Pure psilocybin vs. shrooms

[deviate]

I don't draw boundaries between "natural" and "synthetic" .

Some vitamin pills work, and some don't. Some are more effective as extracts and some are less effective.

I love plants and I love synthetics. I love the Earth, but I see no reason to be bound to it every minute of the day for all eternity.

Man is a product and part of nature. Therefore anything produced from the labour of man's mind (extraction techniques, for instance) is a product of nature.

Sometimes it's good, sometime's it isn't.

yeah, i've thought about the differences between natural and synthetic and one of the only differences i could come up with was that synthetic things are new while natural simply means it's something that's been interacting with its environment for a while. for example if you throw some cans into the ocean, at first they're not natural, not normally part of that ecosystem. but gradually over time sealife will grow on them, animals may live in them and they will become a "natural" part of that environment. since the human body and mind were created by nature anything created by humans is also created by nature.

 

[Coolio]

A good example of why extracts are different from eating the whole plant is DMT. Ayahuasca will take you to the Amazon, the origion of the plants. Pure DMT will take you somewhere else. I doubt it is a coinsidence that the presence of a MAOI just happens to change the trip to the same place the plants origionated from.

Uh, what the hell are you talking about? Since when does ayahuasca take you to the Amazon? I don't think you understand set and setting one bit. If you don't go into a trip with any preconceived notions, no psychedelic is going to force a certain theme on your trip.

 

[S1ngularity]

I have two friends who have both done ayahuasca. They both reported the same exact trip, which involved the drug placing them in the Amazon.

 

[MockTurtle]

Uh, what the hell are you talking about? Since when does ayahuasca take you to the Amazon? I don't think you understand set and setting one bit. If you don't go into a trip with any preconceived notions, no psychedelic is going to force a certain theme on your trip.

On mushrooms i was taken to Aztec Mexico among other places. I saw visions and designs which I found to be Aztec ones. At that point in time I was not aware that mushrooms were utilized by them for sacred purposes, but now I can see the influence they had on them. I think it can be perfectly true that you can go places with a substance. After all, the exact method of hallucinations is beyond our current capacity to understand.

 

[djfriendly]

An instructive and humorous passage from PiHKAL (pp. 67-8 ):

Cludio Naranjo, a psychiatrist-anthropologist who had made his way years bedore through South American jungles to discover the Ayahuasca vine, gave a passionate talk which transmitted the excitement he felt about the jungle images of Ayahuasca-induced intoxication. In his experience, and in the experience of his patients, according to Claudio, the taking of plant extracts that contained harmaline invariably brought about visions of jaguars and other flora and fauna associated with the jungle in which the vine grew.
Also at the meeting was the well-known and respected botanist, Richard E. Schultes of Harvard, and I had heard from him that he had never experienced these particular types of visual images with Ayahuasca.
I had the pleasure of introducing them, and mentioned their common interest. Claudio opened the conversation:
"What do you think about the jaguars?"
"What jaguars?"
A small silence.
"Are you personally familiar with authentic Banistriopsis caapi?" asked Claudio, his voice slightly strained.
"Richard looked at him closely. "I was the one who assigned it its name."
Claudio went on. "Have you ever taken the plant decoction itself?"
"Perhaps fifteen times."
"And never jaguars?"
"Sorry, only wiggly lines."
Claudio turned away. To my knowledge, they have not talked since.

If such lofty experts cannot agree, it seems pretty useless to argue it much here.

 

[Adrenochrome]

From all I have read and garthered in my mind and thought about i have made the conclusion(but i am open minded and I know this isn't necesarilly the truth) that there is probably little difference between pure psilocybin and shrooms. Maybe sometimes there is a difference on certain shrooms if they have a high level of other chemicals(like that one that begins with bae), but usually they dont have a high level of these other chemicals, & since it's usually a small dose of the other chemicals i wonder if the dose even effects anything at all. Like if u took 5mg of mdma u prob wouldn't feel it.

 

[Oceanbear]

Has anyone had the opportunity of sampling both shrooms and pure psilocybin extracted from shrooms?

Well, I have had both lab produced psilocybin and fresh mushrooms and there is quite a difference. Lab produced is way cleaner in feeling... little to no body load/nausea, quite alot of kundalini-like energy, little to no lethargy, considerably more hallucinogenic, and far more 'guideable'.

 

[Blowmonkey]

^ And how many of these trials have you done? If it was only one, then you can't draw conclusions.. There has to be somekind of consistency in the different aspects you mentioned, it could all be placebo.

I'm btw, very skeptical of you acquiring pure Psilocybin.

 

[bluedolphin]

On mushrooms i was taken to Aztec Mexico among other places. I saw visions and designs which I found to be Aztec ones. At that point in time I was not aware that mushrooms were utilized by them for sacred purposes, but now I can see the influence they had on them. I think it can be perfectly true that you can go places with a substance. After all, the exact method of hallucinations is beyond our current capacity to understand.

Perhaps this is a result of the mushrooms' shared influence on both Aztec art and culture and yourself

.....

Anyway I do believe there are other tryptamines in mushrooms which can affect the trip. There is simply too much variation in mushrooms, and in my experience and observation these variations can definitely be attributed to different strains / batches of mushrooms ... not simply people's expectations or setting.

Surely some of you have eaten some shrooms before talking to other people, and had a certain kind of trip, and then talked to other people who ate the same shrooms and all had the same kind of trip. This seems to happen frequently with shrooms.

Also, I find it impossible to believe that psilocin, psilocybin, and beaocystin have exactly the same effects. Just because a couple people couldn't tell the different and wrote that they were the same doesn't make it true for everybody. With all the chemically-similar research chemicals that many of us have sampled, we know that a small molecular difference can sometimes make a big difference in effects. People who prefer wet mushrooms vs. dry mushrooms would probably agree with me on this. Additionally I see no reason to believe that at least some of these mushrooms could be tryptamine factories producing several other, probably less significant chemicals.

 

[DJAcetone]

well, I performed my first extraction this past weekend and after one failed attempt, I successfully achieved crystals on the second try. And they worked well, I might say. There was no neausea, and the trip came on fast. It was almost is if I took LSD. I highly reccomend this to anyone who is interested

 

[bluedolphin]

^^
Out of random curiousity, what color / form were your crystals?

 

[Jamshyd]

There is absolutely no way of possibly knowing the difference between pure Psiloc(yb)in and raw mushrooms, and between the different strains of mushrooms.

Why? Because every single trip is different from the other. I have taken 2C-I 3 different times and it felt like it was a different drug each time. Had I not known that all the 2C-I I have taken was from the same batch, I would have probably speculated that I was working with three different psychedelics.

And speaking of 2C-I, on my first trip I became an Alien (Gigeresque, as in the Aliens movies), and so did my surroundings. Does that suggest that 2C-I was invented by Giger's aliens? not really. Though I do confess I am biased in that I don't buy into much of Mckenna's ideas.

Set and Setting are too crucial. And while setting may standardized, there is absolutely no way that you can standardize set to see a patterns in reactions to the different strains (or pure vs plant) and compare them, because each set will be different each time you try.

Add to the set issue that when people see that they are taking different forms of psilocybin, they will most likely make their reaction to each different, unconsciously.

 

[gloggawogga]

^^^^

Your argument is that differences in experience from one trip to the next come about due to set and setting, which is true, but that is far from proving that set and setting is the only possible cause of differences. I may get slightly different trips each time I try 2c-i, but I have little doubt in blind test that I could easily distinguish between 2c-i and 2c-e.

In the case of mushrooms, the thing to do would be to take some experienced trippers, have them trip in blind tests in a controlled setting, and see if they can guess what you gave them. If they, not knowing what you gave them, can learn to distinguish between various mushroom species/strains and pure psilocin with a level of consistency that is statistically significant, then that would prove there is a discernable difference in effects. Even if they can't, there still may be differences in effects, but they would be too small for even experienced trippers to reliably discern.

 

[Jamshyd]

^^^ That does sound like a good design, with the blind test elliminating the chance for preconception-driven trips, but I still do not think it'll solve the initial problem.

X may be administered 10 doses of pure Psilocin and 10 "equivalent" doses (try to figure THAT out! lol) of, say, Psilocybe cubensis. All trials were blind and not in any particular order (so at one instance X may be getting the pure drug, the other he may be getting plant material..etc.).

I assure you that X will find all the trips equally different (unless all you're testing for is duration/time frames, and even that can be problematic), at least different enough from each other that X will not be able to give an observable difference between pure and plant -- all that assuming that we have a somewhat "standardized" potency for the plant matter, which I believe is very hard to do.

When it comes to testing for strain vs strain in the same manner, you encounter the same difficulties, only double.

That being said, I am with the assumption that all Psilocybin is converted to Psilocin in the body, and thus Psilocin was used for the pure drug. I also do not deny one bit that different strains of mushrooms may contain other chemicals that may alter the trip slighly (This is certainly the case with P. baeocystis). However I would not think the alteration would be significant rnough to be able to tell if the alteration was due to the chemical components of the mushrooms or to set and setting. I hope that clarifies my point. I am not trying to prove that set and setting are the only factor, I am simply saying that there is simply no reliable way to find out...

Though, I could be wrong, and I'd be very glad to see an actual experiment as such carried out.

 

[gloggawogga]

I assure you that X will find all the trips equally different (unless all you're testing for is duration/time frames, and even that can be problematic), at least different enough from each other that X will not be able to give an observable difference between pure and plant --

Thats your opinion and maybe your educated guess, not an assurance. The whole purpose of doing such testing would be to find out.

all that assuming that we have a somewhat "standardized" potency for the plant matter, which I believe is very hard to do.

When it comes to testing for strain vs strain in the same manner, you encounter the same difficulties, only double.

You can standardize the plant potency by doing and alkaloid extract, and then have the person running the test (not the subjects of the test) do a gc/ms analysis and then estimate what an equivilant potency would be. You can then use the extracts in the test, which also prevents the subject from distinguishing a shroom species/strain by its flavour. Alternatively, you can mask the flavor by mixing the shrooms into some food. You can vary randomly the potency of the tests, to prevent the subjects from guessing by any potency pattern.

That being said, I am with the assumption that all Psilocybin is converted to Psilocin in the body, and thus Psilocin was used for the pure drug.

It was also assumed that in a similar way to the way esterase supposedly converts psilocybin to psilocin, iprocetin would be converted to iprocin, ethocetin would be converted to ethocin, and miprocetin would be converted to miprocin. In each case, I found the acetoxy esters not to be the same as the corresponding indolols. So why should I assume psilocin and its phosphoroxyl ester are the same? Because a few people have said so? Personally, I won't make any assumptions, and would (if I could) actually like to try psilocin, psilocybin, and even psilocetin (4-aco-dmt) to see if there are differences.

 

[Jamshyd]

Re: Potency, standardizing mushrooms by extracting really defeats the purpose. You are taking the full bulk of alkaloids and making them all equal whereas they differ in concentration between each individual mushroom.

Re: Esterase, Psilocybin is the Phosphoryl ester of Psilocin. The acetate esters are different, as you already know. Perhaps there is another mechanism, other than the esterase enzyme, that converts psilocybin into psilocin? Or maybe they do not convert at all. I am not taking sides here.

I DO agree that the acetoxy ester of Iprocin was definitely different.

When I said I "assume", I was simply taking the mainstream idea,since the proposed study is that of comparing pure psilocybin vs plant material. I myself am skeptical of this. But now that you have the distinction between Psilocybin and Psilocin, you put one more obstacle in your reasearch. Are you testing for Psilocybin vs mushroom, or for Psilocin vs mushroom? How much pure psilocybin is "equivalent" to 3 grams of cubensis, which can varry a LOT from individual mushroom to individual mushroom in their Psilocybin AND Psilocin AND other contents?

There are simply too many variables to allow you to achieve concrete answers from your experiment.

You are right, though. That is just my opinion. I would be open to being disproved by the afformentioned study .

 

[gloggawogga]

Re: Potency, standardizing mushrooms by extracting really defeats the purpose. You are taking the full bulk of alkaloids and making them all equal whereas they differ in concentration between each individual mushroom.

You aren't standardizing on individual mushrooms you are only standardizing on the average potency of the species or strain so that differing potencies don't become a give away on your test. When you do an alkaloid extract you should be getting the various alkaloids in proportions, and then you get get a detailed gc/ms analysis, which you are only using to estimate the relative potency of that particular species or strain. Then you will be randomizing the doses in the tests anyways so that the subject won't be able to use potency as a way of making the distinction. You don't need exact same potencies of different drugs to distinguish between them. In fact, if two drugs are different drugs, what is "exact same potency"?

Re: Esterase, Psilocybin is the Phosphoryl ester of Psilocin. The acetate esters are different, as you already know. Perhaps there is another mechanism, other than the esterase enzyme, that converts psilocybin into psilocin? Or maybe they do not convert at all. I am not taking sides here.

Right. I'm just saying that people falsely assumed that the acetate esters would be the same, and it turned out they were wrong. Now with so few people testing psilocybin vs. psilocin, whose to say the assumptions about that aren't wrong too?

But now that you have the distinction between Psilocybin and Psilocin, you put one more obstacle in your reasearch. Are you testing for Psilocybin vs mushroom, or for Psilocin vs mushroom? How much pure psilocybin is "equivalent" to 3 grams of cubensis, which can varry a LOT from individual mushroom to individual mushroom in their Psilocybin AND Psilocin AND other contents?

If the distinction between psilocybin and psilocin exists, then different mushroom species/strains will definitely differ to some extent, since the proportions of these to differ. In fact, even dried and wet shrooms will differ. (And some say they do).

There are simply too many variables to allow you to achieve concrete answers from your experiment.

Well, I don't think so, if it were legal and one wanted to put the resources into it. You just take it one step at a time. First you test psilocybin vs. psilocin. If they are different, then all shrooms are different to some extent. If they are the same, then maybe you look at tests of psilocin vs. shrooms, or maybe species vs. species, with a focus on species that are higher in baeocystin or nor baeocystin, since those would be your best chance for differences.

 

[Oceanbear]

^ And how many of these trials have you done?

Less than a dozen. But close to it.

If it was only one, then you can't draw conclusions.. There has to be somekind of consistency in the different aspects you mentioned, it could all be placebo.

Aside from varying doses, the experiences were similar qualitatively. Obviously the intensities were different.

I'm btw, very skeptical of you acquiring pure Psilocybin.

Yeah, I know.... usually most people are. But this was a long time ago and there was alot around for a short period of time. BTW, I'm usually skeptical of people when they tell me they have tried DOM unless they are over the age of 40.

 

[Blowmonkey]

LOL, "there was a lot around for a short period of time"..? Maybe it was 4-HO-DIPT or something, I still doubt you had actual Psilocybin. Who would be crazy enough to synth Psilocybin when mushrooms are abundant? I imagine it is a waste of time, if money is of concern, which I bet it was (considereing it was "on the streets").

 

[gloggawogga]

^^^

4-HO-DIPT wasn't even heard of "a long time ago". And FYI mushrooms weren't abundant, say back in the 70's and 80's, because teks back then weren't as easy as the one's we have today. Chemical precursors were easier to get back then too. In the 60's Sandoz was manafucturing psilocybin in pill form. What he's saying isn't that unbelievable.