12 ms·

> "It's unfeasible and way too expensive to extract psilocybin from magic mushrooms and the best chemical synthesis methods require expensive and difficult to s

• smabie 7y ago
  Also, since we already have 4-aco-dmt (which is virtually identical to psilocybin), so there's no real reason to extract.
  • monktastic1 7y ago
    Having had countless cubensis trips and a handful of 4-aco-dmt ones, I didn't find them very similar (and found the latter to be uniquely unpleasant). Perhaps I have weird chemistry, but I'm not alone. I would hate for others to miss out.
    • rv-de 7y ago
      I would second this. It might be, though, because it is much easier to overdose 4-Aco-DMT than shrooms. Even most milligram scales don't reliably differentiate between 30 and 50 mg but the trip on the latter would be immensely more intense. 4-Aco-DMT seems also to be much closer to DMT than, say, LSD.
• undersuit 7y ago
  Dosing is far easier in pill form regardless?
  • mikeg8 7y ago
    You can make capsules from ground up mushrooms very easily.
    • rriepe 7y ago
      Grinding up a mushroom and putting it in a capsule seems unpredictable, dose-wise. But a whole batch mixed together? It seems like that would be both testable and predictable. This is the way to go for sure.
      • 55555 7y ago
        From what I remember from 14 years ago when I was more interested in this, psilocybic mushroom strains are, gram-for-gram, almost all equivalent in relative potency. Drying them to cracker dry, then grinding them up, and encapsulating (optional), is a safe way to dose. It's not unpredictable. > But a whole batch mixed together Indeed. This is the right way to do it. Making it in a test tube is fine, but it's really not needed. Mushrooms are very cheap to grow, and it's not like people need to take big doses daily to get the benefits.
        • asdff 7y ago
          mushrooms aren't as cheap to grow as laboratory yeast cultures already set up to produce quantities of drug of interest.
• arpa 7y ago
  Hey, drug on wars still exists in the world. You can get excessive jail time just for having some (regardless of quantity) marijuana on you - and that is in "western" country. It was not so long ago that "marijuana had no possible medical application" and was scheduled as a class A drug in UK (and I think, still is). There is a lot of stigma, and decades of bad science, propaganda, and manufactured hatred run deep. Research is difficult, if at all possible because excessively harsh legislation. And who benefits?.. criminal cartels and enforcement agencies. This is also why scientists go such extreme lengths to create psychoactive mimics ("legal highs") - so they can research the stuff that is at least similar without going to jail. It's a fucked up world, my friend. It's not the scientists' approach that is wrong, it's the legislators...
  • robin_reala 7y ago
    Cannabis was downgraded from class A to a class C drug in the UK in 2004, but was upgraded to class B five years later. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drugs_controlled_by_the_UK_Misuse_of_Drugs_Act#Class_B_drugs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drugs_controlled_by_the_UK_Mis...
    • deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    • globular-toast 7y ago
      It was downgraded from class B. It was never class A. The next government returned it to class B because "drugs bad".
      • robin_reala 7y ago
        You are of course right.
  • tdy721 7y ago
    You can go to jail for alcohol too. Just depends where you are.
• tdy721 7y ago
  It’s not hard or expensive to turn brown rice flour and vermiculite into mushrooms. The bit about expensive to create a pharmaceutical compound growing from a mushroom is just silly. Extraction can’t be that expensive.
  • taneq 7y ago
    > Extraction can’t be that expensive. From the article, apparently yes it can: "It's unfeasible and way too expensive to extract psilocybin from magic mushrooms"
    • samatman 7y ago
      It does say that. It's wrong, what it says, but it definitely says it.
      • KarlKemp 7y ago
        Is there any pure psilocybin being sold? My (entirely pop-culture based) impression is that "white powder" and similar processed substances of high purity are the dominant form for almost all drugs. Cocaine isn't sold as leaves, nor can you buy dried poppies. Marijuana is an exception because it easier to smoke in its more natural state and, let's face it, because its users are hippies beholden to the naturalistic fallacy. But THC and that-other-stuff-I-cant-remember are available as concentrates. Given these preferences, psilocybin is the outlier where, as far as I can tell, only the raw, natural form is available. Since the taste is so awful it's close to legendary, I think we can exclude market preference as a cause. That leaves the extraction being rather difficult as the most plausible explanation, doesn't it?
        • collyw 7y ago
          Johns Hopkins trials administer a pill, so I assume it's available somewhere.
        • mrob 7y ago
          I don't think we can exclude market preference. Dried mushrooms are harder to fake than white powders, so it increases buyer's confidence that they're getting the real thing.
• karlicoss 7y ago
  As far as I understand it's too inconsistent, i.e. very unevenly distributed within one fruiting body. Not sure if that's the reason, but: if you ever bought mushrooms/truffles in the Netherlands, there is no psylocibin content on the box. And if you try googling, the estimates vary pretty wildly (although it's possible that it's just a lack or proper research) Also not everyone enjoys the taste of mushrooms or truffles. And psychedelic entities don't care whether they are coming from naturally occurring or synthesized psylocibin ;) Also, humility and appreciation come in different shapes: for example I recall that Shulgin never consumed his pure psychedelics with juice because he could distinguish 'chemical' tastes and had appreciation for that
  • chepaslaaa 7y ago
    With regards to the taste, grinding them up and mixing them into melted chocolate will negate all taste issues (or consistency, I find the getting bits stuck in your teeth is what really sucks).
    • rriepe 7y ago
      Nutella is a real blessing here.
    • jeffhuys 7y ago
      Doesn't work with me, unfortunately. Last time I did this, I could barely hold it down long enough to have some effects. I felt 100x better when it exited my body, but I only had some mild "breathing walls" effects. It doesn't help that I tell restaurants I'm allergic to mushrooms because I really, REALLY hate them, and they won't take me seriously otherwise. (And they're in almost everything, especially "vegan" stuff (which I like, without being vegan)) I have been blessed with a good source on.. ahem.. another source of psilocybin, without any taste. That works!
      • mediaman 7y ago
        It might not help enough if you have some specific reactions to all mushrooms, but letting ground up mushrooms sit in citric acid (from lemons or similar) for 10-15 minutes can help break down the fibers that can cause upset stomachs.
• ninetax 7y ago
  Someone more knowledgeable please step in to correct me but: I think what can be desirable from this process is the lack of variability in the product when you produce it at scale.
  • edoceo 7y ago
    Grind it, blend it, test it. It's how loads of other naturally variable stuff is done eg: flour, whiskey, wine, juice
• kylek 7y ago
  I do wonder what is lost, too. Some folks talk about "mushroom pills" (simply powdered, full spectrum mushrooms) and some talk about "psilocybin extract". It's my understanding that different psilocybe mushrooms species have different effects due to varying levels of not just psilocybin, but psilocin (psilocybin metabolizes to psilocin, but it is also in many species), baeocystin (mexicanas tend to be higher in this) and norbaeocystin.
• Alex3917 7y ago
  > There is no reason That psilocybin shouldn’t be administered in its most common form, as it has been for thousands of years They’re using very large doses in therapy, and there are a lot of unpleasant things that are going to happen already even at the minimum effective dose.
  • mirimir 7y ago
    I doubt that they're "using very large doses in therapy". Compared to serious recreational users, that is. And in my experience, few if any "unpleasant things" occur with Psilocybe. What things were you thinking of?
  • collyw 7y ago
    It sounded equivalent to 3-4 grams of dried mushrooms, which is a moderately large dose (well that's what they described as a "sweet spot"), but not out of the ordinary. Trips are graded up to level 5 with is > 5g dried. Terrance McKenna talks a lot about 5g in silent darkness.
• asdff 7y ago
  Growing it in yeast would be great if you are trying to get a consistent quantity of the drug. You could do vats at a time all genetically identical and producing the same yield batch over batch, and can scale up and down your operation for as much as you have vats and yeast food. This is something you want if you are going to press this into pills at a certain dose and give to people for psychiatric disorders, not for people looking to go on spiritual journeys or see a phish concert.
  • plurinshael 7y ago
    People with psychiatric disorders need spiritual journeys. Spiritual journeys heal and cleanse the mind, heal and cleanse the soul. Do not try to strip that away. The commodification of medicine troubles me--I prefer the perspective of sacred medicine. It goes roughly definitionally / tautologically: if something heals you, is it not sacred? And likewise, if something is sacred, it heals you. By definition. The idea of medicine as a mechanism has really lost something intimate and special, compared to the idea of medicine as divine.
    • sysbin 7y ago
      > People with psychiatric disorders need spiritual journeys. Spiritual journeys heal and cleanse the mind, heal and cleanse the soul. Do not try to strip that away. No opinion on the article or yours but where are you getting this opinion? Why or how, do psychiatric disorders need spiritual journeys. Not all people believe in spiritual journeys or are capable of it. There is noting scientific about what you're suggesting that I'm aware about as well.
      • bawolff 7y ago
        Many (most?) people taking this substance report having some sort of mystical/spiritual experience. I doubt they are actually convening with the divine, but whether/how/why the substance causes that affect in people is certainly a part of "science". I also don't think the spiritual journey aspect should be dismissed so lightly. Its being investigated to help depression. Perhaps inducing a "spiritual" state in people is part of the cause of action of the drug.
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• mirimir 7y ago
  Yes, I'd rather just eat the mushrooms. We used to grow them on autoclaved rice, in mason jars. Also, it's not at all obvious that psilocybin is the only active compound. And conversely, I wouldn't want to experiment with analogs that don't predominate in mushrooms.
• jokowueu 7y ago
  How about we don't do that either . Psilocybin doesn't have any effect on the human body afaik before breaking down to psilocin . 4-aco-dmt is easy to make and readily breaks down to psilocin . Why are trials and research concentrating on this prodrug like it's necessary is beyond my understanding . It's a waste of money and time
  • rv-de 7y ago
    (Mu)Shrooms contain more more psychoactive substances and prodrugs to such than psilocybin. There is a reason why psychonauts debate differences between trips induced by Shrooms vs 4-Aco-DMT. But of course it would make sense to simplify the approach by starting with synthetic prodrugs.
• colechristensen 7y ago
  There are negative side effects from consuming the mushrooms which you don't get from purified psilocybin. Dosage is important. There isn't a way to test for potency which would ensure a reliable dose. Argument fallacies: * your anecdotal positive experiences * suggesting superiority because something is "from nature" * referring to "mistakes from the past" without naming any * suggesting superiority that "has been (done) for thousands of years" Think about why these kinds of arguments are made on different topics which you disagree with and then rethink why you are making them here.
  • ianai 7y ago
    Couldn’t dosage be averaged out by simply drying, “powdering”, and mixing the mushrooms as batches? I think similar is used in winemaking.
    • heavenlyblue 7y ago
      This is what people do exactly.
    • msla 7y ago
      How is that highly artificial process any better than making a pill? Plus, how do you know what other ingredients are in the mushrooms?
      • 34679 7y ago
        The cannabis industry has learned that "what other ingredients" are in the cannabis has a significant effect on the high produced by THC. This is known as the entourage effect. You simply do not get the full benefits with THC alone.
        • msla 7y ago
          We'll need to figure out what those ingredients are, and how they work, and what negative effects they have. Otherwise, we're being extremely unwise, and setting ourselves up for serious problems later.
• svara 7y ago
  Standardized total extracts of natural sources are pretty standard in the pharmacopeia, so what you're saying makes total sense. Making sure that the dosage is standardized is a solved problem. Unfortunately this type of drug preparation is not that fashionable. One example of this is the total extract of St. John's Wort, which is superior to synthetic antidepressants in many cases, but doctors often prefer to prescribe the latter (presumably because a plant based medicine doesn't sound as powerful?).
  • throwaway_pdp09 7y ago
    > St. John's Wort, which is superior to synthetic antidepressants in many cases, Oh boy, yet another claim without references.
    • svara 7y ago
      "Several studies support the therapeutic benefit of St. John's wort in treating mild to moderate depression. In fact, some research has shown the supplement to be as effective as several prescription antidepressants." (https://www.mayoclinic.org/drugs-supplements-st-johns-wort/art-20362212 https://www.mayoclinic.org/drugs-supplements-st-johns-wort/a...) Synthetic antidepressants are by no means completely benign drugs, so having something that can be as effective for mild to moderate depression with a different side effect profile is really useful. Since you could easily have found this and many more sources, including all of the original studies, with a few Google searches, I'm taking your comment as further evidence of an irrational bias against phytopharmaceuticals.
      • throwaway_pdp09 7y ago
        You: > which is superior to synthetic antidepressants in many cases Then justify this with: > some research has shown the supplement to be as effective as several prescription antidepressants (X > Y) != (X = Y) or in plain English, what you cite does not support your claim. > with a few Google searches You make the claim, you provide the references. > taking your comment as further evidence of an irrational bias against phytopharmaceuticals. I support what works regardless of origin. No person who has experienced severe depression would discard something that worked. I don't have time for idiots who presume 'natural' = 'better' though.
• ncmncm 7y ago
  Not inducing extreme nausea seems like sufficient reason for a different process.
• collyw 7y ago
  They were doing it in Amsterdam for years for the recreational market, and still do with truffles. Is it just profit making motive that is coming into play here?
• gwbas1c 7y ago
  I like how mushrooms taste, but my sister doesn't. Her husband even insisted that we don't serve any mushrooms at their wedding. (Granted, it's been years since I last ate magic mushrooms. I loved the way they tasted, but I don't think it's fair for someone who doesn't like they way they taste to have to gag them down just for a trip. I can still remember how they tasted, and the wonderful visions I had.) Mushrooms also don't store well. Extracting psilocybin so it can be served in a more palatable and easily stored form is a good thing.
  • rv-de 7y ago
    You're conflating Mushrooms with (Mu)Shrooms it seems to me. Shrooms are not primarily about the taste. And you can very well make Shrooms storable for up to several years.
    • gwbas1c 7y ago
      Nope: > Granted, it's been years since I last ate magic mushrooms. I loved the way they tasted
  • 0_____0 7y ago
    Store as dried fruits with a dessicant packet and a hand warmer (oxygen scavenger) in freezer. Half of the weird mushroom flavor/odor is from it being improperly dried and stored. I dry mine to cracker-dry, and you really don't get a lot of flavor or texture from them. If they're still hard to consume, shred them and extract into tea. Psilocybin is water soluble. Some like to add lemon juice, as it supposedly hurries the conversion of psilocybin to active psilocin (not sure how true this is). Tastes a little different but is relatively quite palatable.
• steve76 7y ago
  Stroke survivors often suffer from hemianopsia, a loss of visual field due to blood matting down very fine hairs. More critical circulation restoring surgeries, like removing a tumor, sometimes have restored vision. A drug that does that would be used by billions. It would be nice to find an existing rated process.
• ericmcer 7y ago
  It does a little bit cut into the organic/spiritual nature of the experience. If I am going to get high I have recently gone back to just smoking weed instead of eating a 'watermelon burst' gummy or something. Smoking with a pipe is timeless and the ritual, smell, taste are all a part of it for me. Same thing with mushrooms, preparing the tea for me is a part of the experience.
• Anoncomposed 7y ago
  What is the going price for 1 mg of psilocybin? I am seeing a site sell magic mushrooms (Psilocybe Aztecorum) with a psilocybin quantity of ~1g for $15. 7 g for $72. Is this the publicly available norm or does it seem cheap.
• orbifold 7y ago
  I remember reading about growing these mushrooms online at some point. The article strongly cautionend against it unless you know very well what you are doing. Growing any kind of mushroom has the potential to also grow nasty and very unhealthy molds and bacteria. You can easily kill yourself by ingesting those, if you are not very careful to avoid contamination. This is absolutely not taken to be lightly and proper lab procedures would for example require you to perform the inoculation in a glove box.
• cannaceo 7y ago
  It can and is being done. It requires a lot of worker safety because toxic molds can grow in the environment as well. Cannabis now has the same worker safety so I'm confident higher standards can be brought to psilocybin production. To those of you complaining about dosage you can take a representative sample of a batch, grind it up, and test it for potency via GC/MS. Same way it's done in cannabis. For cannabis edibles we have an allowable range of 4.9-5.1mg/dose on a serving labeled 5mg. I'm pretty sure we can nail 1000mg doses of psilocybin pretty accurately.
• tomphoolery 7y ago
  Nature didn't give psilocybin to us as a "gift" in order to help us figure out the world. Just like everything else that can be used and consumed by humans, we co-opted this organism for our own purposes. Psilocybin was evolved by these mushrooms as a defense mechanism against animals trying to eat it, just like every other psychoactive drug. It's a poison, not a medicine. We just so happened to be big enough and our brains wired in a certain way wherein it doesn't kill us or make us feel awful, instead it has the opposite effect. Yes, we absolutely SHOULD be extracting and studying psilocybin and all of the ways it interacts with our brain. With any luck, we can pinpoint the extremely beneficial parts of the drug and create new synthetic compounds that aren't rife with the normal side effects of a psychedelic experience. Perhaps we'll be able to give this new compound to people with mental disabilities or conditions which would prevent them from taking a psychedelic of kind. Or if it was safe enough, it might make an entire class of SSRIs obsolete as mushrooms have a beneficial effect on those of us with anxiety and depression. I have anxiety, and while micro-dosing every day would probably solve that problem, a whole host of side effects comes along for the ride that wouldn't really be great for things like my job, so the SSRI works for now. But if you told me I could take 1 pill of $SOME_SYNTHETIC_DERIVED_FROM_PSILOCYBIN every 2 weeks instead of 1 pill of lexapro every day, I'd sign up for that in a heartbeat, and I'm sure everyone else would too. That doesn't mean 'shrooms would go away, far from it. In fact, I think the more research Big Pharma does on psychedelics, the easier it will be to obtain them. It's already pretty easy (and legal) if you know where to look for spores, and at that point it's just buying some equipment and waiting. I pine for the day that mushroom growing kits are sold that make it totally painless for people to grow their own.
  • mikeg8 7y ago
    First, my choice to use the word gift is exactly that - a personal choice. If I believe that psilocybin is a gift, what authority do you have to say I am wrong? You may feel differently, and I would respect that, without pretending I know better than you on how to interpret such things. Second, you say, "It's a poison, not a medicine" while following with several points supporting the clear medicinal values of the chemical. There is no concrete evidence suggesting psilocybin is a defense mechanism. That's one of the fascinating things about mycology - we know very little. Many mycologists believe that psilocybin may actually be used to attract animals, not repel them. There are several studies about the connection between mycelium and plants as well as theories that the mushroom's fruits bring animals into an ecosystem to disturb/fertilize the surrounding flora, as well as possibly assist with the germination of trees/plants that the fungi depend on. Humans do not have a monopoly on ingesting these mushrooms - goats have been known to seek out psilocybe cubensis and many different animals seek plants/chemicals that bring on altered states of consciousness. Check out "Stealing Fire" if your interested in learning more about this. It seems you may know very little on mirco-dosing. Many mirco-dosers take a pill every 3-4 days. One of the basic principles is that you do not have any perception of the chemical so no negative side effects. It should not inhibit job performance in any way, if done properly. And much of the research suggest micro-dosing has lasting benefits when a user ends their micro-doing after ~8 weeks. Since you'd "sign up in a heart beat" and know how easy it is to find mushrooms, my question is why do you choose to continue supporting big pharma with daily SSIs? I think it could be argued that the cost/known negative side effects of SSIs outweigh the potential (not confirmed) negatives of a properly regimented 6-8 week micro-dosing experiment. Just my thoughts. I also look forward to the day when growing kits are easily available.
• robbrown451 7y ago
  I think you could make the same argument about.... everything? Farming and selective breeding vs. hunting and gathering? Inventing modern materials rather than using wood and stone and animal parts? Pretty much everything. "Mistakes from the past?" Which specific ones are you speaking of? I don't doubt there have been many, but if you are talking about choosing not to simply take things as nature gives them to us, well, I guess you want to return to the stone age or something, but the world doesn't support 7 billion people doing things that way.
  • mikeg8 7y ago
    Some examples that come to mind are pesticides/herbicides/synthetic fertilizers. The farming example is very on-point actually. Production agriculture has become synonomous with monocultures (growing one species) to maximize "yield", and it's having devastating consequences. We're killing micro organisms in the soil, which are necessary for nutrient exchange to the crops. Modern vegetables have 50-80% less nutrients than those of 50 years ago. The lack of diversity in plant species means a single predator/pest will not have any natural repellents, thus requiring pesticides. The soils, losing nutrients rapidly, now require additives in the form of synthetic fertilizers: nitrogen, prosperous, and potassium. We took a system that worked, tried to over engineer it, and created a whole mess of problems and additonal work/cost. Another: We took cows, which have a special organ called a rumen that is specifically designed to extract nutrients from grasses, an abundant resource that many animals cannot use as a food source, and instead began feeding them diets of corn. The corn heavy diets is worse for the cows overall immune system, requiring the addition of antibiotics. Farmers who raise cows in balance with their natural state of a grass based diet will need little to no antibiotics. Wood is making a massive comeback in the commercial construction industry because we realized it has some properties that we were too willing to dismiss, including it's flexibility and amazing strength-to-weight in relation to it's cost to produce. I'm not anti-technology or anti-innovation, but I think it's also important to ask ourselves whether all this extra work we create for ourselves is actually necessary/beneficial. In the case of psilocybin synthesis/extracts, I'm a bit skeptical. I think we're trying to re-invent the wheel.