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

Episode Date: May 20, 2017

In this week's SYSK Select episode, for thousands of years, humans have used hallucinogenic mushrooms for spiritual reasons. Today, however, having them can get you thrown in prison. How do magic mushrooms do what they do? Can they help the mentally ill? Find out in this far out episode. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say. Bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hey everyone, it's Josh. And for this week's SYSK Selects episode, I picked How Magic Mushrooms Work, which came out in 2012. I think we're just kind of starting to dip our toe

into controversial topics, maybe, who knows. And I think I remember us being worried we were gonna get in trouble for it. Well, we didn't, so here it is again. Enjoy. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.

I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant with me. And this is the Far Out podcast, Stuff You Should Know. That's right. We were kicking off, this is our first show, we're recording in 2012. And Josh thought, let's kick it off with the little Almond Brothers and get psychedelic.

Exactly. That's who you think of when you think psychedelia? Well, Almond Brothers. They were known for having mushrooms on their album covers and T-shirts, and it was a very common thing. Those are peaches. No, they had mushrooms all over the place.

Oh, okay. But generally now, of course, you think of the Grateful Dead. Jefferson Airplane. Yeah. The 13th floor elevators. Yeah, Quicksilver Messenger service, Moby Grape. Strawberry alarm clock. Chocolate watch fangin'.

Jimi Hendrix, of course. Who? Yeah. So, Chuck. You're familiar with psychedelia, rock and roll? Of course. Are you familiar with psychedelia as far as psychedelics are concerned?

I know you are. And do you want to know how I know you are? Because we podcasted on it. That's exactly right. LSD and CIA? What else? It seems like we've heard it. Can psychedelics treat mental illness?

That's right. That was a big one. That kind of overlaps with some of this. We're going to lay a lot of the blame of all of the lost research, decades of it, at the feet of Timothy Leary, the man who ruined everything. Yeah.

And what we're talking about, pardon my sniffles, by the way. I'm not sick. Mentally, I'm not allowing myself to think of me as sick. I have sniffles. That's what I did. I was like, no, I'm not sick. I'm just not going to let it happen.

And look at you. You look fantastic. Yeah, it was just a few days. I think if I would have wallowed in it, it would have been more than a week. Yeah, I'm not letting myself fall. Like, I hit it hard, man. Like, tons of fluids and emergency

and airborne and fruits and that was fine. Okay. You'll be great. Airborne? You know that's like wholly discredited. It's the same thing as emergency pretty much. It's just like vitamins and stuff. Oh, okay.

All right. But it doesn't keep you from getting sick. I think that's how it's discredited. But it'll help you out in a vitamin-y way. All right. Some college kids are just like, get to the mushrooms. Exactly. So let's get to the mushrooms, Chuck.

Okey-dokey. Chuck. Josh. I've got no real intro other than, I think we should talk about the history of mushrooms first. Okay. What do you think? I think that sounds great.

Apparently, there's a lot of debate over how long people have been using magic mushrooms as far as religious rituals recreationally. Who knows? But the supposition is that it goes back thousands and thousands of years. For example, there's a cave painting in Algeria that's 9,000 years old that supposedly depicts mushrooms.

There's another one in Spain that's 6,000 years old that depicts mushrooms. And I mean, it makes a lot of sense that when you think of Native American tribes, Amerindian tribes, Mesoamerican tribes, these people have customarily eaten magic mushrooms all this time, right? Well, that's what one camp says is, hey,

they've been used in religious rites for thousands of years in Central America and Northern Africa, like you said. So what's the rub? But then there's another camp that says, hey, you can't prove that. You're just seeing what you want to see when you look at that cave painting or that Almond Brothers cover. And just because there's a mushroom on the wall

doesn't mean that they ate magic mushrooms. What did the Aztecs have? How do you pronounce that? I don't know. I've never been good at pronouncing Aztec, but I can take a stab at it if you'd like me to. Sure. Tayananakthal.

Right. They call it the flesh of the gods, and they use the substance. We know that. We just don't know what it was, but a lot of people think that it might have been quote unquote magic mushrooms. Right. They also made statues of it, that kind of thing.

Yeah, and you generally only do that back in the day if it's a very revered substance. Right. They're not going to make a statue of just like whatever. No. If we can speak in likelihoods, we know there were mushrooms. We assume that there were these mushrooms growing wild like they are today in these areas,

that these people were hunters and gatherers and foragers. So likely tried these mushrooms. If they did try these mushrooms, they probably wigged out. Isn't that the clinical term? I think they call it a trip. OK. Man.

They tripped and probably started incorporating it into their cave art. Like teenagers do today. Sure. On their book covers. On their notebooks. It has been confirmed in contemporary tribes in Central America, including the Mazatec, the Mixtec, the

Nahua, and the Zapatec. So all the texts are way into it. Yeah. At least these days. Right. So if they eat it these days, I would say chances are they probably ate it back in the day as well. Right.

OK. So as far as the West is concerned, I'm sorry. It wasn't also, it's not just Middle America, Mesoamerica, Northern African Spain. You mean like a Middle America, like Ohio and Michigan? Right. It's not just Kansas that's on mushrooms. The Sami, have you heard of the Sami people?

No. So they're finished. They're like indigenous Finnish tribes. Like Bjork clearly has Sami in her. Her look is very Sami. I like that look. Yeah, well, you'd like the Sami's. Cool looking.

They love mushrooms so much that they are known to drink the urine of reindeer that have just recently ingested mushrooms. Really? Yeah, there's an art installation, and I think Berlin recently, of this guy who had a bunch of magic mushrooms in this pen, a bunch of reindeer in them, and he was having the reindeer eat the mushrooms and then collect them in their

urine and storing it. Well, my question to him is why would he go about it that way if he had some magic mushrooms? Did it like increase the potency or something like that? I don't know. You'd probably be better off asking a Sami person than him. Sure. I don't know if like, it's like that coffee we failed to

mention that's fed to like ferrets. And they pooped out the coffee beans. Right, exactly. And then they roast that into coffee. It's status. So anyway, people have probably been eating magic mushrooms for a long time. But among Westerners, it was totally unthought of, unheard

of, unknown until the 50s, right? Yeah. In 1955, a writer, well, he's a mycologist who studies mushrooms. His name was R. Gordon Wesson. And he traveled to Mexico a lot back in the 50s, searching out mushrooms, not for magic mushroom purposes, but he was just into mushrooms.

Right. And he participated in a ritual there. He and his wife did together. Well, not at first. Actually, did you read the article? No. Yeah. It's really good.

You should read it sometime. He took a colleague down there first. Later on, he took his wife and daughter. And she was like 18. So he was like, sure, she's old enough. And they all tripped on these mushrooms. But I'd like to read a selection, if I may. OK.

Alan is his friend, by the way. Is that Alan Heim? Yeah, I think so. OK. Alan and I were determined to resist any effects that they might have to observe better the events of the night. But our resolve soon melted before the onslaught of the mushrooms.

Alan felt cold and wrapped himself in a blanket. A few minutes later, he leaned over and whispered, Gordon, I'm seeing things. I told him not to worry. I was too. We were never more wide awake, and the visions came whether our eyes were open or closed. They emerged from the center of our field of vision, opening

up as they came, now rushing, now slowly, at the pace that our will chose. They began with art motifs. Motifs? Fractals is another word. Motifs. Angling such as might decorate carpets or textiles or wallpaper, or the drawing board of an architect, then I

saw a mythological beast drawing a regal chariot. And then he goes on to describe all sorts of things, including seeing not an imperfect view of ordinary life, but the archetypes, the platonic ideas that underlie the imperfect images of everyday life. So he was tripping hard. It sounds like it. And that's unusual that he says that he saw something in a

chariot, because mushrooms and LSD are, although they're hallucinogens, they don't cause actual hallucinations. They tend to just mess with. Distort things that are already there. Exactly. I have an answer for that, because I thought the same thing. He did it in darkness.

So on drugs or not, if you go and sit in a dark room long enough, you're going to start seeing things in your mind's eye. And I think that's what was going on. He was imagining. You're such an R. Gordon Wasson apologist, Chuck. He was pretty moved, though. And he wrote this article in Life.

And the editor picked out the title, Seeking the Magic Mushroom. Yeah, that's where the name came from, a Life magazine editor in 1957 coined the term Magic Mushroom. Who knew? After that little trip, Wasson and Heim recruited Albert Hoffman, who was the chemist who created LSD, isolated LSD, and said, hey, man, we know what you're into.

Take these mushrooms and figure out what's going on with them. And he did. And he isolated the active ingredient. What is it? A tryptomine, which is an alkaloid. Thank you. It's actually related to tryptophan, the turkey stuff.

Yeah, well, it happens to you on turkey. But the tryptomine is the two are psilocybin and psilocin. So psilocin, that's the metabolite of psilocybin. Psilocybin is the active ingredient, the tryptomine, found in mushrooms. And then when you ingest it, your body breaks down the psilocybin into psilocyne. And they're starting to come to realize that psilocyne is

probably the culprit behind everything. Oh, really? Yeah. Before we move on, I want to point out in the article, he did it quite a few times in Mexico. And then he said later on, just a test to see if it was part of just the communal experience of being there. He went back to New York City and took some.

And he said it was even better in New York City. So he disproved that. He's like, I love New York. So Albert Hoffman isolates psilocybin. And Sandos, who he worked for, who also started mass producing LSD, started mass producing psilocybin as well. And the psychological psychiatry community got its hands on it and started studying it.

And we'll talk about some of the studies later. But as early as the 60s, they realized that obsessive disorders could be treated with psilocybin. Until they shut it down. They totally shut it down. Psilocybin, magic mushrooms, any of the psilocybin mushrooms are a schedule one drug, which is kind of unusual because study after study has shown that mushrooms aren't habit

forming or addictive. And that they kind of do have a lot of medical uses, which again, we'll talk about in a little bit. But let's talk about the mushrooms and cells, Chuck. They are a plant, a mineral, a fungus, or an animal. They're an animal. They're a fungus. And that means it grows from a spore.

And each little mushroom, in the case of psilocybin mushrooms, has anywhere from 0.2 to 0.4% psilocybin. It's a very small amount. Yeah, it sounds like it. And the National Survey on Drug Use and Health in 2003 did a survey. And they found that about 8% of adults over 26, which to me makes this an invalid study already, if they didn't include

20 to 25, 8% have tried it at some point. I saw teenagers something like around 8%, but it was hallucinogens other than LSD, which includes like PCP and stuff like that. It seems kind of weird to lump those together. But in Europe, the prevalence is probably higher between 0.3% and 14.1% of use, at least once in the person's lifetime.

Between 0.3% and 14? Yeah, it's pretty wild. Let's just call it 14. OK. And then for some reason, the Czech Republic and Slovakia report the highest use among teenagers of magic mushrooms. Not sure why. Interesting.

It's a nice place to be. I was about to bag on it and say, you'd do it too, but it's lovely. Or maybe that's why they're doing it, because it is lovely. Because New York City is the best. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker

necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and nonstop references to the best decade ever.

Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper,

because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the I Heart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever

you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new I Heart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Ah, OK, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would

Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place, because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, god. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS, because I'll be there for you.

Oh, man. And so will my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael, and a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy.

You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. So Timothy Leary, we failed to mention,

but of course, obviously, he sunk his teeth into it, literally. And like you said earlier, like all things, he kind of killed the psychedelic movement in a way as he was actually creating it. Yeah, by making it, you know, a hippie burnout thing. Well, he definitely delegitimized it. I mean, there are a lot of people who are studying LSD

and psilocybin and ibogaine, all those, to see how they can help people with mental illness. And Leary was like, no, man, let's just completely screw the establishment with this stuff. Well, and he's the one who established the whole set and setting thing. Right, which is still in use today, including in this article from HowStuffWorks.com,

set and setting are defined in here. Do you want to talk about it? Well, this is the trip, as they call it. The mushroom trip is very dependent on set and setting. The frame of mind that you have going into it, where you are, the setting, obviously, if it's some kind of stressful, highly organized thing, like if you're in school. Or you're in a train station and somebody's like,

you're going to miss your train. You're going to miss your train. It's probably not a good idea. Or if you're hanging out with friends and you're camping, or you're doing something where you have no stress involved and you have the right outlook going in, Timothy Leary says, that's what you want, as far as going into this whole thing.

Right, set as mindset and setting is your environment. Also, studies have found that even what are called drug naive people can have a positive experience on psilocybin mushrooms, if what's about to happen to them is explained to them ahead of time, that that's a big part of it, too, is knowing what you're getting into going into it. Well, and that's a big part of these studies

we're going to talk about later on, was these people were all coached ahead of time by people. They call them their guides, is what they are. Shame, Sean. No, they're research assistants who have had previous experience with psychotropics. Gotcha. But they would explain to them what they're

about to get into, and that would obviously help them along as they're going in. But they do mention the guide thing in here in this article. They say that a lot of people, because you can have a bad trip, which the only thing you can do there is to ride it out. Obviously, you can't turn off the effects, which is a very important thing to note.

It doesn't go away. No, it doesn't. Although supposedly, in the emergency room, they usually prescribe sedatives, and that supposedly helps a bad trip. Yeah, I'm sure it does. But they say in the article here, new users are often advised to have an experienced friend guide

them through the experience. Like, did you see Floating with Disaster? Yeah. Lily Tomlin? Oh, yeah. They accidentally dosed the cop, and she was like, Alan, oh, it's like, she's a great guide. He'll be fine.

Yeah. And then she just kind of coaches him through the thing. I was looking up movies that have mushrooms in them, and I was having a lot of jobs in altered states. Well, this was LSD, but. Oh, yeah. OK. But I guess that's a good time to mention that LSD

and psilocybin mushrooms are very similar in the effect, although they say that mushrooms are generally milder and don't last as long. Yeah. Their chemical composition is very, very similar. Do you know how similar? I think there's like one hydroxy that's different. But they're pretty close.

Very close, yeah. When they made LSD, did they try to synthesize psilocybin? Was that where they were after? No, because they didn't know that psilocybin existed until after LSD had been synthesized. Interesting. Because he did it at LSD in 1945. That's right.

He didn't do psilocybin until it was late. That's quite a coincidence, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. So do you know what's going on in the brain? Do you know what the whole secret is behind magic mushrooms? Central nervous system, there's some kind of inhibits, an inhibit something, right? No, it does the opposite.

It's an agonist, which I came to realize that agony means that you feel everything. I'm in agony means you're feeling everything. An agonist binds to a receptor in your brain that releases a neurotransmitter. And in this case, psilocybin or psilolocin binds to serotonin receptors and says, release the serotonin. And your synapses are flooded with serotonin.

And that's what gives what clinical researchers basically call the sensation of just being overwhelmed by sensation. Interesting. Yeah. It's all serotonin, man. Although there is evidence that it affects your dopamine receptors, but not directly, like indirectly, which would kind of give you a sense of euphoria.

Right. So Josh, some of the side effects when someone has taken mushrooms include dizziness and nausea, muscle weakness, loss of appetite, and numbness. Sometimes there could be vomiting. Sometimes anecdotally, experts have said that inducing vomiting is a way to cease the nausea when you're experiencing nausea in a mushroom trip.

Yeah. And I said they're not considered to be addictive. And you can build up a tolerance really quick. Yeah. It says here in the article that, for example, taking mushrooms two days in a row is going to make the effects of them on the second day far less pronounced, I guess.

Yeah, and one of the guys in these studies, too, I believe takes them for cluster headaches. And he's taken them so much that they don't have psycho hallucinogenic properties anymore. It's just like medicine for him. Weird. Yeah. Really gross fungal medicine.

No, I think you might take a pill. Oh, OK. I'm not sure, though. The tolerance also, you can build up a cross tolerance. So if you took a bunch of mushrooms one day and then the next day took mescaline or LSD, those effects would be dampened as well. And I think it has to do with the fact

that it's your serotonin. Right. But if you do that, that means a lot of other things as well about you. It does. You know? Yes. I don't know what, but.

Oh, you know what? OK. You have a t-shirt that has an Allman Brothers album cover on it. That means you're hippie, a dirty, dirty, smelly hippie. So Chuck, some of the other effects of tripping on shrooms is euphoria or dysphoria. And also, sometimes a very rapid shift between the two. Sure.

Basically being really happy and then being terrified. Right. And then depersonalization, which is a sense that you are not yourself or you belong to somebody else or there's you lose your sense of self. And then derealization, which is the sense that you are in a dream or that, man, this isn't real. Nothing is real, that kind of thing.

The passage of time is often distorted, whether it's like, have we been talking about this for five hours or five minutes or the other way around? I think it can go either way. I found a study that showed, it basically tested that. It gave people psilocybin and then did time interval tests and found that two to three seconds is about the most that a person can successfully achieve these tests.

Oh, really? Yeah. Beyond three seconds, they start to get really bad at it. And they also found the person's tapping preference, which I guess is like, if you're just sitting there tapping your fingers, what your preference is, and it's slower when you're on mushroom. Oh, really?

And like you said, you don't actually hallucinate like you're not going to be sitting there and see pink elephants dancing across the room. But if there's a painting of a pink elephant, it might appear as if the elephant were breathing or moving or shifting. Or if you hear something like a song or running water or a creek or something like that,

you might hear other things within that sound. Yes. But not completely imagine them. Right. So one of the things we were talking about was that, sure, mushrooms have been around for thousands of years, growing wild like they do today. And that's where a lot of people get their mushrooms,

apparently, is just foraging it for them. One of the big problems is that while there are a lot of mushrooms in the genus psilocybe, which we probably should have mentioned earlier, there's the big spoiler. All the mushrooms are in the same genus. There's a lot that look like them, too, and that might grow in similar places,

that will shut down your kidneys. So you have to be very careful when you're foraging for fresh wild mushrooms if you're into that kind of thing, which neither Chuck nor I suggest should be done. Yeah, we're not endorsing this. No, I'm just saying this is in the article. Yeah, I thought that was implicit.

But it's probably a good time to see away. In the article, they also point out that even experienced mushroom hunters have made mistakes out there in the dark in the field among the cows. So yeah, it can be toxic. It's not a good idea to just go pick in mushrooms growing in a cow pie.

And also, that holds true for if you're looking for truffles or edible mushrooms. Yeah, you want to kind of know what you're doing. One way to tell what kind of mushroom you're looking at is to create a spore print, which apparently you take a piece of paper and you take the cap of the mushroom. There's a stem and a cap. And in the genicillicide, most of them are fairly small.

So the cap is about one inch tall. The stem's about three inches tall. Generally. But you take the cap and you place it gill side down. If you've ever looked at the underside of a mushroom, the gills are just so weird looking. Yeah, little powdery gills. Powder is the spores.

You press the gills down on the paper and it should leave an imprint of the spores. And if you know what you're doing, you can identify more easily or more closely the kind of mushroom you're dealing with. So we said that there's dozens of species, I think, of psilocybe mushrooms. Yeah, there's tons of them.

A couple of really popular ones, though, as far as ingestion goes are the psilocybe cubensis. It's one of the most common ones. It's a little larger as far as magic mushrooms go. It's got a golden cap. I'm sorry, it's called the golden cap or Mexican mushroom. It's the street name. That's the one that our Gordon Wasser probably was trying.

Yeah, probably in Mexico. And it's got usually a reddish-brown cap, white or yellowish stem. And here's an important thing. When it's bruised or crushed, it can turn blue. And a lot of people will say, hey, that's how you know it's a magic mushroom, is if it turns blue when you crush it.

And that's not true, because there are toxic varieties that do the same thing. So that's a good way to get yourself in trouble. It's also copperophilic, which means that it grows in poop. Yeah. Moist environments, very humid environments. And hot. Yeah, like South Georgia, let's say.

Or Florida, which apparently, I didn't look to see, but as of February 2009, at least, is the only state in the union where it isn't illegal to, I guess, pick or possess fresh, silicide mushrooms. Fresh as in non-dried out. Right. Yeah.

That's true. Or it was two years ago. I was going to say, is it still, do you know? I don't know. And when they say the reasoning is that, hey, it grows in the wild. People pick mushrooms and might pick them by accident. So we don't want to send you to prison

if something's an accident. Plus, the rainbow family's in Ocala, and we can't. We don't want to screw up their jam. One of the other more popular ones is the silicide semi-lanciata. Nice, Chuck. Or the Liberty Cap. Yeah.

And it also is found in damp grassy fields, populated by cattle. But it doesn't grow directly on the dung. Right. And it's a little pointy cap, light yellow and brown, and it's smaller than the golden cap Mexican. Right. And then, I guess, one or the other, the big three

is P. Bayocystis or the Bluebell or Bottle Cap. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back

into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and nonstop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips?

Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling

of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in, as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s, called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart Podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when

questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. OK, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place, because I'm here to help. This, I promise you.

Oh, god. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS, because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so will my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yeah, we know that, Michael.

And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general, can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen.

So we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. So Chuck, if when we're disposed to take mushrooms, what, according to the article, would the person take? Well, I mean, what are the people who are taking mushrooms doing with them? We talked about foraging.

That's one way. You can buy them, which is illegal. And we don't recommend it, obviously. It's illegal even to have spores, which is surprising, because spores don't actually contain psilocybin, which is what's outlawed. It's a weird loophole. Right.

But it's not a loophole. It's the, what's the opposite of a loophole? The donut, the donut part? The, the munchkin. OK. That's the donut hole is the munchkin. I'm familiar with munchkins, believe me. And then you can grow your own, obviously.

But if you're looking to buy this kind of thing in the United States, you know, they sell it much like marijuana in ounces and quarter ounces and eighth ounces. And I know the, an eighth is defined in this. It's 3.5 grams. In this article. This is the craziest article on the site. It has to be.

Yeah, it is pretty crazy. Yeah, because at one point she talks about, who wrote this? Shayna Freeman. Shayna talks about the ones on the Gulf Coast give you a mellow or high. But the Thai mushrooms give you a much more intense high. Right. It's crazy.

It is. And when they dry out, which is when most people have them, they're dried out. They will lose some of their psychotropic properties in the drying process. But they retain these properties. I don't know about indefinitely, but for years. Yeah.

Well, because you're not just drying them. I think you have to freeze dry them or you have to dry them. There's like a certain way to dry them, I think, that kind of locks in everything. Locks in the flavor, right? The gross. Which apparently is very unfortunate. Some mushrooms have a reported flowery taste.

That sounds awful. Sour or bitter. And so it's not very fun, which means that a lot of people do crazy stuff with their mushrooms to make them more palatable. Chocolates. Mushroom chocolates is one. Soaking liquor, soaking their mushrooms in liquor,

like tequila, rum. Just basically grinding them up and putting them into capsules so you don't taste anything at all. Yeah, like a mushroom pill. Or making mushroom tea, which supposedly if you cook or brew mushrooms, it supposedly doesn't have an effect on the potency. Yeah, the experience the user has.

And it reportedly comes on quicker as well. And anecdotally, people have even been known to eat the slimy remains of the tea. Gross. That's what I think. I mean, everything about mushrooms are gross, but slimy. I don't like mushrooms. Regular mushrooms.

I know they supposedly don't have much of a taste, and they're put in foods for texture, but I don't like the texture. It's just the whole thing grosses me out. Right. So about one gram of dried mushrooms is apparently a very small dose. Four grams is a medium dose for an adult I read.

Medium to large. Yeah. So and I guess one pea cubensis, the Mexican mushroom, dried is about a gram, one decent size one. And when these one gram or four grams or whatever the dose is just taken is ingested, you apparently within 20 minutes, if you take it orally, 20 to 30 minutes,

you start to experience symptoms. And they last for something like six hours. Depending on the potency, I guess. Well, yeah, that's what Shayna Freeman says in this article is that there's differences between from mushroom to mushroom, from person to person. Yeah, I mean, it's not like sand does is making this stuff anymore.

So we mentioned foraging. We mentioned buying off the street, neither which we recommend. No, again, this is all highly illegal. I mean, a schedule one drug will get you a severe prison sentence. You might as well be caught with heroin or cocaine or PCP. Like this is as bad as it gets.

It's not going to be caught with this. Just because you can go out in the cow field and find some doesn't mean you should take it lightly. You're right. No, this is huge, man. That's a huge, huge prison sentence. Very good. It's like a life-ruining prison sentence.

It is, very much. Although I guess probably just about any prison sentence is fairly life-ruining. But this is like double life-ruining. That's huge. Mycology, you can actually grow these things. And that's what some people do, some cultivators do. This is also extremely illegal.

Very much illegal. Used to, and even so, we're going to tell you how to do it. Because this is stuff you should know. OK. OK. Is it? Yes. Well, it's stuff that some people should know.

Well, I guess that at the very least, it's part of explaining everything. It's on our website. Yeah. Jerry's just in the crack. You have to have a spore, because that's the first thing you need for the mushroom to grow. Spore grows onto one mushroom, but a mushroom

can have thousands and thousands of spores. Right. On the underside, the little powdery stuff that we're talking about. And remember, we talked about taking spore prints for identification. Those same spore prints are often what you get in the mail when you mail order mushroom kits.

Right. You can't just throw these spores in the ground. They have to be hydrated with clean water, meaning distilled water. And you can even buy syringes that are filled, pre-filled, with spores and sterile water from suppliers if you don't want to make your own. Right.

So you remember in the Earthworm episode, we talked about duff. Yeah, yeah. That organic, light, spongy, organic material. You have to make your own version of duff using brown flour, vermiculite, which is the little white, pebbly stuff in potting soil, and water.

And you just mix it together, and it creates duff, a fluffy, spongy layer. And I think rice flour, too, because I think wheat flour might I think it might mold easier or something. Oh, OK. That might be wrong. And you create what's called the substrate cake, which is great, it's a great growing medium for mushrooms.

Yeah, it's like your soil. Right, pretty much. And you put this little substrate cake in a can, like a jar, right? Yeah, a canning jar. And then you put it, you put the canning jar in the canning bath or pressure cooker, which sterilizes the insides. That's right.

And then I guess you inject the spores if you have like a syringe with the spores in it, you inject it into the jar. Yeah, poke some holes in the lid. And then that eventually will grow kind of a white, ropey growth called mycelium. Yeah, it's got to be at a very steady, humid environment, about 75 degrees Fahrenheit, 23 Celsius.

And within about a week, like you said, you get the mycelium. And then if you get mold and stuff like that, that means it wasn't a good environment. But eventually, once it's covered in mycelium, you're going to put that into a plastic container for fruiting under the right humid, warm conditions and grow mushrooms. And each little cake can grow a lot of mushrooms. Yeah, like 1,000 or 100?

Yeah, not at once, obviously. No, they grow in waves supposedly. And you harvest, and then more come, and you harvest, and more come. And then over the course of a month is where you get your mushrooms from the cake. Again, very illegal. Yes.

To buy any of this stuff or to engage in growing any of this stuff. And let's talk about that, Chuck. I think it's high time we got to the law part of it. Like we said, mushrooms, since I think 1970, are a Schedule I drug. And like we said, Schedule I drugs are defined as drugs that are highly addictive

and have no medical use, which is kind of weird to put mushrooms in there, but they are in there. I don't think you can argue that with the DEA that comes and bust down your door to break up your mushroom growing operation that, hey, man, these things are not addictive, and there's all sorts of medical uses for them. Although it probably won't be the DNA with mushrooms.

The DEA. Probably going to be, what did I say? DNA. Did I really? It's not going to be the DEA either. You're freaking out. I know. It is likely not going to be the DEA either,

because it's probably going to be a state. Although, is there state DEA? Or there's something like that on the state level? GBI? Yeah. Yeah, I think there's a, yeah, each state has a Bureau of Investigation that I think kind of acts like the state DEA.

But unless you have some big, large operation going on, it's probably not going to be a federal crime. It's probably going to be a state crime. Right, and time was you could order kits, like the ones we described on the internet over through the mail. If you do that now, you are going to get in a lot of trouble.

The DEA probably will come to your house or intercept it or both. And that's been the case since 2003 for the states. It's been illegal, but apparently they started cracking down on the kits. Not that long ago. In 2003. In Great Britain, in 2005, it was still

legal to have mushrooms, fresh mushrooms. But that's not the case any longer. And then in Amsterdam, even Amsterdam, I was surprised to learn of this. In 2001, they outlawed dried mushrooms. Yes. And then in 2008, they outlawed fresh mushrooms. So you can't have any mushrooms in the Netherlands.

But in Mexico, they do have exceptions for indigenous peoples and being used in ceremonies and such. We do in the United States as well, but not necessarily for silicide mushrooms. More for, I think, peyote is the one that's got the big exception. Oh, really? Yeah.

The Native American church is allowed to use peyote. So Josh, we said that for many years, about 35 years or so, it was shut down as far as research goes as potential medical benefits. Since, I don't know when they said you can again, but I know in 2006, Johns Hopkins started a long-term research study along with some other places. But Johns Hopkins really has headed this up.

And they found out a lot of really interesting things, like you said, OCD and some eating disorders, some compulsive eating disorders. Yeah, so basically any compulsion? Yeah, they found that in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, it was written that study proved, well not proved, indicated that for a period of about four to 24 hours, they remained symptom-free for that period.

And sometimes it was even for days. And that they said that there is no treatment that eases the symptoms as fast, because it's pretty much immediate. Of the compulsive disorders? Yeah. I would imagine you have a compulsion, or your compulsion is exacerbated by a lack of serotonin. You take mushrooms, and all of a sudden,

your brain is flooded with serotonin. Cluster headaches? Yeah, this one was interesting. I read about this as well. Cluster headaches are pretty much the worst pain you can have in your head. They liken it to childbirth without anesthesia. And in England, this is in the Guardian that I read this.

There are about 6,000 people in England that suffer these attacks, sometimes daily, with no more than a couple of weeks' remission. It's called a cluster period. With the remission? Like these periods where you have them? Right. Yeah.

Cluster period. Apparently psilocybin helps us out a lot. This one guy, Richard Aleph, says that he's tried conventional treatments in everything his whole life. And the only thing that brought him relief was the magic mushrooms. And even by some longer periods of remission between attacks. Yeah.

So there's another treatment. There's also, whenever you hear of mushrooms or psychedelics or hallucinogens in general, like the whole idea of religious epiphany or feeling like you're a woman with a universe or something. Yeah, a mystical experience. Right. Early on in the West study of mushrooms,

this was kind of noted. And there is this famous study in 1963 where they gave psilocybin to a group of divinity students and sent them to church. Oh, really? Yeah. Wow. And they, of course, reported all sorts

of wonderful mystical feelings and connections with God and religion and just every enlightenment, basically, is what they reported. Which is not surprising because I think you could have called that one, right? Sure. But what's very surprising is that 25 years later, they surveyed the participants again.

And the people who had received psilocybin reported a greater number of positive life changes than people who hadn't been given psilocybin, like the controls, who'd gotten placebo instead. Well, that's what Johns Hopkins has found so far, too. They did a study on 18 adults. This is just one of them. And 94% said that it was one of the top five most meaningful

experiences in their lives. Yeah. 40% said it was a single most meaningful experience. And then they interviewed them again a year later and found that they still felt that way and had these changes in empathy, greater understanding of people, less judgment. And their family members even noticed

that they were calmer, happier, and kinder. Because Dr. Griffiths is the guy leading this. He thinks that they found the sweet spot, which is just enough to get you to that place, but not so much that it could have an adverse effect. Right. I got one more, too, if you're up for it. I am, man.

WebMD. This was just a couple of months ago. WebMD's conducting psilocybin studies? No, they were just reporting on Johns Hopkins again, which is party central, I guess. Personality in humans is generally pretty fixed after the age of 30, they say. And it takes something like a job change or a big move

or a death in the family or a divorce, like something really big to affect your personality in any meaningful way, generally, unless you take mushrooms once, is what they found. Openness decreases across decades very slightly, and people generally become rigid and less creative. But the 52 adults volunteered to eat psilocybin from the ages of 20, 40, 64.

57% had transcendent mystical experiences while taking the drug. And they said measurable increases in openness, which is one of five key parts of your personality. And it did not affect the other four parts, which is interesting, which is neuroticism, extroversion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness. But apparently it makes people more open and creative.

What's crazy to me is looking at the studies and what they're doing in the studies. They found that, I think, two milligrams or five milligrams, some ridiculously large amount of psilocybin injected intravenously through an IV drip, who was too much. Patients started reporting that the experiences were a little overwhelming and terrifying. Can't you imagine some poor sap in a hospital room?

Three milligrams of psilocybin delivered intravenously? That's not set in setting. And there's also, there's been a lot of cats, dogs, rabbits, monkeys, cats, I think I said, rats, mice. Cats really love it, though. That have been given psilocybin over the course of time in the name of research. Or eating it in the wild, I imagine.

Well, have you ever seen the bear? The documentary that follows the two bears? No. The bear eats mushrooms. Oh, really? And they have this big scene where it's just tripping and flowers are blooming and the sky's just moving with the stars and everything.

And we were looking closely. You and me and I were checking it out last night. It's clearly a person dressed as a bear tripping. So we went and did a little research. We're like, this is a documentary. Right. And yeah, they had somebody dress up as a bear for that part. But the actual bear did actually eat mushrooms.

The director was taking a lot of artistic life. But you have to imagine what's it like for an animal. How can we even tell? Apparently mice show that they're hallucinating through head twitches. And then monkeys who have been taught to self-inject psilocybin tend to zone out. Fixed staring is what that's called.

Or they'll grasp at unseen objects. Can you imagine some poor monkey doing that? I can. OK. Oh, it'd be fair too that the WebMD report, 60% said they had these transcendent mystical experiences. But a lot of people also had bad trips. Sure.

Had harrowing bouts of fear and anxiety. So we're not saying that's like, take mushrooms and everything's great for your life. They found that it can go one of two ways. Yeah. Good or bad. Yeah. I guess there's probably no such thing as a neutral mushroom

experience. I don't think so. I think it's going to affect you profoundly in one way or the other. Yeah. If you want to know, you got anything else? I got nothing else, sir. If you want to know more about mushrooms,

you can read this article on the site, this crazy article on the site, How Magic Mushrooms Work, by typing that into the search bar at howstuffworks.com. And that means that it is time for listener mail. And I think we proved that we can cover other stuff like this. We will find out if we get in a lot of trouble for this one, whether we can cover stuff like this one.

It's a big part of the world and out to explain everything. Exactly. Not just flowers and bluebirds. We have to cover the dark underbelly as well, Jeff. All right, I'm going to call this from Max. OK. Long time listener, first time e-mailer. I've sent e-mail lots of times, but just not to you guys.

Max is a funny guy. I've listened to the show religiously at work, but since I was laid off in May, I'd fallen far behind. Hustling to get that dollar left, little time for lengthy dissections on cheesemaking arts or why we get zits. I posted the details of my sad, unemployed, S-Y-S-K-less experience on Twitter.

And you guys retweeted it to your adoring throngs. You did that? Yeah. It's nice. I got many well-wishers, a couple of people who asked for my CV. What does that stand for? Curriculum Bite. Really?

I've never heard that. I mean, I've seen it. It's your resume. Yeah, but I just never knew exactly what it stood for. No, you do. It's like the WC. When you walk in there, you're going to find a toilet, because it's a water closet.

But they even call the toilet the water closet. It's not even just the room. It refers also to the toilet for some reason, which makes no sense to me. It's a closet. There's water. Where was I? I got many well-wishes, a couple asked for my CV,

and several new followers. I got out of this retweet. People actually follow me back as you. Not much came of that alone, but it was awesome that you guys did that for me. Really cheered me up when that job search had been in vain for such a long while. So I wanted to send you dudes a heads up

that after four lengthy interviews with the same company, I've been hired. I was vetted more thoroughly than Sarah Palin. It's an office gig in a nice neighborhood, about 10 minutes from my home, which is a real perk that's hard to come by here in the San Francisco Bay area. I'll be making more money than ever before working with a friend of mine

and now I have plenty of time to catch up on your fine program. So haza to that. That is awesome. Thanks for your help, dudes. If I ever find myself in Atlanta, where you find yourself by the Bay, I owe you many beers. And that is Max in Martinez, California,

who you can follow at Wicked Machine if you're so interested. That's awesome. And I guess he'll be tweeting about his great new job working with his buddy. Yeah. Sleepin' late. Make him more money than ever.

Rollin' in dough. That's nice. Good for Max. Thanks a lot, Max, for writing in. Yeah, I was wondering, actually, like a week or so ago how he was doing. But yeah, like right away, somebody was like, hey, send me your CV.

Your curriculum by type. People are going to be every unemployed person on the planet now. It's going to say Josh, help. We'll retweet him. Apparently, it doesn't do a whole lot, but we'll give it a shot. If you want to, I guess, let us know that you're unemployed on Twitter,

you can tweet to us at S-Y-S-K podcast. You can go hang out with us on Facebook. Indeed. Facebook.com slash stuff you should know. Or you can send us a good old-fashioned email at stuffpodcast at howstuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Whatever you ever have to say, bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts.