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Comment by whatnotests | Hacker News Reader

Hopefully they can make it taste better?

Many years ago, we grew ours on white rice. Eaten fresh, they were quite tasty. Also OK after freeze drying. But commercial Psilocybe do have an unpleasant taste, even fresh. Maybe they grow them on manure.

Well you effectively have 3 common ways of consuming them: fresh, dried and truffles. In my opinion dried is very easy to consume, they don't have most of their taste (nor mass); truffles come second because they don't taste too bad (kinda like nuts but tartier) and finally the worst to consume because of volume and taste is regular fresh caps and stalks but even then they don't taste that bad.

Eating them in something like a ham sandwich makes it OK in my opinion.

I've only ever ordered them from legal producers so I don't know how much extra work they put into making them not taste bad versus illegal growers.

4th: brew them in a cup of tea.

Yeah, this is the best way to consume the shroom. Mix with a little loose leaf green tea and it actually tastes pretty good, with a tingly after-feeling on your tongue.

For anyone that's interested, basically just roughly dice 1/8 oz. of dried mushrooms and add a scoop of your favorite tea. Put the mix in a large teaball (or multiple small ones). Boil 2-3 cups of water. Let the water cool for 20-30 seconds on a cold burner before pouring into your teapot. Steep and drink!

Where / how is it legal?

At least in the United States, it's legal to buy and ship the spores in almost every state (one notable exception being California).

I grind mine to ~dust and pack them in 0.3 g gelatine capsules - no taste and 1 is just enough for microdosing.

you microdose mushrooms?? Interesting. Just for recreation when you want to relax or do you ever do it during the day?

I'm on a break but I used to take them for the general enhancing effect and going deeper into meditation. Sometimes during day even in public places, which was a big mistake in the generally nervous/anxious place I was in life. Perhaps I got too arrogant.

edit: then again a capsule or two and a remote cabin could be just what I need to reset from the upheaval in my mind..

Do you get any meaningful work benefit from a single 0.3g capsule? That sounds low even for a microdose.

It is possible I'm more sensitive to its effects for various reasons but ime one capsule starts working in 30-45 minutes and I get a noticeable effect affecting mood and bodily sensations. 1 capsule certainly gets me more in touch with the internal world when meditating.

I don't know how much one should talk about this stuff on open forums but it certainly can be a shortcut to achieving or visiting some powerful states of experience, which may not be always be or seem positive at least during, so Ymmv and be safe.

I've microdosed mushrooms maybe a dozen times and generally the last thing I want to do is work. Would not recommend to anyone looking for a productivity boost.

With that said, they're a great stress reliever.

Tea with honey. Tastes wonderful.

Blue Honey, my friend... blue honey. Many years ago I was gifted a mason jar of it, made from fresh whole mushrooms, blue as can be, beautiful and very tasty. Started the day with one thin spread on a piece of buttered toast, then breeze through the day until after work, when a nice cup of blue honey tea got me through the night. Yeah, I miss that.

ah such a romantic feeling description and so dead on

Hopefully they make it trip better.

Bad trips are a ...doozy, to say the least.

this discovery will likely have little impact on the taste of what's being consumed, or the subjective quality of the trip.

the bad taste is the result of either a) the flesh of the mushrooms, or b) (in the case of isolated psilocybin) the alkaloid being a bitter "chemical" tasting chemical. in either case, the problem can be mitigated without understanding the mushroom's psilocybin synthesis pathway.

the bad trip has to do with the alkaloid itself, and a the reaction of particular brain that's been dosed with it at a particular time. again, understanding the mushroom's synthesis path isn't going to change the end result. it might help chemists discover new and worthwhile paths to synthesizing other tryptamines with a lower potential for bad trips, but it's not like there's a shortage of viable methods for producing novel tryptamines at the moment.

still, really really cool discovery. not trying to downplay that. just saying the parent and GP i'm replying to are talking about things that are pretty much orthogonal to this discovery.

EDIT: ok, i can imagine one situation where this could impact flavor: in a world where psilocybin is legal, one might imagine boutique engineered mushroom strains that have desirable flavor characteristics, and which produce psilocybin. this discovery could help with engineering that sort of thing. i don't actually think that's a worthwhile use of anyone's time (again, there are ways to mitigate the taste issue, and determining the amount of mushrooms you eat by anything other than the desired intensity of the trip seems like a flat out bad idea). but still, i stand partially corrected.

You are right, I'm sure. Just a cheeky response to a cheeky response. (Though, with the hopeful side-effect of luring more learned answers, like yours :))

> the subjective quality of the trip

I dunno. I mean, anecdotally, I get a a different kind of drunk on regular beer, fancy beer, and different kinds of liquors. People seem to swear by the different weed strains. I wouldn't be surprised if the rest of the composition of the mushroom has a noticeable effect on the trip.

To me, this just means it'll be easier to try blending substances together; I can totally imagine designer packs that use time-release and a collection of substances to create particular experiences.

Cannabis has multiple psychoactive compounds, mainly THC and CBD. That's the reason different strains can have very different effects.

On the other hand, there seems to be a lot of arguing about different experiences with the same compound, not just with alcohol, but also with other drugs like LSD, MDMA, etc., if you look at forums... I'm skeptical and think most underrate the effect of previous mood and dosage in the effects of drugs.

Is it at all possible there are other psychoactive components to shrooms? I suspect not, but that might differentiate strains.

Alcohol is alcohol. The differences you are noticing are probably due to the amount of water you're consuming with your alcohol (two pints of 5% beer contains a lot more water than one pint of 10% beer), how fast you're drinking (some liquors you shot, some you sip for example, sweeter drinks get drunk faster than bitter drinks), and possibly also related to the amount of sugar you consume (as is common in sweeter mixed drinks).

That's not entirely true, the other substances in the drink also effect the intoxication.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congener_(alcohol)

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tryptophol

I could go on listing other substances in alcoholic drinks, but ethanol is far from the only substance in alcoholic beverages with biological and psycholical impact.

don't forget placebo

Pro-tip: blend your mushrooms into a drink with milk and a little sugar. You can pound this drink easily, and the onset is faster and more predictable.

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