Magic Mushroom Testing with Ian Bollinger from Hyphae Labs
Alisa Nappa
 
Ever wondered what was inside magic mushrooms that made them work? Are some varieties more potent than others? Do you grow your own and wondering how the potency stands up against others out there? We're joined by Ian Bollinger of Hyphae Labs who helps run the Psilocybe Cup which tests numerous compounds in submitted samples from magic mushroom growers around the country. Ian tests for potency and develops individualized finger prints for each cultivar to match mushroom variety with each person's needs/wants. We chat about all the cutting edge topics, and findings over the last couple years and what's just on the horizon for the psilocybe/magic mushroom industry.
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TRANSCRIPT
0:11 Welcome, welcome. You are listening to the mushroom revival podcast. I'm your host, Alex Dora. And we are diving into a mysterious, wonderful portal of all things, mushrooms and fungi. We bring on guests and experts from all around the globe to geek out with us and go into that rabbit hole. And we touch on surface level things we go down super, super deep and nitty gritty. So today we have Ian Bollinger on the podcast to talk about all things, analytical testing, psilocybin testing, and the wonderful world of philosophy science. So Ian, how're you doing today? Doing pretty darn amazing. Thank you for asking. Oh, yeah, good to hear. So why don't you give the listeners a little one, two. Who's in? 1:08 Well, I am a humble Ian doing Ian things is one of my favorite things to say. But um, I am a 1:16 for lack of a better term and theologian, researcher, psychedelic researcher. I've spent the past three years of my life founding a number of nonprofits as well as one of the first psilocybin mushroom testing companies in the United States over in Oakland, where it's called hyphae labs, and we put together not just the psilocybin cup, but also have been helping support community by providing data around mushroom potency for appropriate dosing as a form of harm reduction. On top of that, I've been able to support my business partner, Reggie Harris and who's Oakland hyphae. And a number of his events that he's put out, on top of doing my best to communicate the importance of science education. When it comes to entheogens my stance, it comes from Lorenzo Haggerty, who says when it comes to psychedelics, it's no not No, kn O W. Not No, no, I'm an educator first. There you go. And the most 2:20 kind of the quote that revolves around you guys is fuck around and find out which I love. 2:26 As a scientist, I always always always loved that tagline by always add on to it. Fuck around, find out, write it down. There you go. Yeah, that's really got to share it, you have to provide it for the next generation. It has to survive view. You know, if you've learned something, and have, which is amazing. And most of this podcast episode, we're going to talk about one of the many projects that you're involved in, specifically, which you've been writing these amazing reports on, which I've been just loving, and I reread them all last night, and I'm just like, III have even more respect for what you guys are doing. But what is the hyphae cup or the psilocybin cup? So it was our approach to the responding to cannabis industry. So the cannabis industry existed and had the High Times Cannabis Cup. And you'd be seeing cultivars of cannabis winning first, second, third place. And then the next year, anything that didn't place you never saw again. 3:37 Right. Our response to that was a there's a loss of biodiversity there. That is, is harming us now, in modern days, like how many cultivators decided that their lemon Kush, just because it didn't have high THC is no longer worth spending time cultivating or how many cultivators went under, because whatever plant that they decided to invest into was not the top 123 of the High Times Cannabis Cup. So we saw that we responded to that in a way that we thought would be beneficial. Instead of it being 4:12 Oh, it says I'm about to leave. 4:16 And hopefully I don't leave. 4:19 The idea being that the hyphae Cup, the psilocybin cup, is intended to take the principles of competition, but bring people together to have discussions around use. So again, like it was a hierarchy first, second, third place in the Cannabis Cup. 4:39 I had mentioned earlier I speaking with a therapist friend of mine, he introduced me to a conversation point that I think is the most poignant piece. So there was a really, really good article written online with an infographic if you will, if you can imagine a horizontal line graph. On the beginning of it, you had the number 3000 And at the end of it, you had the net 5:00 For 8000, in in between, were a bunch of pictures of rappers. And the idea was the unique word choice of rappers from you know, maybe like little NAS X at the 3500 point to like delta on the Funky Homosapien at the 7000 point. And it's just meant to highlight the diversity of word choice in rappers. It's not saying one's better than the other, it's just looking at it informationally. It was a non hierarchical approach. Somebody liked that article so much that they reproduced it, I believe it was in Rolling Stone. And when they reproduced it, they flipped it from horizontal to vertical. And as soon as that happened, the author reached out and said, Hey, can you take this back? I don't want to get shot. Because now rappers that were at the beginning of the list are now at the bottom of the list. And again, hierarchy proves that that is that has a whole different context and meaning. And so yeah, how could we avoid that? When we're talking about mushrooms? How can we avoid this high number equals good mentality that plagued the cannabis industry for years, I mean, it's only been in the past maybe three to five years that we've seen an influx of novel cannabinoids terpenes as important to the profile of cannabis. I mean, I think it was only in the past a year or two, that the Emerald Cup announced their different profile categories, which I hope to think was somewhat inspired by our hyphae spectrum, which we developed for our first hyphae cup, it was taking that first second third place model and flipping it on its side. And instead of having a top of the list, bottom of the list, you have a spectrum of use categories. So if you have a mushroom, that's maybe not the most potent mushroom in the world, Great. That's good for micro dosing, because you never want to macro dose, your micro dose. 6:55 And then after micro dosing, I would say there's another layer, you could go, I want to have recreational dose, I want to go to a concert, I want to go to a theater, I want to maybe have fun, get some good visuals, socialize, but not feel introspective, or maybe fall into some kind of existential hole. 7:12 But don't get me wrong, some people do want to fall into that existential hole or ask those hard questions, typically in a therapeutic setting. So maybe they want to be able to go deep, but come out of that space and still converse with somebody. So then I think of, you know, the therapeutic dose. And then the last kind of range that I imagine is the wide open ceiling. The idea that some people just want to go deep spiritual or deeply introspective, like there are people that want to do 30 grams of mushrooms, that's great. But I would also like it that if they're going to take 30 grams of golden teacher, that they could get the same kind of effect from five grams of certain strains of penis envy. Right? 7:54 And so, purpose is dosage. 7:57 Yeah, and let's break it down from your initial your first report that you ever published in May of 2021. And this was the preliminary tryptamine potent potency analysis. Yeah. And I noticed that, you know, and it was, it was so cool. Seeing, you know, each report had additional, you know, compounds that you're testing for additional categories that you were just talking about, or even, you know, it's like a category of what looks the best than a bag, you know, or what do bag appeal. Yep. Yeah, bag appeal. And these different categories, I think, was really awesome to see each report just kept building on the last and had more robust data that you, you know, we're detailing the substrate that XYZ. So let's go back to the first report. You had psilocybin. psilocybin, you had harm, main and harm mean, which are beta carbon liens. And what I thought was interesting was, all of them had harmed mean, the beta carboline. But only, I'd say, maybe 7550 to 75% of them had harm main. Why do you think that some of them did not test? 9:20 Positive for that beta carboline? There are a number of different answers. It could have been as simple as maybe that they're there. And they're just not in quantifiable amounts for that organism. Or they could be masked by other compounds that could be hiding my ability to see them. Or I will admit, just because this is science, and I'm a huge fan of being open to possibilities. I might be Miss identifying. I don't think so. But I might be Miss identifying those compounds because that first initial test I was using a certain kind of approach that did not always separate 10:00 things as well as it possibly could, if that makes sense. And so there is the possibility in the early in the first two runs of like psilocybin and psilocybin are the two major compounds you were looking for. But there are other tryptamines that we could talk about, and that you've mentioned, we expand into biosystem, or originates and just to name two. 10:20 The first time we were doing analysis, we were talking about ranges where we're looking at analysis, because we weren't 100% confident we were getting that separation. So it's like this is where we would see psilocybin, if it was just pure psilocybin, but we acknowledge the fact that there may be other things there hidden underneath it, that we might not be separating at the early stages. We've since expanded beyond that. And so that's why answer initially is on the analytical side, we might not be seeing it because it's below our threshold of detection in that organism, or we might be seeing it in certain compounds, because maybe harm mean and harm ain are so similar to some other compound that I'm unaware of in that mushroom, that I might be co analyzing those things, and we call it co eluding not not, and I don't believe that is the case, but I am open to that possibility. 11:11 Alternatively, something I have learned is species specific profiles, which is something that we get to see a lot more of in the more modern things, because people are growing more than just selasa bee cubensis. And we're testing more than just lots of bee cubensis. 11:29 There are cultivators, that our growing different species of psilocybin producing mushrooms penniless by forests gianopolous. All of these are within the psilocybin production 11:45 area of mushrooms. And so because of that kind of interesting variation in organisms, you get to see different enzymes. So just like I have brown hair and brown eyes, and if I recall correctly, you have blue hair, blue eyes and blonde hair, blue eyes, blue hair, red hair, yeah, red hair, good hair. Okay. Yeah, you're but again, it's so it's like, different. We're both humans. I mean, they're both cubes, or they're both basidiomycete. But they have different profiles, just like you have a different skin profile, hair profile eye color profile to me. And so this is why 12:24 I believe that the conversations that we need to have are a lot more personalized and specific to the medicines, because I have people that are sending in, like, again, perennials by spores, or some of these other philosophy, species philosophy, sign essence. And they do test for beta carboline, in detectable limits, as compared to some other species of cubensis, where you don't see anything. So it's species variation also plays a role. And I think that that's the more important factor to this conversation than anything else. 12:58 There's at least one more factors, I'm going to describe the three. So again, we have, you know, analytics, it could be an era and analytics don't believe that's the case. There could be the factor of organisms, different organisms have different profiles, then there's substrate, which is something that has become more to light as of late, is the idea that what you're cultivating your mushroom on, is going to play a major factor in what the mushroom is able to produce? Right. What I thought was interesting about this, is I read a paper that was released in 2020. I don't know if you read the paper, but it showed the stability of four tryptamines and mushrooms and mycelium and how those degrade depending on how you hydrate them and things like that, which was nuts, because I haven't really heard anybody talk about it since the paper has been released. And I've been trying to tell everybody that I can, because, you know, it showed a incredible fast degradation of tryptamines over 212 degrees Fahrenheit 14:04 for dehydration, and anybody that's hydrating their mushrooms beyond that is rapidly degrading the tryptamines in it, or, you know, 14:15 after a month of storage, if it's powderized it loses half its potency, or, you know, it loses when it's cut or sliced or you know, 14:28 the blue bruising, yeah, and all these different things that I hear a lot of growers focus on the cultivation or and the substrate but I don't hear a lot of 14:41 cultivators focusing on okay, how am I once once I pick it, to storing it? Like that actually seems incredibly important. And I thought it was interesting because and I'll try not to ramble too much but in one of the 15:00 ports, you know, there's two penis of the varieties, but one was, you know, two to three times more potent than the other, which was crazy, you know that two of the same cultivars could be wildly different potency levels. And then in the, in the Michigan report that you did, 15:22 though, though, one of the winners was by a cultivator called farmer maggot, and he grew the strain FM penis MB, but it listed that the substrate was just cocoa core, which is pretty like, devoid of nutrients. So, which was weird, like that was the winner that was the most potent growing on a substrate that was almost devoid of nutrients. So, you know, like, I'm, 15:50 I'm curious, have you talked to all these growers and figured out what substrate they're growing? At? What temperature? Are they dehydrating? How long ago? Did they, you know, process this sample? And all those kinds of questions to figure out what's going on with the potency. So I try to 16:11 get as much information from cultivators as they are willing to provide. Some cultivators are a little bit more mum, about their, their substrates or their particular methods. Others are like no, I'm, I want people to know, kind of a thing. 16:27 I will state that I do not believe that that person was cultivating on just cocoa quar. Because if we think about it, they probably started in a jar first, and they probably mixed that jar in with something else. So it could have been a high nutrient grain grain or something like that, that they were using originally, that they were they were starting it, you know? 16:49 Don't, again, that's like I only have the information I'm given. So some are more upfront, and some people aren't, I do always try to get harvest dates. So it's like, when did you harvest it, too? When did I test it? Like, I want to know that timeframe if I can, because that does play a role, even if it is a whole fruit that does play a role. 17:08 And I think that you are hitting on something that I think is very important here. I do want to point out that most recently, for the most recent cup that we held in the winter, as well as the one that we held previous to that, in the spring, we had a person named silly Simon, who topped off the charts with his own personal cultivated line of penis envy. But the thing is, is every time he submitted, he always submitted freeze dried fruits. 17:38 And this is making me think that there is a whole different category for freeze dried versus heat dried, you know, like typical dehydrator. 17:48 And because of the conversation that you just brought up the idea that anything over 212 degrees Fahrenheit can cause degradation. It's like there's a whole conversation to have there. And I believe that I believe personally, that the fruits that he produces that are freeze dried tend to be of higher quality, because we tend to work with therapists too. Because we have excess mushroom. And we tried to put it in the hands of people doing work that's already been tested. So it's like, Hey, this is tested this way, please feel free to use it. And if you can provide us feedback, so we can tell the cultivator and we can start to build that database. 18:25 The people that have taken it, note its potency, the Shiva Lingam series, but they also note that it's a fuller profile, it's something different. 18:35 And there is something to be said about the substrate that it's grown on. Because I mean, I know people that don't use any 18:44 the base, the CVG, cocoa core vermiculite, gypsum as like it, and then other people know I'm mixing turtle doubt and, and other people like when I use buffalo dog, it's like, Yeah, everybody's different. You know, everybody's got their own thing. I believe. And this is something that I've learned from speaking with people like silly Simon, that 19:04 you need to have a cultivated relationship with your organism, which has a cultivated relationship with its substrate. So if you're going to be growing your mushroom up on, on sorghum, you know, as as your grain, you should use a sorghum syrup as your liquid culture. It prepares it to can engage in that kind of consumption. And so those are extra layers of understanding that we try to communicate to people as well because just as much as you're saying that we're not talking about the storage after you harvest the mushroom, where people are minimally talking about substrate, people are minimally talking about growth conditions. Like there was a study put out by some Jamaican researchers that I only got to see a poster of I have no idea where I've where if it's gone anywhere since then, but light exposure, right, he's this potency 20:00 Any any light exposure any light. So they actually showed that full light exposure, half and half light exposure and no light exposure to the same mushrooms than the no light exposure had the highest potency. Well think about it this way, this is what my hypothesis is like if your metabolism is geared towards producing vitamin D. And now you don't have to produce it anymore because you're not getting exposed to sun. So you don't have to worry about UV radiation or whatever, you can use that energy in that metabolism for other things. 20:28 That's my hypothesis. That's I don't know if it's true or not. But again, the data exists, we need reproducibility. I tell people this so they can do their own experiments. But this is what I tried to do my best to communicate. It's like there are people out here we're at the we're at the infancy of all of this work. You're right, we don't know what the best storage conditions are. We do know that whole fruits are usually best. I argue whole fruit trees dried is the best. I don't recommend making extractions because Cillessen is extremely unstable in modally environments. So you're basically going to be limiting yourself to the phosphate tryptamines biosystem, nor biosystem psilocybin origination 21:08 as if you're going to be making extracts just because the stability of psilocybin, if you can make it, but I mean, it becomes a hassle. Yeah becomes a hassle to store it. Yeah. Like just keep the whole mushroom and extract when you need it, you know, kind of a deal. Just eat it. Don't get me started already ready to go the conversation specifically with cubensis on caps versus 21:32 caps versus stems. All right, yeah, all the data right now points do no statistical significance between caps and stems and cubensis just eat the whole mushroom. 21:43 So there is a difference, but it's not statistical. 21:48 Based on so every study that I've read, before, I saw your reports showed that the caps and even the paper that we're just talking about that shows 21:59 Yeah, bye bye to 2x. But that was total tryptamine. So I don't know, I know you were just studying, or just analyzing the psilocybin and psilocybin not total tryptamine. So that could be the difference. The other reports were, we're measuring total trip to mean. So I don't know if that 22:19 is the the only difference right there. But there's some layers to this conversation on top of. 22:27 Again, so I think the conversation should come down to what we were looking at were so many different species. And the thing that I'm learning now is representation. So I'm actually working with some cultivators to do flush testing. So it's like going up to a bin and making sure that we're selecting from specific locations on the bin. To get representations of those areas. For each flush, like first flush, second flush, third flush, you're taking from the upper left hand corner, upper right hand corner, center, lower left hand, lower right hand corner, and then we can start to map out that flushes potency over time and on location. And one of the things that we're learning is that there are some areas if you if your substrate is not homogenized, or if your growth conditions are not similar throughout, you're gonna get wild variance between one side of event to another, not like not wild variance, statistically significant variance. Like I've seen some fruits where it's like this one fruit seven milligrams per gram while the other fruit or four. It's like, interesting. 23:28 So there's whole conversations to have around representation. One fruit, cap and stem can be completely different than another fleets cap and stem. Right? Right. So this is where I believe the conversation like it's not like Amanita where almost all of the Musca molinia botanic acid are found in the cap, usually the skin of the cap. 23:50 So it's like different species have different expressions. And with cube NC, it's interesting in the sense that 24:00 and so the free cube NC the difference between cap and stem, while there is a more potent cap most of the time, in most of the studies that I've seen, and over time, the data that I've run, I will state that there is yet to show a statistical significance between a cap or a stem. Like you're just better off eating the whole fruit and trying to separate the two. It's like that episode of Seinfeld with the Pops. You know, it's like why, who's gonna eat? Who's gonna eat the bottoms? Newman, we don't have a Newman. 24:29 So I want to touch on two really quick things and then ask a follow up question. The one about the light is interesting. When we were mass producing quarter steps, one one, there's a couple actually famous papers about the specific wavelength of light, they're 24:49 helping to increase the amount of cortisol and adenosine in the quadriceps militaris. And so we landed on a combination of red 25:00 Blue and White wavelengths of light to increase the potency, of course, even an adenosine, and they the whole paper, you know, it showed, hey, if you use a green light or whatever different color lights, it has a huge impact on on potency. So I wanted to point that out for people who want to do this testing at home that are growers tested out, you know, because I feel like that could be huge or no light versus a different color light. And then, and then with Freeze drying, one of the things in this paper, 25:34 the stability of 25:36 sills, psilocybin in the form of analog tryptamines. 25:41 They showed that freezing it freezing fresh mushrooms actually was the quickest degrader of the tryptamines. But I think it was extremely cold, maybe colder than freeze drying. But I just want to point that out there for people that before they jumped the gun and start freeze drying everything to just double check the temperature of that. 26:06 And then my follow up question or it's versus short term storage, they were looking at long term drying is not good. Like just drying it for a cold is fine, like getting it to 26:16 freeze dried, then cracker dry storage room temperature cracker dry, you know, if you can get it to freeze dried, and then room temperature cracker dried, that's the best is is as far as my personal experience and based off of the numbers that I'm seeing the highest producers have always been the highest profiles have always been freeze dried. It's sad how 26:40 expensive freeze dryers are. But it changes the game for storage. And you're right. That's definitely one of the biggest things that I think if we could create a community space where somebody could come in and they could freeze dry their their own product, that would be amazing. You know, like, yeah, that's something that the community would benefit from greatly. And I know there are people I believe there's a group in Oregon called much love. 27:04 Seattle, Oregon area 27:07 that is actively trying to build those spaces. Cool. That's awesome. And so I noticed that it was it was not all the reports and not all the cups, but there was there was a few winners of of the cups that were you know, as small as a marble. And, you know, I know tidal wave grows in these weird mutated blobs. But there is this other other cultivar called fuzzy balls. 27:37 And are they are they just kind of like hyphal knots? Like they're just kind of mutated blobs of mushrooms, or are they a truffle or like what? What's going on there? So I'm going to touch on I'm gonna weave back in another cultivar that I had mentioned earlier Shiva Lingam. 27:55 The one the one that he won that was frozen of those were essentially or like, are you familiar with the cultivar? Yeti? 28:03 No, but I think I saw it on on the list. Yeah, Yeti is typically like looks like little snowballs. Like they have like, white really like bulbous round bottoms, and the cap barely gets away from barely gets away from the veil break. And it's so small and so attached to it's almost indistinguishable from the actual site. 28:25 And so, when we had the penis envy lineage, Shiva Lingam submitted for the first time, though it was these little 28:34 they were one of them were the little balls, these little cute little like, they look like styrofoam balls almost. But they were they were in, they had the Stipe, they had a cap, they were noticeable. Noticeably unique fuzzy balls was actually a version of what you had described earlier with the tidal wave. I call it surface level sclerotia sclerotia being like, truffles are like, you know, magic rebels from philosophy Temperance is it's a, it's a mycelial knot is what sclerotia is. And so what I think about with these, I call it the Enigma body type because originally, the people thought that it was Enigma strain was the only one that does this, but it's actually more of a morphology, you can actually induce it into a bunch of different cubensis strains to cause these kind of surface level sclerotia and the fuzzy balls was one of those. So it's sometimes are these little like, they look like little snow balls. And other times like they look like little like almost like black blue Nuggets with the mostly white with like black blue bruising on them. 29:41 And that's what the tidal wave kind of looks like. That's kind of the fuzzy balls was like a more white version of those little white neck, those little nuggets. And then like you have the freeze dried little Shiva Lincoln's. So it's like the variety of different kinds of mushrooms are very interesting because typically 30:00 The smaller the mushroom the more potent it is milligrams per gram. 30:06 That's that's something that I've been noticing. Pretty much across the board aborts like one person no cap Oakland submitted a bunch of aborts one year and they performed very, very well relative to non abort. 30:22 Right, same cultivator from I mean same species, different cultivator, non aborts, so, paying attention to when you harvest can play a role. Yeah, you might not be getting the pounds that you want, or the weight that you want, but they're gonna punch heart, and microgreens. Well, this is kind of the idea. Yes, exactly. This is kind of the idea. It's like, we need to start to have these relationships, don't get me wrong, I believe letting the mushroom go full cycle up to spore is or having some of them go to spore drop. And working with those in that genetic lineage is important. Just like sometimes you got to let cannabis go to seed, you can't just clone it over and over and over and over again, you're gonna get degradation over time. And so I think that it's an important part to pay attention to the lifecycle of the organism, again, building a relationship with the lineage. And then once you understand that lineage very well, you can then start to understand when it's most potent to harvest, the most important thing we can do with the information I'm providing is build deeper relationships with our fungal teachers. 31:28 We had a strain, or we had a cult of our of cordyceps militaris that grew into these mutated like marbles, like almost like these cultivars that you're talking about. And honestly, at the time, I didn't think much of it, and it was like, oh, it just got mutated. You know, and I almost like, and I wonder how many times philosophy growers have done this in the past and kind of been like, oh, no, it's a bad batch or whatever. Because that's what I was thinking of. And it was like, oh, we can't, you know, let's, and then we're like, oh, we'll just throw it in the tincture, because no one has to look at like how pretty they are. Yeah, but honestly, they were the best. 32:10 The best 32:13 weight per like, what do you call it the best harvest that we've ever gotten per gram? Yeah. And it was like, we were kicking ourselves because we didn't, we didn't, we didn't save the strain. And we're like, Oh, my God, like, we're just waiting for it to happen again. But, you know, I wonder how many times that has happened in the past with like, sauce, beet growers, that this mutation just happened. And, you know, they they thought it was like a bad batch or something, and they threw it out or whatever it's like, but it's like, no, that's those are the best, you know, it might not look good, but it looks it's like actually incredible. Which is why I highlight again, fuck around, find out write it down. Like the process of finding these things and documenting them. Like if you find this thing, and you have documentation and you're like strain, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's like, you could be like, Okay, well, maybe we still have that somewhere, like you can go back and try to find it or, you know, again, it's like people can maybe recreate the conditions that produced it. But again, I hear you, sometimes it's just nature happens. And you get something that's beautiful and different and changes the conversation. So when that happens, that's why I believe that the writing it down part comes into play the most because it's like sometimes random things happen that you don't account for. And I mean, that's how posted notes got made, you know, right. So on the total opposite spectrum is spring 2022. The recreational champions were very, like the the cap was extremely open, almost curled up, or it was curled up. And it was very mature mushroom. 33:57 And I think that the two the top two winners were like this. And the caps were like very, you know, up skirted. And it looked like spores were going everywhere. Yeah. Or they must have. And I hear a lot of growers kind of Pooh poohing that. And they're like, Oh, you got to pick it before the veil breaks and blah, blah, blah. And I've always been like, I didn't really get why, you know, and I am like, well, it's not losing potency, because the spores don't have psilocybin or psilocybin in it. Like, you know, 34:33 maybe it's just, you know, bag appeal. But, you know, I've heard a lot of people say, Oh, it gets less potent, the more you know, the the cap unfurls, Is there truth to that? Or is it just kind of like an urban myth? So somewhat, in the sense that right now, the data is pointing towards this hypothesis for me, is that at some point in the mushroom lifecycle, so you have to do 35:00 mycelium, they come together, they bond together, they form hyphal knots. And then they form a primordial knot, that primordial knot then turns into a pin, the pin, grows, grows, grows, jailbreak and becomes actual open air, mushroom and spores get dropped along that lifecycle at some point in time, 35:22 psilocybin, psilocybin production stops, however, growth of the mushroom does not. So there's a ceiling on what that mushroom can produce, as far as potency, but there is no ceiling on its size. 35:40 And so that means that your milligrams of of compound relative to the gram of fruit shrinks, does that make sense? The ratio gets smaller. And so that's that's what the data is pointing towards for me for now, is that there's a ceiling and then there's a floor. And certain species have higher ceilings for the sizes, some species don't like. Like I said earlier, Yeti, it's known for its short squat, small fruits like it's not going to produce a large Burma style open air canopy. 36:18 And so that's the most important distinction between the potency of the mushroom and the size of the mushroom that I think that should be part of the conversation a little bit. Yeah, and I'm sure it depends on the cult DEVAR I'm sure it depends on the substrate, the lighting XYZ. But I think it's important to note that and to figure that out of like, how many days post pinning or whatever, is the most optimal time to harvest and, and there's even papers on cordyceps militaris, measuring, you know, core to seep in, and adenosine degradation, or, or production and degradation, and making this whole bell curve. And, you know, for us, obviously, you know, it changes, but we got kind of a sweet spot where we knew that the most optimal time to harvest for the most optimal amount of quarters secant and adenosine and I think, yeah, I mean, yeah, that that sounds like an amazing thing to know, it hope it's just gonna, I'm proposing hypotheses based off of the data I'm observing, not stating facts, but these are the spaces where I think conversation should be looking at again, we're at the intro of this. So what I'm trying to do is maybe inspire somebody to do their own work to maybe try to bring more to the conversation. Because I think that this is a space where citizen scientists have a lot more ability to speak to 37:49 where we're going with these conversations than before. And that's what I'm most excited about is, is this conversation, like you said, it's trying to find that sweet spot, trying to have a conversation around what that might even look like her different cultivars. And then furthermore, looking at what these compounds are used for, so Corti, sipping and adenosine, are typically used as far as, again that it's getting used and degraded. Because adenosine is used in so many different biological functions just as like a an energy carrier as ATP, or Furthermore, as a building block of DNA. So 38:27 adenine, but you can get there from adenosine. Right? The idea being that it has a lot of uses, versus psilocybin are psilocybin, which is built up and then stored, because it's only going to get used, if there's anything grazing on the mushroom, it's typically it's thought to be an anti herbivory compound, and it's not psilocybin or psilocybin. That is actually the end game. That's just the storage space. As soon as something grazes on, it, like chews into the mushroom, it breaks the cell wall, and it puts psilocybin and psilocybin in the environment with enzymes that bind it together to form that bluing stuff. That bluing reaction is actually a polymer of psilocybin that looks like Indigo. Right? That's why it's that bluish purple color like Indigo. And so that that Polymer is actually mucks with insects, nematodes, and like gnats and things like that. And so that's the end game is the theory is as our understanding psilocybin and psilocybin or just the storage, the precursors to it, it's like when you have a glow stick and you crack it, and then you get the glow, because you're mixing the chemicals together. That's what's happening with psilocybin, psilocybin and these enzymes that bind them together into something bites into it, you're cracking into that glow stick, everything's mixing together, and you're getting this thing. I love that. I just came up with it, I appreciate it. 39:54 I'm never going to get that out of my head every time I see philosophy now. I'm just 40:00 Got 40:02 glow sticks cracking inside of it instead of green, they're like this blue color. Yeah. So on the topic of, you know, fucking up insects and quadriceps the the most recent report, you actually added a couple 40:19 samples of cordyceps militaris. And you were testing all this philosophy species for adenosine, which I didn't even know how to in there, which is cool. And then one of the samples, of course, militaris had a was it point three milligrams per gram of tryptamines. What what's going on there the mean, specifically. So adenosine and tryptamine, are building blocks. So we actually, we have to, we need to eat other organisms, human beings need to eat other organisms for the essential amino acid tryptophan. Because we don't make it ourselves. Tryptophan is digested in our body into tryptamine. And then built into serotonin and melatonin respectively. There's even arguments that you brought, your brain makes DMT. But that's a different conversation. 41:15 But the idea is, they're building blocks. So tryptamine is ubiquitous, it's everywhere. Adenosine is ubiquitous, it's everywhere in almost every eukaryotic organism, so any higher order organism, you're going to find the we call it the currency of cells, that's called adenosine triphosphate, or ATP. And the compound is meant to hold energy. So in ATP form, it's a high energize molecule that your enzymes in your body can then take the one of those phosphate groups to turn a teepee into a DEP triphosphate into diphosphate. And in doing so, they get the energy they need to accomplish some kind of enzymatic task. So think about it like as dollar bills. You know, it's like, the more ATP you have, and the thing is, is like human beings, we need to breathe air, when we breathe air, we make ATP, like oxygen is is utilized through we'll call it the citric acid cycle to produce adenosine triphosphates, to be able to allow us to do metabolism. And so adenosine is an almost every ligand living organism again, it's also a building block to DNA. So adenosine and tryptamine, exist 42:32 pretty ubiquitously throughout the kingdom of life. And so that's why I want to make sure that we acknowledge this and have these conversations and show that, you know, there just because it has tryptamine, doesn't mean it has psilocybin in it. 42:45 Right? Yeah. 42:47 But it doesn't mean it's not bad for you, because it high amounts of tryptamine can be digested and turned into serotonin, melatonin, maybe help a person with their own internal levels of those things. So knowing that your 43:00 quadriceps is not just full of oxygen utilization molecules, like adenosine or Cordy sipping, which is one of the reasons why Sherpur used them in the Himalaya to climb Mount Everest is because it allows their body to utilize oxygen more efficiently. 43:17 And that's why we think about like, I think on it one of those, I think that's like a Joe Rogan, Aubrey Marcus, they create shroom tech sport, which is meant to be a quadriceps based oxygen utilization 43:33 for athletes. So talking about other kind of beta carbon liens that you haven't touched on, I'm curious if you have any plans for Nora Harmon or harmala or parallel pair Loreen, I think is how you pronounce it. But there's this other one that is also found in ovo, Curtis Epstein essence court assigning C and D. I don't know if you've ever looked into that one. I have this is something that is actually fairly fairly new to me. I'll ask you to shoot me a little bit of information about that one, because that is something Yeah, within my radar. The thing about beta carboline is 44:15 that they are the I do a different extract entirely to try to analyze those because they tend to be a little bit more 44:25 like we're going to be doing certain extract solutions. So like, you may have learned that, you know, between water, methanol and ethanol, one of those is better than the other extracting Corti seeping in adenosine. 44:37 The same is true for these beta carbon liens. So one extract that's good at extracting psilocybin might not be good at extracting these beta carbon liens. This is what I was talking to touching that earlier about maybe the analytics side of things, playing a role. 44:51 And so in that way, we have three different r&d methods to include Harmon Harmon and Hormel all and if we can get those, we get those 45:00 separated, we just want to make sure that we can do analysis on low, low, low, low, low, low levels. And that's the issue, it's like, 45:10 I want to make sure that we're getting down to because we're not going to be seeing it in more than maybe the parts per millions, like the low 10s of maybe ones of the parts per millions, sometimes even half a part per million. So trying to observe at those low levels in some of these mushrooms is kind of where we're going to want to be at versus some of the ones where I can shine a UV light at it. And I can actually see what looks to be a beta carboline is present. So yeah, that mean, there's gonna be a lot of work that needs to be done. And that's why we're doing r&d. And so I believe that there's a lot of space to have, because some of these mushrooms have been shown to have beta carboline in there, my cilia 45:51 more so than their fruiting bodies. Right? Yeah. In the hyphal tip. Yep, yep, yep, yep. Yep. And so there's a whole conversation to have about that. Because, interestingly enough, the HAR mean, actually had another name when European scientist came to South America, and they were trying to understand Ayahuasca they were separating out the individual compounds because like, it's a tea of two different plants. You know, Ben hysteric cap Ei, and shukr. Una, you know. 46:25 The thing here is, is that the monoamine oxidase inhibitors, when they were trying to get separate them out individually, they're like, this is an amazing compound. We want to call it telepathy theme, because it allows for nonverbal communication between humans Oh, they send it back. It's already has a name. It's called harming or harming. It's like, well, cheese, like, why can't we can't telepathy that's a such better name. And well, if you think about it, too, it's like, if it's in the hyphal tips hyphae are constantly trying to search for other hyphae. That's the idea of what hyphae are doing. They're searching for nutrients, and they're searching for other hyphae to form knots with. And so there's a whole conversation to be happy about. Are these compounds communication, like are these are these communication hormones? And if so, if we find them in the tips, that's why we're probably going to be likely finding them more in the mycelia than in the fruit itself. So again, I don't think we're looking in the right spot is the is one of the answers is like I do believe that it's going to be much richer in the mycelium. For those reasons. Again, telepathy, communication, nonverbal communication between humans. I'm not saying it's chemical, but I do know that's what mushrooms are doing. And so maybe the exudation of these 47:40 beta carb liens are how they can find similar myceliated that they don't want to mate with and find different mycelium that they do want to mate with. 47:51 And in your spring 2022 cup report, you added a bunch of different compounds from biosystem, nor biosystem, regni seen nor psilocybin. And you have this incredible chart where you know, people please download this report, so you can actually see it because it's going to be hard for me to kind of describe what is there a name for that kind of chart. 48:17 It's just a chemical table. If though if it's one I recall correctly, it's going to have the building blocks of each of the compounds from tryptophan to tryptamine, to serotonin in the body's compounds, as well as the profile of all the compounds you'd expect to see in mushrooms, the ones some of the ones you just named, as well as, so you have psilocybin and Cillessen are the most well known. 48:39 And then the name for there is just a table to be honest, there's no real No no, everything. No, no, this one was like a it's like a circle. And it had like, 48:50 you know, like all the compounds were around the circle. Oh, gotcha. Gotcha. The radar charts. Yes. Radar Chart? Yes. Yes, yes, yes. Yes. Yes. Yeah. coolest thing ever. Yeah. I mean, people have to actually see it, because it's gonna be impossible for me to describe what it is. But I mean, it, it's creating kind of a 49:09 normalized scale of discussion is what we're trying to represent there. Yeah, and this is this goes back to kind of the the wrapper analysis that you're talking about before it's it's less of a oh, this is more potent. And rather, this is just how this mushroom interacts with you. And each mushroom is different. There's no better or worse, this one just has higher levels of this, but lower levels of this and it just is, is each is their own characteristics and fingerprint. So yeah, a fingerprint would be a great word to describe it. 49:47 And you have you know, on the labels you have like psilocybin, strength duration, so Wilson speed onset, North Cillessen, unknown slash stomach or 50:00 regularly seen unknown slash immobility nor biosystem unknown slash mood and biosystem unknown slash stomach. So can you talk a little bit more about like, do we have much research? I know there's four unknowns. For those compounds that like stomach like, is it good for gut health? Or what's the research on on these, specifically Nora Cillessen are regularly seen NorthBay assistant and Bay assistant. So there's a paper that I believe came out November last year, that has really helped me have this conversation in a more nuanced way. Looking at the list of those compounds like psilocybin, so lowson originates, and it's hydroxy version. So like psilocybin is the phosphate tryptamine. psilocybin is a hydroxy. tryptamine 50:53 originates in is tri methyl instead of Dimethyltryptamine. And it has a tri methyl psilocybin like compound as well, it has a long name, I'm not going to get into it. But there's a total of eight compounds that you want to look at. This paper looked at six of those compounds, 51:10 and looked at their serotonin receptor binding profiles. So all the different types of serotonin receptors you have in your body, they looked at how well psilocybin binds to it, how well psilocybin binds to it, how well all of these different compounds bind, and they found that some of them like origination or Norberto assistant and their hydroxy tryptamines, do not bind to 51:36 prefrontal cortex or brain serotonin receptors. 51:42 But the funny thing is, is we have serotonin receptors, very, very widely dispersed throughout our body. And are you familiar with the term the second brain? 51:53 In the gut? Yeah, the gut has just as many if not more serotonin receptors, and then the brain does. And so one of the things that again, the reason why I say unknown is because these are all hypotheses at the time I was hypothesizing that there is a role to be played. So if we talk about Nora biosystem, its actual name is for Foss, forall, oxy tryptamine. 52:19 It gets digested into a compound that doesn't have a fun name. It's just four hydroxy tryptamine. 52:26 That's what your body turns it into. That's the psilocybin like compound for hydroxy tryptamine. Serotonin goes by another name, five hydroxy tryptamine. 52:38 I believe I hypothesize your body will treat silt like the four hydroxy tryptamine. Just like it would treat serotonin 52:49 like so if we can think about how maybe you have a euphoric mood after you take mushrooms that could likely be from the influx of serotonin like molecules that are now in your body. 53:01 You know, that is one hypothesis. Alternatively, the other one is again stomach. So that extra methyl group that you find on biosystems. So if you have Noor biosystem, which is no methyl group, Bejo system, which is one methyl group, psilocybin, which is two methyl groups, that one methyl group doesn't let it get to the blood brain barrier, get through the blood brain barrier to get into our brain. So that Bayeux system and its hydroxy compound Nourse lowson 53:29 tend not to make it to the brain but they still bind to serotonin receptors. And there are plenty of serotonin receptors in our guts that could easily have an effect whether that be upset stomach, or decrease in in your stomach's upsetedness don't know, it's still hypothesize. 53:48 Alternatively, when we're talking about origination, which is that trimethyl tryptamine, and it's hydroxy analog. 53:56 There's a whole conversation to be had about this concept called wood lovers paralysis. Are you familiar with this term? Yeah, I was just talking to someone about this. This is nuts. So wood lovers paralysis is something that occurs with people that tend to eat psilocybin containing mushrooms that are grown on woodchips or wood loving mushrooms. This is like some philosophy submerge in essence in Australia, or philosophy, Eleni I signed essence on the West Coast of the United States. These mushrooms that tend to grow on wood chips 54:31 have been shown to have higher levels of origination in them, 54:37 which has had been theorized and I can support it with some metabolic information to bind to serotonin receptors in skeletal muscle tissues, which can cause immobility. 54:52 And for a lot of people, if they're taking mushrooms and all of a sudden they find themselves in a psychedelic state and unable to move but 55:00 perfectly conscious, that's a very freaky place to be in. 55:04 Some people like it. Well, I argue if I had Parkinson's, and I'm able to calm my shakes by taking a high originates in mushroom, that's actually probably a good thing. So I mean, call it a bug, call it a call it a feature. I think it's all about perception. How are we approaching these things, and this is why profiles play an important role in conversation, knowing your mushroom has high origination in it might mean that you want it more or don't want it more depending upon your use case scenario. And this is why I'm trying to provide profile data as a form of engaging in this use case scenario. I like to think about psilocybin so you say on there I have psilocybin is duration, and solution is onset, or like kind of speed onset reason for that anything else Sillas. To loosen doesn't need to be digested, you can take it in your body, work with it, it will pass through all the membranes make it to your brain quickly. psilocybin is like a time release, it's gotta die, it's gotta be dephosphorylated gotta have that phosphate group removed, to turn into psilocybin before it can have an effect. And so duration for me, it's like how much psilocybin is there is going to tell you how long the how long the experience is going to be, versus how much psilocybin is going to be there, it's gonna tell you how quickly that experience is going to hit you. And so if you're thinking about something like, therapists, I want something that is going to both hit my patient quickly, but not be too long of an experience. So I want something that is, you know, higher as Cillessen, maybe a one to one psilocybin Cillessen ratio, so we know it's going to hit quickly, it's not going to last too long. And we can maybe work in a two hour three hour window, instead of a six to eight hour window. You know, alternatively, this could be the opposite of micro dosing, I don't want psilocybin in my microdose if I'm going to homogenize a month's worth of microdose put them into capsules, I want high psilocybin content, because that's more stable over time, as we were talking about earlier. Does that make sense? Yes, case scenario, yeah, it's interesting, because, you know, 57:14 like, 57:17 someone who isn't me, 57:20 and people that I know, have, 57:24 you know, I've done it by feeling in the past and so it's been like, you know, just like watching them grow and getting a feeling or maybe a placebo from the name of like, oh, it's an Amazonian you know, so it must have this like jungle feeling, whatever, whatever relationship that you have from the jungle or whatever, or like, whatever the name oh, it's like ape so it must be come on like super strong or whatever. And then seeing it grow faster, it gives you this perception, whatever. And so I'm sure there's different layers of placebo and 57:59 like how your relationship to the cultivars and things like that to where you are like oh, this this cultivars this feeling 58:09 and I'm although I think there's truth in that in some of it, I'm sure some of it is like your own perception which they're all fun stories and they're great but it's it's cool to now kind of figure out you know, what's doing what on a chemical level and and to have more analysis and then so in in the in the fall hyphae cup that you just 58:39 that you just published, you added DMP five Meo DMT, FOTON in fo Tinnin. Is that how you pronounce it? I've always read it. I've never sent it. Correct. I don't like I don't like the game of correcting people. I'm looking at how I say it. You say it how you say it. If we were if I understand what you're saying. I'll if I don't understand. I'll ask that. No, it was also on the same page. Exactly. Bufo bouffant, and then Buffon Nene, like both. I don't Okay, like you're right, you're not wrong. Okay, so like, 59:15 why did you just pick these randomly just to be like, oh, like they've never been tested before. So let's just see if they contain it. The only thing that I've I've read was about DMT, which was hypothesized by Alexander Shogun, which he said that if you put five Meo DMT in the substrate, the mushrooms will hyper accumulate it, which I don't know if that was ever proven, but yeah, where were you coming from with these compounds? There's three prongs at which I was trying to approach this from. One was my goal was to always have a method that could be used for any 59:57 psychedelic substance 1:00:00 protesting. So the idea is like you could run a mescaline containing cacti, you could run an Ayahuasca tea, you could run a mushroom, any of those three things could be set through that instrument on that method, and you could be able to get an answer of potency, that was the goal. 1:00:17 Or even like a frog extract, you know, it's like, all of those are things that should be analyzable on the same method. 1:00:24 And I was working with another group to be able to do that. And including those I figured it was important because we did this is the second prong 1:00:33 have a number of different people 1:00:36 with different substrates, like they were spiking their substrates in that way. 1:00:41 And that kind of weaves into the third prong, which was a conversation that I've been trying to 1:00:49 trying to be a voice of reason in as best as I can. I don't presume myself to be a voice of reason much ever. But I'm trying to at least put out a middle ground approach, because I've heard a lot of Yeah, and a lot of knee. 1:01:03 So are you familiar with silo? methoxy? 1:01:07 Yeah, yeah, this is the compound that I believe you're discussing, when you're talking about the good thing, compound, as you take five Meo DMT, five methoxy DMT, put it in the substrate, and the mushroom will readily take up that five methoxy and add the hydroxy group to it in the four position. So it's Oh lowson Goddess five Meo DMT. And this is a a enzymatically, possible compound, a Shogun, hypothesized it, and there's a whole church based around it now, they believe that they have not only locked in and dialed in the ability to produce it. 1:01:49 But they also believe it to be outside the purview of legal jurisdiction, because the MRIs and stuff like that they think it's outside of that 1:02:00 I did get a small microdose capsule that I was able to test. It did test positive for psilocybin and psilocybin. This was handed to me. Yeah, I think it was October last year, November last year. So I did get a chance to test that. And I sent it off to another lab for validation testing, as well. But the issue is, is there's no standard for Sylow methoxy. One. So while I was seeing psilocybin and psilocybin in this, there were peaks that were unidentifiable, that are in a range that could be hypothesized to be very similar to five methoxy DMT. 1:02:42 But I couldn't, I couldn't say without, you know, instrumentation that cost as much as the house, you know, it's like 250,000 to $500,000 instrument. 1:02:52 And so, without that kind of level of investigation, or like university levels of investigation using nuclear magnetic resonance, it's stuff like that, I would not be able to identify a compound present without an A standard of it. And so that being said, I argue it's Schrodinger as compound, like, we don't have enough data yet. The box is not open. It could be, it could also not be, I see things that point towards his possible existence. But I've also heard claims that there is no psilocybin or psilocybin in these mushrooms. While I haven't seen that data, that I haven't seen data, the supports that I've seen data that contradicts it. 1:03:34 I'm interested to see how that works. I think I've heard them say on a podcast recently that they've gotten psilocybin production to less than one milligram. 1:03:43 Which is, I mean, if that's possible, cool, but they're saying that it's all being converted into psyllium toxin. But it's like, it's hard for me to confirm that when we don't have standards for it, you know. So again, we're in this nascent state, we're still in the early stages. So I will state if you have DMT, or high DMT containing substrates, like there's this one commonly occurring grass in California called phalaris grass, it's rich and DMT, it naturally produces DMT. Yeah, if you actually add that to your substrate, you can increase the amount of psilocybin production because psilocybin is for phosphor oil, oxy DMT. So the same principle works there. So if you have phalaris grass, you can put that in your substrate and you can increase potency that way. So that's probably a better option for those people that are interested in knowing that approach. Just like you could probably do something similar with adenosine and Corty. Seaton. That's exactly yeah, that's, that's kind of my theory as to why they work on insects so well, it's because they're hijacking the ATP and quality sleep and production of the organism. That's a different conversation for a different thing. Yeah, no, I that my brain immediately went there of like, oh, yeah, you bent quadriceps, substrate or fruiting bodies or 1:05:00 You know, the the Qwerty signing C and D, the beta carboline that I was talking about earlier? Yeah. Yeah, I, I'm sure you know, the actual fruiting bodies of ovo quadricep sign essence would be so expensive, but so is five Meo DMT. So if some, some cultivator wanted to make some super expensive one they could do it or, you know, see us for is the, the, the kind of the poor man's overview, of course of sign essence was just mycelial biomass grown in a in a bioreactor, but it probably has chord assigning C and D as well and, and might 1:05:42 boost it as well or do something. But yeah, I'm super interested to see all this done. And 1:05:49 I have two follow up questions for this and two paths that I kind of want to go down. One is that, you know, you're talking about, you would need a piece of equipment, the cost of a house, you know, and you're doing all this testing, non, not for profit. And so I'm just curious, and maybe you've used the same equipment this whole time, or you've upgraded since the first report, but 1:06:19 what what kind of equipment are you using for kind of a layman at home. So further correction, we only did one set of testing not for profit, on the cups, we have asked people to submit payment for to support the science and allow us to keep going. And we do offer testing, 1:06:37 at reasonable rates for patrons and things like that. Yeah, clients. So we do offer nonprofit testing for therapists and things like that. But just throwing that out there that it's not all not for profit, for clarity sake, because I believe that's important. The instrument that we've been using has been a it's a whole lab space was a bootstrap lab space that we've been slowly upgrading over time, like we started off in an apartment, we moved into a incubator lab space. And now we're in our own dedicated space, 1:07:12 the process has been a series of upgrades, like the instrument is still the same, like the the chassis is still the same, but the inner workings have been updated, modernized, if you will. 1:07:26 And in that way, we're utilizing a lot of the same basic principles like the instruments a workhorse, the reason why I like it, it's like, 1:07:35 like a 1980s, Honda Civic, like, you could drive that thing into the ground. You know, it's like, it's not going to you as long as you just do some basic maintenance on it, unlike unlike a BMW, or Volvo, which you have to it's like a watch, you got to maintain it kind of a thing, or else it's going to fall apart on you. 1:07:55 So getting that kind of an instrument helps us do a lot of work, but we're doing is intended for analysis of known compounds, versus analysis of unknown compounds. And that's usually done with. So what we're doing is chromatography, which is utilizing light absorbance, going back to the light conversation, utilizing light absorbance to determine compound presence, versus mass spectrometry, which is you're literally taking compounds and utilizing magnets to break them apart into constituent parts, and then analyzing each one of those parts. And then based off of how much of each of those parts are present, adding it all together to determine the structure of the original molecule. And then you have to use other stuff to confirm even more, you have to have databases and stuff like that. And so that utilizing a mass spectrometer, as you can imagine, working with magnets, typically requires a 1:08:54 large amount of gases like argon and stuff like that, to be able to get temperatures that you need to create environments where you can actually do that kind of work. And that all requires specific kinds of instrumentation, all of which costs more than you know, that BMW that I mentioned earlier. Right. And I'm sure in the future this testing will be Wow, widely available, and people can send it in to a bunch of different labs as it 1:09:24 Yeah, I feel like we're going in the right direction. And we're going to follow in the footsteps of of cannabis and you know, you can there's a there's a million cannabis labs now and they're testing all these different things, which is incredible and amazing. 1:09:38 Let me ask you right there. Let me promise you I have many harsh criticisms because I'm moved into this space from cannabis and cannabis. Oh, it's not perfect. Oh, it is. And this is why I'm trying to learn lessons from cannabis. Not the least of which is I do not believe this is two different statements here. This is the Ian Ray the psycho not an Ian the scientist. So got it psycho now. 1:10:00 First, 1:10:01 psychedelics, mushrooms, and the agenda, whatever you want to call them, are inherently dangerous, okay? In the sense that they can put you in a place where if you are unsupported or have nothing around you, you don't know what outcomes you're gonna be facing. Like without the right support network, they are dangerous, just like a car. If you don't know how to drive a car, putting your person on the road is dangerous. However, the scientist in me has learned 1:10:34 that for profit models 1:10:37 are not incentivized to prioritize safety. Yeah, put those two things together. 1:10:44 An inherently dangerous substance where for profit models are not incentivized to prioritize safety. And that's a dangerous mix. And we see that in cannabis. Right now labs, labs stopping you, whoever gives you the highest number or the people you go with. There was a lab in Colorado, they got shut down, because while their method was validated, and it passed ISO certification, it was considered fudging numbers. Because I mean, honestly, I don't know if you smoke cannabis. But most people that smoke cannabis usually don't smoke the seeds in the stems. 1:11:16 Usually, usually, yeah. And so in their testing, they would add in a sifting step. Okay. That way, they would remove some seeds and sevens. Well, that was viewed as modifying the actual plant. But it's like, because other labs weren't doing it, they were just taking like whole flower homogenizing it and just testing the whole flower. Right? So their numbers were being skewed because they were adding in this sifting step. 1:11:44 You see what I'm saying? How like wild, there's no, their incentive was to get higher numbers. And so they were getting those higher numbers, and people would come shop with him, so they'd sell it. So again, for profit models aren't incentivizing the safety of the individual. They're incentivized to get whatever the client wants. So and then those instances is always higher number equals better. And so this is where I'm trying to start the conversation differently. Where I'm trying to say hire number does not equal better. There are lots of uses for things, even if they're at low numbers. Furthermore, I think that there's even deeper conversations to have about why we would choose to pursue higher number equal better in a for profit model. If we could have a third party nonprofit testing, I think that would be the goal, like or at least a standard by which everybody can be compared to there's no there is proficiency testing in cannabis, but it's plus or minus 20%. So I could have 120 milligrams per gram, and you could have 100 milligrams per gram. It's like, and that's acceptable. 1:12:48 That goes, go ahead. It goes back to our conversation before about using the fingerprint rather than a potency scale. Right of like, it's not this one is better. This one is more potent than this one. It's like, you know, yeah, maybe this one has as less psilocybin and psilocybin, but it has more reggae scene, or however you pronounce it, and that it might be great for a person with Parkinson's not wanting to melt their face off in the machine. Now flan, you know? Yep, yep. Well, it's like the profiles are important, because that's also why I moved away from talking about percent, because percent is always based off of weight. And I think what we should be talking about is, again, moving into the whole conversation about milligrams per gram. So like the Johns Hopkins studies, were giving people pure psilocybin, they gave them 25 to 30 milligrams of pure psilocybin for a 75 kilogram person, that's 155 pound verse. So they had a scale that was all relative. So it's like, okay, if you weigh 85 kilograms, that means you got I think it's like 27 to 33 or something like that. It scales relative to your body weight. Yeah. And so this is kind of where we need to start having these conversations. It's like, okay, well, my fruit has how many milligrams of these compounds per gram of fruit, I weigh out five grams, that gives me this many milligrams. I know how to dose myself based off my body weight. Like I'm trying to start those kinds of conversations. Because what happened to a good old session we'd like what happened to a weed, I can introduce somebody to cannabis with like, yeah, all there is right now was this 25% melt your face off, you know, kids aren't going to be scared from it's like, Whatever happened to a good little 10 percenter? You know, yeah, I actually love going to Jamaica and a lot of the weed there is like push weed, you know, or as they call it, and it's like not melt your face off at all. And you can just smoke it all day and get like a little buzz you know, it's like this nice little like 1:15:00 You know, and then and then you go to some dispensaries and you just like you take one puff and you're just a puddle, you know, it's like, all right. And each they're they're getting more and more potent, like, what people are also I'm not I'm a flower man through and through. I'm not a dabs guy I have nothing against ABS I think against extracts but it's like, to me, that's a far distant relationship with this thing. It's like it's a relationship with the molecule, no longer relationship with the plant, you know, I'm saying, and to me, I've always been a, you know, I appreciate the sovereignty of compounds and molecules. But I much appreciate much rather appreciate the relationship of organisms more like I can grow a mushroom, I can grow a cannabis plant, I can have a interaction with it, I can talk with it. I can. I mean, don't get me wrong, like, someone who isn't me, it's probably done. 1:15:54 The same with DMT crystals, you know, grown them up in their own little jar and talk to them. But at the same time, it's like, that's a different relationship is all I'm saying. It's like, I'm not saying it's wrong, or I'm trying to bring fall to it. But that's not me. It's like, I'm not a, an extract sky. Like I'm more of a flower guy. I'm more of a direct relationship, like nothing against LSD, but I'm not gonna go out of my way. Thank God, I'll say that. But I will go out of my way to take maybe LSA lethargic acid Aima. Yeah, yeah. Why? Maybe Woodrow Yeah, or it bulimia or No, Maria, we have morning glories. And so again, like there's, there's this whole conversation to have about relationships. Because again, I think 1:16:36 we are very extraction airy as a species, our modern iteration of us is very much we're different from nature, we're separate from nature, there's manmade, and then there's natural, it's like, that distinction is funny, 1:16:50 in the sense that it doesn't exist, and it's all in our head. And furthermore, this idea, it's, there's this separation, it's like, we're trying to make something that was natural, more hours. And I think that what should be happening is the opposite of that is instead of us thinking into ourselves, we should be thinking back into nature. Does that make sense? 1,000% I don't mow my lawn. And I think it's like, I love watching it grow, quote unquote, wild and seeing all this, wildflowers grow. And all these, these different plants grow and like, I It hurts my soul to mow my lawn. And I'm like, why? Like, why do I have to control that? Just a little side note, but 1:17:31 I feel the same with 1:17:34 like, microdose pills, like if it's ground up into a powder in a capsule, or it's it's made into a chocolate or like anything else. One, it's going back to that report that I mentioned, probably 10 times this episode. Yeah, this stability. The second you grind it into a powder, potency goes way down. I mean, the the tryptamines start to degrade very, very fast and buy a lot. And the second, you know, when you're making a chocolate, a lot of times you're heating it up to a high heat, not all the time, but you know, there's problem too. And then you also have to powder it. So it's like, yeah, maybe it tastes better. Maybe it's easier to use, but how close are you to the mushroom? Have you? Have you even seen a whole mushroom? You know, or do you just get it from from your guy on Venice Beach and he just gives you chocolates or capsules? And like, have you actually seen a mushroom before? not beat around the bush? I think that gummies and chocolates are poly drinking 1:18:38 chocolate, then things are a allies totally. So they play a role in potentiating the effects of true true trends. So I think that that's a part of the sugars in sugar. And one of the reasons why sugar alcoholic beverages exist is because sugar helps alcohol cross the blood brain barrier. 1:19:01 Hmm. That's why sugary drinks can get you more than a straight drink. I didn't know that. Wow. Yeah, that's actually it's ironic because if you think about a lot of the like cocktails and Frou Frou drinks that most people try to get for women are sweet. There's a whole there's a whole manipulative, there's a whole manipulative conversation to it. Yeah, interesting. Yeah. And so that being said, sugars plus tryptamines, eight and they're crossing the blood brain barrier. So it is Polly drugging. So this is why I don't want to beat around the bush like we need to have this conversation. I don't know if people are familiar with these terms. But this is common in the psychedelic space, but by experienced individuals, Candy flipping, you know, yeah, or hippy flipping. You know, all of these different ways hippie flipping is taking MDMA and mushrooms candy flipping is taking MDMA and LSD typically. 1:19:57 And so those are I mean, again, I might not be using 1:20:00 The same terms that everybody else knows. There are tons of different ways of talking about this kind of form of poly drugging. And I think that the most important conversation it's like trying to listen to to two songs at the same time. Some people can do it like some people can do it masterfully. I look at like mashups of like, freeze McGee and stuff like that, where they take to, I wear my sunglasses at night, and 1:20:23 I can't remember the one that they blended it with. But it's, it matches, it meshes perfectly, and they do it beautifully. But other times you're trying to listen to Beethoven symphony. And you know, Skrillex is like, that's not gonna go well. Yeah, and, and I feel like for beginners, I feel like if you want to do that at a later point, go for it and everyone, you know, the world is your oyster. But for I think everyone should have, you know, just to like a standalone experience with just just the full fruits, you know, try it once at least, you know, and then if you want to polydrug or you do do it, whatever floats your boat, if you want to put it in chocolates, capsules, because easier, whatever works to you know, have a better relationship but but at least once just you know, just to have a foundation and and this kind of leads me you know, the the talk about capsules and chocolates and stuff. microdosing is like the biggest talk ever right now and everyone in their their uncle's grandmas talking about it and 1:21:30 and micro dosing Institute, if you don't mind, I think they're an amazing group of people working with Dr. James Fadiman both in the United States and in Europe, to bring these conversations at the forefront. 1:21:41 So I personally have an interesting view on micro dosing. 1:21:47 I have this conversation. Yeah, like I am not I just don't. 1:21:55 I use, I've been micro dosing for like 10 years. And it's not until recently that I realized, for me personally, I just don't really buy the whole sub perceptual dose, I just don't, I think it's all placebo. And based on seven peer reviewed, published papers in the last couple of years, that kind of that those were the their results, we need a lot more tests and things like that. But you know, that's, that's a little side side note. But I noticed in your report that you said, a microdose should be point two milligrams per pill, and can and should contain one milligram of active tryptamines having a content around five milligrams per gram, or point 5%. And you chose a microdose champion, which was the 10th most potent at that, you know, five milligram per gram range. And I'm just curious how what, why that number? Why did why did you pick that? So again, I'm trying to start the conversation at a point that makes sense to me. So if you have five milligrams of tryptamines per one gram of fruit, okay. If I take a fifth of that fruit, 1:23:13 point two milligrams, and 1.2 grams, sorry, 200 milligrams, that gives me one milligram of active tryptamines. I think that's the solid starting point. Like start there. Right. So it just makes your math easy. It's super strict. Yes. No, I mean, we got to start somewhere. I'm not saying I'm right. Yeah. I'm just saying, like, we got to start somewhere. So might as well start here. Totally. Yeah. Yeah, that kind of the goal, and I get I targeted something with high psilocybin. Because, again, we want to maintain, we're gonna homogenized it, you're gonna make it in bulk, you want something that's gonna be stable. 1:23:52 Yeah. Yeah. Does that make sense? Totally. And then this is another question that you had. 1:24:01 This actually, do you mind if I actually pause for a second touch base on something that I want to weave into earlier? Because you use the word that I again, I, I think that it's an elephant in the room use the word placebo effect. 1:24:14 And this idea, it's like, well, let's not forget that. All medical scientific studies need to account for the placebo effect, which for all intents and purposes, is the brain and the body healing itself. Oh, where idea? Yes, is a thing. And so what you acknowledge the fact that there is something to be said, for the impact of placebo, but then there's also something to be said for 1:24:43 jumpstarting an engine, you know, it's like, sometimes just the act of taking something is that jumpstart, that's kind of what we're talking about with the placebo effect. 1:24:54 Sometimes it has an effect. Sometimes it doesn't, but the act of taking something in causes some kind of reaction. 1:25:00 Action in the brain. And yeah, I think that there is something there that we should always try to remember. It's like there's this connection that we have to our own mental health here, that if we're taking these micro doses, the micro doses aren't doing anything for us. We are doing something for ourselves. And that's what I'm trying to get to here. It's like these materials aren't healing. Our bodies are healing, we're working on ourselves. Like, this is the big conversation that I want to throw in here, because that's the key component of the placebo effect that people forget. It's like it's not the external source. It's doing the thing. It's you that's doing the thing. Yeah. And I want to point out that like, I, yes, 1,000%. And I don't want to paint sub percent as bad. Because yes, placebo is amazing. And it's like, incredible that people are having these benefits. And if you're getting benefits, that's all that matters. I want to de stigmatize the thought liberal dose, that if you go beyond the perception, perceptual, and you start feeling it, that there's like all these memes out there that like, oh, wasn't a microdose anymore. And like, oh, no, I took too much, quote, unquote. And it's like, well, 1:26:19 that doesn't have to be a bad thing. And actually, my, all of my most potent microdose journeys have been when they go beyond the perceptual or go beyond the sub perceptual into perceptual. And I start, I'm like, on the border of uncomfortability, because I'm like, doing normal day to day things. And I'm like, really feeling it. And honestly, I have the best insights, the most powerful breakthroughs I'm able to real time integrate. But But that's me personally. So I just want to destigmatize for people who who want to paint that as bad or like, Oh, if I feel a microdose that means I took too much and that's bad. It's like, no, no, it's just, it's just a different. It's just a different state where you can also do amazing things. And I just want to point that out, because I feel like it's gotten a bad rap. And I don't, you know, I just want to like, be like, no, no, that's an amazing place. Yeah, like, anxiety is the biggest thing. So it's like, you're, you're on that, that that line, you're writing that line of like, 1:27:30 it's I'm gonna use the word anxiety, people have different stress, it's like, or, or different ways of approaching it, I think it's 1:27:38 a wave that we're all it's like surfing, you know, it's like surfing has its own stigma to it, you know, crashing sharks, you know, all these different all the hard work it takes to get out there, you know, to do surfing like having to go at the early hours, but at the same time, in doing so, like pushing yourself to that place is a place that some people like to be in, I like to be in those spaces as well. Like, I like to be at those like, oh, okay, me being this close to the edge allows me a good understanding of where I'm at right now. Like, it's keeping me present. Yeah, in a way that if I didn't do it, it doesn't. And that works for me too. But I always think that there's this interesting approach, just like how some psychedelics cause ego loss, and some cause ego inflation. I think that some people need both of those. Some people need that some people like I know, I know, therapists, that specifically staff that they work with people of color, and it's like they've been beat down their entire fucking lives for generations. They don't need ego loss, you know, they need some kind of support or some kind of ego inflation. And I'm like, that's valid. And so different, different strokes for different folks, the idea that some of us need to have that surfboard, kind of like riding the edge kind of space to to push us to be our better selves. Some of us need that 1:29:01 safety, blanket security of being able to say, I know, I am not definitely tripping, you know, the different people need different spaces. Right. And I think that's why I respect what you're saying you're not trying to stigmatize or D stigmatize you're trying to say, let's be open to the possibility that a perceptual micro dose is not a bad thing. 1:29:23 Yeah, definitely. I respect that. I respect that. I think that there's an open conversation to have there. I don't think I think that I don't have the answer to it. And I think that it's going to probably end up having a conversation very similar to, you know, how we approach alcoholism and stuff like that. Maybe, you know, it's like, having a drink at lunch is not bad. But, you know, being a little tipsy before four can be a little issue. You know, it's like, where does that kind of, I mean, there's a conversation to have there. It's like, Yeah, I know functional crack addicts. I know people that will literally work eight to 10 hour shift and 1:30:00 Go Home smoke crack until they pass out, wake up and do the same the next day, more power to him like you're, you're, you're, you're not harming anybody, you're doing something like you're not harming yourself, you're not putting people at risk. Like, I think that there's something to be said for this. And so I hear you like, let's, let's let's be open to the possibility of D stigmatization, regardless of whether it's low dose perceptual or perceptual. Let's just be open to that. Yeah. And kind of shifting gears here a little bit, but it's on the same level of like picking a standard for both micro dosing, but also a breakthrough amount. And you're talking about I think it was the John Hopkins study where it was around 25 to 30 milligrams per 70 kilogram person or 154 pounds. Transcribed by https://otter.ai
