Researchers and veterans testifying on the use of psychedelic drugs to relieve post-traumatic stress disorder and suicidal thoughts urged House lawmakers to back more studies into the alternative treatments.
I live in Colorado and several psychedelics were recently fully legalized here. The day that happened, I ordered some mycelium cultures and started learning how to grow mushrooms. I started doing it “just because I could” and it turned into something so much more.
It has absolutely changed my frame of mind for the better. The random bouts of depression are gone and my anxiety is manageable without daily SSRIs. (For those who don’t know, the class of antidepressants I was on are not like taking an aspirin for a headache. Starting and stopping SSRIs can be a lengthy process, and even risky in some cases.) As a perk, my alcohol cravings were reduced significantly. (I was already about a year into abstinence, but like any alcoholic will tell you, the cravings and temptation never really goes away.)
I am still a few months into this experiment, but I’ll keep it going for as long as I can. If I go crazy from taking a few grams of mushrooms every one or two weeks, I’ll let you know.
I hear a lot of testimonials that sound exactly like yours and I’ve been strongly considering growing some myself. How does one go about this safely and for someone with only some gardening experience lol? They grow inside right? Do they stink? Or just kinda like grocery store portabello or chef’s sampler mushroom smell?
Oh, quick addendum that is more about the actual benefits and how I got to that point.
It took a while, but started at moderate dosages to become absolutely familiar with what my mind and body could handle. Eventually, I worked my way up to the mythical “breakthrough” dosages. (+5g)
To be honest, it took getting to a state where my perception of reality was completely annihilated for the major benefits to start being persistent and effective. Once a person goes through that experience once or twice with the absolute and pure intent of getting healthy, it is life changing.
The term for a breakthrough is also known as “ego destruction” or “ego dissolution”. At this very moment, a tear came to my eye thinking back on those experiences. It is extremely intense and probably the single most beautiful experiences of my life. It’ll change a person, is what I am saying.
To be honest, I don’t need to go that far again for quite a while. It’s not that I don’t want to, it’s that I don’t need to. If you allow psychedelics to build on your own self-awareness, abuse and excessive use is a non-issue. Psychedelics, for me, self-regulate. It’s just one of those impossible to describe feelings.
Edit: As a perk, it’s my social drug of choice. I am completely comfortable around people at a 2-3g gram dose and it’s not an everyday thing, at all. It’s a much healthier substitute for my years of daily alcohol abuse, IMHO.
Thanks for both your posts! Interesting and helpful. I’ve never had psilocybin just by chance I haven’t had the opportunity even though I’ve done a lot of drugs and had my frat boy / psychonaut days but just by chance never got around to a shroom trip and now don’t live with easy access to good and plentiful drugs lol. I’ve had experience with what I was told was LSD but was likely some research chemical as well as two or three other experiences with what I was told from the beginning were research chemicals. It was so-so. I have a high tolerance to most every drug probably because I’m a bulky adult male with depression and ADHD my brain and body need a lot to react but for whatever reason this just does not apply to psychedelics. Applies to energy drinks amphetamine cocaine weed alcohol even like spicy or sketchy food (I have a strong stomach) you name it but nope every trip was like okay here it goes lol. I did experience ego death in at least one or two of them, it was cool. In one trip I not only lost the concept of myself but I lost the concept of how society works because I really wanted a sweet drink but the concept of using some paper or plastic from my pocket to exchange for it was just lost to me. I forgot the entire human bartering concept as a whole temporarily, lol. One trip was with frat bros and was chill and fun mostly comedic buddy stuff rather than any introspection or mental health stuff, one was with an ex and was okay but mostly visual and I combined with mdma to candy flip or whatever the kids called it back then with my gf we were doing what you think we would be doing, mostly, lol. One trip I was alone and did some introspection and experienced ego death but either the dosage or chemical wasn’t the right blend to gain any deep insight. Aaaand one trip was truly a trip as for some reason I accused my then roommate of messing with my laptop for some reason even though he was chill and wouldn’t do that and then I just went for an impromptu long distance walk around the college town I was in. Somehow someway the drug kicked in enough and I was just following what I thought were like clues where to go for the fun of it like a real life video game but for some reason I couldn’t shake the feeling like am I actually doing this am I losing it seeing patterns and stuff that aren’t there? Long story short I ended up on federal government property and I guess their security called the cops on me which several of them showed up because of just how bizarre my situation was and I was obviously out of it but in a psychedelic way like fear and loathing in las vegas not like booze or pot. But I guess after a decently long conversation they determined I wasn’t doing anything sketchy or dangerous or had any care about the location I was in and they took me to the hospital to detox etc. It led to my first of three total involuntary psychiatric stays (all around a few years of tumultuous time in my life for unrelated reasons basically mental health). Which btw those places mostly are the suck but that first one was the worst. I was still high and now being held in a hospital room alone under supervision waiting to figure out wtf they wanted from me and they somehow authorized the suicide watch 72hr involuntary hold every state has despite me being neither suicidal or homicidal, just obviously mentally not in a good place. But sorry for the wall of text, that was many years ago and thankfully because of not doing that poorly in my life anymore and literally having PTSD making me despise and avoid ever being in hospitals for any reason I haven’t been back in a while lol. Just specialists for me now. I really want to try microdosing at first to gauge my brain and body’s reaction to psilocybin since anything psychedelic or dissociative makes me nauseous my strong stomach puts in its immediate resignation. But I do also want a proper bigger dosage trip to connect with myself more spiritually and analyze myself and my mindset much better which I just like everyone and their uncle find psychadellics primo for.
Edit: Oo I forgot! I already take and like mushroom based nootropics right now it’s lions mane and cordyceps. I get good results from them
Your life is not that different than many others, to be honest. Everyone is unique, so I don’t want to disregard that.
I have similar issues in that I have ADHD, depression and anxiety. It caused a ton of problems for me growing up, especially when it comes to alcohol and drug abuse. As mentioned before, alcohol was my demon of choice for about 30 years.
Psychedelics are unique. If you want to party and just get fucked up, they can absolutely work that way. Once I started to seriously experiment with how they could be used to change who I was as a person, the experience immediately changed. It changed completely.
Mostly as a joke with a tiny hint of seriousness, I have recently been personifying mushrooms. A mushroom will let you trip and party, but if you ask nicely, it’ll show you things you really want to see and understand.
Regardless if you like that experience or hate it, it’ll still hold you there for a few hours and make you stare at what you originally wished for.
Growing them is fairly easy and you just need to understand when the growing environment is most vulnerable to contamination.
There is not really an unsafe way to grow them and there aren’t any conditions that I can think of that would somehow turn p. cubensis toxic. Once a specific species of mycelium takes hold of a substrate, it’s quite difficult for any other mold or fungi to grow in it which would be the source of anything that could be toxic.
They don’t stink at all, imo. They should always have a nice earthy smell and once you get fruit development, they just smell like mushrooms. If they are dried and stored correctly, they will taste like portobellos. Like any other dried foods, if they are not kept in a dry environment and go stale, they will taste bad.
Then there is the chitin. It’s basically a super tough glucose structure that is produced in nature for things like exoskeletons and stuff. If you hear people getting an upset stomach from shrooms, that is why. I happen to have a stomach of steel so it doesn’t bother me in at all. This is where making tea or lemon extracts can really help.
Uncle Bens Tek is the easiest way to get started with minimal supplies. You literally innoculate a bag of Uncle Bens brown rice to kick off the mycelium development. 90 Second Mycology has a great series about it and tells you all the supplies you need: https://youtube.com/@90SecondMycology?si=4I_9bu838ABEdUo0
Depending on where you live, getting a mycelium culture might be difficult. GA, CA and IA are the only states that I know that have restrictions on buying spores or mycelium cultures. Since I am in CO, it’s fully legal for me to grow and order these things. My primary source for genetics is Denver Spore Company since it’s local and I trust them. They are also very active in our local mushroom communities as well. https://www.denversporecompany.com/terms-and-conditions
It takes a bit to understand the growth cycle, but that comes with practice. It’s not like a typical house plant, but once it “clicks” how everything works, it gets super easy to tweak and manage how they grow.
Then there is usage. Some people just aren’t compatible with psilocybin or psychedelics in general. My chemistry happens to be 100% compatible. Marijuana makes me super paranoid while tripping seems 100% compatible with my perception of life. Start small and gradually increase your dose and you can’t really go wrong. Many people report that microdoses work great, but that is not my thing.
If you are not familiar with what a trip is or how it works, Josie Kins has done a good job of classifying and describing “levels” of a trip. The graphics she has in her videos are super accurate to my personal experiences: https://youtu.be/UQRfTD6AXPs?si=90sCLieDEfLF3go3
I hold out hope that it will provide long lasting treatment for depression, too.
Anecdotally, it is working for me.
I live in Colorado and several psychedelics were recently fully legalized here. The day that happened, I ordered some mycelium cultures and started learning how to grow mushrooms. I started doing it “just because I could” and it turned into something so much more.
It has absolutely changed my frame of mind for the better. The random bouts of depression are gone and my anxiety is manageable without daily SSRIs. (For those who don’t know, the class of antidepressants I was on are not like taking an aspirin for a headache. Starting and stopping SSRIs can be a lengthy process, and even risky in some cases.) As a perk, my alcohol cravings were reduced significantly. (I was already about a year into abstinence, but like any alcoholic will tell you, the cravings and temptation never really goes away.)
I am still a few months into this experiment, but I’ll keep it going for as long as I can. If I go crazy from taking a few grams of mushrooms every one or two weeks, I’ll let you know.
I hear a lot of testimonials that sound exactly like yours and I’ve been strongly considering growing some myself. How does one go about this safely and for someone with only some gardening experience lol? They grow inside right? Do they stink? Or just kinda like grocery store portabello or chef’s sampler mushroom smell?
Oh, quick addendum that is more about the actual benefits and how I got to that point.
It took a while, but started at moderate dosages to become absolutely familiar with what my mind and body could handle. Eventually, I worked my way up to the mythical “breakthrough” dosages. (+5g)
To be honest, it took getting to a state where my perception of reality was completely annihilated for the major benefits to start being persistent and effective. Once a person goes through that experience once or twice with the absolute and pure intent of getting healthy, it is life changing.
The term for a breakthrough is also known as “ego destruction” or “ego dissolution”. At this very moment, a tear came to my eye thinking back on those experiences. It is extremely intense and probably the single most beautiful experiences of my life. It’ll change a person, is what I am saying.
To be honest, I don’t need to go that far again for quite a while. It’s not that I don’t want to, it’s that I don’t need to. If you allow psychedelics to build on your own self-awareness, abuse and excessive use is a non-issue. Psychedelics, for me, self-regulate. It’s just one of those impossible to describe feelings.
Edit: As a perk, it’s my social drug of choice. I am completely comfortable around people at a 2-3g gram dose and it’s not an everyday thing, at all. It’s a much healthier substitute for my years of daily alcohol abuse, IMHO.
Thanks for both your posts! Interesting and helpful. I’ve never had psilocybin just by chance I haven’t had the opportunity even though I’ve done a lot of drugs and had my frat boy / psychonaut days but just by chance never got around to a shroom trip and now don’t live with easy access to good and plentiful drugs lol. I’ve had experience with what I was told was LSD but was likely some research chemical as well as two or three other experiences with what I was told from the beginning were research chemicals. It was so-so. I have a high tolerance to most every drug probably because I’m a bulky adult male with depression and ADHD my brain and body need a lot to react but for whatever reason this just does not apply to psychedelics. Applies to energy drinks amphetamine cocaine weed alcohol even like spicy or sketchy food (I have a strong stomach) you name it but nope every trip was like okay here it goes lol. I did experience ego death in at least one or two of them, it was cool. In one trip I not only lost the concept of myself but I lost the concept of how society works because I really wanted a sweet drink but the concept of using some paper or plastic from my pocket to exchange for it was just lost to me. I forgot the entire human bartering concept as a whole temporarily, lol. One trip was with frat bros and was chill and fun mostly comedic buddy stuff rather than any introspection or mental health stuff, one was with an ex and was okay but mostly visual and I combined with mdma to candy flip or whatever the kids called it back then with my gf we were doing what you think we would be doing, mostly, lol. One trip I was alone and did some introspection and experienced ego death but either the dosage or chemical wasn’t the right blend to gain any deep insight. Aaaand one trip was truly a trip as for some reason I accused my then roommate of messing with my laptop for some reason even though he was chill and wouldn’t do that and then I just went for an impromptu long distance walk around the college town I was in. Somehow someway the drug kicked in enough and I was just following what I thought were like clues where to go for the fun of it like a real life video game but for some reason I couldn’t shake the feeling like am I actually doing this am I losing it seeing patterns and stuff that aren’t there? Long story short I ended up on federal government property and I guess their security called the cops on me which several of them showed up because of just how bizarre my situation was and I was obviously out of it but in a psychedelic way like fear and loathing in las vegas not like booze or pot. But I guess after a decently long conversation they determined I wasn’t doing anything sketchy or dangerous or had any care about the location I was in and they took me to the hospital to detox etc. It led to my first of three total involuntary psychiatric stays (all around a few years of tumultuous time in my life for unrelated reasons basically mental health). Which btw those places mostly are the suck but that first one was the worst. I was still high and now being held in a hospital room alone under supervision waiting to figure out wtf they wanted from me and they somehow authorized the suicide watch 72hr involuntary hold every state has despite me being neither suicidal or homicidal, just obviously mentally not in a good place. But sorry for the wall of text, that was many years ago and thankfully because of not doing that poorly in my life anymore and literally having PTSD making me despise and avoid ever being in hospitals for any reason I haven’t been back in a while lol. Just specialists for me now. I really want to try microdosing at first to gauge my brain and body’s reaction to psilocybin since anything psychedelic or dissociative makes me nauseous my strong stomach puts in its immediate resignation. But I do also want a proper bigger dosage trip to connect with myself more spiritually and analyze myself and my mindset much better which I just like everyone and their uncle find psychadellics primo for.
Edit: Oo I forgot! I already take and like mushroom based nootropics right now it’s lions mane and cordyceps. I get good results from them
Your life is not that different than many others, to be honest. Everyone is unique, so I don’t want to disregard that.
I have similar issues in that I have ADHD, depression and anxiety. It caused a ton of problems for me growing up, especially when it comes to alcohol and drug abuse. As mentioned before, alcohol was my demon of choice for about 30 years.
Psychedelics are unique. If you want to party and just get fucked up, they can absolutely work that way. Once I started to seriously experiment with how they could be used to change who I was as a person, the experience immediately changed. It changed completely.
Mostly as a joke with a tiny hint of seriousness, I have recently been personifying mushrooms. A mushroom will let you trip and party, but if you ask nicely, it’ll show you things you really want to see and understand.
Regardless if you like that experience or hate it, it’ll still hold you there for a few hours and make you stare at what you originally wished for.
Growing them is fairly easy and you just need to understand when the growing environment is most vulnerable to contamination.
There is not really an unsafe way to grow them and there aren’t any conditions that I can think of that would somehow turn p. cubensis toxic. Once a specific species of mycelium takes hold of a substrate, it’s quite difficult for any other mold or fungi to grow in it which would be the source of anything that could be toxic.
They don’t stink at all, imo. They should always have a nice earthy smell and once you get fruit development, they just smell like mushrooms. If they are dried and stored correctly, they will taste like portobellos. Like any other dried foods, if they are not kept in a dry environment and go stale, they will taste bad.
Then there is the chitin. It’s basically a super tough glucose structure that is produced in nature for things like exoskeletons and stuff. If you hear people getting an upset stomach from shrooms, that is why. I happen to have a stomach of steel so it doesn’t bother me in at all. This is where making tea or lemon extracts can really help.
Uncle Bens Tek is the easiest way to get started with minimal supplies. You literally innoculate a bag of Uncle Bens brown rice to kick off the mycelium development. 90 Second Mycology has a great series about it and tells you all the supplies you need: https://youtube.com/@90SecondMycology?si=4I_9bu838ABEdUo0
Depending on where you live, getting a mycelium culture might be difficult. GA, CA and IA are the only states that I know that have restrictions on buying spores or mycelium cultures. Since I am in CO, it’s fully legal for me to grow and order these things. My primary source for genetics is Denver Spore Company since it’s local and I trust them. They are also very active in our local mushroom communities as well. https://www.denversporecompany.com/terms-and-conditions
It takes a bit to understand the growth cycle, but that comes with practice. It’s not like a typical house plant, but once it “clicks” how everything works, it gets super easy to tweak and manage how they grow.
Then there is usage. Some people just aren’t compatible with psilocybin or psychedelics in general. My chemistry happens to be 100% compatible. Marijuana makes me super paranoid while tripping seems 100% compatible with my perception of life. Start small and gradually increase your dose and you can’t really go wrong. Many people report that microdoses work great, but that is not my thing.
If you are not familiar with what a trip is or how it works, Josie Kins has done a good job of classifying and describing “levels” of a trip. The graphics she has in her videos are super accurate to my personal experiences: https://youtu.be/UQRfTD6AXPs?si=90sCLieDEfLF3go3