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Comment by dfalzone | Hacker News Reader

I wonder if this is at all related to the common pairing of citrus fruits with psychedelic drugs. A lot of people recommend eating an orange or drinking orange juice when you take LSD, and a lot of people recommend using lemons to enhance psilocybin mushroom trips. Maybe grapefruit would pair even better with these drugs.

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The lemon-tek method of consuming psilocybin mushrooms isn’t related to this. Acidic conditions speed up the conversion of psilocybin into psilocin. This normally happens in your stomach, the lemon-tek method just does externally. This causes the overall experience to be shorter, but more intense. Psilocin also doesn’t appear to be metabolized by the enzymes that grapefruit inhibits.

source?

The wikipedia article for Psilocybin has all of the above.

>Psilocybin [...] is a prodrug that is converted into [...] psilocin [...] This chemical reaction takes place under strongly acidic conditions

And for metabolism

>Psilocin is broken down by the enzyme monoamine oxidase [...] Some psilocin is not broken down by enzymes and instead forms a glucuronide [...] Psilocin is glucuronated by the glucuronosyltransferase enzymes UGT1A9 in the liver, and by UGT1A10 in the small intestine

Grapefruit juice also has drug interactions with opiates and (I think) anti depressants, amongst other things.

Certainly reminds me of the Kool Aid in "Electric Kool Aid Acid Test"

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