[Mushrooms Subthread] Potentiation by Citrus Juice

[cryptix420]

No, I always take my mushrooms capsuled - less taste and more comfortable. I'm perfectly happy with the effects I experience. Drinking the tea does make them hit a little quicker (because some will be absorbed by the mucous membranes in your mouth) but I don't really see the point in them coming on faster.

If all you needed to do to convert psilocybin to psilocin was put them in lemon juice I think we'dve heard a little more about it. What we have is the placebo effect in action.

Well what would you think of someone arguing with you about the flavor of food that they themselves had never even tasted?

 

[Solipsis]

That's not really fair, flavor belongs to the realm of qualia while for the lemon tek "the truth is out there".

 

[Ismene]

Why is that?

From what i hear synthetic psilocin is quite the bees knees

I dunno solipsis - I tend to think if you could create pure psilocin simply by soaking mushrooms in lemon juice it would be a widely known about and discussed procedure.

Does the speed of the lemon juice hit quicker than mushroom tea?

 

[Ismene]

Well what would you think of someone arguing with you about the flavor of food that they themselves had never even tasted?

I wouldn't say something was true unless I could offer a sensible reason as to why it might be true. I could just as easily say "Standing on one leg while wearing your mothers pantyhose on your head makes mushrooms hit faster". Would you really feel the need to go out and do it?

 

[SONN]

^we'd first question you to see whether or not you had tried it with good results and if you had maybe we would try it and if it produced good results then we would come to the conclusion that it was probably true and not just the placebo effect.

 

[cryptix420]

That's not really fair, flavor belongs to the realm of qualia while for the lemon tek "the truth is out there".

I suppose it was a poor analogy, just trying to get the point across.

 

[Ismene]

and if it produced good results then we would come to the conclusion that it was probably true and not just the placebo effect.

That's not how the placebo effect works tho - if someone has told you it works and you've gone to the trouble of soaking it in lemon juice then there's a good chance it will "work" through the placebo effect. That's how the whole voodoo and witchdoctor scene have worked for centuries - you go to the trouble of mixing goats foot with droppings of shrew and hey presto - it must work mustn't it? And sure enough the placebo effect makes it work for you.

What you'd really need to do is ask a friend to take two lots of mushroom powder and soak one lot in lemon juice and the other in water. Then mix them both with something to mask the taste and see if you could tell the difference in consecutive trips.

 

[2c-goinsane]

i tripped mushrooms a good 15 times on penis envys the strain i get is very potent, 1 gram will produce a full blown mental and visual trip for atleast 3 hours everything will be moving pretty nicely aswel. the trips would always be pretty controllable/somewhat comfortable at doses from 2-5gs dry on empty stomach everytime, a couples time itd get hairy and id start to forgot mentally they were safe and stuff like that, heart exploding, etc nothing out of the norm for me. i was always able to move around pretty well to without much problems. visuals would always be nice but they never really actually got poppin poppin like iv seen from lsd and dmt.

i also combo'd 2ce(20-30mg doses)+ same mushrooms i always get a couple times and both were very intense and lengthy trips, but didnt come close to my first 1.75g lemon tekd, also same setting im always in.


im definitley not exagerating im very big into telling the truth and not making things more than what they are, i have terrific memory aswel.

the first time i lemon tekked 1.75gs of the same strain in the same setting i always eat them in, i came up hard as fuck was like a 18 wheeler smashing into my mind i didnt know it was gonna make them that much more intense its very very high paced reminded me alot like strong lsd but still different was like the mushroom god just coming down and bitched slapped me. it ripped me a new asshole within 10mins it was just starting to take over me i didnt have a choice i just had to let everything go and lay down i couldnt move, it was way more magical feeling than usual, felt like i was in a very old primitive mind state thousands of years old, visuals were nuts i seen my body melting away downward into a blob i thought id always have to be proped up by metal braces for ever, it was so profound i really thought i had really done it this time was crazy but very very interesting. I also have lemon tekked a 3.5 of my strong strain and its like being on alot of heroin, your eyes will even roll around, visuals get very intense intricate fractals will cover every surface in the room, the visuals are hard to explain im still understanding more about it even. Also at the peak i felt like a hit a break through was like i was in a dark peaceful place.

I evtually popped out of it and started puting everything back together including my mind i didnt sleep for 24 hrs just because i was so astounded by the experience haha.

everyone iv showed it to as been blown away, 1 guy will never eat them again and hes ate them plenty of times without any problems before. everyone else claims thats the only way theyll eat em and its a whole different trip than usual.

these are just ime i know for a fact it makes a big difference for me or else i wouldnt go out of my way to get lemons and oranges everytime i trip mushrooms.

take it easy everyone. i really believe everyone should atleast give it a try cant knock it till you try it, try to have the best quality mushrooms you can get should be well worht it in the end.

 

[Ismene]

So you think lemon juice makes psilocybin more powerful? Any ideas why it would other than placebo?

Strange that you think orange juice makes your trip more powerful - in Amsterdam they used to sell this drink guaranteed to kill your mushroom trip stone dead - that was concentrated orange juice and guarana.

 

[Shroomanator]

This man is right! Now just to find the supplies involved... *sigh

I really think we all ought to chill the fuck out and, as soon as possible, all try the combination for ourselves.

peace?

 

[Solipsis]

I wouldn't say something was true unless I could offer a sensible reason as to why it might be true. I could just as easily say "Standing on one leg while wearing your mothers pantyhose on your head makes mushrooms hit faster". Would you really feel the need to go out and do it?

Not that you implied otherwise but I am not saying anything is 'true' but rather that my personal experience tells me there is something going on here. And it's not random so you can leave the reductio ad absurdum at the door. You tell me how selective "Citrus acetyl esterase" is for example and how plausible is it that phosphorylesterases in the juice would or could play an active role in this story? The wildest result I had was with multifruit juice, I imagine if you want a really diverse population of enzymes in your formula that's the way to go.
My experience with mushroom tea is relatively limited but the experiences I have had were on average barely kept near normal result (from eating the mushrooms themselves) in its effects. I can't be positive that tea is actually weaker, and the fact that I didn't always eat the leftover mushroom pulp may have something to do with this. But as a control group for fruit juice preparations, it fails to nullify the fruit juice / lemon tek experiments.

I'm also thinking: let us take the hypothesis that the lemon tek works, are enzymes even necessary or do simple acid/base equilibrium laws dictate that the normal ester : indolol ratio is shifted towards the indolol because the acidity results in proportional protonation? This may mean that a process that is otherwise also taking place in the stomach can start already before ingestion. So instead of gradually releasing both alkaloids (I take it the zwitterion is rather soluble and absorbtion-friendly as well), it's the indolol that is ready and set in the starting blocks when it's all gulped down.
As I said before: the liquid medium would provide an important role indeed. If a lemon tek preparation would be put in a food dehydrator and the result would be eaten I wonder if this would slow it down. Also I wonder if heat-treated lemon juice that would denature the enzymes would prove an interesting control group.
Damn it, now we need a group of shroomers who are down for a long-term experiment, of course preferably they would not be aware of the whole lemon tek theory so that placebo would not logically play a role. :D

I may sound like a believer but it remains a theory and I am well aware of that. At the same time I am very much intrigued and interested in plausible explanations, though things like this are notorious for hanging around for years without anyone investing the time and energy to get to the bottom of it.
The number of people who voted they notice no difference is worrying, for example the LSA -> LAH theory seems to have a much better success ratio.
Then again, a lot of people believe vitamin C and sugar are compounds that abort a trip, still somehow this lemon tek thing evolved. I mean stranger things have evolved that are downright outrageous and silly, but it didn't seem like a particularly placebo-sensitive premise.

 

[Ismene]

Do you just think the lemon juice just brings the trip on quicker solipsis or do you think it makes the psilocybin a lot more psychedelic like 2c-goinsane?

 

[Bagseed]

i experienced death and ego loss (yeah i know you don't like that term, but i don't know any better (; ) on only 2,6g of homegrown cubes which i ground up (not even powdered), soaked in lemon juice and then filled up with some hot tea. this was the strongest and most profound trip i've ever had, including the experience of infinity, entities, etc.
that being said, this was only my second time doing mushrooms, so you cannot take my experience as safe data ^^, but my feeling tells me that the lemon juice and also adding heat and more water to it made an impact. i never thought what i experienced was possible on not even 3g of cubes. my first time were 25g of fresh cubes and this was like nothing in comparison. also i tend to be a bit more tolerant to psychedelics than some other people. 25mg of 2c-e are well managable for me, while for two friends it was nearly overwhelming, same thing i experienced on LSD.

what i want to say is that you, ismene can never be sure too, same as us, but the only thing you do is defending your opinion in short posts with little content and never really going into some arguments someone else posted. and this goes the same way in many threads here in PD you post in. just saying...

 

[Ismene]

My posts have content bagseed - just not the content you'd like them to have. Isn't the best way for you to post your opinion and let me post my mine? And not take things personally?

I've taken mushrooms in tea and in orange juice and never noticed any difference apart from that they come on slightly faster than when taken capsuled. But capsuled has no taste and no nausea so that's the way I prefer. Y'follow?

If it's only your second time doing mushrooms then I wouldn't reach any conclusions yet. Mushrooms can vary vastly in effects depending on a whole lot of variables - this is something that most people don't understand. If you're only tripping once every few months it's easy to think "Dude, that lemon juice trip was stronger than the one I had 3 months ago".

 

[Bagseed]

If it's only your second time doing mushrooms then I wouldn't reach any conclusions yet.

yeah i know and that's what i've said too (; . my point was that you ignore the experiences of other people and say it's bullshit just because you've experienced different. maybe your body metabolizes psilocybin faster than most people, so you don't see the difference, have you thought about that? your view is a little black-white don't you think?

 

[Ismene]

I'm not saying it's bullshit at all - I understand that some people who have taken mushrooms think lemon juice makes it come on faster and others think it supercharges psilocybin itself to be more psychedelic. I'm sure if you believe lemon juice will make you trip harder then you more than likely will trip harder. I've never doubted that.

But I'm just saying don't take it at face value. As fastandbulbous has already explained on the first page of this thread there's no reason why lemon juice would affect mushrooms in any way whatsoever.

But if you want to soak mushrooms in lemon then you go ahead mate - god loves you, do what you want.

 

[Bagseed]

^ i've read that post you refered to right now and while it sounds reasonable, it most certainly is not a foolproof explaination. some other people in this thread talked about "ester hydrolysis" (i'm no chemist but since i started browsing BL i've got an idea^^) which might turn psilocybin into psilocin in a reaction. i think we can agree that ingesting an active drug might show effects faster than ingesting a prodrug? (not saying it's 100% sure that citric acid does that to psilocybin)

also i've read in the 4-aco-dmt thread that a guy transforms psilacetin into psilocin using ester hydrolysis and has had good experiences with that...

 

[Ismene]

But why would mixing mushrooms with lemon juice be any faster than swallowing them and letting them mix with stomach acid? Particularly when stomach acid is massively more effective than lemon juice?

Incidentally, every report I've ever read says psilocybin remains largely unchanged until processed by the liver - it's not the stomach acid that "converts" it into psilocin, it's enzymes in the liver. If that's true then obviously the lemon tek is nothing but placebo.

I'd be interested to see if the people who've taken them in lemon juice have ever taken them in mushroom tea for example - liquids do tend to come on a little faster than capsuled, although not always, I've taken capsules and been peaking within an hour, the time a trip takes to come on can vary massively.

 

[2c-goinsane]

honestly at first i was doing the lemon tek for less nausea, i had read its a smoother cleaner more clearheaded trip than eating them dry and i first tried them with 1.75 and i came up hard alot quicker than usual stomach pains were just the same as eating them dry if not worse because of all the citrus in my emty stomach, it was a hell of alot more confusing i know its just not me, the whole time i couldnt believe this was happening off that little amount and it just went down the rabbit hole from there.

iv ate mushrooms many many times and different ways and this one yeilded the most profound effects it forced me into all of it and it has done the the same another time i have tried it with 3.5 but i was more familiar with it and was fine still had to reassure myself many times and remind myself i had ate mushrooms, its the only thing that has came close to lsd for me with the whole rebirth experience and what not. the next day i feel magnificent very happy to be alive and well.

 

[Ismene]

Yeah, but the problem is once you think it's far more powerful than normal mushrooms the placebo effect will make it so.

Are you sure you havn't even had one experience where it wasn't as powerful? Usually other factors will come into play with psychedelic drugs - you arn't guaranteed an explosive trip every time with any drug because your mood will be different, the weather will be different, you'll be tired etc. Even lemon juice can't affect that.

But hey - if it works for you then keep doing it - god loves you.