Psilocybin Produced in Yeast

The construction of the tripping factory.

>There are negative side effects from consuming the mushrooms which you don't get from purified psilocybin.

Such as? It tastes bad? Mild gastrointestinal effects (which can happen with various psychedelic substances even without ingesting the fungus scaffolding)?

> suggesting superiority because something is "from nature"

Obviously something being natural does not make it better. Neither does something synthetic mean it's superior. Additionally, this probably comes from marinol/dronabinol - while marijuana has one of the best safety profiles of any substances, extracted THC does not.

Organic magic mushrooms have an exceptionally high (physical) safety profile (see Nutt et al, the Lancet 2007) whereas the same is not true for extracted psilocin. It's a bit ironic you're calling him out for fallacies while committing some yourself.

Johns Hopkins research has shown a single dose having clinically significant improvement in depression for at least 6 months in 80% of participants; such results are unprecedented in psychiatry:

https://youtu.be/81-v8ePXPd4

See also, Marsh Chapel Experiment:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsh_Chapel_Experiment

I appreciate the effort you've put in to "refute" me, but I do not think that you've actually put much thought into it.

I'm aware of how logic works, I have a degree in mathematics. I did not intend to use A=>B as a reason that B=>A; I was using both as self-evidential statements.

I'm talking about a completely different premise / system of thinking about medicine that I learned from several Indian / Native American tribal attitudes. In this way of thinking, there is no medicine that is not sacred. This operates more or less as an axiom, though they would probably not describe it that way. Because axiom implies an inflexibility and rigidity not intended... I don't think "sacred medicine" means "You can use however much of this substance in whatever fashion you choose and always have positive results." There are additional rules, guidelines, and best practices to consider, always. But if something brings you connection, warmth, healing, new awareness, humility, love for others, rapport with the Earth, insight into your life, etc, then we generally call that "sacred", and we also call it "medicine", even if the thing in question is just having a conversation, watching a dog play in the sunshine, or smelling the scents on the breeze. Sacred medicine.

If you're already formulating your rebuttal, please arrest the thought because I haven't really made any point yet. I'm just laying out the groundwork, describing how other cultures think about life.

I guess the one question I would ask you relates to your final statement.

>trap of assuming that because something is moral/sacred/good, its consequences must also be good. This is not so.

I find this silly. Of course you can have too much of a good thing, or use a good thing in a way that is ignorant of the larger system around it and end up doing harm. But are you sure you're not really trying to "refute" the existence of the spiritual, or of the sacred? If you refuse to believe in those things, or refuse to conceptually work with things you've never personally experienced, that is your choice. But I think you should identify that bias as driving your argumentation, and maybe take a step back if you have not had an experience in this realm. You wouldn't try to describe Italy if you'd never set foot in Italy, would you?

Nature didn't give psilocybin to us as a "gift" in order to help us figure out the world. Just like everything else that can be used and consumed by humans, we co-opted this organism for our own purposes. Psilocybin was evolved by these mushrooms as a defense mechanism against animals trying to eat it, just like every other psychoactive drug. It's a poison, not a medicine. We just so happened to be big enough and our brains wired in a certain way wherein it doesn't kill us or make us feel awful, instead it has the opposite effect.

Yes, we absolutely SHOULD be extracting and studying psilocybin and all of the ways it interacts with our brain. With any luck, we can pinpoint the extremely beneficial parts of the drug and create new synthetic compounds that aren't rife with the normal side effects of a psychedelic experience. Perhaps we'll be able to give this new compound to people with mental disabilities or conditions which would prevent them from taking a psychedelic of kind. Or if it was safe enough, it might make an entire class of SSRIs obsolete as mushrooms have a beneficial effect on those of us with anxiety and depression. I have anxiety, and while micro-dosing every day would probably solve that problem, a whole host of side effects comes along for the ride that wouldn't really be great for things like my job, so the SSRI works for now. But if you told me I could take 1 pill of $SOME_SYNTHETIC_DERIVED_FROM_PSILOCYBIN every 2 weeks instead of 1 pill of lexapro every day, I'd sign up for that in a heartbeat, and I'm sure everyone else would too.

That doesn't mean 'shrooms would go away, far from it. In fact, I think the more research Big Pharma does on psychedelics, the easier it will be to obtain them. It's already pretty easy (and legal) if you know where to look for spores, and at that point it's just buying some equipment and waiting. I pine for the day that mushroom growing kits are sold that make it totally painless for people to grow their own.