paradigm shift in our consciousness.

01:42:03 ►

What will it take to achieve that?

01:42:09 ►

If I die trying, but I’m inadequate to the task to make a course change in the evolution of life on this planet,

01:42:12 ►

okay, I tried.

01:42:13 ►

The fact is, I tried.

01:42:15 ►

How many people are not trying?

01:42:17 ►

If you knew that every breath you took

01:42:19 ►

could save hundreds of lives into the future

01:42:22 ►

had you walked down this path of knowledge,

01:42:24 ►

wouldn’t you run down that path of knowledge as fast as you could?

01:42:29 ►

I believe nature is a force of good.

01:42:34 ►

Good is not only a concept, it is a spirit.

01:42:38 ►

And so hopefully the spirit of goodness will survive.

01:42:42 ►

Are you on the bus?

01:42:51 ►

Thank you very much. You’re listening to The Psychedelic Salon,

01:43:08 ►

where people are changing their lives one thought at a time.

01:43:13 ►

Needless to say, when Paul asked the crowd if we were on the bus or off the bus,

01:43:18 ►

we all rose to our feet and cheered.

01:43:20 ►

And if you aren’t familiar with that phrase, on the bus,

01:43:24 ►

you ought to look it up because it’s still very important to many of us

01:43:27 ►

I should let you know that on the program notes

01:43:30 ►

I’ve also added links to Paul’s books on Amazon

01:43:33 ►

and to his company, Fungi Perfecti

01:43:36 ►

whose lion’s mane capsules I can give an unqualified

01:43:39 ►

personal endorsement of

01:43:41 ►

I think you really owe it to yourself to, at the very least

01:43:44 ►

check out the

01:43:45 ►

Fungi Perfecti website. I guarantee that you’re going to find it to be a very interesting place

01:43:51 ►

to visit from time to time. Like you, I could go on and on about how important psilocybin mushrooms

01:43:58 ►

have been to me. In fact, it was on a magic mushroom trip near the ruins at Palenque when I

01:44:03 ►

made the decision to quit my job and move to the coast.

01:44:07 ►

Had that not happened, well, you and I wouldn’t be together here in cyberdelic space right now.

01:44:13 ►

And even though we aren’t always aware of it, our friends the fungi are truly the wind under our wings.

01:44:19 ►

On many different levels, I think they’re holding our world together.

01:44:23 ►

Like most people, every once in a

01:44:25 ►

while I get what my mother used to call being down in the dumps, which I personally believe is a much

01:44:31 ►

better way of saying it than saying I was depressed. To me, depression indicates the use of

01:44:36 ►

pharmaceuticals, but down in the dumps is just something that we all have to live through every

01:44:41 ►

once in a while. However, these past few years, I’ve come across something that always lifts up my spirits.

01:44:48 ►

You see, where we live, on many mornings, there are one or two yards along my walk

01:44:53 ►

where a few little mushrooms have sprung up.

01:44:55 ►

So I’ve begun talking to them.

01:44:58 ►

Not out loud, of course.

01:45:00 ►

I am well aware what would happen to me if somebody reported an old man standing on their lawn and talking out loud to the mushrooms.

01:45:09 ►

I might be stoned a lot of the time, but I’ve never been that stoned.

01:45:13 ►

What I do, however, is I picture them in my mind and tell them how much I appreciate all that their species has done for us and for me in particular.

01:45:25 ►

for me in particular, and in my imaginary conversation with them, they suddenly appear in their ancient guise, and these old, old beings gently assure me that this too will pass,

01:45:32 ►

that there are both good times and difficult times ahead. However, I’m not to worry, because

01:45:37 ►

there can be no growth without a little discomfort and maybe even some pain. But they tell me to

01:45:43 ►

remember that these beautiful living beings

01:45:46 ►

will always have my back. They’ll always be there for me and, well, somehow that little imaginary

01:45:51 ►

conversation always makes me feel better. You might want to try it for yourself sometime.

01:45:57 ►

And for now, this is Lorenzo signing off from Cyberdelic Space, be well my friends. Thank you.

⚗️ alembic

Explorer

620 - Psilocybin and the Mycology of Consciousness

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