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InvisibleXlea321
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Registered: 02/25/01
Posts: 9,134
Why do shrooms make psilocybin?
    #519340 - 01/13/02 11:21 AM (22 years, 2 months ago)

Anyone heard any good ideas why psilocybin is made by plants? Is it really just for our benefit?


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Don't worry, B. Caapi

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OfflineOdd_Snail
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Re: Why do shrooms make psilocybin? [Re: Xlea321] * 1
    #519348 - 01/13/02 11:29 AM (22 years, 2 months ago)

it is probably made as a poison to deterr animals from eating the it. if so i don't think it worked out all that well.


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Darlene: "Ted, I got you this new nose plug to stop you from snoring at night."
Ted: "Uh yeah, and I got you this paper bag to stop you from looking like James Brown in the Morning."
Darlene: "Oh come now, I don't look anything like James Brown."
Ted: "Hey kids, who does your mom look like in the morning?"
Kids... in unison: "James Brown!"
Darlene, "All right, thats enough... It's poison spaghetti for dinner tonight."

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OfflineNextGenHippie
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Re: Why do shrooms make psilocybin? [Re: Odd_Snail]
    #519387 - 01/13/02 12:02 PM (22 years, 2 months ago)

LoL


--------------------
[pot]Think left and think right[pot]
[pot]and think low and think high[pot]
[pot]Oh, the thinks you can think up if only you try[pot]
-Dr. Seuss

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InvisibleLallafa
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Re: Why do shrooms make psilocybin? [Re: Xlea321]
    #519393 - 01/13/02 12:10 PM (22 years, 2 months ago)

mushrooms arent plants
and it could be a poisen of sorts, to discourage animals from eating them
on the other hand, it could also be there so that we will continue cultivating them


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my tax dollars going to more hits of acid for charles manson

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InvisibleXlea321
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Re: Why do shrooms make psilocybin? [Re: Lallafa]
    #519397 - 01/13/02 12:15 PM (22 years, 2 months ago)

Lal, the poison theory sounds like a load.

Mankind has cultivated mushrooms for around 25 years. I don't think that's long enough for them to adapt do you?


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Don't worry, B. Caapi

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OfflineMurple
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Re: Why do shrooms make psilocybin? [Re: Xlea321] * 1
    #519403 - 01/13/02 12:20 PM (22 years, 2 months ago)

They make it for the Smurfs. Duh.

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InvisibleLallafa
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Re: Why do shrooms make psilocybin? [Re: Xlea321] * 1
    #519405 - 01/13/02 12:21 PM (22 years, 2 months ago)

i dont know, and neither does anyone else.
what are we supposed to do, ask the mushrooms?


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my tax dollars going to more hits of acid for charles manson

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InvisibleXlea321
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Re: Why do shrooms make psilocybin? [Re: Murple]
    #519409 - 01/13/02 12:23 PM (22 years, 2 months ago)

Well I'm getting some shit today i must say.

Please note, I said "good" ideas. Every fuckwit on earth knows the load of horseshit about "it's so animals don't eat them".

Lal, just because you don't know doesn't mean no-one else does.


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Don't worry, B. Caapi

Edited by Alex123 (01/13/02 12:27 PM)

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InvisibleLallafa
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Re: Why do shrooms make psilocybin? [Re: Xlea321]
    #519424 - 01/13/02 12:40 PM (22 years, 2 months ago)

"Lal, just because you don't know doesn't mean no-one else does."

no one knows for sure
we can throw theorys around all day, but none of them can be proven



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my tax dollars going to more hits of acid for charles manson

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InvisibleXlea321
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Re: Why do shrooms make psilocybin? [Re: Lallafa]
    #519446 - 01/13/02 01:01 PM (22 years, 2 months ago)

Don't worry about the proof people. Just throw a few ideas around.

As long as it's not the one about animals eating them.


--------------------
Don't worry, B. Caapi

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Offlinethe universe
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Re: Why do shrooms make psilocybin? [Re: Xlea321]
    #519467 - 01/13/02 01:17 PM (22 years, 2 months ago)

It's a total evolutionary accident? That's the only thing it could be besides to deter animals or to attract animals or as a message from the other side


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"If you had a million years to do it in, you couldn't rub out even half the 'Fuck you' signs in the world."- J. D. Salinger

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OfflineMurple
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Re: Why do shrooms make psilocybin? [Re: Xlea321]
    #519499 - 01/13/02 01:57 PM (22 years, 2 months ago)

> Don't worry about the proof people. Just throw a few ideas around.
> As long as it's not the one about animals eating them.

If you wanted people to make up meaningless bullshit, you should've just said so.

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InvisibleXlea321
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Re: Why do shrooms make psilocybin? [Re: Murple]
    #519510 - 01/13/02 02:04 PM (22 years, 2 months ago)

Nah I didn't say throw around meaningless bullshit (tho that's basically what the forum is about anyway) I said if you'd heard any good reasons why, put em down without worrying about too much proof.


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Don't worry, B. Caapi

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OfflineHollywood
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Re: Why do shrooms make psilocybin? [Re: Xlea321]
    #519561 - 01/13/02 03:12 PM (22 years, 2 months ago)

Sorry Alex but even though you think the poison theory is a wash it seems the most logical to me.

If mamals and other critters in the forest were constantly foraging on these it would make it much harder for them to reproduce so maybe they evolved to protect themselves from that kind of fate.

Just imagine a little black bear or something that just ate a shit load of cubenis and then layed down for a nice summer nap.
Within a half hour that would be one terrified animal. I bet its safe to say it wouldn't ever eat those again if not run away from them every time it seen them.

I'm sure there are others here that might have more scientific, educated theories but this one just makes sense to me.

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OfflineMurple
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Re: Why do shrooms make psilocybin? [Re: Hollywood]
    #519580 - 01/13/02 03:28 PM (22 years, 2 months ago)

Nobody has any clue why plants/fungi make alkaloids. The poison theory is by far the most widely accepted among scientists because most alkaloids are pretty toxic, but there are obviously huge holes in this theory - consider for example the opium poppy. In the case of opium, it seems the alkaloids ENCOURAGE animals to eat the seed pods... which makes sense, as this would help spread the seed. The alkaloids are concentrated mostly in the seed pods. Does this mean the alkaloids are there to encourage eating? Maybe. Maybe not. Perhaps the plants use these alkaloids internally for some purpose... many of them are analogous to chemicals found in animals. I dont think anybody would argue that human brains produce GHB and DMT to either encourage or discourage animals from eating human brains... theyre used internally. So far, nobody has figured out anything alkaloids seem to be doing in plants... doesnt mean they dont do anything.

People have been trying to figure out the alkaloids for a long time, and nobody has an answer. Anybody who claims to have the answer is talking meaningless bullshit. Personally I suspect there is more than one reason they exist, but I cant say what those reasons are, other than perhaps a few guesses.

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Offlinetchyted
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Re: Why do shrooms make psilocybin? [Re: Hollywood]
    #519592 - 01/13/02 03:44 PM (22 years, 2 months ago)

well, it seems that most animals other than humans don't possess the part of the brain that is responsible for hallucination. look in hoffman's research if you don't believe me.

my personal postulate on this matter is that the production of indole alkaloids by mushrooms presents a gapping hole in Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection.

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OfflineArchDruid
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Re: Why do shrooms make psilocybin? [Re: tchyted]
    #519599 - 01/13/02 03:50 PM (22 years, 2 months ago)

My anwer and theory is this,
I think that since psylocibin is basically a nuero-transmitter like our own seratonin, I believe that were whitnessing(sp?) the birth of a primative nervous system.
I believe that mushroom are conscious in a way, like an ameoba(sp?).
Weird to think about while your chomping them, heh.


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" I have decided to become an example for others, although I have never been one for moderation. I have decided never to eat LSD while asleep, never to refrain while awake, and to never eat less than 10 hits at a time."

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Invisible00Zen
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Re: Why do shrooms make psilocybin? [Re: Xlea321]
    #519612 - 01/13/02 04:00 PM (22 years, 2 months ago)

It is my belief that the psilocybin content acts as a timing mechanism, once the mycelium have been introduced into an environment that has the essentials for alkaloid production it begins stock piling them like mad. Once the alkaloid content is high enough in a certain area of the mycelium, the mushroom has detected proper nutrients for reproduction, and begins to trigger a fruiting response. It is interesting to note that the phosphorous that is essential to psilocybin production is also essential to the production of DNA. One of my colleagues believes that psilocybin acts as a catalytic agent possibly during the production of spores or other tissues, in a process whereby the phosphate group of the psilocybin is reduced to yield psilocin.

It's theoretical and speculative but it's my general take on this mystified mushroom.

-Zen

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InvisibleXlea321
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Re: Why do shrooms make psilocybin? [Re: tchyted]
    #519628 - 01/13/02 04:15 PM (22 years, 2 months ago)

interesting stuff guys.

i'm not sure which animals actually eat psilocybe mushrooms but certainly the more poisnous mushrooms like amantia can be eaten by deer, rabbits, squirrels, guinea pigs etc with no ill effects.


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Don't worry, B. Caapi

Edited by Alex123 (01/13/02 04:21 PM)

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InvisibleXlea321
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Re: Why do shrooms make psilocybin? [Re: Hollywood]
    #519636 - 01/13/02 04:31 PM (22 years, 2 months ago)

Hollywood - if bears are anything like sheep...

http://mjshroomer.yage.net/news14.html

The Weekly World News. October 3, 1989. Page 43.


SHEEP EAT LSD AND GO BONKERS!


Sheep are tripping like Woodstock hippies thanks to a crop of hallucinogenic mushrooms that sprouted on islands off the coast of Scotland.

Authorities say the animals can't resist the mushrooms, which contain a natural type of LSD and cause them to hallucinate for hours.

According to reports, the sheep:

*Stumble and fall like drunks.

*Run in terror from imaginary predators.

*Wander into roads and refuse to move, even for speeding traffic.

*Have lost all interest in sex.

Walk sideways and backwards, bleating crazily.

*Won't eat anything but mushrooms even though they have no nutritional value and taste like old leather.

The sheep even let other barnyard animals like chickens, roost on their backs without flinching.

"They're wrecked," Dr. Phillip Johnston of the North of Scotland Agriculture College, told reporters.

I have never seen sheep behave like this/ They're litterally out of their minds.

"But as long as the mushrooms are growing, the sheep are going to eat them. They must like the way they feel when they're tripping.

"They act crazy -- but they look like they're having a good time."

Shepherds alerted authorities after their herds began to behave strangely in August.

Animal experts traced the problems to the mushrooms, which grow wild and in great numbers in the Shetland Islands when weather conditions are right.

"In a few more weeks the mushrooms will be gone and the sheep will return to normal," said Dr. Johnston. "In the meantime, the shephers are going to have to keep a close eye on their flocks.

"As long as they're under the influence of drugs, they're in danger of hurting themselves."
To the right center is the photograph which came with the above article




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Don't worry, B. Caapi

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Offlinedelysid
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Re: Why do shrooms make psilocybin? [Re: ArchDruid]
    #519669 - 01/13/02 05:18 PM (22 years, 2 months ago)

ArchDruid: i like that theory but seratonin in not psychedelic and acording to "dmt : the sprit molecule" dr. rick strassman did test with seratonin for years and came to the conclusion that DMT was a better canidate for that role of what your calling a nervous system and what he is calling a spirit.

i think your theory is very interesting.


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"oh the colors....where am i?"

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Offlinechargrt
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Re: Why do shrooms make psilocybin? [Re: delysid]
    #519691 - 01/13/02 05:42 PM (22 years, 2 months ago)

I believe the best current answer we have to this diabolically taxing question was provided to us by the late, great Terence McKenna :)

http://www.deoxy.org/mushword.htm


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Invoke the One together, so Both may disappear.

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InvisibleKid
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Re: Why do shrooms make psilocybin? [Re: Xlea321]
    #519735 - 01/13/02 06:31 PM (22 years, 2 months ago)

> Anyone heard any good ideas why psilocybin is made by plants?

Does it necessarily serve a function?
Considering that we don't know why life exists, I think it would be tough to draw conclusions about why mushrooms produce psiloc(yb)in.

> Is it really just for our benefit?

Who told you that?

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OfflineSpaceManSpliff
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Re: Why do shrooms make psilocybin? [Re: Kid]
    #519799 - 01/13/02 07:52 PM (22 years, 2 months ago)

As a cynic, I would say it is either an accident of evolution or simply no longer needed by the plant.

Look at all the unneeded organs and compounds in humans and other animals. Eye type structures in deep sea creatures that never see light, apendix in humans etc.


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==================================
"Not happy with your life? Hate your job? There is a support group for that, it's called EVERYONE, we meet at the bar everynight."

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InvisibleXlea321
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Re: Why do shrooms make psilocybin? [Re: Kid]
    #519980 - 01/14/02 12:24 AM (22 years, 2 months ago)

"Does it necessarily serve a function? "

Organisms don't usually waste energy producing pointless substances - otherwise they die.

"Who told you that"

No-one "told" me anything. Humans love taking it. That appears to be it's only use. It's doubtful it helps the plant in anyway - if we go by the sheep, animals will eat it to the exclusion of any other food source.

Do you know of any other reason psilocybin is produced? If you do, bring it on.




--------------------
Don't worry, B. Caapi

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OfflineHB
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Re: Why do shrooms make psilocybin? [Re: Xlea321]
    #520095 - 01/14/02 03:57 AM (22 years, 2 months ago)

just because shrooms may be a poison does not mean they are not an enjoyable poison ...

sure you'd think the word poison would ALWAYS mean bad but realize how much you enjoy good trips ...

or the word poison really comes into play if you have a bad trip, which nature probably "intended" for all the "trips" to be

i dunno, just my thoughts. it's all like asking why marijuana contains THC ...

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OfflineMan
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Re: Why do shrooms make psilocybin? [Re: HB]
    #520296 - 01/14/02 09:48 AM (22 years, 2 months ago)

Theres one thing psilocybin does. It makes the dominant (intelligent) life forms on this planet ensure its suvival by growing it. It even makes us make forums on the internet so people can tell other people how to grow them and grow them better. It even makes us collect spores and sell them to others spreading there seed. A symbiotic relationship.

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InvisibleKid
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Re: Why do shrooms make psilocybin? [Re: Xlea321]
    #520304 - 01/14/02 09:56 AM (22 years, 2 months ago)

> No-one "told" me anything. Humans love taking it. That appears to be it's only use.

That's backwards reasoning. I'll give you an example: Humans love consuming alcohol. Therefor, the process of fermentation only exists to serve humans.

Or even better: Humans love consuming cows. Thus, cows reproduce in order to be turned into hamburgers.

> Do you know of any other reason psilocybin is produced?

Maybe it's an accident? No, I don't know. My whole point was that we don't even know if it serves a purpose, which you're assuming.

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OfflineKrendle
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Re: Why do shrooms make psilocybin? [Re: Xlea321]
    #520607 - 01/14/02 03:27 PM (22 years, 2 months ago)

Moving to General Questions--this is a mushroom website folks :)


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First person to PM me with a truly witty sig gets to see their words at the bottom of my posts :wink:

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Invisiblesupercollider
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Re: Why do shrooms make psilocybin? [Re: Xlea321]
    #520776 - 01/14/02 06:30 PM (22 years, 2 months ago)

Mushrooms are a super-evolved being, and they know that by producing psilocybin, they can put themselves in the good graces of humans. The humans will then spread the spores and propagate the shrooms, insuring the survival of their species.

This theory is basically borrowed from Terence McKenna, and I don't necessarily believe it myself. It's plausible though.

*Ewps, I hadn't seen Man's post at the time I made this one.*


--------------------
Supercollider? I just met her!

Edited by HateCamel (01/14/02 06:32 PM)

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InvisibleKid
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Re: Why do shrooms make psilocybin? [Re: Krendle]
    #521042 - 01/14/02 10:19 PM (22 years, 2 months ago)

That's not the example of backwards reasoning that I provided. The example I provided was analogous to your argument about why mushrooms produce psiloc(yb)in. The example you've just provided, is NOT analogous.

Also,for the sake of argument, if you're inclined to follow the theoretical framework of evolution: perhaps the environmental cues which caused certain species of mushrooms to produce psiloc(yb)in no longer exists. Though producing psiloc(yb)in doesn't serve a function any longer, it's not maladaptive (mushrooms don't die off because they produce it). Thus, there's no necessity for mushrooms to STOP producing psiloc(yb)in.

That's just for argument's sake, but it makes sense, and mirrors evolutionary theories which already exist (in other words, I'm not just making arguments up off the top of my head, if that will make you think any more about it).

ps... I'm putting this as a reply to Krendle because if I try to reply to Alex123, nothing comes up in the "In response to:" box...

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InvisibleZen Peddler
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Re: Why do shrooms make psilocybin? [Re: Kid]
    #521303 - 01/15/02 05:31 AM (22 years, 2 months ago)

to the fuckhead - 'mushrooms arent plants.'
mushrooms are fungi - fungus is by definition - plant without chlorophyll or green coloured matter, leaves or stems.


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OfflineNextGenHippie
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Re: Why do shrooms make psilocybin? [Re: Xlea321]
    #521326 - 01/15/02 06:40 AM (22 years, 2 months ago)

I wish I were a scottish sheep. :smile:
Ach,  Baa Laddie, Baa!


--------------------
[pot]Think left and think right[pot]
[pot]and think low and think high[pot]
[pot]Oh, the thinks you can think up if only you try[pot]
-Dr. Seuss

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OfflineArchDruid
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Re: Why do shrooms make psilocybin? [Re: delysid]
    #521914 - 01/16/02 01:06 AM (22 years, 2 months ago)

Delysid - Just thought I would mention that I really apreciate your kind words about my theory, most just laugh at me. While I know that seratonin is not psychoactive, I was making the comparason as to there similar function and chemical makeup, not there effect. But seriously thanx again, I actually believe that shit though, It can be quite disturbing though, I picture them as little elves everytime I eat them now.
DMT is another great example, I think the same theory applies to DMT carrying plants as well.


--------------------
" I have decided to become an example for others, although I have never been one for moderation. I have decided never to eat LSD while asleep, never to refrain while awake, and to never eat less than 10 hits at a time."

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OfflinePeyotl
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Re: Why do shrooms make psilocybin? [Re: ArchDruid]
    #522607 - 01/16/02 03:34 PM (22 years, 2 months ago)

the defense mechanism thing is convenient but doesnt hold water. first off, what did the shroom say?' hey these fuckin pigs are eating the shit outta our asses so lets start producing a potentilly noxious substance to deter them'? mushrooms are the fruit of the fungus, so why does the fungus produce psilo containig shrooms when up till that point therers no psilo in the cake?


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Offlinetoo_many_weirdos
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Re: Why do shrooms make psilocybin? [Re: Peyotl]
    #522793 - 01/16/02 07:21 PM (22 years, 2 months ago)

No, the mushroom did not make a concious (sp?) decision to start producing that "potentially noxious substance".
It's called evolution and natural selection.
over millions of years, through random genetic mutations, some shrooms produced a little psiloc(yb)in. These mushrooms survived better and longer than the ones without psiloc(yb)in, and so the non-producing mushrooms died out.

also, the cake does produce alkaloids long before the fruiting bodies appear.

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OfflineUrQuattro
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Re: Why do shrooms make psilocybin? [Re: Zen Peddler]
    #522806 - 01/16/02 07:27 PM (22 years, 2 months ago)

In reply to:

to the fuckhead - 'mushrooms arent plants.'
mushrooms are fungi - fungus is by definition - plant without chlorophyll or green coloured matter, leaves or stems.




Ummm......NO. You see, there is this little thing called the Kingdom-Phylum-Class-Order-Family-Genus-Species type of classifying life. Kingdom represents the most fundamentally different type of life around. Plants are in one, Animals are in another, blue-green algae are in another, and guess what - Fungi are in a completely different kingdom. Therefore, they are a completely fundamentally different form of life.

Now, here are a few thoughts i have had: 1. The actual fungus that appears above ground is only a small part of the overall being. It can be considered the "fruit" of the fungus. Plants that produce fruit use the fruit to have animals eat them, along with the seeds (spores in the fungus world, of course), which then pass the seeds, generally undigested, through their bodies and distribute them to locations which otherwise wouldnt receive that genetic information. So, if one considers that animals (including humans) receive psychoactive effects from mushrooms, it is possible to consider that the psylocybin mushrooms are there to be eaten, and to subsequently spread genetic information through animal ingestion. HOWEVER, i am unfamiliar with the potency of spores once eaten and defacated. So, therefore, psylocybin would be an evolutionary aid to the mushroom to spread its genetic information to new areas.

2. Another idea is that psylocybin DOES serve some neurotransmitter-type purpose in the mushroom itself. Since the mycelium also contains psylocybin, it is safe to say that it isnt necessary for only the mushroom itself to posess in order to fulfill its genetic goal... It could even form a system of chemical communication from one mushroom to another within the same mycellium community. Or perhaps even a consciousness transmitter...

Which then leads in to the next idea:

Mushrooms have a symbiotic relationship with humans/animals, and not just for genetic distribution. Just as dogs and humans have a symbiotic relationship, it might be possible to think in terms of mushrooms sharing their consciousness and experiences with humans and other animals through the transmission of psylocybin.

Many of us have had spiritually expanding experiences using these fungi. In addition, there is evidence to show that they can even enhance abstract reasoning (this is more from my own experience, along with people i have talked to, and with a reference from the food of the gods, as well as an extrapolation from "the illuminati papers" which referenced the longest study on LSD which showed an average increase of 10% in the subjects' IQ).

Then, of course, one could consider that nature is trying to send a message to animals and humans to return a balance, or simply to expand consciousness itself.

I suppose, that if one considers the universe to be self-aware, or at least in the process of becoming self aware, and then the holographic universe could come into play, its possible to say that the earth is just a single cell in the entire entity that is the universe.

So, psylocybin mushrooms might act as a consciousness-catalyst...

OR, continuing the holographic universe theory. Humans have a growth and behavior analogous to viruses/bacteria. Some of each of these have formed symbiotic relationships with their hosts, but since humans left the vegetable type mind behind and are focusing more on the animalistic and dominator type mind more, this symbiotic relationship has become a parasitical relationship....

So, perhaps the universe/reality/whatever it is, is simply trying to use psylocybin to form a symbiotic relationship again. If one considers that each species is important, then having humans that are symbiotic with their environment would be beneficial to the earth, other species of life, and the universe as a whole.

So, if this last supposition is possible, then its possible to extract from that the idea that psylocybin is a "cure" for the planet, not to rid it of the human beings or animals, but to simply help them form a symbiotic relationship. Since consciousness gone awry and ego's driven beyond control end up dominating others and forming parasitic relationships, psylocybin ends up negating these characteristics, and rebalance consciousness itself....

But anyway, i could go on for pages, but im just touching on a few different ideas that i have had....


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Edited by UrQuattro (01/16/02 07:39 PM)

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OfflineArchDruid
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Re: Why do shrooms make psilocybin? [Re: UrQuattro]
    #523121 - 01/17/02 02:08 AM (22 years, 2 months ago)

Thats exactly what I was saying, I think they're trying to communicate with us. I never thought they might be able to communicate to eachother, thats even more wierd to think about.
I personnaly think of them as little fairy people who became stationary over the years (like the ent's in the second book of Lord Of The Rings), yet they still live and are conscious.


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Re: Why do shrooms make psilocybin? [Re: UrQuattro]
    #523193 - 01/17/02 04:54 AM (22 years, 2 months ago)

That was one excellent post UrQuattro.
To simplify the cause of the existence of the ability of shrooms to produce Psilocybin down one or two assumed historical (and themselves simplified) environmental conditions is foolish in my view .


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Re: Why do shrooms make psilocybin? [Re: Murple]
    #523195 - 01/17/02 04:59 AM (22 years, 2 months ago)

> If you wanted people to make up meaningless bullshit, you should've just said so.


its called useing you imagination murple, if that's meaningless to you then you have my pity.


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Anonymous

Re: Why do shrooms make psilocybin? [Re: MeltingPenguin]
    #524141 - 01/18/02 02:38 AM (22 years, 2 months ago)

To remind us of the interconnectedness of everything

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Re: Why do shrooms make psilocybin? [Re: HB]
    #14950147 - 08/19/11 11:06 PM (12 years, 6 months ago)

Quote:

HB said:
it's all like asking why marijuana contains THC ...



actually there is an answer to that.

THC is the plants defense. why us humans find pleasure in it, idk... perhaps we inherit the defense and the plant tells our DNA, "alright, look ill make you feel paradise, if you keep reproducing me".... and so the symbiosis occured.... :bigblunt:

EDIT: just realized this thread is about 10 years old, sorry, im pretty stoned. :stoned:


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Re: Why do shrooms make psilocybin? [Re: Anonymous]
    #14953046 - 08/20/11 03:54 PM (12 years, 6 months ago)

Quote:

Anonymous said:
To remind us of the interconnectedness of everything





:peace: thats all,
what an old thread,

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Re: Why do shrooms make psilocybin? [Re: ant61]
    #14953066 - 08/20/11 03:58 PM (12 years, 6 months ago)

10 year old posts need some love too

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Re: Why do shrooms make psilocybin? [Re: Xlea321]
    #27026132 - 11/07/20 05:20 AM (3 years, 4 months ago)

So I know this subject is old , but I would like to put my little reasoning in that:

A biology teacher said it to me once: When studying living things like plants, fungi ,etc .. we shall not ask why at start ,but how.

Why he said that?

Well , in this case fungi , and plants don't have a brain , and cannot think. So saying that the shrooms make psylocibin for defense purposes is false . It produces psylocibin, and psylocibin can act like a defense , but it does not produce it for defense.

So how can the mushrooms produce psylocibin? well it's a very complicated subject that I cannot speak about in a very detailed way , but if we put it in a simple way:

We can make a hypothesis: In some moment of the history , the shrooms who produced psylocibin were those who survived better => so could spread the spores better.  / and those very similar but who cannot produce it didn't .


Now we can ask ourselves why :

-> We can assume that those mushrooms are tasty for the animals .

-> We acknowledge that psylocibin is mostly present in the mush ,in the fungi dick , the fungus ding ding dong.

-> Assuming you're a hungry animal , and you eat shrooms as if it was salad, you will likely never it that again, and over the generation , evolution will make your heritage don't eat that also .=> instinct.

( Yesterday I ate 15g of dried truffles, and I'm thinking seriously in never eat mushrooms again :laugh: )

-> Scientists found that psylocibin reduce appetite in insects also, and may be more functions in different animals

To conclude: Some mushrooms mutate => Acquire new characteristic => mother nature make selection => Characteristic preserved.

That is not instantaneous , and may be other substances similar to psylocibin were produced before .

Sorry for my shitty english

:tryingnottodie: :crazy2:

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Re: Why do shrooms make psilocybin? [Re: Pharmacien]
    #27026887 - 11/07/20 01:46 PM (3 years, 4 months ago)

Quote:

Pharmacien said:

( Yesterday I ate 15g of dried truffles, and I'm thinking seriously in never eat mushrooms again :laugh: )





why are you thinking that?


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Re: Why do shrooms make psilocybin? [Re: epilectric]
    #27027150 - 11/07/20 04:25 PM (3 years, 4 months ago)

I had a very very bad trip, felt like my body were torn apart, and that I was melting with the room, forgot who I am , where I was , what I was,

it was very progressive and thanks to my friend who send me a message asking if I was doing good , I thought I was doing some very weird shit , and that made me bad very hard . After 1h I think I "passed out" , I think i just forgot as I was not prepared or my brain didn't understood the experience.

The worst moment was when I realized that the trip was more strong than a normal dmt trip, and that it would last a few hours. I think that the confusion and the anxiety just snowball with the time . But It was very weird and I can't remember 90 % , but I can remember the feelings I had at those moments however.

I will do mushrooms again but maybe in a few weeks , think I pushed too hard that time , the set was not optimal at all, it was a very immature decision . But I'm not traumatized yet  , as always it stabilized my mood and depression , it will last may be a few weeks also I think. I reuse it even if a had a bad trip always , it's like drunk people when they say they'll never drink again ...:tongue2:

:tryingnottodie: :doingmediocre:

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Re: Why do shrooms make psilocybin? [Re: Pharmacien]
    #27027218 - 11/07/20 05:00 PM (3 years, 4 months ago)

If you cant remember sections, you have blacked out, and that means the dose was too high.

it is not a lack of ability to take your medicine; this is just too high a dose for your brain to perform any associative pattern matching. (like reverb too high on all channels)


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Re: Why do shrooms make psilocybin? [Re: redgreenvines]
    #27027875 - 11/08/20 02:16 AM (3 years, 4 months ago)

oh yes I see , so I really blacked out .

Do you think the brain will get used to it ? like if one keep trying to have very high doses like that .

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Re: Why do shrooms make psilocybin? [Re: Pharmacien]
    #27027965 - 11/08/20 05:39 AM (3 years, 4 months ago)

never.
it is not like lifting weights at all.

the equivalent is undesireable, and otherwise called TOLERANCE which is not worth building.


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Re: Why do shrooms make psilocybin? [Re: Pharmacien]
    #27028305 - 11/08/20 10:12 AM (3 years, 4 months ago)

Quote:

Pharmacien said:
I had a very very bad trip, felt like my body were torn apart, and that I was melting with the room, forgot who I am , where I was , what I was,

it was very progressive and thanks to my friend who send me a message asking if I was doing good , I thought I was doing some very weird shit , and that made me bad very hard . After 1h I think I "passed out" , I think i just forgot as I was not prepared or my brain didn't understood the experience.

The worst moment was when I realized that the trip was more strong than a normal dmt trip, and that it would last a few hours. I think that the confusion and the anxiety just snowball with the time . But It was very weird and I can't remember 90 % , but I can remember the feelings I had at those moments however.

I will do mushrooms again but maybe in a few weeks , think I pushed too hard that time , the set was not optimal at all, it was a very immature decision . But I'm not traumatized yet  , as always it stabilized my mood and depression , it will last may be a few weeks also I think. I reuse it even if a had a bad trip always , it's like drunk people when they say they'll never drink again ...:tongue2:

:tryingnottodie: :doingmediocre:





sounds harsh but you seem to handle it well

all that from just 15g of truffles?


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Re: Why do shrooms make psilocybin? [Re: epilectric]
    #27028362 - 11/08/20 10:39 AM (3 years, 4 months ago)

Yes, maybe the setting increased the whole thing:

In less than a month I will be passing the first exam (we have 2 during the year), to become a pharma or a medical student.so with all the stress...

And my trip was in my bed in complete dark , just listen to wardruna songs , don't know if it is important but , I didn't ate the day before and I'm very underweight right now .

But I tought dried truffles were more strong than shrooms, and 15g of dried shrooms is quite a lot no? my max with shrooms is 6g dry in yoghurt and I didn't passed out that time.


(it's ok to deviate the subject a bit?)

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Re: Why do shrooms make psilocybin? [Re: Pharmacien]
    #27028830 - 11/08/20 03:31 PM (3 years, 4 months ago)

Quote:

Pharmacien said:
oh yes I see , so I really blacked out .

Do you think the brain will get used to it ? like if one keep trying to have very high doses like that .





No.  It won't.    :buzzaldrin:


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Re: Why do shrooms make psilocybin? [Re: PrimalSoup] * 1
    #27029333 - 11/08/20 10:32 PM (3 years, 4 months ago)

Psilocybin is a tryptamine. It's chemically structured similarly to tryptophan, an amino acid, which helps to produce serotonin and melatonin. These are both responsible for consciousness and perception. I think psilocybin and other hallucinogenic tryptamines like dmt, are amino acids for CONSCIOUSNESS. Building blocks of consciousness. If tryptophan is an amino acid, a building block for physical life, then psilocybin and other tryptamines are amino acids for consciousness and the spiritual realm.

So I think hallucinogenic tryptamines are amino acids for our minds, our bodies don't produce them naturally, so we get them from fungi.

Can someone go a little bit deeper with this thought?

I can't remember who but someone theorized that dmt and tryptamines are the universal "consciousness molecule" that all living beings and entities share in common.

Update: wow I just realized this thread is super old.


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Edited by OutsideOfMyMind (11/08/20 10:38 PM)

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Re: Why do shrooms make psilocybin? [Re: Xlea321]
    #27029451 - 11/09/20 01:04 AM (3 years, 4 months ago)

Imagine having a much, much smaller Central Nervous System and munching on one or a bunch of these little suckers. You'd probably trip to death and or figure out a way to get eaten/killed while tripping lmao.


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Re: Why do shrooms make psilocybin? [Re: Xlea321]
    #27029564 - 11/09/20 04:52 AM (3 years, 4 months ago)

Old thread, but there are a couple of competing theories. Alan Rockefeller tells it best, but I'll try to tell it okay-ish:

1. Insects: there are lots of insects that eat and lay their eggs in mushrooms, one theory is that psilocybin acts as an insect repellant or maybe even kills them, or makes life difficult for them, or something. The problem with this theory is that there are still a ton of insects that will happily eat and lay their eggs in psilocybes.

2. Animals: one idea is that it makes animals less inclined to eat them, but this is probably a bad theory. Animals like to get high and are known to eat intoxicating plants in massive quantities (even in quantities so large that it makes the animals very sick, the animals will still come back and eat more later). So more likely is the idea that they produce psilocybin for the same reason apples taste good: to get animals to spread their spores. They want to be eaten because it allows their spores to spread. One problem with this is that it's unclear if this actually allows spores to be spread or not. But it's still a good theory because animals like to get high, and lots of plants taste good specifically so that animals will eat them.

3. Humans: people have been gathering them in certain places for thousands of years (or more). In the process, people spread their spores all over everywhere, way further than the mushrooms naturally could on their own. There is a clear benefit for the mushroom for people gathering them and carrying them around, their spores are able to reach places they would never naturally be able to through that.

And finally, I'd like to add 4: all of the above.

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Re: Why do shrooms make psilocybin? [Re: Loaded Shaman]
    #27029621 - 11/09/20 06:00 AM (3 years, 4 months ago)

I think Loaded Shaman is right , if we continue in my reasoning , the shrooms thrive along the evolution because they have that great capacity to make non functional a living thing like a mammal when consuming enough quantities.

      With internet and all those guys speaking bs on youtube we tend to woo woo too much , and this makes us closed minded  =>  "contradiction?!"
                So I don't think mushs were made by nature just to make us trip and explore consciousness , maybe they are just as they are , and that with all possibilities in nature it is not very special that things like mushs exist you know , maybe in another planet far away from here with approx the same conditions we would have apples that not only have tryptamine like molecules but cannabinoids at the same time :crazy2:

      But we could think also about Terence Mckenna:

=> fungi are older than humans 
+
=> We have a consciousness and are affected in a very profound way by mushs

          =          and if mush were not created by nature to fit into our intellectual and consciousness exploring but rather we were modeled by these substances ? maybe and probably they came first and they influenced us to be what we are today(among other substances) .Thats way more plausible as we find these substances in a lot of cultures .
( and when I say we I include other animals too)

Maybe the reason for their existence is just pure luck => or a very complex mix of all of those theories .=> or the reason of our existence is theirs :crazy2::confused:

as nooneman said , a lot of animals like to be high.

-> the tolerance goes high and quick to animals too ?
->If they have a great tolerance so my hypothesis is broken because they could eat all the shrooms and the species would not thrive.
-> Maybe psylocibin is just like the taste substance in apples as you said nooneman :crazy:

I will write a new post during my holidays in december ,after doing a lot more research on the subject and I will put together all that has been said in this post( if you guys think is worth) , and maybe at that time the mushs will tell me more about them :eek::crazy2::mushroom2:

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Re: Why do shrooms make psilocybin? [Re: Pharmacien]
    #27032813 - 11/11/20 05:56 AM (3 years, 4 months ago)

Quote:

Pharmacien said:
Yes, maybe the setting increased the whole thing:

In less than a month I will be passing the first exam (we have 2 during the year), to become a pharma or a medical student.so with all the stress...

And my trip was in my bed in complete dark , just listen to wardruna songs , don't know if it is important but , I didn't ate the day before and I'm very underweight right now .

But I tought dried truffles were more strong than shrooms, and 15g of dried shrooms is quite a lot no? my max with shrooms is 6g dry in yoghurt and I didn't passed out that time.


(it's ok to deviate the subject a bit?)




i see, i'm underweight too and i absolutely couldn't take any psychedelic on an empty stomach, i need to eat regularly, otherwise i faint :laugh: or at least become very nauseous.

good luck with the exams!


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Re: Why do shrooms make psilocybin? [Re: epilectric]
    #27033559 - 11/11/20 02:38 PM (3 years, 4 months ago)

Hey can someone read my response a few posts up and tell me what you think?


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Re: Why do shrooms make psilocybin? [Re: OutsideOfMyMind]
    #27034688 - 11/12/20 07:27 AM (3 years, 4 months ago)

so many silly posts in here

how about this theory, just like a tangerine tree makes tangerines mushrooms make their own versions. Tangerines are good for you it just so happens, and the same can be said for mushrooms.

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Re: Why do shrooms make psilocybin? [Re: cube talk]
    #27034715 - 11/12/20 07:45 AM (3 years, 4 months ago)

Yeah you're just saying that it is like that because it is like that .
Like church people saying that jesus loves you, because he loves you.

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Re: Why do shrooms make psilocybin? [Re: cube talk]
    #27035204 - 11/12/20 12:42 PM (3 years, 4 months ago)

Quote:

cube talk said:
so many silly posts in here

how about this theory, just like a tangerine tree makes tangerines mushrooms make their own versions. Tangerines are good for you it just so happens, and the same can be said for mushrooms.



Low effort response. Someone answer my question.


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Re: Why do shrooms make psilocybin? [Re: OutsideOfMyMind]
    #27035344 - 11/12/20 02:15 PM (3 years, 4 months ago)

Quote:

OutsideOfMyMind said:
Psilocybin is a tryptamine. It's chemically structured similarly to tryptophan, an amino acid, which helps to produce serotonin and melatonin. These are both responsible for consciousness and perception. I think psilocybin and other hallucinogenic tryptamines like dmt, are amino acids for CONSCIOUSNESS. Building blocks of consciousness. If tryptophan is an amino acid, a building block for physical life, then psilocybin and other tryptamines are amino acids for consciousness and the spiritual realm.

So I think hallucinogenic tryptamines are amino acids for our minds, our bodies don't produce them naturally, so we get them from fungi.

Can someone go a little bit deeper with this thought?

I can't remember who but someone theorized that dmt and tryptamines are the universal "consciousness molecule" that all living beings and entities share in common.

Update: wow I just realized this thread is super old.




I'll bite. :laugh2:

There is speculation that endogenous DMT serves that purpose but the experiments to demonstrate it on humans are prohibited.  So there's that...

Hallucinogenic tryptamines are widespread in natural substances, not just mushrooms.  Mushrooms are special in that you don't need to do any preparation to extract the alkaloids - just eat them.  And they don't have terrible side effects due to related compounds, mostly.

But the idea that the mushroom evolved them for our consumption is unsupportable.  Psilocybes date back about 50 million years according to current research.  https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/08/130806132852.htm

Quote:

Using new molecular and computational techniques, the team has produced the first multi-gene evaluation of the evolutionary development of Psilocybe, which constitutes a major step in classifying and naming "magic" mushrooms. Earlier work showed that species of Psilocybe did not commonly descend from a single ancestor. As a result, the hallucinogenic species (the genus Psilocybe) were typically separated from their non-hallucinogenic relatives (the genus Deconica). But this new work now places the two separate monophyletic -- meaning developed from a single ancestor -- groups into different families. Within Psilocybe (family Hymenogastraceae) and Deconica (family Strophariaceae s.str), the authors have discovered several strong infrageneric relationships.

According to the authors, their analysis of various morphological traits of the mushrooms suggests that these typically weren't acquired through a most recent common ancestor and must have evolved independently or undergone several evolutionary losses, probably for ecological reasons. Nevertheless, species of Psilocybe are united to some degree because they have the psychedelic compound psilocybin and other secondary metabolites, or products of metabolism. The authors say that former Psilocybe species that lack these secondary metabolites could also be found in Deconica.





You might also find this interesting: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6121855/

Quote:

Impact Statement
The rate of horizontal gene transfer (HGT) between species of microorganisms is thought to be higher for genes located in gene clusters, which often encode all of the enzymatic, regulatory, and transport‐related steps required for a metabolic pathway to function in a single genomic locus. Such clusters may enhance the evolvability of fungi by facilitating the rapid loss or gain of multigene traits such as the production of bioactive molecules. Although developmentally complex mushroom‐forming fungi are thought to experience little HGT compared with morphologically simpler fungi, a scattered distribution of the hallucinogenic molecule psilocybin among diverse “magic” mushrooms led us to hypothesize that its biosynthetic pathway has been dispersed by HGT of a gene cluster. To test our hypothesis, we sequenced the genomes of three distantly related hallucinogenic mushroom species for comparison with closely related, nonhallucinogenic species. We identified a homologous multigene cluster in each hallucinogenic species by searching for clustering among all genes with a psilocybin‐like distribution among mushroom species. The enzymatic functions of genes within this cluster were confirmed here and in another concurrent study, and phylogenetic analyses support HGT of the cluster between divergent dung decomposers in the genera Psilocybe and Panaeolus, a first for mushroom‐forming fungi. Bioactive molecules like psilocybin are often presumed to have niche‐specific roles, but the ecological contexts in which they evolved are rarely known. We found that distantly related dung‐ and wood‐decay fungi have less variation in their genome content compared to close relatives in alternative niches, suggesting that this content is shaped in part by shared ecological pressures. Coupled with the inheritance patterns of the psilocybin cluster, these data support the hypothesis that psilocybin production is part of a larger adaptive strategy to dung and late wood‐decay niches, which harbor abundant invertebrates that eat or compete with fungi. We speculate that neuroactive compounds like psilocybin that target broadly conserved neurotransmitter receptors may have evolved as a strategy to influence arthropod activity in these niches, and that fungi within these niches could be further sources of neuroactive molecules.




And the answer perhaps is simple enough:

Quote:

Secondary metabolites are small molecules that are widely employed in defense, competition, and signaling among organisms (Raguso et al. 2015). Due to their physiological activities, secondary metabolites have been adopted by both ancient and modern human societies as medical, spiritual, or recreational drugs. Psilocin is a psychoactive agonist of the serotonin (5‐hydroxytryptamine, 5‐HT) ‐2A receptor (Halberstadt and Geyer 2011) and is produced as the phosphorylated prodrug psilocybin by a restricted number of phylogenetically disjunct mushroom forming families of the Agaricales (Bolbitiaceae, Inocybaceae, Hymenogastraceae, Pluteaceae, Fig. 1A) (Allen 2010; Dinis‐Oliveira 2017). Hallucinogenic mushrooms have a long history of religious use, particularly in Mesoamerica, and were a catalyst of cultural revolution in the West in the mid‐20th century (Nyberg 1992; Letcher 2006). Psilocybin was structurally described and synthesized in 1958 by Albert Hoffman (Hofmann et al. 1958), and a biosynthetic pathway was later proposed based on the transformation of labeled precursor molecules by Psilocybe cubensis (Agurell and Nilsson 1968). However, prohibition since the 1970s (21 U.S. Code § 812—schedules of controlled substances) has limited advances in psilocybin genetics, ecology, and evolution. There has been a recent resurgence of research on hallucinogens in the clinical setting; brain state imaging studies of psilocin exposure have identified changes in neural activity and interconnectivity that underlie subjective experiences, and therapeutic trials have investigated psilocybin's potential for treating major depression and addictive disorders (Griffiths et al. 2011; Carhart‐Harris et al. 2012; Petri et al. 2014; Carhart‐Harris et al. 2016; Johnson et al. 2017). Although the ecological roles of psilocybin, like most secondary metabolites, remain unknown, psilocin's mechanism of action suggests metazoans may be its principal targets.




Here's the timeline:

Quote:

ECOLOGICAL DRIVERS OF PSILOCYBIN GENE CLUSTER EVOLUTION
Recent studies suggest that ecology can select for both genome content (Ma et al. 2010; de Jonge et al. 2013) and organization in eukaryotes through both vertical and horizontal patterns of inheritance (Holliday et al. 2015; Kakioka et al. 2015). The phylogenies of PS genes suggest they originally served roles in the wood‐decay niche among fungi, and more recently emerged through both vertical and horizontal transfer in dung‐decay fungi (Figs. 3C and ​and4A).4A). Horizontal transfer and retention of PS clusters are evidence of selection on the PS pathway in the recipient lineage, as secondary metabolite clusters are generally unstable in fungal genomes (Reynolds et al. 2017). In addition to similar ecological pressures, similar genome content among wood and dung‐decaying fungi may also reflect the ecological diversification of Agaricomycetes that accompanied major geological transformations (Fig. 4A). For example, the emergence of true wood opened a massive saprotrophy niche space in the upper Devonian (380 Mya), in which the Agaricomycetes diversified with the aid of key enzymatic innovations (Floudas et al. 2012). The subsequent radiation of herbivorous megafauna during the Eocene approximately 50 MYA (MacFadden 2000) and the spread of grasslands 40 MYA (Retallack 2001) expanded the mammalian dung niche space in which invertebrates and fungi competed. These changes parallel the repeated emergence of dung‐specialization from plant‐decay ancestors in the radiation of Psilocybe and other Agaricales lineages (Ramirez‐Cruz et al. 2013; Tóth et al. 2013). Late stage wood‐decay fungi like Psilocybe spp. likely harbor genetic exaptations for lignin tolerance/degradation, and competition with invertebrates and prokaryotes; thus acquisition of particularly adaptive functions by other fung




Emphasis added - no special pleading required. :solidnod:

But I may have misunderstood the question - psilocybin isn't an amino acid...although indeed L-tryptophan is demonstrated to be a precurosor to psilocin synthesis in mushrooms through a complicated enzymatic pathway...and we can benefit from this... :cookiemonster:


--------------------

if you stand too close to the machine it'll start to eat you
Primal's simple tested teks and projects: :awesomenod: Wheat Prep 2.0  Acidic Tea Tek  Potency Project! 

Edited by PrimalSoup (11/12/20 02:33 PM)

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OfflineLosTresOjos
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Re: Why do shrooms make psilocybin? [Re: PrimalSoup] * 1
    #27035597 - 11/12/20 04:44 PM (3 years, 4 months ago)

I feel like we have to understand consciousness and spirituality first before we start to attribute them to anything outside of metaphysics.

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OfflineOutsideOfMyMind
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Re: Why do shrooms make psilocybin? [Re: LosTresOjos]
    #27035880 - 11/12/20 07:52 PM (3 years, 4 months ago)

Quote:

LosTresOjos said:
I feel like we have to understand consciousness and spirituality first before we start to attribute them to anything outside of metaphysics.



I feel like everything in the field of psychedelic studies encompasses a very broad amount of subjects such as biochemistry, chemistry, biology, Neuroscience, physics to an extent, philosophy, psychology, psychiatry, and metaphysics. There may be even more topics that I can't think of right now which encompass psychedelic studies. Hopefully one of these days when I get my ph.d after I get my bachelor's in biochemistry, if I am the head of a research team doing some sort of psychedelic studies, I would make sure to have people employed in various different fields of study because I think they all have something to contribute. I would have people working for me like biochemists, chemists, biologists, psychologists, philosophers, psychiatrist, etc etc etc. You would need different people from a wide variety of subjects who have knowledge about a lot of different things.


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OfflineOutsideOfMyMind
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Re: Why do shrooms make psilocybin? [Re: PrimalSoup]
    #27035896 - 11/12/20 07:58 PM (3 years, 4 months ago)

Quote:

PrimalSoup said:
Quote:

OutsideOfMyMind said:
Psilocybin is a tryptamine. It's chemically structured similarly to tryptophan, an amino acid, which helps to produce serotonin and melatonin. These are both responsible for consciousness and perception. I think psilocybin and other hallucinogenic tryptamines like dmt, are amino acids for CONSCIOUSNESS. Building blocks of consciousness. If tryptophan is an amino acid, a building block for physical life, then psilocybin and other tryptamines are amino acids for consciousness and the spiritual realm.

So I think hallucinogenic tryptamines are amino acids for our minds, our bodies don't produce them naturally, so we get them from fungi.

Can someone go a little bit deeper with this thought?

I can't remember who but someone theorized that dmt and tryptamines are the universal "consciousness molecule" that all living beings and entities share in common.

Update: wow I just realized this thread is super old.




I'll bite. :laugh2:

There is speculation that endogenous DMT serves that purpose but the experiments to demonstrate it on humans are prohibited.  So there's that...

Hallucinogenic tryptamines are widespread in natural substances, not just mushrooms.  Mushrooms are special in that you don't need to do any preparation to extract the alkaloids - just eat them.  And they don't have terrible side effects due to related compounds, mostly.

But the idea that the mushroom evolved them for our consumption is unsupportable.  Psilocybes date back about 50 million years according to current research.  https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/08/130806132852.htm

Quote:

Using new molecular and computational techniques, the team has produced the first multi-gene evaluation of the evolutionary development of Psilocybe, which constitutes a major step in classifying and naming "magic" mushrooms. Earlier work showed that species of Psilocybe did not commonly descend from a single ancestor. As a result, the hallucinogenic species (the genus Psilocybe) were typically separated from their non-hallucinogenic relatives (the genus Deconica). But this new work now places the two separate monophyletic -- meaning developed from a single ancestor -- groups into different families. Within Psilocybe (family Hymenogastraceae) and Deconica (family Strophariaceae s.str), the authors have discovered several strong infrageneric relationships.

According to the authors, their analysis of various morphological traits of the mushrooms suggests that these typically weren't acquired through a most recent common ancestor and must have evolved independently or undergone several evolutionary losses, probably for ecological reasons. Nevertheless, species of Psilocybe are united to some degree because they have the psychedelic compound psilocybin and other secondary metabolites, or products of metabolism. The authors say that former Psilocybe species that lack these secondary metabolites could also be found in Deconica.





You might also find this interesting: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6121855/

Quote:

Impact Statement
The rate of horizontal gene transfer (HGT) between species of microorganisms is thought to be higher for genes located in gene clusters, which often encode all of the enzymatic, regulatory, and transport‐related steps required for a metabolic pathway to function in a single genomic locus. Such clusters may enhance the evolvability of fungi by facilitating the rapid loss or gain of multigene traits such as the production of bioactive molecules. Although developmentally complex mushroom‐forming fungi are thought to experience little HGT compared with morphologically simpler fungi, a scattered distribution of the hallucinogenic molecule psilocybin among diverse “magic” mushrooms led us to hypothesize that its biosynthetic pathway has been dispersed by HGT of a gene cluster. To test our hypothesis, we sequenced the genomes of three distantly related hallucinogenic mushroom species for comparison with closely related, nonhallucinogenic species. We identified a homologous multigene cluster in each hallucinogenic species by searching for clustering among all genes with a psilocybin‐like distribution among mushroom species. The enzymatic functions of genes within this cluster were confirmed here and in another concurrent study, and phylogenetic analyses support HGT of the cluster between divergent dung decomposers in the genera Psilocybe and Panaeolus, a first for mushroom‐forming fungi. Bioactive molecules like psilocybin are often presumed to have niche‐specific roles, but the ecological contexts in which they evolved are rarely known. We found that distantly related dung‐ and wood‐decay fungi have less variation in their genome content compared to close relatives in alternative niches, suggesting that this content is shaped in part by shared ecological pressures. Coupled with the inheritance patterns of the psilocybin cluster, these data support the hypothesis that psilocybin production is part of a larger adaptive strategy to dung and late wood‐decay niches, which harbor abundant invertebrates that eat or compete with fungi. We speculate that neuroactive compounds like psilocybin that target broadly conserved neurotransmitter receptors may have evolved as a strategy to influence arthropod activity in these niches, and that fungi within these niches could be further sources of neuroactive molecules.




And the answer perhaps is simple enough:

Quote:

Secondary metabolites are small molecules that are widely employed in defense, competition, and signaling among organisms (Raguso et al. 2015). Due to their physiological activities, secondary metabolites have been adopted by both ancient and modern human societies as medical, spiritual, or recreational drugs. Psilocin is a psychoactive agonist of the serotonin (5‐hydroxytryptamine, 5‐HT) ‐2A receptor (Halberstadt and Geyer 2011) and is produced as the phosphorylated prodrug psilocybin by a restricted number of phylogenetically disjunct mushroom forming families of the Agaricales (Bolbitiaceae, Inocybaceae, Hymenogastraceae, Pluteaceae, Fig. 1A) (Allen 2010; Dinis‐Oliveira 2017). Hallucinogenic mushrooms have a long history of religious use, particularly in Mesoamerica, and were a catalyst of cultural revolution in the West in the mid‐20th century (Nyberg 1992; Letcher 2006). Psilocybin was structurally described and synthesized in 1958 by Albert Hoffman (Hofmann et al. 1958), and a biosynthetic pathway was later proposed based on the transformation of labeled precursor molecules by Psilocybe cubensis (Agurell and Nilsson 1968). However, prohibition since the 1970s (21 U.S. Code § 812—schedules of controlled substances) has limited advances in psilocybin genetics, ecology, and evolution. There has been a recent resurgence of research on hallucinogens in the clinical setting; brain state imaging studies of psilocin exposure have identified changes in neural activity and interconnectivity that underlie subjective experiences, and therapeutic trials have investigated psilocybin's potential for treating major depression and addictive disorders (Griffiths et al. 2011; Carhart‐Harris et al. 2012; Petri et al. 2014; Carhart‐Harris et al. 2016; Johnson et al. 2017). Although the ecological roles of psilocybin, like most secondary metabolites, remain unknown, psilocin's mechanism of action suggests metazoans may be its principal targets.




Here's the timeline:

Quote:

ECOLOGICAL DRIVERS OF PSILOCYBIN GENE CLUSTER EVOLUTION
Recent studies suggest that ecology can select for both genome content (Ma et al. 2010; de Jonge et al. 2013) and organization in eukaryotes through both vertical and horizontal patterns of inheritance (Holliday et al. 2015; Kakioka et al. 2015). The phylogenies of PS genes suggest they originally served roles in the wood‐decay niche among fungi, and more recently emerged through both vertical and horizontal transfer in dung‐decay fungi (Figs. 3C and ​and4A).4A). Horizontal transfer and retention of PS clusters are evidence of selection on the PS pathway in the recipient lineage, as secondary metabolite clusters are generally unstable in fungal genomes (Reynolds et al. 2017). In addition to similar ecological pressures, similar genome content among wood and dung‐decaying fungi may also reflect the ecological diversification of Agaricomycetes that accompanied major geological transformations (Fig. 4A). For example, the emergence of true wood opened a massive saprotrophy niche space in the upper Devonian (380 Mya), in which the Agaricomycetes diversified with the aid of key enzymatic innovations (Floudas et al. 2012). The subsequent radiation of herbivorous megafauna during the Eocene approximately 50 MYA (MacFadden 2000) and the spread of grasslands 40 MYA (Retallack 2001) expanded the mammalian dung niche space in which invertebrates and fungi competed. These changes parallel the repeated emergence of dung‐specialization from plant‐decay ancestors in the radiation of Psilocybe and other Agaricales lineages (Ramirez‐Cruz et al. 2013; Tóth et al. 2013). Late stage wood‐decay fungi like Psilocybe spp. likely harbor genetic exaptations for lignin tolerance/degradation, and competition with invertebrates and prokaryotes; thus acquisition of particularly adaptive functions by other fung




Emphasis added - no special pleading required. :solidnod:

But I may have misunderstood the question - psilocybin isn't an amino acid...although indeed L-tryptophan is demonstrated to be a precurosor to psilocin synthesis in mushrooms through a complicated enzymatic pathway...and we can benefit from this... :cookiemonster:



As someone who is on the pathway to studying biochemistry with intent to one day do my own psychedelic research, this is EXTREMELY fascinating to me. THERE IS SOME SORT OF SECRET OR HIDDEN REASON WHY THESE SUBSTANCES CONTAIN THE ALKALOIDS THAT THEY DO. IT'S NOT JUST BY ACCIDENT OR CHANCE. I did not mean to use caps lock and I don't feel like fixing it because I'm on my phone. There is way more than what meets the eye in the world of psychedelic studies. I love this kind of stuff that gets my brain thinking about complex things.


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OfflineLosTresOjos
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Re: Why do shrooms make psilocybin? [Re: OutsideOfMyMind]
    #27035994 - 11/12/20 09:53 PM (3 years, 4 months ago)

Find a secret like that is like finding god.

  Unless its a simple bio chemistry question.

Edited by LosTresOjos (11/12/20 09:56 PM)

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OfflineOutsideOfMyMind
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Re: Why do shrooms make psilocybin? [Re: LosTresOjos]
    #27036027 - 11/12/20 10:18 PM (3 years, 4 months ago)

Quote:

LosTresOjos said:
Find a secret like that is like finding god.

  Unless its a simple bio chemistry question.



It shouldn't be too difficult. Round up some scientists and get with it. Computational Neuroscience.


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OfflinePrimalSoup
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Re: Why do shrooms make psilocybin? [Re: OutsideOfMyMind]
    #27036079 - 11/12/20 10:59 PM (3 years, 4 months ago)

Quote:

OutsideOfMyMind said:
Quote:

PrimalSoup said:
huge long post



As someone who is on the pathway to studying biochemistry with intent to one day do my own psychedelic research, this is EXTREMELY fascinating to me. THERE IS SOME SORT OF SECRET OR HIDDEN REASON WHY THESE SUBSTANCES CONTAIN THE ALKALOIDS THAT THEY DO. IT'S NOT JUST BY ACCIDENT OR CHANCE. I did not mean to use caps lock and I don't feel like fixing it because I'm on my phone. There is way more than what meets the eye in the world of psychedelic studies. I love this kind of stuff that gets my brain thinking about complex things.




Well yeah I don't disagree, at least some of the time.  It just seems like too much of a coincidence, in the first place, and then there's the feeling of just knowing how to navigate psychedelic spaces, and they offer this feeling of coming home. 


It could of course be the other way around - human evolution affected by lemur like ancestors 50m years back developing a strong liking for certain kinds of wild fungus and self selecting for the advantages (of stealth, or cunning, or some hyperspatial sense) of adaptation it provided.  That we get what we get out of it would just be entirely accidental, albeit beneficial. 

Still it's an ancient calling. :cookiemonster:


--------------------

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Primal's simple tested teks and projects: :awesomenod: Wheat Prep 2.0  Acidic Tea Tek  Potency Project! 

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