Free range vs mushrooms cultivated

[Azure Cloud]

Has anyone consistently noticed a difference between wild caught mushrooms and closet cultivated mushrooms of the same species.

I've notice, and this being for equivalent doses of dried shrooms, that closet cultivated shrooms seem to provide a very innocent and benign quality to the character of the trip. I'm also surprised about how big everything seems when being outdoors once the trip really kicks in.

If the shroomz are picked out in the pastures, the whole quality of the trip seems much more hedonistic to me. Also the teacher seems more intense and less forgiving.

This could all be in my head. But it was always consistently so ime.

Anybody relate?

 

[Cream Gravy?]

Intense and less forgiving aren't words I would relate to hedonistic. Are you sure you don't mean something else?

 

[Solipsis]

In some cases the bioactive chemicals that an organism produces (toxins or psychoactives I mean here) are dependent in composition on what the organism feeds on. Some animals have toxins or maybe even venom that they make from chemicals in their food, which is why poison tree frogs living in the rain forest make toxins that they don't really make in captivity.

However if I am not mistaken the psychoactive compounds in psilocybe mushrooms are apparently more like a coincidental intermediate of their metabolism, at least that seems to be true for the DMT in many many plants. AFAIK mushrooms have no (evolutionary) benefit from intoxicating the animals that eat them.

There may be some secondary alkaloids in mushrooms but the effects come mainly from psilocybin and psilocin. Even the idea that psilocybin may produce more of a mindfuck than psilocin rather than it just being a pro-drug with no significant qualitative contribution of its own, is controversial.

The argument seems way stronger for psychedelics being very suggestive and placebo-like effects being way underestimated and acknowledging this is blocked by a sort of denial or self-blindness. And some patterns can be self-reinforcing: the quality of the trip may be influenced by what you think of the mushrooms and what you know about them, the circumstances how you got them...
So I think it is in your head.

However for potency in general, environmental conditions may perhaps be a factor... maybe potent trips got a bit more serious for you.

 

[Azure Cloud]

Intense and less forgiving aren't words I would relate to hedonistic. Are you sure you don't mean something else?

I see how that is confusing but for me what I perceive while tripping is often paradoxical in nature.

 

[Azure Cloud]

In some cases the bioactive chemicals that an organism produces (toxins or psychoactives I mean here) are dependent in composition on what the organism feeds on. Some animals have toxins or maybe even venom that they make from chemicals in their food, which is why poison tree frogs living in the rain forest make toxins that they don't really make in captivity.

However if I am not mistaken the psychoactive compounds in psilocybe mushrooms are apparently more like a coincidental intermediate of their metabolism, at least that seems to be true for the DMT in many many plants. AFAIK mushrooms have no (evolutionary) benefit from intoxicating the animals that eat them.

There may be some secondary alkaloids in mushrooms but the effects come mainly from psilocybin and psilocin. Even the idea that psilocybin may produce more of a mindfuck than psilocin rather than it just being a pro-drug with no significant qualitative contribution of its own, is controversial.

The argument seems way stronger for psychedelics being very suggestive and placebo-like effects being way underestimated and acknowledging this is blocked by a sort of denial or self-blindness. And some patterns can be self-reinforcing: the quality of the trip may be influenced by what you think of the mushrooms and what you know about them, the circumstances how you got them...
So I think it is in your head.

However for potency in general, environmental conditions may perhaps be a factor... maybe potent trips got a bit more serious for you.

I see what you're saying and I can't deny a lot of it is likely true.

I know mushrooms cultivated on rye substrates are more potent gram per gram than mushrooms cultivated using brown rice flour substrates.

I'm thinking more of high doses where I wouldn't think the amount difference in active ingredients Would contribute significantly to the quality or intensity of the trip, like in the 7+ g range. But I now think maybe that I'm wrong.

I reckon cow manure is a more ideal substrate than brown rice or rye. This may contribute to a more potent mushroom and a slightly different psychoactive profile. Honestly I've never tried a domesticated strain grown on manure, so really I have no control group for comparison.

 

[Solipsis]

Cubensis is not necessarily a dung lover like Pan Cyans, it does well on manure but probably because it gets all the sulfate and minerals it needs or maybe some other boosting nutrients. But you can supplement those in many different ways like adding coffee grounds to your regular substrate. I don't think it is that picky about it's substrate like wood-lovers which require wood for the fruiting stage.

Grains are just superior to brown rice yeah, but again not really because Cubensis is specific about its habitat but because brown rice flour is a bit lacking (though fine as a starter tek like PF). You could say that habitat and nutrient composition is basically the same but still, Cubensis is less specific about it while other species are much more finetuned to certain conditions and grows can fail if they are not met.

 

[phuckingnutz]

I've fruited cubes on dung (horse and cow) and straw/grain mix , but never had outdoor shrooms, but have consistently read/heard that the indoor cubes are stronger.
Don't know for sure, but the dung shrooms vs straw/grain shrooms...no appreciable difference in potency.
Oh and the dung was collected by me from local cow/horse pastures so the nutrient comp was the same as wild...except, of course, for the spawn, which was rye berries...the environmental conditons were ideal...since they were inside.
I know with weed,at least IME stress is conducive to higher potency, but apparently...according to the literature...not so with cubes.

 

[Solipsis]

Would make sense it seems.
I think mescaline and cannabinoids are produced as deterrents against predation but it is not that obvious or certain at all with mushrooms. Mushrooms are only the fruiting bodies / reproductive organs of the fungus which otherwise lives underground. It can sacrifice the mushrooms it makes so that spores can be spread. Spores are dropped from the mushrooms but can also be eaten along with say roaming cattle and this does not harm the spores, rather they are 'activated' passing through a cow's GI tract so that the spores germinate relatively well from aged droppings which of course contain plenty of nutrients.
So unless cows and other animals are psychonauts and psilocybin is evolved to motivate them to eat shrooms I don't think we can consider the alkaloids to exist as specialized compounds to deter animals either.
If stress ups the defenses of an organism it makes sense that deterrant chemical levels rise, I already knew that to be true for mescaline cacti but apparently it happens with weed as well.

Pure dung is not a superior substrate, I think, by the way... it can be great to supply certain nutrients but on its own it can be deficient in other necessary substances. With indoor cultivation, multiple growing parameters can be finetuned, although some like the levels of certain gases are difficult to control for the typical grower. Some conditions for some fungi are difficult to recreate with artificial cultivation, for example Cordyceps Sinesens - one composite species family a parasitic fungus growing from certain insect (!!) bodies... was elusive to grow artificially, requiring certain specific conditions... nature is not intentionally finetuned as a set of conditions, but has such a rich diversity of conditions that in some specific places (for Cordyceps at least part of the Himalaya) conditions are exactly right and they match with an organism evolved to exist exactly there.

By the way that Cordyceps fungus which looks like pretty gnarly alien stalks growing from dead insects, is amazingly healthy and has even been used by China to win the summer Olympics many many years ago... the athletes were busted for doping but they couldn't find what they had taken. Finally they admitted it was Cordyceps. It can increase red blood cell count and IIRC also ATP levels and more. A really magical drug. Of course it is also rare and exotic and more pricey than gold.

Cubensis is not evolved to exist in one specific place and has been found just about all over the world, at least parts of the world with the right climate type / geo latitude. One of its strengths is its adaptation...

All of this can help put into perspective what may determine Cubensis potency, if potency depends on some growing conditions... I don't think each nutrient is equally essential for mushrooms to let the part of the metabolism that includes indole alkaloids run well.

 

[phuckingnutz]

So unless cows and other animals are psychonauts and psilocybin is evolved to motivate them to eat shrooms I don't think we can consider the alkaloids to exist as specialized compounds to deter animals either.
If stress ups the defenses of an organism it makes sense that deterrant chemical levels rise, I already knew that to be true for mescaline cacti but apparently it happens with weed as well.

Yes, the shrooms want to be eaten...spread those spores around.

 

[Solipsis]

More opinions on that: http://www.bluelight.org/vb/threads/161973-why-do-plants-produce-alkaloids

 

[Ismene]

I think it's placebomine. I'm sure if I dried and capsuled dried or homegrown or wild shrooms and gave you them without you knowing and asked you to identify them for £1000 a go, I'd be a millionaire before you.

 

[phuckingnutz]

I think it's placebomine. I'm sure if I dried and capsuled dried or homegrown or wild shrooms and gave you them without you knowing and asked you to identify them for £1000 a go, I'd be a millionaire before you.

I think you're probably right...placebomine can some very strong stuff.
Most of the evidence about cultivated vs fresh was mainly anecdotal and the only actual assays were, IMO, flawed due to degradation prior to assay for the wild shrooms.
Also, that is, very likely, also the reason for the anecdotal evidence favoring the cultivated over wild...degradation prior to consumption.
As i said, I've never had a wild shroom. The only wild i've ever run across were chock full of maggots, I just barely dodged that bullet. luckily a friend found them before I partook...too bad it wasn't before they did.

 

[Azure Cloud]

Speaking of why mushrooms evolved the active alkaloids - this is my casual and unscientific observation:

When I've picked non active look-a-like species, if I set them out to dry, within a day I'll notice little slugs all over the useless bounty. I've never noticed slug colonization on psychoactive species.

Maybe these psychoactive compounds ward off slugs. I don't know, but it always made sense to me.

EDIT-> oh snap, I just saw the post above. Are you positive those were the "right" fungi, full of maggots? That would throw my theory out the window.