The Latest News on Magic Truffles and Mushrooms
The role of psilocybin, the active ingredient in psychedelic truffles and mushrooms, has been pivotal in the revival of interest in psychedelics for their potential therapeutic benefits – particularly in the realm of wellbeing and mental health treatment.
Psilocybin has garnered this well-deserved attention for its purported ability to enhance mood, cognitive functions, creativity, and even sexual function (as you will read below), even without inducing a full-blown psychedelic experience. Join us as we venture into a collection of latest news, breakthrough research and enticing podcast episodes surrounding these potential life-changing natural compounds. We have added a link to all our tips so that you can get started right away!
FUNGI: OUR FRIENDS FROM THE FOREST
The absolute must-see documentary Fantastic Fungi, available on Netflix, takes us into the fascinating world of fungi, including the use of mushrooms and truffles in traditional medicine and modern psychedelics research. Featuring interviews with experts and breathtaking visuals, it offers insights into the potential therapeutic benefits of these natural substances.
Read this groundbreaking article from the New York Times: My Adventures With The Trip Doctors (read here) – The Researchers and Renegades Bringing Psychedelic Drugs into the Mental Health Mainstream, in which author Michael Pollan shares an excerpt from his bestseller How to Change your Mind: The New Science on Psychedelics. Pollan has been an authority on sustainable and fair food in the United States for decades, and has recently delved into the whole world of psychedelics. If you want to be completely informed about the world of psychedelics, definitely read his entire book!
If reading is not your favorite hobby, good news! His bestseller is transformed into a four-part series under the same name How To Change Your Mind (read here). In each episode, Pollan explores a different mind-altering compound; LSD, psilocybin, MDMA, and mescaline, and although only the second episode is fully dedicated to psilocybin, we do suggest watching all four of them; you won’t regret it.
MOMS ON MUSHROOMS
One remarkable trend seems very much on the rise: microdosing mothers. In the Wall Street Journal’s The Working Woman’s Newest Life Hack: Magic Mushrooms (read here), a select group of moms in high-powered jobs explain how psilocybin has become the answer to a packed social and professional calendar. ‘‘I work hundreds of hours a week, and it helps my performance,’’ says Kiana Avaripour, 42, who runs her own agency. ‘‘It allows me to be my best self.’’
As in other parts of the world in the last years, the use of magic mushrooms has increased in the UK, in part due to a trend for microdosing – tiny doses “below the perceptual threshold,” as explained in Mums on magic mushrooms: Why parents are ‘microdosing’ class A drug (read here). Many users are parents, who say the drug helps with the stresses of modern-day life. It’s worth noting with this title that psilocybin truffles are fully legal in the Netherlands.
Even Oprah Winfrey is sold, as you may read in the following article in her online magazine Are All the Moms Microdosing Without Me (read here)?, in which a mother of two digs into the advantages of shrooming for increased mental health and shares her findings.
Besides all the reading, we’ve also come upon a few interesting podcasts on mothers using psilocybin to improve their daily life. In Moms on Mushrooms: Healing, Community, & Education for Mothers, Tracey Tee, founder of Moms on Mushrooms (read here), talks about safe, intentional psychedelic use for mothers. During her own journey with psilocybin Tracey began to feel called to support moms in a deeper and more meaningful way. In 2022, she launched an online microdosing course created exclusively for moms called M.O.M. – “Moms on Mushrooms.”
In the soulful episode Microdosing and Motherhood (read here), with Anna Heil on Microdosing Table Talk, Anna Heil discusses how some mothers have reported the positive results of using psilocybin microdoses for mood swings and anxiety during pregnancy and breastfeeding. The conversation also touches on how microdosing can increase awareness, and plant medicines can help embrace our divinity and humanness as parents.
HEALING THE BODY WITH PSILOCYBIN?
In the article Psychedelic Experiences Linked With Improved Sexual Function (read here) we encounter the findings of the first known scientific investigation into the effects of psilocybin on sex, conducted by researchers at Imperial College London, which finds participants reported improvements across a range of measures for several weeks after an acute psychedelic experience.
In the podcast episode Microdosing for Healing, Kayse Gehret, the Founder of Microdosing for Healing, an international virtual community and coaching program supporting microdosing practice, tells the story of embracing microdosing and her grand mal seizure disorder going away. “When I was introduced to the concept of microdosing, […] the idea that I could do something that felt more like a natural supplementation, a spiritual vitamin if you will, over time, as kind of an expansiveness [tool] and a healing modality – not anticipating at all it would have the effect that it did end up happening for me – but that sounded more appealing than high dose work at the time. So I started microdosing and among other things, my seizure disorder disappeared completely, immediately upon practicing.”
FOOD FOR THOUGHT: UNLOCK YOUR BRAINPOWER
If you want to get into neuroregeneration and cognition-enhancing, read The Stamets Stack: Should You Try Microdosing (read here)? Stamets Stack is a combination of three supplements assembled and thoroughly researched by mycologist Paul Stamets, containing psilocybin mushrooms, Lion’s Mane mushrooms, as well as niacin. The stack components are hypothesized to work better together as psilocybin mushrooms and Lion’s mane have a dual ability to create new neurons in the brain and repair existing neurological damage.
The Times published The Secret to my Successful Career: Microdosing Magic Mushrooms (read here) and the title says it all!
Besides the more common and daily use of mushrooms and truffles, our nature friends are also slowly gaining terrain in the medical world of our Western society. The Vice article Microdosing Psychedelics Could Help People With ADHD describes a new study published in Frontiers in Psychiatry showing that consuming tiny amounts of LSD or magic mushrooms could help ADHD sufferers with mindfulness. “We found improvements in all facets of mindfulness after four weeks of microdosing,” according to Petra Hurks, professor of the neuropsychology department at the University of Maastricht.
A study from the University of Southern Denmark shows that microdosing on – or taking very small doses of – psilocybin may have a beneficial effect on mental health disorders. Read it in this Medical News Today article: Can Microdosing Psilocybin, the Compound in Magic Mushrooms, Aid Mental Health (read here)? And for a more in-depth research on the matter, we can really advise you to read the latest book of the Canadian trauma expert Gabor Maté. In his book The Myth of Normal he discusses how the use of psychedelics, like psilocybin, can have an amazing beneficial effect in treating people who are suffering from all different types of trauma.
PSILOCYBIN: A SPIRITUAL PERSPECTIVE
In the enticing The Third Wave Podcast episode Were Early Christians Tripping On Psilocybin Mushrooms (read here)?, we meet Jerry Brown, who has a PhD in anthropology and author of Psychedelic Gospels, talks about psychedelic mushrooms in early Christian society. We hear about the evidence for psychedelic use that exists in Christian art, and how the Inquisition during the sixteenth century could have resulted in the destruction of these psychedelic traditions. Jerry also shares his vision of a future with freedom to practice psychedelic use as part of our basic religious rights.
The beautiful documentary A New Understanding: The Science of Psilocybin (read here) explores the treatment of end-of-life anxiety in terminally ill cancer patients using psilocybin, to facilitate deeply spiritual experiences, and how these experiences help patients to understand their illness, and therefore their lives. The documentary focuses on the confluence of science and spirituality in the first psychedelic research studies since the 1970s with terminally ill patients. As a society, we devote a great deal of attention to treating cancer, but very little to treating the human being who is dying of cancer.
As interest in psychedelics continues to grow, so too does our understanding of their potential benefits and risks. While microdosing mushrooms and truffles holds promise as a tool for enhancing well-being, health, and creativity, it’s essential to approach these substances with caution and respect. While research progresses and societal attitudes evolve, we may unlock even more insights into the therapeutic potential of these beautiful fungal friends. Stay tuned for further developments in the exciting field of psychedelic science.
