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When America first dropped acid

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41–50 of 185 posts

Re: When America first dropped acid

#41

I'm curious to see how many people have access to mushrooms these days. For my 20s and 30s it seemed impossible to get, now all of a sudden I can get them no problem. I have a friend who is not into drugs at all but grows them, weighs them, and has a pill making machine to make pills so he can accurately micro-dose to address severe depression. I have other friends who love drugs and can get the literally anytime the…

The "uncle ben tek" has been around a decade or more now and that really changed the accessibility of it. It uses shelf stable ready-to-eat (fully cooked, sterilized) rice as the medium for inoculation. It dramatically reduces the difficulty and risk of what used to be the main failure point in the process. Now for $200 of gear and the complexity of a weekend baking project you can just do the whole thing yourself. A…

Huh, I've been using PF tek as a starter for grain beds, never heard of uncle ben. I'll look into that.

It's a fun hobby. It motivated me to go back to school and pursue a biology degree. I think there's a lot we can learn from fungus, and not even in some kind of spiritual mumbo jumbo way, they're just better than we are at a lot of tasks (e.g. if you want to talk about 9's of availability, mycorrhizal networks are way ahead of us: they don't tend towards single points of control/failure like we do).

Re: When America first dropped acid

#42

I take psychedelics a few times a year. I'm good with LSD once a year and I'm ok skipping it. I enjoy low (not micro) doses of mushrooms a few times each summer. Both have been very good for my sobriety. They aren't for everyone though. Great to see this becoming mainstream. Sad to see the number of charlatans and the industry has popped up around it. I hope that we're able to safely get these substances to those tha…

The effects of low doses of mushrooms/MDMA make me wonder if we have been going about it all wrong. You can easily take 20% of the normal amount and have a pleasant and noticeable effect but still be highly functional. It is like our "normal" dose for those drugs is the equivalent of 6+ drinks, and the idea of only having a beer or two is painted as a waste.

It’s not the same though. A high dose can lead to life altering insights. A low dose will just be a fun time.

Alcohol in higher doses isn’t therapeutic. More than 4 beers and any therapeutic effect alchohol could’ve had is now also gone. :)

Re: When America first dropped acid

#43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "uncle ben tek" has been around a decade or more now and that really changed the accessibility of it. It uses shelf stable ready-to-eat (fully cooked, sterilized) rice as the medium for inoculation. It dramatically reduces the difficulty and risk of what used to be the main failure point in the process. Now for $200 of gear and the complexity of a weekend baking project you can just do the whole thing yourself. A…

Huh, I've been using PF tek as a starter for grain beds, never heard of uncle ben. I'll look into that. It's a fun hobby. It motivated me to go back to school and pursue a biology degree. I think there's a lot we can learn from fungus, and not even in some kind of spiritual mumbo jumbo way, they're just better than we are at a lot of tasks (e.g. if you want to talk about 9's of availability, mycorrhizal networks are…

If you have the process and technique down you might end up just sticking with what you're using. My understanding is the benefit of uncle ben is its reliability for beginners, not so much yield or quality. I think there are also newer & better variants of it anyway? But yeah look around.

So yeah, fungus. Funny enough I pretty much only grow koji and some other food molds. I like to talk shop with mushroom growers though. The techniques are really different but we share a lot of experiences and... mindset. People end up with an almost spiritual admiration for the mold. Which is self-evident for psilocybes of course, but koji growers seem to develop it too.

Re: When America first dropped acid

#44

I take psychedelics a few times a year. I'm good with LSD once a year and I'm ok skipping it. I enjoy low (not micro) doses of mushrooms a few times each summer. Both have been very good for my sobriety. They aren't for everyone though. Great to see this becoming mainstream. Sad to see the number of charlatans and the industry has popped up around it. I hope that we're able to safely get these substances to those tha…

The effects of low doses of mushrooms/MDMA make me wonder if we have been going about it all wrong. You can easily take 20% of the normal amount and have a pleasant and noticeable effect but still be highly functional. It is like our "normal" dose for those drugs is the equivalent of 6+ drinks, and the idea of only having a beer or two is painted as a waste.

Just this weekend I took a low dose of mushrooms and went to a nightclub. I typically drink at these places so it was interesting to take just mushrooms and zero booze.

It was quite fun at a low dose and gave a similar feeling to being drunk without the downsides. After that experience if I had to choose to go out and drink or go out and take a low dose of mushrooms I'm definitely doing the latter.

Re: When America first dropped acid

#45
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany: Spores are legal in Austria (maybe also Netherlands?). Then search Uncle Ben's Tek online. You can also grow legal mushrooms like this, King Oysters in my case. It's a wonderful project teaching you a lot. Start to finish it's about 20 hours of work spanning 2 months.

Spores are illegal in Germany. But just buy a growkit from the Netherlands, if you're terminally ill in Germany, chances are that law enforcement won't even start processing before you're dead. PS: awesome tip!

> Spores are illegal in Germany

So are growkits, but spores are easier to transport (in a syringe suspended in water, or on aluminium foil). Problem with growkits is that it takes a while to see whether you’ve got a good (or contaminated) one, and yield isn’t that high.

Main options:

- (Learning, qulity) Start from spores (syringe or dry): do this to learn a lot, and also to have something to eat afterwards. It was one of my most valuable projects ever. Spores go into petri dish, then search for Uncle Ben’s. Two months starting from zero.

- (Learning, quality, faster) Clone a living part: get your hands on mycelium or a fresh fruiting body (possibly also a sclerotium AKA truffle), which consists of mycelium as well (the »fruit« is the same material as the »tree« for fungi, I digress but this is so interesting). Put into agar petri dish, let it grow, and search for Uncle Ben’s. (I did this with store-bought King Oysters.) Roughly 2 weeks faster than the spore process because you’re skipping the selection-and-transfer phase, and thus also contamination risk.

- (No learning, genome+contamination gambling, fastest) Growkit: don’t have experience with this, but I’ve heard that they often don’t work because they’re contaminated. I have no practical experience here.

Re: When America first dropped acid

#46
post #15

I'm curious to see how many people have access to mushrooms these days. For my 20s and 30s it seemed impossible to get, now all of a sudden I can get them no problem. I have a friend who is not into drugs at all but grows them, weighs them, and has a pill making machine to make pills so he can accurately micro-dose to address severe depression. I have other friends who love drugs and can get the literally anytime the…

So I'm a stage 4 cancer patient and now there's a real fire under my ass to do a heroic dose. I talked to my therapist about it and he was like yea, here's this website where you can order some chocolate bars. My jaw hit the floor. I thought he was referencing the darkweb, but nope just a typical site in Canada I think. I'm still incredibly new to it all and would love to grow my own at one point. I'd also love to kn…

DO NOT just go and do a heroic dose on your own if you are not VERY experienced.

Re: When America first dropped acid

#47
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I'm a stage 4 cancer patient and now there's a real fire under my ass to do a heroic dose. I talked to my therapist about it and he was like yea, here's this website where you can order some chocolate bars. My jaw hit the floor. I thought he was referencing the darkweb, but nope just a typical site in Canada I think. I'm still incredibly new to it all and would love to grow my own at one point. I'd also love to kn…

Sorry about the cancer. What's the idea behind a heroic dose?

[deleted]

Re: When America first dropped acid

#48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The claim being that its all propaganda, and what we know as 60s ideology (peace love etc) actually never really happened. What did happen was that those that prescribed to that line of thinking either moved to communes, or they dropped so much acid they were societally irrelevant. This sounds like something you'd read in a pop psychology book, not an actual piece of historical analysis. Given the visible cultural…

No this opinion comes from Academia. A large volume of media was created in a very short time, and then essentially disappeared/stopped production over night

This is an incredibly difficult position to defend, and I would challenge you to do so.

Re: When America first dropped acid

#49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh, I've been using PF tek as a starter for grain beds, never heard of uncle ben. I'll look into that. It's a fun hobby. It motivated me to go back to school and pursue a biology degree. I think there's a lot we can learn from fungus, and not even in some kind of spiritual mumbo jumbo way, they're just better than we are at a lot of tasks (e.g. if you want to talk about 9's of availability, mycorrhizal networks are…

If you have the process and technique down you might end up just sticking with what you're using. My understanding is the benefit of uncle ben is its reliability for beginners, not so much yield or quality. I think there are also newer & better variants of it anyway? But yeah look around. So yeah, fungus. Funny enough I pretty much only grow koji and some other food molds. I like to talk shop with mushroom growers th…

> My understanding is the benefit of uncle ben is its reliability for beginners, not so much yield or quality.

This.

- You get sterilized substrate, which requires special equipment to produce on your own (large enough pressure cooker, mainly).

- Sterilizing rye is a bit of an art. Not too mushy, not too hard, properly sterilized, get the moisture right. Might take a couple of attempts.

- Financial investment is negligible either way.

- You’re hedging your contamination bets with 200g packs, because creating lab conditions at home isn’t that easy. (Plenty of tutorials claim it is, and then show you their special mushroom tent, which you won’t recognize as a beginner, and then you wonder why you’ve got orange fluff a month later.)

Re: When America first dropped acid

#50

I take psychedelics a few times a year. I'm good with LSD once a year and I'm ok skipping it. I enjoy low (not micro) doses of mushrooms a few times each summer. Both have been very good for my sobriety. They aren't for everyone though. Great to see this becoming mainstream. Sad to see the number of charlatans and the industry has popped up around it. I hope that we're able to safely get these substances to those tha…

The effects of low doses of mushrooms/MDMA make me wonder if we have been going about it all wrong. You can easily take 20% of the normal amount and have a pleasant and noticeable effect but still be highly functional. It is like our "normal" dose for those drugs is the equivalent of 6+ drinks, and the idea of only having a beer or two is painted as a waste.

Micro dosing psylocibe/psylocin on a regular basis puts your heart valves at some risk of permanent damage in ways occasional high dose use does not.
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