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SYSK Selects: How Magic Mushrooms Work · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Hey everyone, it's Josh and for this week's s Y
0:04
Speaker 1: s K Selects episode, I picked How Magic Mushrooms Work,
0:08
Speaker 1: which came out in two thousand and twelve. I think
0:10
Speaker 1: we're just kind of starting to dip our toe into
0:14
Speaker 1: um controversial topics maybe who knows. And I think I
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Speaker 1: remember us being worried we were going to get in
0:20
Speaker 1: trouble for it. Well we didn't. So here it is again,
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Speaker 1: enjoy Welcome to Stuff you should Know from house Stuff
0:31
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast on
0:40
Speaker 1: Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant with me. Uh
0:45
Speaker 1: and this is the far out podcast Stuff you should know.
0:48
Speaker 1: That's right. We were kicking off. This is our first
0:51
Speaker 1: show we're recording in and uh, Josh thought let's kick
0:56
Speaker 1: it off with the Little Almond Brothers and get psychedelic exactly.
1:02
Speaker 1: That's how you think of when you think psychedelia. Well,
1:06
Speaker 1: they were known for having mushrooms on their album covers
1:11
Speaker 1: and t shirts and it was a very common thing.
1:13
Speaker 1: Those are peaches, dead mushrooms all over the place. Okay, yeah,
1:17
Speaker 1: but generally now, of course, you think of like, you know,
1:19
Speaker 1: the grateful Dead. Jefferson airplane, Yeah, the floor elevators, Yeah, Quicksilver,
1:27
Speaker 1: messenger service, Moby Grape strawberry, alarm clock, chocolate watchman, Jimi
1:33
Speaker 1: Hendricks of course. Who yeah, so Chuck Uh, you're familiar
1:38
Speaker 1: with psychedelia rock and roll? Of course? Are you familiar
1:42
Speaker 1: with psychedelia as far as psychedelics are concerned. I know
1:45
Speaker 1: you are, and you want to know how I know
1:47
Speaker 1: you are because we podcasted on it. That's exactly right,
1:51
Speaker 1: LSD and Cia. What else? It seems like we've been
1:54
Speaker 1: psychedelics treatmental illness, that's right. That was a big one
1:56
Speaker 1: that kind of overlaps with some of this. Um. We're
1:58
Speaker 1: gonna lay a lot of the blame of all the
2:01
Speaker 1: lost research, decades of it at the feet of Timothy Leary,
2:04
Speaker 1: the man who ruined everything, um and what we're talking about.
2:09
Speaker 1: Pardon my sniffles. By the way, I'm not sick mentally.
2:13
Speaker 1: I'm not allowing myself to think of me as sick.
2:16
Speaker 1: I have sniffles. That's that's what I did. I was like, now,
2:19
Speaker 1: I'm not sick. I'm just not gonna let it happen.
2:21
Speaker 1: And you look at you. You look fantastic. It was
2:23
Speaker 1: just a few days I think if I would have
2:25
Speaker 1: wallowed in it, it would have been more than a week.
2:27
Speaker 1: I'm not yeah, I'm not letting myself. I hit it hard, man,
2:29
Speaker 1: like tons of fluids and emergency and airborne and fruits,
2:34
Speaker 1: and that was fine. Okay, you'll be great airborne. You know.
2:39
Speaker 1: That's like Holly discredited. It's the same thing as an
2:42
Speaker 1: emergency pretty much. It's just like vitamins and stuff. Okay,
2:45
Speaker 1: all right, but it doesn't keep you from getting sick.
2:47
Speaker 1: I think that's how it's discredited. But it'll it'll help
2:50
Speaker 1: you out, like in a vitamin any way. Right, alright,
2:54
Speaker 1: some college, because there's like get to the most room exactly.
2:58
Speaker 1: So let's get to the mushroom. Chuck, Um, chuck. I've
3:03
Speaker 1: got no real intro other than I think we should
3:07
Speaker 1: talk about the history of mushrooms first. What do you think?
3:10
Speaker 1: I think it sounds great. Um. Apparently there's a lot
3:14
Speaker 1: of um debate over how long people have been using
3:20
Speaker 1: magic mushrooms. UM. As far as religious rituals recreationally, who knows,
3:27
Speaker 1: but the supposition is that it goes back thousands and
3:30
Speaker 1: thousands of years. For example, there's a cave painting in
3:34
Speaker 1: Um Algeria that it's nine thousand years old. Um, that
3:38
Speaker 1: supposedly depicts mushrooms. There's another one in Spain that's six
3:43
Speaker 1: thousand years old that depicts mushrooms. Um. And I mean
3:47
Speaker 1: it makes a lot of sense that when you think
3:49
Speaker 1: of Native American tribes, Amerindian tribes, Mesoamerican tribes. Um, these
3:56
Speaker 1: people have customarily eaten magic mushrooms all this time. Right. Well,
4:01
Speaker 1: that's what one camp says is, hey, they've been used
4:04
Speaker 1: in religious rites for thousands of years and Central American
4:08
Speaker 1: Northern Africa, Like you said, so, uh, what's the rub?
4:13
Speaker 1: But then there's another camp that says, hey, you can't
4:15
Speaker 1: prove that you're just seeing what you want to see
4:17
Speaker 1: when you look at that ca painting or that Allmond
4:19
Speaker 1: Brothers cover and uh, just because there's a mushroom on
4:23
Speaker 1: the wall doesn't mean that they ate magic mushrooms. What
4:26
Speaker 1: did the Aztecs have? How do you pronounce that? I
4:32
Speaker 1: don't know. I've never been good at pronouncing Aztec, but
4:35
Speaker 1: I can take a stab at it if you'd like
4:36
Speaker 1: me to. Tan un knocked tal right. They called it
4:42
Speaker 1: the flesh of the gods, and they use the substance
4:44
Speaker 1: we know that we just don't know what it was,
4:46
Speaker 1: but a lot of people think that it might have
4:48
Speaker 1: been quote unquote magic mushrooms. Right. They also made statues
4:52
Speaker 1: of it, that kind of thing, um, And you generally
4:55
Speaker 1: only do that back in the day, if you if
4:58
Speaker 1: it's a very revered sub instance, they're gonna make a
5:01
Speaker 1: statue of just like whatever. If we can speak in likelihoods,
5:05
Speaker 1: there were we know there were mushrooms where we assume
5:08
Speaker 1: that there were these mushrooms growing wild like they are
5:10
Speaker 1: today in these areas that these people were hunters and
5:14
Speaker 1: gatherers and foragers so likely tried these mushrooms. If they
5:19
Speaker 1: did try these mushrooms, they probably wigged out, right, isn't
5:24
Speaker 1: that the clinical term? I think they call it a trip?
5:27
Speaker 1: Okay man, Uh, they tripped and um probably started incorporating
5:32
Speaker 1: it into their cave art you know teas today and
5:36
Speaker 1: there on their book cover from their notebooks. Uh. It
5:40
Speaker 1: has been confirmed in contemporary tribes in Central America, including
5:45
Speaker 1: the mass at Tech, the Mixed Tech, the Nagua, and
5:49
Speaker 1: the Zappa Tech. So all the texts are way into
5:51
Speaker 1: it at least these days. Right, So if they eat
5:54
Speaker 1: it these days, I would say, chances are they probably
5:58
Speaker 1: ate it back in the day as well. Okay, so um,
6:00
Speaker 1: as far as the West is concerned. Um, well, I'm
6:04
Speaker 1: sorry it wasn't. Also, it's not just Middle America, Mesoamerica,
6:11
Speaker 1: Northern African Spain, you mean like a Middle America like
6:13
Speaker 1: Ohio and America. It's not just Kansas that's on mushrooms. Um,
6:19
Speaker 1: the Sammi. Have you heard of the Sami people? So
6:22
Speaker 1: they're finished. They're like indigenous Finish tribes like be York
6:28
Speaker 1: clearly has Sami in her. Like her look, it's very Sami. Um. Yeah,
6:33
Speaker 1: well you'd like the Sammies. Cool looking. Um. They love
6:37
Speaker 1: mushrooms so much that they are known to drink the
6:40
Speaker 1: urine of reindeer that have just recently ingested mushrooms. And
6:44
Speaker 1: there's yeah, there's an art installation and I think Berlin
6:46
Speaker 1: recently of this guy who had a bunch of magic
6:50
Speaker 1: mushrooms in this pin, a bunch of reindeer in them,
6:53
Speaker 1: and he was having the reindeer eat the mushrooms and
6:55
Speaker 1: then collect him their urine and storing it. Well, my
6:59
Speaker 1: question to him is why would he go about it
7:02
Speaker 1: that way? If he has some magic mushrooms. Did it
7:04
Speaker 1: like increase the potency or something like that. I don't know.
7:07
Speaker 1: You'd probably be better off asking a sami person than him. Sure,
7:11
Speaker 1: I don't know. If like, um, it's like that coffee
7:13
Speaker 1: we failed to mention that's like ferrets and they poop
7:16
Speaker 1: it out the coffee being and then they roast that
7:18
Speaker 1: into coffee. Exact it's status. Um. So anyway, people have
7:22
Speaker 1: probably been eating magic mushrooms for a long time, but
7:26
Speaker 1: among Westerners it was totally unthought of, unheard of, unknown
7:32
Speaker 1: until the fifties. Right, yeah. Uh. In nineteen five, a
7:36
Speaker 1: writer while he's a mycologist who studies mushrooms. His name
7:40
Speaker 1: was our Gordon Wesson, and he traveled to Mexico a
7:44
Speaker 1: lot back in the fifties searching out mushrooms. Not for
7:48
Speaker 1: magic mushroom purposes, but he was just into mushrooms and
7:52
Speaker 1: he participated in a ritual he and his wife did together, well,
7:57
Speaker 1: not not at first. Actually, did you read the article? No, yeah,
8:01
Speaker 1: it's really good. You should read it sometime. He he
8:04
Speaker 1: took a colleague down there first. Later on he took
8:07
Speaker 1: his wife and daughter and she was like eighteen, so
8:10
Speaker 1: he was like, sure, she's old enough, and they all
8:13
Speaker 1: tripped on these mushrooms. But I'd like to read a
8:16
Speaker 1: selection if I may Alan as his friend. By the way,
8:20
Speaker 1: is that allen him? Um? Yeah, I think so. Um.
8:24
Speaker 1: Alan and I were determined to resist any effects that
8:27
Speaker 1: they might have to observe better the events of the night,
8:30
Speaker 1: But her resolve soon melted before the onslaught of the mushrooms.
8:34
Speaker 1: Alan felt cold and wrapped himself in a blanket. A
8:36
Speaker 1: few minutes later, he leaned over and whispered, Gordon, I'm
8:40
Speaker 1: seeing things. I told him not to worry. I was too.
8:45
Speaker 1: We were never more wide awake, and the visions came,
8:47
Speaker 1: whether our eyes were open or closed. They emerged from
8:50
Speaker 1: the center of our field of vision, opening up as
8:53
Speaker 1: they came, now rushing, now slowly, at the pace that
8:56
Speaker 1: our will chose. They began with art motifs. Motifs fractals
9:03
Speaker 1: is another word angling, such as might decorate carpets or
9:07
Speaker 1: textiles or wallpaper, or the drawing board of an architect.
9:11
Speaker 1: Then I saw a mythological beast drawing a regal chariot.
9:16
Speaker 1: And then he goes on to describe all sorts of things,
9:19
Speaker 1: including seeing not an imperfect view of ordinary life, but
9:24
Speaker 1: the archetypes, the platonic ideas that underlie the imperfect images
9:29
Speaker 1: of everyday life. So he was tripping hard. It sounds
9:32
Speaker 1: like a yeah, And that's unusual that he says that
9:35
Speaker 1: he saw something in a chariot, because mushrooms and lst
9:39
Speaker 1: are Although they're hallucinogens, they don't cause actual hallucinations. They
9:43
Speaker 1: tend to just mess with, distort things that are already there. Exactly.
9:47
Speaker 1: I have an answer for that because I thought the
9:49
Speaker 1: same thing. He did it in darkness, So I mean,
9:53
Speaker 1: on drugs or not. If you go and sit in
9:55
Speaker 1: a dark room long enough, you're gonna start seeing things
9:58
Speaker 1: in your mind's eye. And I think that's what's going on.
10:00
Speaker 1: You're just imagining. It's such an our. Gordon Wasson, apologist, Chuck.
10:05
Speaker 1: He was pretty moved though, and he wrote this article
10:07
Speaker 1: in Life, and uh, the editor picked out the title
10:10
Speaker 1: Seeking the Magic Mushroom. Yeah, that's where the name came from.
10:12
Speaker 1: A Life magazine editor in nineteen fifty seven coined the
10:16
Speaker 1: term magic mushroom. Um. After that little trip um, Wasson
10:23
Speaker 1: and Heim recruited Albert Hoffman, who was the chemist who
10:28
Speaker 1: created LSD isolated LSD and said, hey, man, we know
10:33
Speaker 1: it's you're into. Take these mushrooms and figure out what's
10:36
Speaker 1: going on with them. And he did, and he isolated
10:40
Speaker 1: the active ingredient. A um, what is it a trip
10:44
Speaker 1: to It's a trip to mine, which is an alkaloid.
10:47
Speaker 1: Thank you. That's actually related trip to fan. Okay, the
10:50
Speaker 1: Turkey stuff. Yeah, well you know it happens to in Turkey.
10:54
Speaker 1: But the trip of mine is the two are psilocybin
10:57
Speaker 1: and silison. So siloson is uh, that's the metabolite of psilocybin.
11:02
Speaker 1: Psilocybin is the active ingredient the trip to mind found
11:06
Speaker 1: in mushrooms. And then when you're when you ingested, your
11:08
Speaker 1: body breaks down the psilocybin into psilocine. And they're starting
11:11
Speaker 1: to come to realize that psilocine is probably the culprit
11:15
Speaker 1: behind everything. Yeah. Um, before we move on, I want
11:18
Speaker 1: to point out in the article he uh, he did
11:21
Speaker 1: it quite a few times in Mexico, and then he
11:22
Speaker 1: said later on, just to test to see if it
11:25
Speaker 1: was part of just the communal experience of being there,
11:28
Speaker 1: he went back to New York City and uh and
11:31
Speaker 1: took some and he said it was even better in
11:33
Speaker 1: New York City. Also, he disproved that he's like I
11:37
Speaker 1: love New York UM, so okay. Albert Hoffman isolates psilocybin
11:43
Speaker 1: UH and Sandoz who he worked for, who also started
11:47
Speaker 1: mass producing LSD, started mass producing psilocybin as well, and
11:51
Speaker 1: UM the psychological psychiatry community got his hands on it
11:55
Speaker 1: and started studying it. We'll talk about some of the
11:57
Speaker 1: studies later, but as early as the sixth ease they
12:00
Speaker 1: realized that UM obsessive disorders UM could be treated with
12:06
Speaker 1: psilocybin until they shut it down. They totally shut it down.
12:10
Speaker 1: Psilocybin magic mushrooms UM. Any of the silocide mushrooms are
12:14
Speaker 1: a Schedule one drug, which is kind of unusual because UM,
12:18
Speaker 1: study after study has shown that mushrooms aren't habit forming
12:22
Speaker 1: or addictive and that, you know, they kind of do
12:25
Speaker 1: have a lot of medical uses, which again we'll talk
12:28
Speaker 1: about in a little bit. But let's talk about the
12:30
Speaker 1: mushrooms and cells. Chuck. They are a plant, a mineral, fungus,
12:36
Speaker 1: or an animal. They're an animal. Uh, there are a
12:41
Speaker 1: fungus and it means it grows from a score and UH,
12:46
Speaker 1: each little mushroom in the case of psilocybin mushrooms has
12:52
Speaker 1: anywhere from point two to point four percent psilocybins a
12:55
Speaker 1: very small amount. Yeah, it sounds like it. And uh,
12:59
Speaker 1: the National Survey on Drug Use and Health in two
13:01
Speaker 1: thousand three did a survey and they found that about
13:05
Speaker 1: eight percent of adults over twenty six, which to me
13:08
Speaker 1: makes us an invalid study already if they didn't include, um,
13:15
Speaker 1: eight percent have have tried it at some point. I
13:18
Speaker 1: saw like teenagers, UM, something like around eight percent, but
13:21
Speaker 1: it was hallucinogens um other than LSD, which includes like
13:28
Speaker 1: PCP and stuff like that. Really, it seems kind of
13:30
Speaker 1: weird to lump those together. Um. But in Europe the
13:33
Speaker 1: prevalence is probably higher, um between point three percent in
13:38
Speaker 1: fourteen point one percent of use at least once in
13:42
Speaker 1: the person's lifetime between point three and fourteen. Yeah, it's
13:46
Speaker 1: pretty pretty wild. And let's just call it fourteen, okay,
13:50
Speaker 1: you know. And then for some reason, um, the Czech
13:52
Speaker 1: Republic in Slovakia report the highest use among teenagers of
13:57
Speaker 1: magic mushrooms. Not sure why. Interesting, Yeah, it's a nice
14:01
Speaker 1: place to be. It was about to bag on it
14:03
Speaker 1: and say you'd do it too, but it's lovely. Yeah,
14:07
Speaker 1: or maybe that's why they're doing it because it is lovely,
14:10
Speaker 1: because New York City it's the best. Uh So Timothy Leary,
14:16
Speaker 1: we failed to mention. But of course obviously he sunk
14:19
Speaker 1: his teeth into it literally, and like you said earlier,
14:23
Speaker 1: like all things, he kind of killed the psychedelic movement
14:27
Speaker 1: in a way as he was actually creating it. Yeah,
14:30
Speaker 1: by making it, you know, a hippie burnout thing. Well,
14:33
Speaker 1: he definitely delegitimized it. I mean, there are a lot
14:36
Speaker 1: of people who were studying um LSD and psilocybin and
14:42
Speaker 1: um I would gain all those to see how they
14:46
Speaker 1: can help people with mental illness. And Leary was like, no, man,
14:51
Speaker 1: let's just completely screw the establishment with this stuff. Well,
14:55
Speaker 1: and he's the one who established the whole set and
14:57
Speaker 1: setting thing right which is still in use today, including
15:01
Speaker 1: in this article from how Stuff Works dot com. Set
15:04
Speaker 1: and setting are defined in here. Um, do you want
15:09
Speaker 1: to talk about it, Well, this is the trip as
15:12
Speaker 1: they call it, The mushroom trip is very dependent on
15:15
Speaker 1: set and setting, the frame of mind that you have
15:19
Speaker 1: going into it. Where you are the setting obviously, if
15:22
Speaker 1: it's you know, some kind of stressful, highly organized thing.
15:28
Speaker 1: Like if you're in school or you're like in a
15:30
Speaker 1: train station and somebody's like, you're gonna miss your train.
15:32
Speaker 1: You're gonna miss your train is probably not a good idea.
15:35
Speaker 1: Um Or if you're hanging out with friends and you're
15:39
Speaker 1: camping or you're doing something there where you have no
15:41
Speaker 1: stress involved and you have the right outlook going in,
15:44
Speaker 1: Timothy Leary says, that's what you want as far as
15:47
Speaker 1: going into this whole thing. Right set is mindset and
15:50
Speaker 1: setting is your environment. Um Also, studies have found that
15:54
Speaker 1: even um what are called drug naive people can have
16:00
Speaker 1: a positive experience on psilocybin mushrooms if there is if
16:06
Speaker 1: what's about to happen to them is explained to them
16:08
Speaker 1: ahead of time. That that's a big part of it too,
16:10
Speaker 1: is knowing what you're getting into going into it well.
16:12
Speaker 1: And that's a big part of these studies we're going
16:14
Speaker 1: to talk about later on was these people are all
16:16
Speaker 1: coached ahead of time by people you know, they call
16:20
Speaker 1: them their guides is what they are now. They're reach
16:25
Speaker 1: research assistants who have had previous experience with psychotropics, but
16:30
Speaker 1: they would explain to them what they're about to get
16:32
Speaker 1: into and that would obviously help them along as they're
16:34
Speaker 1: going in. But they do mention the guide thing in
16:37
Speaker 1: here in this article. Uh, they say that a lot
16:41
Speaker 1: of people, um, because you know, you can have a
16:44
Speaker 1: bad trip, which the only thing you can do there
16:46
Speaker 1: is to write it out. Obviously you can't turn off
16:48
Speaker 1: the effects, which is a very important thing to note.
16:52
Speaker 1: It doesn't go away, No, it doesn't. Although supposedly, um,
16:55
Speaker 1: in the emergency room they usually prescribed sedatives and suppose
17:00
Speaker 1: really helps a bad trip. Yeah, I'm sure it does, um,
17:03
Speaker 1: But they say in the article here, new users are
17:05
Speaker 1: often advised to have an experienced friend h guide them
17:09
Speaker 1: through the experience, Like did you see Flirting with Disaster? Yeah,
17:14
Speaker 1: Lily Tomlin, Well yeah, they accidentally dosed the cop and
17:18
Speaker 1: she was like Alan and it's like she's a great guy,
17:20
Speaker 1: He'll be fine, and that she just kind of coaches
17:23
Speaker 1: him through the thing. I was looking up movies, um
17:25
Speaker 1: that have mushrooms in him, and I was having a
17:28
Speaker 1: lot of job. I found like Altered States. Well this
17:30
Speaker 1: was LSD, but oh yeah, okay, but I guess that's
17:34
Speaker 1: a good time to mention that LSD and psilocybin. Mushrooms
17:37
Speaker 1: are very similar in the effect. Although they say that
17:41
Speaker 1: mushrooms are generally milder and don't last as long, their
17:45
Speaker 1: chemical composition is very very similar. Do you know how similar?
17:50
Speaker 1: I think there's like one um hydroxy really that's different,
17:54
Speaker 1: but they're pretty close, very close. Would when they made
17:57
Speaker 1: LSD did they try to synthesize psilocybin? Was that the
18:01
Speaker 1: way they were after? No, because they didn't know that
18:06
Speaker 1: psilocybin existed until after LST had been synicide. Interesting because
18:10
Speaker 1: you know he did LST in and do psilocybin until
18:15
Speaker 1: like quite a coincidence, isn't it? Yeah? Um, so do
18:20
Speaker 1: you know what's going on in the brain? Do you
18:22
Speaker 1: know what the whole secret is behind magic mushrooms? Uh?
18:26
Speaker 1: Central nervous system. There's some kind of inhibits and inhibits
18:30
Speaker 1: something right. Uh. No, it does the opposite. It's an agonist,
18:34
Speaker 1: which I came to realize that agony means that you
18:36
Speaker 1: feel everything. I'm in. Agony means you're feeling everything. And
18:41
Speaker 1: agonists UM binds to a receptor like in your brain
18:47
Speaker 1: that releases a neurotransmitter, and in this case, UM psilocybin
18:52
Speaker 1: or psil Lowson binds to serotonin receptors. It says, relieve
19:00
Speaker 1: the serotonin, right, and your synapses are flooded with serotonin
19:04
Speaker 1: and that's what gives what clinical researchers basically call the
19:08
Speaker 1: sensation of just being overwhelmed by sensation. Interesting. Yeah, it's
19:13
Speaker 1: all serotonin, man, although there is evidence that it affects
19:16
Speaker 1: your dopamine receptors, but not directly, like indirectly, which would
19:22
Speaker 1: kind of give you a sense of view for you right,
19:25
Speaker 1: uh so, josh. Some of the side effects when someone
19:28
Speaker 1: is taking mushrooms include dizziness and nausea UM, muscle weakness,
19:32
Speaker 1: loss of appetite, and numbness um. Sometimes uh, there could
19:38
Speaker 1: be vomiting sometimes anecdotally. Experts have said that inducing vomiting
19:45
Speaker 1: is a way to cease the nausea when you're experiencing
19:48
Speaker 1: nausea in a mushroom trip, and said they're not considered
19:53
Speaker 1: to be addictive and you can build up a toleran
19:55
Speaker 1: it's really quick. Yeah. Um. It says here in the
19:58
Speaker 1: article that like, for exam ample, taking mushrooms two days
20:01
Speaker 1: in a row um is going to make the effects
20:05
Speaker 1: of them on the second day far less pronounced I guess.
20:10
Speaker 1: And one of the guys in these studies to um,
20:12
Speaker 1: I believe, takes them for cluster headaches, and he's taken
20:16
Speaker 1: them so much that they don't have psycho hallucinogenic properties anymore.
20:21
Speaker 1: It's just like medicine for him, really gross fungal medicine. No,
20:27
Speaker 1: I think you might take a pill. Okay, I'm not
20:29
Speaker 1: sure though. UM all the tolerance also, UM, you can
20:32
Speaker 1: build up across tolerance. So like if you took a
20:35
Speaker 1: bunch of mushrooms one day and then the next day
20:37
Speaker 1: took mescalin or LSD, those effects would be dampened as well.
20:41
Speaker 1: And I think it has to do with the fact
20:43
Speaker 1: that it's all it's your serotonin. But if you do that,
20:46
Speaker 1: that means a lot of other things as well about you.
20:48
Speaker 1: It does you know, yes, I don't know what, but
20:52
Speaker 1: oh you know what, you have a T shirt that
20:55
Speaker 1: has an Almond Brothers album cover, it means you're hippie,
20:59
Speaker 1: a dirty, dirty, melly hippie. So um chuck. Some of
21:02
Speaker 1: the other effects of tripping on shrooms is um euphoria
21:07
Speaker 1: or dysphoria, and also sometimes a very rapid shift between
21:12
Speaker 1: the two. UM basically being really happy and then being
21:15
Speaker 1: terrified UM and then deep personalization, which is a sense
21:19
Speaker 1: that you are not yourself, or you belong to somebody
21:22
Speaker 1: else or there's you, you lose your sense of self,
21:27
Speaker 1: and then de realization, which is the sense that you
21:30
Speaker 1: are in a dream or that man, this isn't real,
21:34
Speaker 1: nothing is real, that kind of thing. The passage of
21:37
Speaker 1: time is often distorted, whether it's like have we been
21:43
Speaker 1: talking about this for five hours or five minutes or
21:46
Speaker 1: the other way around. I think it can go either way.
21:48
Speaker 1: I found a study that UM showed it basically tested
21:51
Speaker 1: that it gave people psilocybin and then did like time
21:55
Speaker 1: interval tests and found two to three seconds is about
21:58
Speaker 1: the most that a person can it's successfully achieve as
22:04
Speaker 1: these tests, like beyond three seconds they start to get
22:07
Speaker 1: really bad at it. And they also found the person's
22:11
Speaker 1: tapping preference, which I guess is like if you're just
22:14
Speaker 1: sitting there tapping, you know your fingers, what your preferences,
22:17
Speaker 1: and it's slower when you're on mushroom really so uh
22:24
Speaker 1: and like you said that, you don't actually hallucinate, like
22:26
Speaker 1: you're not going to be sitting there and see pink
22:28
Speaker 1: elephants dancing across the room. But if there's a painting
22:32
Speaker 1: of a pink elephant, uh, it might appear as if
22:35
Speaker 1: the elephant were breathing or moving or shifting. Or if
22:38
Speaker 1: you hear something like a song or running water or
22:43
Speaker 1: you know, a creek or something like that, you might
22:45
Speaker 1: hear other things within that sound, but not completely imagine them. Right. So,
22:52
Speaker 1: one of the things we were talking about was that, sure,
22:55
Speaker 1: mushrooms have been around for thousands of years, growing wild
22:59
Speaker 1: like they do today, and um, that's where a lot
23:03
Speaker 1: of people get their mushrooms. Apparently is just foraging it
23:07
Speaker 1: for him. One of the big problems is that, Um,
23:10
Speaker 1: while there are a lot of mushrooms in the genus Silocybe,
23:14
Speaker 1: which we probably should have mentioned earlier, that's there's the
23:18
Speaker 1: big spoiler. All the mushrooms are in the same genus. Um,
23:23
Speaker 1: there's a lot that look like them two and that
23:26
Speaker 1: might grow in similar places that will shut down your kidneys. Yeah,
23:30
Speaker 1: so you have to be very careful when you're foraging
23:33
Speaker 1: for fresh wild mushrooms if you're into that kind of thing,
23:37
Speaker 1: which neither Chuck nor i Um suggests should be done. Yeah,
23:42
Speaker 1: we're not endorsing this, No, I'm just saying like this
23:44
Speaker 1: is in the article. Yeah, I thought that was implicit,
23:46
Speaker 1: but it's probably a good time to c o a yeah. Um.
23:49
Speaker 1: In the article, they also point out that even experienced
23:52
Speaker 1: mushroom hunters have made mistakes out there in the dark
23:57
Speaker 1: in the field among the cows. So yeah, it can
24:01
Speaker 1: be toxic. It's not a good idea to just go
24:03
Speaker 1: picking mushrooms growing in it pie. And that holds true
24:08
Speaker 1: for if you're looking for truffles or you know edible mushrooms. Um. Yeah,
24:14
Speaker 1: you want to kind of know what you're doing. Um.
24:16
Speaker 1: One way to tell what kind of mushroom you're looking
24:18
Speaker 1: at is to create a spore print, which apparently you
24:21
Speaker 1: take a piece of paper and you take the cap
24:25
Speaker 1: of the mushroom. There's a stem in a cap um
24:29
Speaker 1: and in the genocilicide. Most of them are fairly small,
24:32
Speaker 1: so the cap is about one inch tall, the stems
24:34
Speaker 1: about three inches tall. Um. But you take the cap
24:37
Speaker 1: and you place a gill side down. If you've ever
24:39
Speaker 1: looked at the underside of a mushroom, there's the gills.
24:42
Speaker 1: They're just so weird looking, little powdery, powdery gills. Powder
24:47
Speaker 1: is the spores you press the gills down on the
24:50
Speaker 1: paper and it should leave an imprint of the spores.
24:53
Speaker 1: And if you know what you're doing, you can identify
24:56
Speaker 1: more easily or more um closely. They kind of mush him.
25:00
Speaker 1: You're dealing with um. So we said that there's like
25:04
Speaker 1: dozens of species I think of Psilocybe mushrooms. Yeah, there's
25:07
Speaker 1: tons of them. A couple of really popular ones though
25:11
Speaker 1: as far as ingestion goes, are the Psilocybe cubensis. It's
25:17
Speaker 1: one of the most common ones. It's a little larger
25:20
Speaker 1: as far as magic mushrooms go. It's got a golden cap.
25:23
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, it's called the Golden cap or Mexican mushroom,
25:26
Speaker 1: the street name that that's the one that um our
25:30
Speaker 1: Gordon Wasser probably was probably in Mexico um And it's
25:35
Speaker 1: got usually a reddish brown cap, white or yellowish stem.
25:39
Speaker 1: And here's an important thing. When it's bruised or crushed
25:42
Speaker 1: um it can turn blue. And a lot of people
25:45
Speaker 1: will say, hey, that's how you know it's a magic
25:47
Speaker 1: mushrooms if it turns blue when you crush it. And
25:49
Speaker 1: that's not true because there are toxic varieties that do
25:53
Speaker 1: the same thing. So that's a good way to get
25:56
Speaker 1: yourself in trouble. Um. It's also copera philic, which means
26:00
Speaker 1: that it grows in poop yeah, um, moist environments, very
26:04
Speaker 1: human environments, and hot yeah, like h South Georgia, let's say,
26:09
Speaker 1: or Florida. Yeah, which apparently I didn't look to see.
26:13
Speaker 1: But as of February two thousand nine, at least, um
26:16
Speaker 1: is the only state in the Union that where it
26:19
Speaker 1: isn't illegal to I guess pick or possess fresh pilocybe
26:24
Speaker 1: mushrooms fresh as a non dried out right. Yeah, that's true,
26:28
Speaker 1: or it was two years ago. I was gonna say,
26:30
Speaker 1: is it's still you know? I don't know. And when
26:32
Speaker 1: they say the reasoning is that, hey, it grows in
26:34
Speaker 1: the wild. People pick mushrooms and might pick them by accident,
26:37
Speaker 1: so we don't want senior prison if something's an accident.
26:40
Speaker 1: Plus the rainbow families in Ocala, and we can't we
26:44
Speaker 1: don't want to screw up their jam. One of the
26:48
Speaker 1: one of the other more popular ones is the Psilocybe
26:51
Speaker 1: semi lanciata chuck or the liberty cap and um. It's
26:57
Speaker 1: also is found in damp grassy fields populated by cattle,
27:01
Speaker 1: but it doesn't grow directly on the dung. And it's
27:04
Speaker 1: a little pointy cap, light yellow and brown, and it's
27:07
Speaker 1: smaller than the golden cap Mexican. Right. And then I
27:11
Speaker 1: guess one or the other of the big three is
27:15
Speaker 1: p Bayo sistus or the bluebell or bottle cap? So chuck.
27:20
Speaker 1: If when we're disposed to, um, take mushrooms, what, according
27:26
Speaker 1: to the article, would the person do? Well? I mean,
27:32
Speaker 1: what are what are the people who are taking mushrooms
27:34
Speaker 1: doing with them? We we talked about foraging. That's one
27:37
Speaker 1: one way you can buy them, which is illegal and
27:40
Speaker 1: we don't recommend it obviously. Um. It's illegal even to
27:44
Speaker 1: have spores, which is surprising because sports don't actually contain psilocybin,
27:49
Speaker 1: which is what's outlawed. It's a weird loophole, but it's
27:52
Speaker 1: not a loophole. It's the what's the opposite of loophole
27:55
Speaker 1: the donut the doughnut part. Okay, that's what the donut
28:01
Speaker 1: hole is. The munch. I know, I'm familiar with munch,
28:04
Speaker 1: can't believe me, okay, Um, And then you can grow
28:07
Speaker 1: your own, obviously, but if you're looking to buy this
28:10
Speaker 1: kind of thing in the United States. You know, they
28:12
Speaker 1: sell it much like marijuana, and uh ounces and quarter
28:16
Speaker 1: ounces and eight ounces and uh, I know the an
28:20
Speaker 1: eight is defined in this three point five grams in
28:23
Speaker 1: this article. This is the craziest article on the site,
28:27
Speaker 1: has to be. Yeah, it's pretty crazy. Uh yeah, because
28:31
Speaker 1: at one point she talks about who wrote this, Shana Freeman.
28:35
Speaker 1: Shana talks about the ones on the Gulf Coast give
28:38
Speaker 1: you a mellower high, but the tie mushrooms give you
28:42
Speaker 1: a much more intense high. Right, it's crazy. It is. Um.
28:46
Speaker 1: And when they dry out, which is when most people
28:50
Speaker 1: uh have them, they're dried out, they will lose some
28:55
Speaker 1: of their psychotropic properties in the drying process, but they
29:00
Speaker 1: retain these properties. I don't know about them definitely but
29:03
Speaker 1: for years. Yeah. Well, because you're you're not just drying.
29:07
Speaker 1: I think you have to freeze dry them or you
29:09
Speaker 1: have to dry them. There's like a certain way to
29:12
Speaker 1: dry them. I think that kind of locks in everything favor,
29:17
Speaker 1: which apparently is very unfortunate. Um. Some mushrooms have a
29:21
Speaker 1: reported flowery taste that sounds awful, um, sour or bitter,
29:27
Speaker 1: so it's not very fun, which means that a lot
29:30
Speaker 1: of people UM do crazy stuff with their mushrooms to
29:34
Speaker 1: make them more palatable chocolates, mushroom chocolates is one. UM
29:39
Speaker 1: soaking liquor, soaking their mushrooms in liquor like tequiler rum um,
29:46
Speaker 1: just basically grinding them up and putting them into capsules
29:49
Speaker 1: so like you don't taste anything at all, like a
29:51
Speaker 1: mushroom pill um. Or making mushroom tea, which supposedly if
29:57
Speaker 1: you cook or um brew mushrooms, it's it's it's supposedly
30:03
Speaker 1: doesn't have an effect on um the potency, Yeah, the
30:07
Speaker 1: experience the user has and it reportedly uh comes on
30:10
Speaker 1: quicker as well. And anecdotally people have even been known
30:16
Speaker 1: to eat the slimy remains of the tea. Gross. That's
30:20
Speaker 1: what I think. I mean, everything about mushrooms are gross,
30:23
Speaker 1: but slimy. I don't like regular mushrooms like it's. I know,
30:28
Speaker 1: they supposedly don't have much of a taste and they're
30:30
Speaker 1: put in foods for texture, but I don't like the texture. Yeah,
30:33
Speaker 1: it's just the whole thing grosses me outright. So um,
30:37
Speaker 1: about one gram of dry mushrooms is apparently a very
30:42
Speaker 1: small dose four grams UM is a medium dose for
30:47
Speaker 1: an adult. I read um medium too large? Yeah, so, uh,
30:53
Speaker 1: and I guess one P. Cubensis, the Mexican mushroom dried
30:58
Speaker 1: is about a gram, a decent sized one. And when
31:01
Speaker 1: the when the one gram or four grams or whatever
31:05
Speaker 1: the dose is just taken, UM is ingested. Uh. You
31:09
Speaker 1: apparently within twenty minutes if you take it orally twenty
31:13
Speaker 1: to thirty minutes, you start to experience symptoms and they
31:16
Speaker 1: last for something like six hours, depending on like the potency.
31:21
Speaker 1: I guess, well, yeah, that's what That's what SHANEA. Freeman
31:24
Speaker 1: says in this article is that, like the there's differences
31:28
Speaker 1: between from mushroom to mushroom, from person to person. Um. Yeah, that.
31:32
Speaker 1: I mean, it's not like Sandoz is making this stuff anymore. So.
31:36
Speaker 1: We mentioned foraging, right, we mentioned uh, buying off the street,
31:41
Speaker 1: neither of which we recommend. No, again, this is all
31:44
Speaker 1: highly illegal. I mean, a schedule one drug will get
31:47
Speaker 1: you a severe prison sense. You might as well be
31:51
Speaker 1: caught with heroin or um cocaine or PCP like this
31:58
Speaker 1: is it. This isn't as bad as it's not, just
32:01
Speaker 1: because you can go out in the cowfield and find
32:03
Speaker 1: some doesn't mean you should take it lightly. You're right, No,
32:06
Speaker 1: this is huge, man, that's a huge, huge prison sentence.
32:09
Speaker 1: Very good. It's like a life ruining prison sentence. It
32:12
Speaker 1: is very although I guess probably just about any prison
32:15
Speaker 1: sentences fairly life ruining. But this is like double life ruining.
32:20
Speaker 1: That's huge. Uh mycology. You can actually grow these things,
32:24
Speaker 1: and that's what some people do, some cultivators do. This
32:27
Speaker 1: is also extremely illegal, very much illegal. Uh used to
32:32
Speaker 1: and even so we're going to tell you how to
32:33
Speaker 1: do it because this is stuff you should know, okay, okay, uh, yes,
32:40
Speaker 1: well it's stuff that some people should know. Well, I
32:42
Speaker 1: guess at the very least, it's part of explaining everything.
32:46
Speaker 1: It's on our website. Yeah, Jerry's just in there, crack um.
32:51
Speaker 1: You have to have a spore because that's the first
32:53
Speaker 1: thing you need for the mushroom to grow. Uh. Spore
32:56
Speaker 1: grows onto one mushroom, but a mushroom can have that
33:00
Speaker 1: thousands and thousands of spores on the underside the little
33:03
Speaker 1: pottery stuff that we're talking about. And remember we talked
33:05
Speaker 1: about taking spot prints for identification. The same sport prints
33:09
Speaker 1: are often what you get in the mail when you
33:12
Speaker 1: mail order UM mushroom kits. Right, you can't just throw
33:17
Speaker 1: these spores in the ground. They have to be hydrated
33:19
Speaker 1: with clean water, meaning distilled water. And you can even
33:24
Speaker 1: buy syringes that are filled pre filled with spores and
33:30
Speaker 1: sterile water from suppliers if you don't want to make
33:32
Speaker 1: your own. Right. So you remember in the um Earthworm
33:36
Speaker 1: episode we talked about duff that that organic, light, spongy
33:41
Speaker 1: organic material. You have to make your own version of
33:43
Speaker 1: duff um using brown flower vermiculite, which is the little
33:48
Speaker 1: white pebbly stuff in like potting soil, um and water.
33:52
Speaker 1: You just kind of mix it together and it creates
33:55
Speaker 1: duff a fluffy, kind of spongy layer. And I think
33:57
Speaker 1: rice flower too, because I think wheat flour might uh,
34:01
Speaker 1: I think it might mold easier or something. Okay, I
34:03
Speaker 1: might be wrong. Um. And you create what's called the
34:07
Speaker 1: substrate cake, which is great. It's a great growing medium
34:10
Speaker 1: for um mushrooms. It's like your soil, right pretty much. UM.
34:16
Speaker 1: And you create you put this little substrate cake in
34:20
Speaker 1: a can like a jar, right, yeah, canning jar, and
34:24
Speaker 1: then you put it You put the canning jar in
34:26
Speaker 1: the canning bath or pressure cooker which sterilizes the insides.
34:31
Speaker 1: That's right. And then I guess you inject the spores.
34:36
Speaker 1: If you have like a syringe with the spores in it,
34:38
Speaker 1: you injected into the jar. Yeah, put poke some holes
34:41
Speaker 1: in the lid, and then that eventually will grow kind
34:44
Speaker 1: of a white ropey growth called um my celium. Yeah,
34:48
Speaker 1: it's got to be at a very steady humid environments
34:52
Speaker 1: about seventy five degrees fahrenheit twenty three celsius. And within
34:57
Speaker 1: about a week, like you said, you get the mycelium.
35:00
Speaker 1: And then, uh, if you get mold and stuff like that,
35:03
Speaker 1: that means you know, it wasn't a good environment. But eventually,
35:07
Speaker 1: once it's covered my cilium, you're gonna put that into
35:10
Speaker 1: a plastic container for fruiting. Uh, and under the right humid,
35:14
Speaker 1: warm conditions and grow mushrooms. And each little cake can
35:18
Speaker 1: grow a lot of mushrooms, like a thousand or a hundred. Yeah,
35:21
Speaker 1: not at once, obviously, No, they grow and waves supposedly,
35:24
Speaker 1: and you harvest, and then more come, and the harvest
35:27
Speaker 1: and more come, and over the course of a month.
35:30
Speaker 1: Is where you get your mushrooms from the cake. Again,
35:35
Speaker 1: very illegal to buy any of this stuff or to
35:37
Speaker 1: engage in growing any of the stuff. Um. And let's
35:40
Speaker 1: talk about that, Chuck. I think it's high time we
35:42
Speaker 1: got to the law part of it. Um. Like we said, mushrooms,
35:46
Speaker 1: since I think are U a Schedule one drug? Um
35:52
Speaker 1: And like we said, Schedule one drugs are defined as
35:55
Speaker 1: drugs that are highly addictive and have no medical use um.
36:00
Speaker 1: Which is kind of weird to put mushrooms in there,
36:02
Speaker 1: but they are in there. I don't think you can
36:04
Speaker 1: argue that with the d A that comes and bust
36:07
Speaker 1: down your door to break up your mushroom growing operation
36:11
Speaker 1: that hey man, these things are not addictive and there's
36:14
Speaker 1: all sorts of medical uses for him. Although it probably
36:16
Speaker 1: won't be the d n A with mushrooms, is d
36:19
Speaker 1: A probably gonna be what I say, d n A
36:23
Speaker 1: did I really, it's not gonna be the d e
36:25
Speaker 1: A either. You're freaking out. I know it is likely
36:28
Speaker 1: not going to be the d e A either, because
36:30
Speaker 1: it's probably gonna be a state Although is there state
36:34
Speaker 1: d A or there's something like that on the state level? Yeah, Yeah,
36:40
Speaker 1: I think there's a. Yeah, there's Each state has a
36:43
Speaker 1: Bureau of investigation that I think kind of acts like
36:45
Speaker 1: the state d e A. But unless you have like
36:48
Speaker 1: some big, large operation going on, it's probably not going
36:51
Speaker 1: to be a federal crime. It's probably gonna be a
36:53
Speaker 1: state crime, right UM. And time was you could order
36:57
Speaker 1: kits like the ones we describe UM on the internet
37:03
Speaker 1: over through the mail. If you do that, now you
37:06
Speaker 1: are going to get in a lot of trouble. The
37:07
Speaker 1: d e A probably will come to your house or
37:09
Speaker 1: intercepted or both. UM. And that was. That's been the
37:14
Speaker 1: case since two thousand three. For the States, it's been illegal,
37:17
Speaker 1: but apparently they started cracking down on kits in two
37:21
Speaker 1: thousand three. UM. In Great Britain UH, in two thousand
37:25
Speaker 1: and five, it was still legal to have um mushrooms
37:29
Speaker 1: fresh mushrooms, but that's not the case any longer. UM.
37:33
Speaker 1: And then in Amsterdam, even Amsterdam I was surprised to
37:38
Speaker 1: learn of this. UH in two thousand one they outlawed
37:41
Speaker 1: UM dried mushrooms, and then in two thousand and eight
37:45
Speaker 1: they outlawed fresh mushrooms. So you can't have any mushrooms
37:48
Speaker 1: in the Netherlands. But in Mexico they do have exceptions
37:52
Speaker 1: for indigenous people's and being used in ceremonies and such.
37:57
Speaker 1: We do in the United States as well, um, but
37:59
Speaker 1: not necessarily for pilocide mushrooms. Um more. For I think
38:06
Speaker 1: payote is the one that's got the big exception. Yeah,
38:09
Speaker 1: the Native American Church is allowed to use payote, so, Josh,
38:16
Speaker 1: we said that for many years, about thirty five years
38:21
Speaker 1: or so, it was shut down as far as research
38:25
Speaker 1: goes as you know, potential medical benefits. Uh. Since I
38:30
Speaker 1: don't know when they said you can again, but I
38:32
Speaker 1: know in two thousand six Johns Hopkins started a long
38:36
Speaker 1: term research study along with some other places, but Johns
38:39
Speaker 1: Hopkins really has headed this up, and they found a
38:43
Speaker 1: lot of really interesting things like you said, O C
38:46
Speaker 1: D uh, and some eating disorders, some compulsive eating disorders,
38:51
Speaker 1: so basically any compulsion. Yeah, they found that. Uh. In
38:54
Speaker 1: the in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, it was written
38:57
Speaker 1: that uh study proved well, not proved, indicated that for
39:02
Speaker 1: a period of about four to twenty four hours they
39:06
Speaker 1: remained symptom free for that period and sometimes it was
39:10
Speaker 1: even for days, and that they said that there was
39:12
Speaker 1: no treatment that eases the symptoms as fast because it's
39:16
Speaker 1: pretty much immediate of the compulsive disorders. Yeah, I would
39:20
Speaker 1: imagine it's your you have a compulsion, or your compulsion
39:23
Speaker 1: is exacerbated by a lack of serotonin. You take mushrooms
39:28
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden your brain is flooded with
39:31
Speaker 1: silicide or serotonin. Cluster headaches, Yeah, this one was interesting.
39:35
Speaker 1: I read about this as well. Cluster headaches are pretty
39:38
Speaker 1: much the worst pain you can have in your head.
39:40
Speaker 1: They liken it to childbirth without anesthesia and um in England.
39:46
Speaker 1: This was in The Guardian that I read this. They're
39:49
Speaker 1: about six thousand people in England that suffer these attacks um,
39:53
Speaker 1: sometimes daily with no more than a couple of weeks remission.
39:57
Speaker 1: And it's called the cluster period with the remission or
40:02
Speaker 1: like these these periods where you have them, yeah, r period.
40:06
Speaker 1: Apparently psilocybin helps us out a lot. And this one guy,
40:09
Speaker 1: Richard alf says that he's tried conventional treatments in everything
40:14
Speaker 1: his whole life and the only thing that brought him
40:16
Speaker 1: relief was the magic mushrooms and even by some longer
40:19
Speaker 1: periods of remission between attacks. So there's another treatment. Um.
40:26
Speaker 1: There's also you know, whenever you hear of um H,
40:31
Speaker 1: mushrooms or psychedelics or hallucinogens in general, like the whole
40:35
Speaker 1: idea of religious epiphany or feeling like you're a one
40:38
Speaker 1: with a universe or something a mystical experience. Right early
40:43
Speaker 1: on in the West, the West study of um mushrooms this,
40:47
Speaker 1: this was kind of noted. And there is this famous
40:50
Speaker 1: study in nineteen sixty three where they gave psilocybin to
40:55
Speaker 1: a group of Divinity students and send them to church.
41:00
Speaker 1: Really yeah, and um, they of course reported like all
41:05
Speaker 1: sorts of wonderful mystical feelings and connections with God and
41:08
Speaker 1: religion and um, just every enlightenment basically is what they reported. Um,
41:14
Speaker 1: which is not that surprising because you know, I think
41:17
Speaker 1: you could have called that one right. But what's very
41:21
Speaker 1: surprising is that twenty five years later they've they've surveyed
41:25
Speaker 1: the participants again, um, and the people who had received
41:29
Speaker 1: psilocybin UM reported a great greater number of positive life
41:34
Speaker 1: changes than people who hadn't been given psilocybin, like the
41:38
Speaker 1: controls who've gotten placebo instead. Well that's what JOHNS. Hopkins
41:42
Speaker 1: has found so far too. They did, uh a study
41:45
Speaker 1: on eighteen adults is just one of them, and ninety
41:48
Speaker 1: four percent said that it was one of the top
41:51
Speaker 1: five most meaningful experiences in their lives, said it was
41:55
Speaker 1: a single most meaningful experience. And then they interviewed them
41:59
Speaker 1: again a year later and found that they still felt
42:04
Speaker 1: that way and had these changes in UH empathy, greater
42:08
Speaker 1: understanding of people, less judgment, and their family members even
42:12
Speaker 1: noticed that they were calmer, happier, and kinder. Because Griffith's
42:17
Speaker 1: Dr Griffiths is the guy leading this. He thinks that
42:19
Speaker 1: they found the sweet spot, which is just enough to
42:23
Speaker 1: get you to that place, but not so much that
42:26
Speaker 1: it could have an adverse effect. I got one more too,
42:29
Speaker 1: if you're up for it. A web MD. This is
42:32
Speaker 1: just a couple of months ago we conducting philocybin stuff. No,
42:36
Speaker 1: they were just reporting on Johns Hopkins again, which is
42:39
Speaker 1: party central. I guess um personality and humans is generally
42:44
Speaker 1: pretty fixed after the age of thirty, they say, And
42:48
Speaker 1: it takes something like a a job change or a
42:53
Speaker 1: big move, or a death in the family or a divorce,
42:55
Speaker 1: like something really big to affect your personality in any
42:58
Speaker 1: meaningful way generally, unless you take mushrooms once. Really is
43:03
Speaker 1: what they found. UH openness decreases across decades very slightly,
43:09
Speaker 1: and people generally become rigid and less creative. But the
43:13
Speaker 1: fifty two adults that volunteered to eat psilocybin um from
43:17
Speaker 1: the ages of sixty four had transcendent mystical experiences while
43:23
Speaker 1: taking the drug, and they said measurable increases in openness,
43:28
Speaker 1: which is one of five key parts of your personality,
43:32
Speaker 1: and it did not affect the other four parts, which
43:34
Speaker 1: is interesting, which is neuroticism, extroversion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness. But
43:41
Speaker 1: apparently it makes people more open and creative. What's crazy
43:43
Speaker 1: to me is looking at like the studies and what
43:47
Speaker 1: they're doing in the studies like UM, they found that uh,
43:52
Speaker 1: I think, like UM, two milligrams or five milligrams, some
43:56
Speaker 1: ridiculously large amount of psilocybin injected intravenously through an ivy
44:01
Speaker 1: drip was UM like too much? Patients started um started
44:07
Speaker 1: reporting that the experiences were a little overwhelming and terrifying.
44:11
Speaker 1: Can't you imagine some poor sap in like a hospital
44:13
Speaker 1: room getting like three milligrams of psilocybin delivered intravenously UM.
44:19
Speaker 1: And then there's also, uh, there's been a lot of
44:22
Speaker 1: cats dogs, rabbits, um, monkeys, cats, I think I said rats, mice, cats, um,
44:31
Speaker 1: that have been given psilocybin over the course of time. Uh,
44:35
Speaker 1: in the name of research or eating in the wild. Imagine, well,
44:38
Speaker 1: have you ever seen The Bear, the documentary that follows
44:42
Speaker 1: the Two Bears. The bear eats mushrooms and they have
44:46
Speaker 1: this big like scene where it's like just tripping and
44:50
Speaker 1: flowers are blooming and the skies just moving with the
44:52
Speaker 1: stars and everything. And we were looking closely, you mean,
44:55
Speaker 1: I were checking it out last night, UM that it's
44:59
Speaker 1: clearly person dressed as a bear tripping. So we went
45:02
Speaker 1: and did a little researcher, like this is a documentary, right,
45:06
Speaker 1: And yeah, they had somebody dress up as a bear
45:08
Speaker 1: for that part, but the actual bear did actually eat mushrooms.
45:13
Speaker 1: They just the director was taking a lot of artistic life.
45:17
Speaker 1: But you and it's you have to imagine, like what's
45:20
Speaker 1: it like for an animal? Like how can we even tell?
45:23
Speaker 1: Apparently mice mice show that they're hallucinating through head twitches.
45:29
Speaker 1: And then monkeys who um have been taught to self
45:32
Speaker 1: inject psilocybin um tend to zone out. Fixed staring is
45:38
Speaker 1: what that's called or they'll grasp at unseen objects. You
45:43
Speaker 1: imagine some poor monkey doing that. I can uh, oh,
45:49
Speaker 1: it would be fair to that. The UM web md
45:53
Speaker 1: report you know six said they had these transcendent mystical experiences,
45:58
Speaker 1: but a lot of people also had bad trips at
46:01
Speaker 1: hiring abouts of fear and anxiety. So you know, we're
46:05
Speaker 1: not saying that it's like, take mushrooms and everything's great
46:08
Speaker 1: for your life. They found that it can go one
46:10
Speaker 1: of two ways, good or bad. Yeah. I guess there's
46:15
Speaker 1: probably no such thing as a neutral mushroom experience. I
46:19
Speaker 1: don't think so. I think it's gonna affect you profoundly
46:21
Speaker 1: in one way or the other. Um, if you want
46:24
Speaker 1: to know, you've got anything else, I got nothing else, sir.
46:27
Speaker 1: If you want to know more about mushrooms, you can
46:30
Speaker 1: read this article on the site this crazy article on
46:33
Speaker 1: the site UM how magic mushrooms work. By typing that
46:37
Speaker 1: into the search bar at how stuff works dot com.
46:40
Speaker 1: And that means that it is time for listener mail.
46:46
Speaker 1: And I think I think we proved that we can
46:48
Speaker 1: cover other stuff like this. We will find out if
46:51
Speaker 1: we get in a lot of trouble for this one,
46:53
Speaker 1: whether we could cover stuff like this one, and it's
46:56
Speaker 1: a big part of the world, and we're out to
46:57
Speaker 1: explain everything exactly, not just flowers and blue birds. We
47:03
Speaker 1: have to cover the dark underbelly as well. Jack all right,
47:06
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this um uh from Max. Okay, longtime listener,
47:13
Speaker 1: first time emailer. I've sent email lots of times, but
47:16
Speaker 1: just not to you, guys. Max is a funny guy.
47:20
Speaker 1: I've listened to the show religiously at work, but since
47:22
Speaker 1: I was laid off in May, I'd fallen far behind
47:24
Speaker 1: hustling to get that dollar, left little time for length
47:28
Speaker 1: lengthy dissections on cheesemaking arts or why we get zits.
47:33
Speaker 1: I posted the details of my sad, unemployed s y
47:36
Speaker 1: s k less experience on Twitter, and you, guys retweeted
47:41
Speaker 1: it to your adoring throngs. You did that. Yeah, it's nice.
47:45
Speaker 1: I got many well wishers, a couple of people who
47:47
Speaker 1: asked for my CV. What does that stand for? Curriculum vite.
47:52
Speaker 1: I've never heard that. I mean, I've seen it, but yeah,
47:55
Speaker 1: but I just never knew exactly what it stood for.
47:59
Speaker 1: It's like the debbie you see when you walk in there,
48:01
Speaker 1: the water closet. You're gonna find a toilet because it's
48:03
Speaker 1: a water close. But they even called the toilet the
48:05
Speaker 1: water closet. It's not even just the room. It refers
48:08
Speaker 1: also to the toilet for some reason, which makes no
48:10
Speaker 1: sense to me. It's a closet, there's water. Uh where
48:16
Speaker 1: was I? I got many well wishes, a couple asked
48:18
Speaker 1: for my CV, and several new followers. H I got
48:22
Speaker 1: out of this retweet people actually following this back busy.
48:25
Speaker 1: Not much came of that alone, but it was awesome
48:28
Speaker 1: that you guys did that for me. Really cheered me
48:29
Speaker 1: up when that job search had been in vain for
48:31
Speaker 1: such a long while. So I wanted to send you
48:34
Speaker 1: dudes a heads up that after four lengthy interviews with
48:37
Speaker 1: the same company, I've been hired. I was vetted more
48:40
Speaker 1: thoroughly than Sarah Palin. It's an office gig and a
48:43
Speaker 1: nice neighborhood about ten minutes from my home, which is
48:45
Speaker 1: a real perk that's hard to come by here in
48:47
Speaker 1: the San Francisco Bay Area. I'll be making more money
48:50
Speaker 1: than ever before working with a friend of mine, and
48:55
Speaker 1: and now I had plenty of time to catch up
48:56
Speaker 1: on your fine program. So huzzah to that. That is awesome.
49:00
Speaker 1: Thanks for your help, dudes. If I ever find myself
49:02
Speaker 1: in Atlanta where you find yourself by the Bay, I
49:05
Speaker 1: owe you many beers. And that is Max in Martinez, California,
49:09
Speaker 1: who you can follow at Wicked Machine if you're so interested.
49:15
Speaker 1: That's awesome, and I guess he'll be tweeting about his
49:17
Speaker 1: great new job working with his buddy, sleeping late, making
49:20
Speaker 1: more most of rolling. Indough, that's nice. Good for Max, Um,
49:25
Speaker 1: thanks a lot, Max for writing in. Yeah, I was
49:27
Speaker 1: wondering actually like a week or so ago, how he
49:30
Speaker 1: was doing. But yeah, like right away somebody was like, hey,
49:33
Speaker 1: sa me or cbe. It's your curriculum vitae. People are
49:36
Speaker 1: gonna be every unemployeed person on the planet. Now, it's
49:38
Speaker 1: gonna see Josh help. We'll retweet them. Apparently it doesn't
49:42
Speaker 1: do a whole lot, but we'll we'll give it a shot. Um,
49:46
Speaker 1: if you want to, I guess let us know that
49:49
Speaker 1: your own employee on Twitter, you can tweet to us
49:51
Speaker 1: at s y s K podcast. You can go hang
49:54
Speaker 1: out with us on Facebook, uh facebook dot com, slash
49:58
Speaker 1: stuff you should Know, or you can send us a
50:01
Speaker 1: good old fashioned email at Stuff Podcast. At how stuff
50:05
Speaker 1: works dot com For more on this and thousands of
50:13
Speaker 1: other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com, m