Tryptamines Psilomethoxin Church

[G_Chem]

Ayalight, I read all of those articles the day they were published. I think now, and have long said I think sacrament may well not contain any psilomethoxin. I knew this in December before I joined, because they said they’d never proven it with labs in their blog post. I have never held nor endorsed the idea that the identity of chemical compounds is rightly a matter of faith. That’s facepalm talk for me.

I think the church followed Shulgin’s suggestion, stumbled onto something interesting, and leapt to the conclusion that they’d made the psilomethoxin that Shulgin gave only even odds of resulting. Then, with a mix of sincere delusion, lots of drugs, lawyerly chutzpah, and the possibly relaxed scruples required to produce and distribute a psychoactive substance having 2 scheduled precursors, across international borders, with zero fucks given to DEA’s request that such groups file for a religious exemption, they launched a church with a website and an ecommerce platform.

Then they got spanked by people with actual hard chemistry chops, and have retracted their public profile, even changed their name pending a scientific reply to the USONA paper validating that the Gartz/Shulgin method, with details as developed by church, results in a novel substance or substances of interest. Back to the drawing board doesn’t mean descent into deeper more fraudulent fraud, but maybe more humility.

I’ll want more after I run out. I’d really like it not to be as inconsistent or even controversial as it’s been in church hands.

Now you’re just lying…

“…have long said I think sacrament may well not contain any psilomethoxin. I knew this in December before I joined…”

Let’s look at some of your posts..

“Placebo is real, but i can easily differentiate psilomethoxin from psilocybin microdoses blind.”

“This experiment has been almost my only interruption of almost 2 straight months of almost daily Pm microdosing: no tolerance effect as with psilocybin.”

“Granted there’s no proof. I wrote why i still think it’s likely legit here:”


Not one time in your earlier posts did you say you thought it didn’t contain psilomethoxin, quite the opposite.

On top of that you seem to know quite alot of the inside workings of the organization, how the substance is supposedly made, things that you wouldn’t expect someone not affiliated with the church as a higher up to know.

Only after many have proven this is all bullshit do you start saying these things, but of course still trying to sow doubt in the research with comments like “well some of the samples were inconsistent (note: when before you were certain you could feel the difference every time I may add) so maybe they just need to improve their quality of end product.”

Also Snafu brings up good points. How can one differentiate a substance when taking barely perceptible doses? Doesn’t make sense in the slightest. You are taking a dose that you can’t even feel!!

I stand by my words. Although keep trying..

-GC

 

[Latherdome]

Now you’re just lying…

“…have long said I think sacrament may well not contain any psilomethoxin. I knew this in December before I joined…”

Let’s look at some of your posts..

“Placebo is real, but i can easily differentiate psilomethoxin from psilocybin microdoses blind.”

“This experiment has been almost my only interruption of almost 2 straight months of almost daily Pm microdosing: no tolerance effect as with psilocybin.”

“Granted there’s no proof. I wrote why i still think it’s likely legit here:”


Not one time in your earlier posts did you say you thought it didn’t contain psilomethoxin, quite the opposite.

On top of that you seem to know quite alot of the inside workings of the organization, how the substance is supposedly made, things that you wouldn’t expect someone not affiliated with the church as a higher up to know.

Only after many have proven this is all bullshit do you start saying these things, but of course still trying to sow doubt in the research with comments like “well some of the samples were inconsistent (note: when before you were certain you could feel the difference every time I may add) so maybe they just need to improve their quality of end product.”

Also Snafu brings up good points. How can one differentiate a substance when taking barely perceptible doses? Doesn’t make sense in the slightest. You are taking a dose that you can’t even feel!!

I stand by my words. Although keep trying..

-GC

Now you're just trolling me. Yes, I have not consistently used neutral language like "sacrament" to describe what church calls Psilomethoxin or Pm. In the view of at least some church principals, Psilomethoxin is what results from their process, whether that's 4-HO-5-MeO-DMT or not, because they literally tried (and failed) to trademark the term. As if Water(tm) contains sugar, because that's what Water, Inc.(R) puts in their line of hydration products. Which is kookoopants. I digress.

Most of what I've written about this is on Reddit. Here's me 6 months ago calling it "the alleged psilomethoxin" long before USONA paper broke, also acknowledging lack of proof. .

I repeat: I don't know what's in sacrament. I have never known, nor pretended to know, because I'm not a chemist. I have always understood church claims about its identity as wishful or tentative, sometimes going along and calling it Psilomethoxin, other times adding "alleged" or, more frequently, using neutral language. Searching on "psilomethoxin" is after all the way people find these discussions. You will see that I have never made any post about it (I think), instead always only joining discussions started by others, to share my direct experience generally among people with none (low-energy for a shill, right?). By searching on Psilomethoxin, which is how I found Bluelight. By referring to the Church of Psilomethoxin (an abandoned name) does that mean you're endorsing church claims? Ridiculous.

I stand by my experience that this stuff acts differently than psilocybin. Over time, as I have sampled more batches of sacrament, I've accepted that some might be just psilocybin, specifically 3 of the 7 separately packaged products that I have come into serially over 8 months. You can't fault me for inconsistency when I report new information in the light of ongoing experience. I don't have a story to stick to, friend. The 4 of 7 that seem legit? Do they contain 4-HO-5-MeO-DMT? I have never said so, but also: I don't rule it out. Because I don't accept blindly that the USONA or other papers had legit samples and were conducted competently in good faith. You shouldn't either.

I'm really looking forward to what church chemist eventually finds and shares in a peer-reviewed paper. I hope they can hold out that long. I have ZERO attachment to it being psilomethoxin. But my experience continues to tell me it's something interesting. I'm even open to the possibility that I am the world's biggest placebo stooge, even though I think 3/7th of what I've received is bunk/weak, because refusing to consider that hypothesis wouldn't be any more scientific than asserting, as you do, that "many have proven this is all bullshit." Science doesn't work that way.

Here's a bonbon for you:

Also if I were a shill you'd think I'd use a burner account name. Instead you'll find that Pm or whatever term you prefer is a small minority of what I post about, because if you wanna go full stalker you can find I'm a real person without anything to hide. Last word's for you, Moderator.

 

[Esperighanto]

Hamilton Morris recently mentioned that he received an initial sample of the sacrament from this place that was completely devoid of psychoactive compounds, then a second sample which contained ketamine. If I can find the episode of his podcast where he says that, I'll edit this post with the info. It seemed like he implied the church was doing it on purpose to fuck with him, though.

 

[Latherdome]

Hamilton Morris recently mentioned that he received an initial sample of the sacrament from this place that was completely devoid of psychoactive compounds, then a second sample which contained ketamine. If I can find the episode of his podcast where he says that, I'll edit this post with the info. It seemed like he implied the church was doing it on purpose to fuck with him, though.

The ketamine thing is wholly new to me. At what dose is ketamine orally active? (No experience).

I have heard that HM was planning to synthesize Pm (4-HO-5-MeO-DMT) to check it out without any church involvement.

 

[ayalight]

Latherdome,
I don't know why your persist in saying things like:
"I don't accept blindly that the USONA or other papers had legit samples and were conducted competently in good faith"

There is nothing you or anyone has brought forth to suggest that the USONA researchers are acting in anything but good faith. And it was very easy for anyone to get samples from CoP and there is no reason not to believe them when they wrote that they verified that the person who gave them the sample got it from CoP.

Hamilton Morris also didn't find PM in what the church sent him (though I have heard nothing about an alleged finding of ketamine in another test he did. That sound bizarre!) nor have the two other people found PM who have reported their findings online. CoP could simply send a sample to a lab. They could have done this any time in the last couple years.

Again I trust your and other peoples reports that, sometimes, it appears the effects are different from psilocybin. Something interesting seems to be going on. Though I have no interest in being a guinea pig for some alleged/unknown substance sent in the mail in circumstances that lack integrity.

 

[Latherdome]

Latherdome,
I don't know why your persist in saying things like:
"I don't accept blindly that the USONA or other papers had legit samples and were conducted competently in good faith"

There is nothing you or anyone has brought forth to suggest that the USONA researchers are acting in anything but good faith. And it was very easy for anyone to get samples from CoP and there is no reason not to believe them when they wrote that they verified that the person who gave them the sample got it from CoP.

Hamilton Morris also didn't find PM in what the church sent him (though I have heard nothing about an alleged finding of ketamine in another test he did. That sound bizarre!) nor have the two other people found PM who have reported their findings online. CoP could simply send a sample to a lab. They could have done this any time in the last couple years.

Again I trust your and other peoples reports that, sometimes, it appears the effects are different from psilocybin. Something interesting seems to be going on. Though I have no interest in being a guinea pig for some alleged/unknown substance sent in the mail in circumstances that lack integrity.

As previously stated, the following is sus to me:

1. The fact that they failed to disclose conflicts of interest in the initial preprint. USONA is a developer of prescription pharmaceuticals in the psychedelic space, a couple atoms away from Psilomethoxin. Bill Linton is president of Usona, and also president and founder of Promega, among the foremost suppliers of enzymes for drug synthesis among other things, which is how tryptophan becomes psilocybin in vivo. So here this entity with many millions invested in enzymatic synthesis of prescription drugs takes an interest in a 2-bit wildcat church claiming to have legal right to distribute cheaply a holy grail psychedelic (non-impairing, fast acting, no tolerance) produced wholly within humble psilocybes by bio-enzymatic synthesis, bypassing the famously slow pay-to-play FDA approval process, and thumbing their nose at DEA. If you don't see how Mr. Linton might benefit by discrediting this church, I have nothing more to say. (I referred to stakeholders, not shareholders by the way. Big capital interests are frequently intertwined in deliberately murky ways, not least with government.)

Are the church's claims fair to challenge scientifically? Absolutely; I applaud such efforts, and would love to see all this stuff basically open sourced. Just declare your conflicting interests plainly first.

2. The lack of custody control. If your intent is collaborative instead of competitive, you ask the source, not just say your sample was anonymously donated. And if you're adversarial, say investigating in a criminal case, you must prove proper evidence protection from tampering, or your findings may be inadmissible in court. How was it stored? What is the shelf life? Even if the researchers who did the lab work are world-class competent and honest, how do they know that the sample was legit? In the absence of controls, all it would take is one bad actor to tamper with or substitute. Who encapsulated it? Church hadn't distributed encapsulated AFAIK any time in 2023, except as one-offs to people like Martin Ball.

3. The language of the study's preface and conclusion referring to public safety, while at the same time alleging that only normal psilocybe alkaloids were detected. Psilocybes are generally recognized as physiologically safe. There have surfaced no reports of harm or adverse reactions to what the church distributes. Yet by alluding to public safety, you succeed in suggesting that this material is dangerous, which would be consistent with intent to harm the church.

All that said, I also accept the possibility that the sample was legit (and not even from one of the 'bad' batches), and the tests sound: no psilomethoxin. In context of the other tests, and the failure so far of the church to demonstrate otherwise, I think it is far more probable than not that sacrament contains no psilomethoxin. Science is not a collection of facts, however, but a process, and there are processes ongoing to demonstrate how sacrament is more interesting than plain cubes liberally laced with placebo. My ongoing direct experience supports belief that it will. I don't expect anybody to take my word for it.

I have some theories about what it could be instead. So does the church chemist. I won't be sharing these ideas: I'm nobody. I'm staying tuned. As I've said before, when this thread perked back up again, I stopped posting because ball is in church's court to produce extraordinary evidence backing extraordinary claims, however heavily revised they may be from what they've claimed in the last year.

 

[ayalight]

As previously stated, the following is sus to me:

1. The fact that they failed to disclose conflicts of interest in the initial preprint. USONA is a developer of prescription pharmaceuticals in the psychedelic space, a couple atoms away from Psilomethoxin. Bill Linton is president of Usona, and also president and founder of Promega, among the foremost suppliers of enzymes for drug synthesis among other things, which is how tryptophan becomes psilocybin in vivo. So here this entity with many millions invested in enzymatic synthesis of prescription drugs takes an interest in a 2-bit wildcat church claiming to have legal right to distribute cheaply a holy grail psychedelic (non-impairing, fast acting, no tolerance) produced wholly within humble psilocybes by bio-enzymatic synthesis, bypassing the famously slow pay-to-play FDA approval process, and thumbing their nose at DEA. If you don't see how Mr. Linton might benefit by discrediting this church, I have nothing more to say. (I referred to stakeholders, not shareholders by the way. Big capital interests are frequently intertwined in deliberately murky ways, not least with government.)

Are the church's claims fair to challenge scientifically? Absolutely; I applaud such efforts, and would love to see all this stuff basically open sourced. Just declare your conflicting interests plainly first.

2. The lack of custody control. If your intent is collaborative instead of competitive, you ask the source, not just say your sample was anonymously donated. And if you're adversarial, say investigating in a criminal case, you must prove proper evidence protection from tampering, or your findings may be inadmissible in court. How was it stored? What is the shelf life? Even if the researchers who did the lab work are world-class competent and honest, how do they know that the sample was legit? In the absence of controls, all it would take is one bad actor to tamper with or substitute. Who encapsulated it? Church hadn't distributed encapsulated AFAIK any time in 2023, except as one-offs to people like Martin Ball.

3. The language of the study's preface and conclusion referring to public safety, while at the same time alleging that only normal psilocybe alkaloids were detected. Psilocybes are generally recognized as physiologically safe. There have surfaced no reports of harm or adverse reactions to what the church distributes. Yet by alluding to public safety, you succeed in suggesting that this material is dangerous, which would be consistent with intent to harm the church.

All that said, I also accept the possibility that the sample was legit (and not even from one of the 'bad' batches), and the tests sound: no psilomethoxin. In context of the other tests, and the failure so far of the church to demonstrate otherwise, I think it is far more probable than not that sacrament contains no psilomethoxin. Science is not a collection of facts, however, but a process, and there are processes ongoing to demonstrate how sacrament is more interesting than plain cubes liberally laced with placebo. My ongoing direct experience supports belief that it will. I don't expect anybody to take my word for it.

I have some theories about what it could be instead. So does the church chemist. I won't be sharing these ideas: I'm nobody. I'm staying tuned. As I've said before, when this thread perked back up again, I stopped posting because ball is in church's court to produce extraordinary evidence backing extraordinary claims, however heavily revised they may be from what they've claimed in the last year.

I find what you wrote to be utter nonsense. There is no conflict of interest. UNSONA studies psychedelics. There is no evidence they have any interest in creating psilomethoxin. You are simply echoing the baseless claims of CoP whether you intend to or not.

It is also nonsense to frame their analysis in terms of a criminal case. The fact is CoP was making mail order substance readily available. You are grasping at straw men and the nonsensical arguments of CoP once again.

There are indeed public safety issues when people are being provided with a psychedelic substance that is not the falsely alleged legal one they are being sold.

I understand the issues with CoP that you have pushed back on. Yet, I don't know why you choose to continue to echo these lame claims that they make.

I've repeated these things in different ways so I'll probably refrain from commenting further on this

 

[Latherdome]

I find what you wrote to be utter nonsense. There is no conflict of interest. UNSONA studies psychedelics. There is no evidence they have any interest in creating psilomethoxin. You are simply echoing the baseless claims of CoP whether you intend to or not.

It is also nonsense to frame their analysis in terms of a criminal case. The fact is CoP was making mail order substance readily available. You are grasping at straw men and the nonsensical arguments of CoP once again.

Must be the Stockholm Syndrome. You can note that a certain paranoia characterizes church leadership, and this may be readily transmissible to us flock sheep.

 

[Didgital]

Was about to tell everyone to just calm down. Till I saw this comment.

There have surfaced no reports of harm or adverse reactions to what the church distributes. Yet by alluding to public safety, you succeed in suggesting that this material is dangerous, which would be consistent with intent to harm the church.

Well any safe drug use starts with knowing what drug one is consuming. But since that answer is very unclear (all analytical data agrees or straight up denies any psilomethoxin content) then yes it is a public safety issue. If I mislabeled something intentionally or not, that could be very dangerous. No one here afaik is trying to harm the church. I think you've done that more than we could...

We're just discussing if it's legit or not. All data says no. Sue me for saying that.

By all means continue to spend your hard earned dollars to either a religious fanatic or straight up capitalist scammer. We won't stop you.

 

[Latherdome]

I can agree that the presence of psilocybin is a greater transgression than a lack of psilomethoxin, because of its legal status apart from its safety profile. Entering certain countries with any amount of schedule 1 is a world of hurt up to hanging, and i’ve said as much in church channels. So I accept your point.

 

[ayalight]

Must be the Stockholm Syndrome. You can note that a certain paranoia characterizes church leadership, and this may be readily transmissible to us flock sheep.

Seems like empty words to avoid the issues I raised. At least in a subsequent post you acknowledged the safety issue. Perhaps you can come around to reconsidering the empty notions (that CoP raised and you seem to be echoing) about USONA.

 

[Didgital]

Lets keep it chill please. BL is not for insulting (I prolly done it), it is a place where everyone can speak their mind. We should be grateful that we have a member of the church here. Otherwise we wouldnt know much more than what the website says.

 

[Didgital]

Ayalight, I read all of those articles the day they were published. I think now, and have long said I think sacrament may well not contain any psilomethoxin. I knew this in December before I joined, because they said they’d never proven it with labs in their blog post. I have never held nor endorsed the idea that the identity of chemical compounds is rightly a matter of faith. That’s facepalm talk for me.

I think the church followed Shulgin’s suggestion, stumbled onto something interesting, and leapt to the conclusion that they’d made the psilomethoxin that Shulgin gave only even odds of resulting. Then, with a mix of sincere delusion, lots of drugs, lawyerly chutzpah, and the possibly relaxed scruples required to produce and distribute a psychoactive substance having 2 scheduled precursors, across international borders, with zero fucks given to DEA’s request that such groups file for a religious exemption, they launched a church with a website and an ecommerce platform.

Then they got spanked by people with actual hard chemistry chops, and have retracted their public profile, even changed their name pending a scientific reply to the USONA paper validating that the Gartz/Shulgin method, with details as developed by church, results in a novel substance or substances of interest. Back to the drawing board doesn’t mean descent into deeper more fraudulent fraud, but maybe more humility.

I’ll want more after I run out. I’d really like it not to be as inconsistent or even controversial as it’s been in church hands.

Btw thank you for this.

 

[ayalight]

Lets keep it chill please. BL is not for insulting (I prolly done it), it is a place where everyone can speak their mind. We should be grateful that we have a member of the church here. Otherwise we wouldnt know much more than what the website says.

Agreed. If at times I have skirted the edge of insult or being uncivil I apologize.

 

[Latherdome]

Nothing substantial to add. Glad nobody needs to take my word for it that there is a church chemist trying to do real science. Straight up, I'm alienated by the church's renewed/continued public assertions that they are manufacturing and distributing 4-HO-5-MeO-DMT aka Psilomethoxin in the face of some contrary evidence, and zero supporting besides Shulgin's decades-old suggestion that their process might work.

But also: what they are distributing is not just psilocybin, in a good way. I have only experiential/anecdotal support for this position, sadly, but far too much for me to dismiss as placebo/expectancy. I'm still drinking that koolaid after almost 10 months near daily, but face an ethical dilemma when I run out. I think church is torching any credibility they have left, or even may yet recover among science-positive people, in doubling down on it being psilomethoxin, and that's a shame because it makes the science to validate what's there harder, both to fund and for those without direct experience to give fair hearing.

I may be able to lend a beaker-washing hand in person early January. That is, unless I have to pledge fealty to the idea that the identity of chemical compounds is a matter of religious faith. That's an irreconcilable difference right there.

 

[Didgital]

You would think if the church is going to throw down $20,000+ on analytical equipment, that they could get a 100mg custom synth of the material for analytical purposes. Why even purchase analytical equipment (especially an HPLC) without a reference standard?

There's a pretty recent paper that describes direct 4-acetoxylation of tryptophan that could potentially be applied to 5-methoxytryptophan. From there, decarboxylate to the primary amine (there's many references for this procedure) and then methylate to the tertiary amine via reductive amination (See Hamilton Morris 5-meo-dmt synth) followed by deacetylation (See Nick Cozzi's Usona Instititute synthesis of psilocybin that proceeds from 4-aco-dmt) to 4-HO-5-MeO-DMT. If the 5-MeO-tryptophan is a suitable substrate, then this would greatly shorten the synthetic route described by Shulgin. You wouldn't even need any fancy enzymes.

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.orglett.1c01434

That's a great idea, though good luck obtaining the dueterated form of 5-MeO-DMT. That seems like it in itself would be just as costly if not more than getting a custom synthesis of the reference standard.

I would love to see DEA paperwork actually authorizing the Church to possess 5-MeO-DMT or even Psilocybin

but face an ethical dilemma when I run out.

I am confused, what ethical dilemma do you face?? To purchase more???

 

[AlsoTapered]

I can confirm that psilomethoxin would be VERY costly to make - even if each of the 10 steps had a yield of 90%, 13% would be the overall yield. Given that some steps have a much lower yield, the overall yield would be miniscule. Imagine starting with 1Kg of material and ending up with a few grams of product. The cost would be immense.

But it's known that certain classes of mushrooms will add a 4-OH to tryptamines BUT I can find no examples of ring-substituted tryptamines undergoing this bio-4-hydroxylation. A 5-MeO moiety is going to alter the electronic character of the 4 position.

@fastandbulbous would likely be able to predict if a 5-MeO would induce or prevent 4-hydroxylation.

 

[ayalight]

It's interesting and valuable that the church chemist decided to post here. Though he also indicated that he is not willing to engage in a discussion in this thread which is unfortunate. I will have to take some time to parse out his response and the replies to it.

Yet, it seems to me that he and the other principals lack integrity by continuing to assert on their website that:
"Our spiritual sacrament, Psilomethoxin, is contained in the mushroom fruiting bodies. Once picked from the substrate/growing medium the fruiting bodies are dried, powered and sent to our members."
They have not demonstrated this. Others have good evidence it isn't true. And the whole endeavor creates ethical and legal vulnerabilities given the public nature of their promotions.

 

[Latherdome]

It's interesting and valuable that the church chemist decided to post here. Though he also indicated that he is not willing to engage in a discussion in this thread which is unfortunate. I will have to take some time to parse out his response and the replies to it.

Looks like he's engaging in a discussion in this thread to me.

Yet, it seems to me that he and the other principals lack integrity by continuing to assert on their website that:
"Our spiritual sacrament, Psilomethoxin, is contained in the mushroom fruiting bodies. Once picked from the substrate/growing medium the fruiting bodies are dried, powered and sent to our members."
They have not demonstrated this. Others have good evidence it isn't true. And the whole endeavor creates ethical and legal vulnerabilities given the public nature of their promotions.

This is the "extra dramatic" ethical dilemma I mentioned above. I don't approve of this public representation, yet I do firmly believe/know that what they are distributing is great if mysterious stuff (albeit inconsistent). And purchasing it directly or indirectly funds the valuable research that is occurring to validate or revise the bold, apparently contrafactual claims made by other principals, as necessary basis for implementing the Good Manufacturing Practices that will bring consistency and the possibility of more meaningful safety research.

I don't see the chemist as endorsing the website claims, by the way. That would be unseemly for a scientist. Even investing in a reference standard of psilomethoxin presumes you know what you're looking for. It's more appropriate first to find what's in these mushrooms that accounts for the unique effects apparent in bioassay.

 

[ayalight]

I am simply trying to understand definitively what happens academically when when a xenobiotic compound is introduced to an organism of general interest whose natural pathways express as significant anabolism of structurally related compounds as an exploration in metabolomics and proteomics without the position having any current influence over the church's website design, mission statement, declared stance, administrative choices, operations decisions, or even getting paid. This scientific exercise includes the very possible scenario of findings that the compound is broken down for excretion catabolically.

Would the church have been better off paying research labs to sift through every molecule in a sample? Perhaps in the lens of going deeper into the goosechase after one unsupported claim of a structure, but I argue it is not in the sense of the mushroom communitiy's greater good- considering the approach I have been able to take can provide an answer to that question, learn what happens in reality from a bigger picture, leaves behind a means to research anything afterwards instead of a private lab invoice attached to a test report, and opens doors for perpetual advancements by anyone. Specifically noting that there would not now be an open invitation to all if private testing chosen for providing a community resource for the furthering of general knowledge in areas that have not yet been provided resources by the nearly dominated laboratory space ownership of universities and larger scale businesses.

My life will not have been as fulfilling as it could have if someone were able to demonstrate there has always been a place I had not found like this- where I could drive to with just a handshake and a question- to proceed using analytical instruments, machines, and glassware, at no cost even electricity beyond BYO consumables and managing generated waste. Its likely I would not even mind providing small scale reagent quantities and assuming stewardship of reasonable waste in many scenarios.

I would strongly suggest we just make a nice plaque indicating any bullshit has been heard and marked as such to proceed with dedicating attention and resources into productive tasks. I did not make any prior or current claims, I did not have any involvement in them as they were made, I did not know they were being made as they had been asserted for months until the Usana paper, I do not support any claims, and I do not have the influence to change any aspect of the church's website or mission statements- not even the ability to direct any persons to recant, resign, or apologize.

I hope I can contribute here in ways other than providing a specific commentary nucleation point. I was otherwise content prior to today using my facility alone and without ever visiting this forum, pretty much assuming to not be recieves well. I'd ask for refraint from questioning my integrity while asserting I had anything to do with anything other than asking a group making a claim if I can look into it properly as a scientist. It is about as useful to be aiming for such dialogs about the content and claims in a church's website as it would be useful to read a textbook and proceed seeking to have the librarian discuss why its bad that publishers would change each chapter's questions every year to sell a new edition. We all see what is up so lets do something worthwhile about it instead.

Ah, thank you for being part of this discussion. I misrepresented what you wrote earlier. I thought you wrote you wouldn't return or reply here. Yet, you actually said if you didn't you could be contacted by email.

However, I find this statement rather disengenuous:
"I do not support any claims, and I do not have the influence to change any aspect of the church's website or mission statements- not even the ability to direct any persons to recant, resign, or apologize."

Your title is Head Scientist at the Church of the Sacred Synthesis. You may not have an administrative role that allows you to change what's on the website or to require that other principals amend their public statements yet as both a scientist and, hopefully, someone concerned about the ethical, spiritual and scientific integrity of the church you would demand that what the church proclaims is true. Your role also makes you legally vulnerable for the legal transgressions which are occuring (BTW I think sacramental psychedelic medicines should be, more or less, legal for people to use as they wish and with whom they wish. However, this is clearly not the case at the present time).

How can you as Head Scientist at the Church of the Sacred Synthesis acquiesce to what I quoted from the website:
"Our spiritual sacrament, Psilomethoxin, is contained in the mushroom fruiting bodies. Once picked from the substrate/growing medium the fruiting bodies are dried, powered and sent to our members."

And I also find it disingenuous to state:
"Would the church have been better off paying research labs to sift through every molecule in a sample? Perhaps in the lens of going deeper into the goosechase after one unsupported claim of a structure,"

This is not a question of a "goosechase" or "sifting through every molecule". It is a fact that the church claimed to be producing the very specific molecule psilomethoxin. That was their reason for being in the first place and was the name of their church until the controversy ensued because of the Usona paper. It was highly irresponsible for them to make the claim that this is what they were sending people when they couldn't substantiate it. Especially because their alleged (and specious) claims of legality were based on it.

While I find statements like this to be disingenuous I do trust that you are sincere and have a good heart. I hope all of us can have a civil and useful inquiry.