Science

[Fungal biology]… thousands of years…

…there are more than 300 species of psilocybin-containing mushrooms… A paper published in the journal Fungal Biology summarizes centuries of psilocybin use among shamans and guides who treated people for a host of ailments, from anxiety and rheumatism to toothaches and stomach pain… A study published in Evolution Letters sets out the evidence for this…

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…study investigates how psilocybin affects consciousness

…a new study by Johns Hopkins Medicine researchers… The study found that among people who have had a single psychedelic experience that altered their beliefs in some way, there were large increases in attribution of consciousness to a range of animate and inanimate things. For example, from before to after the experience, attribution of consciousness…

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Shroom dosage…

 If [a] recent study, published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology, is anything to go by, weight-adjusted dosing is just an exercise in futility. Researchers issued participants – whose weights ranged from 108 pounds to 249 pounds – different doses of shrooms with the aim of analyzing whether heavier individuals would experience a more pronounced trip. In the…

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Synthetic opioids stronger than fentanyl have cropped up in US

A group of synthetic opioids called nitazenes, even more powerful than fentanyl in some of its forms, has begun to emerge… Forensic experts have found that the syringes used in some overdoses contain a potent synthetic opioid class – nitazenes – which is up to 20 times more powerful than fentanyl – a drug that…

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[Gmo]… yeasts and how to make them produce psilocybin

…the last thing we did was to play around with the genetic code of the Psilocybe genes a little bit so that we could divert production towards some of the other intermediates and derivatives of the pathway… …we had to dig a little bit into the genome of Psilocybe cubensis to find the missing genes. We then introduced them…

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Psilocybin leaps ahead of other psychedelics in trials and studies

Psilocybin has a quirky advantage for researchers over and above LSD and MDMA, according to Dr. David Nutt, a physician and Professor of Neuropsychopharmacology at Imperial College. In a world grappling with… isolation, mushrooms, especially… [psilocybe] mushrooms, offer a connection to the natural world, forging community, and healing in ways that modern pharmaceuticals, even psychedelic…

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Do psychedelics boost creativity?

Since time immemorial, people have used psychedelics for spiritual development, personal growth and expanded creativity. But rigorous research on psychedelics for self-improvement is only just starting to pick up steam. Without any clear business model emerging around psychedelics for creativity, and the large-scale regulatory changes that are necessary for the legal, non-medical use of psychedelics,…

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Scientists create cell-based… potential 5-meo-dmt “bio-factory”

You can’t blame people for wanting the expansive and often life-changing jolt that 5-MeO-DMT can deliver. But this kind of transcendence comes at a cost. The practice of collecting defensive secretions from toad parotoid glands isn’t a pretty sight. It often involves harassment of the animal that leads to mutilating them and destruction of their habitats.…

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Hemp extraction to mushroom extraction?

…can cannabis equipment be used for mushroom extraction? Psilocybin and cannabis are polar opposites – literally. Cannabinoid molecules are nonpolar, while psilocybin is… because cannabinoids are nonpolar molecules, typically extracted through CO2, hydrocarbon, butane or ethanol, that equipment wouldn’t suffice to extract a polar molecule, like psilocybin. There are some exceptions, however… natural extraction methods…

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…controlled crystal engineering process for large-scale synthesis of psilocybin polymorphs

Polymorphs B, A, and H… supported through Usona as an open access paper… peer-reviewed study… shows three most pharmaceutically relevant crystalline forms of psilocybin have been consistently created and observed since 1959. The ability of a unique crystalline arrangement to solidify in more than one form, called polymorphs, can be optimized using precise combinations of…

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