How Psilocybin Mushrooms Can Help Save the World with Paul Stamets | SXSW 2023

thank you [Laughter] well I'm super honored to be here um thank you all for coming I'm one voice in a long long lineage of mycologists and experts that expense extends literally back thousands of years so it is My Moment On Stage today but many other great scientists and mycologists and shamans have preceded me and so what I'm going to show you is a continuation of knowledge Keepers and now with our Technologies and all the interests that is occurring sweeping the planet now the field of data is being populated like never before but it's an affirmation that many indigenous peoples have held true is now confirmed even more so being expanded shamanistic practices in in business cultures are never static we are all indigenous to this Earth so we are expanding the body intellect of knowledge through all of our experiences and sharing information and this is the message of psilocybin psilocybin teaches you that we are all one we are all one people and we need to share this information together in order to protect this precious planet so I'm going to take you on a rocket ship a magical mushroom Mystery Tour um and um open your receptors hold on to your hats put on your seatbelts so here we go so my talk is how silicide mushrooms can save the world that's not metaphoric I'm actually increasingly convinced it's uh it's a narrative that is populated with very important facts we are a Time critical in the evolution of our species our planet is in crisis unless we have a paradigm shift in Consciousness we will not be able to put into practice the applications and strategies to build a common community of interest and I think many of the problems that we face today throughout the world is that because people are destabilized because of fear and they're because when they're afraid they strike out so one of the great lessons of psilocybin is to remove that instability and realize that you have friends all around you all the time they may speak different languages there may be of a different nationality they may be a different racial history but indeed I believe in the goodness of people We Are All One People I fundamentally I think is the power of goodness that pervades the universe it's just a matter of us to be able to tap into it so I do have some disclosures because I want you to show my prejudices but I don't know the difference between my avocation my vocation right all of you who you pursue your interest if you pursue your interest you have a bias right otherwise you would not be pursuing your interests so it's kind of a circular reasoning but nevertheless for the sake of transparency I funded I founded a company I'm the sole owner I have 145 wonderful employees who are part of this narrative um we have co-founded a new company in the Psychedelic space micrometica life sciences and one of my co-founders is here Dr Pamela Crisco who's part of the Canadian psychedelic Association the leading clinical trials up there and we have created a new non-profit called the center for ecological Consciousness which is a play on the Ecology of Consciousness and the consciousness of ecology you can work with that I don't have to interpret it I have multiple books and a new book that I'm currently writing as well so that being said let's look at how many psilocybin mushroom species there are more than 140 species circumnavigate over 5 600 collections been made since the 1800s these psilocybin species are resident across every continent except for Antarctica so far so whether you're Irish whether you're from North Africa from North Africa whether a Mesoamerican whether you are in the Northwest Canada all these regions of the world indigenous peoples would discover magic mushrooms but mushrooms are different we know what mushrooms are edible and poisonous from the experiences of people who've eaten them before us right it helps you select down the gene pool for the people who make mistakes but we know similarly which ones are magical but what's different about mushrooms is they're they're ephemerality they're so ephemeral and so plants and animals are in your viewscape your event horizon constantly for weeks months years but mushrooms which are so powerful that come up and Sprout and then disappear in five days you know some can feed you some can kill you some are medicinal that can heal you and some can send you on a powerful Journey subsequent to that powerful Journey you know as your memory recedes the mushrooms disappear you go months years into the future you have that what it was that you know because our familiar area of contact gives us confidence says the cognizanti in the in indigenous cultures held this sacred knowledge it was very precious and ephemeral because of of it being so tenuous when there was invasions when religious persecution domination from invading armies those tenuous threads of knowledge oftentimes were severed now we're at a space with our technology because of the internet and all of us being here that we can share this information so hopefully it'll be forever preserved we are very very fortunate that there are some threats going back in history these echoes in the archaeological record are also from various regions of the world the Mesoamerican mushroom stones from 2500 BC to 1500 A.D interestingly in about the same period of time in Greece Demeter here is featured giving Persephone before she goes into the underworld and then this speaks to the elucinian Mysteries many of you know this Socrates Plato many other early Greek philosophers all particularly elus Indian Mysteries once in a lifetime thousands of people in a great Celestron would imbibe this mushroom concoction It is believed Albert Hofmann was one of the co-authors of a book called The Road to eluses and presented this concept and then we had this amazing cave art from northern Algeria seven thousand years ago obviously the artist was very excited about mushrooms and mushrooms because they rot so quickly it was well discovered throughout the world that if you put them in honey it would help preserve them well this may actually have led to psychoactive medes and the Bavarian beer Act of 1560 in in Europe specifically banned mushrooms from beer and there's a very big influence of Catholicism and so some of us speculate that maybe that was one way that the Catholic church was trying to suppress the indigenous use of magic mushrooms by Germanic peoples who would go into the forest and have these ceremonies celebrating nature an extraordinary record is kept with one preserved by one of the Catholic priests seahogun who in the in the also around the same time as the Bavarian Bureau very interesting coincidence um recorded the use of magic mushrooms extraordinary they ate them before dawned with honey they also drank basically chocolate Before Dawn the mushrooms they ate with honey when they began to get heated from them they begin to dance and some sang and some web some cared not to sin but would sit down in their rooms and stayed pensive-like then there was the drunkenness of the mushrooms had passed they spoke with another with the visions that they had seen this could have been written today right this is a contemporaneously accurate description of what these you know ancestors were experiencing and no doubt this extended it way before the Spaniards came to the new world but we know about this primarily now today because of two extraordinary women Maria Sabina with the Mazda Tech Shaman in Oaxaca and Maria Stephen had many disciples and Maria Sabina used a mushroom called philosophy Zapata Quorum a wild mushroom she did not use philosophy commences this is important for you to know this is a wild mushroom that she would go into the into the forest to find knowing the differences between the psilocybin mushrooms and non-solicide mushrooms I propose to you she was not only a shaman she was a Mycologist this is important now our Gordon Wasson gets a lot of attention and it's important that he does get credit but it was Valentino Lawson who is the true Mycologist in their relationship she knew Latin binomials she first introduced our Gordon Watson her husband on a honeymoon an Upstate New York and at our own docks when they found some mushrooms and he was horrified and she was excited that was the dawn of the of the terms they coined microphilia and microphobia the love of mushrooms and the fear of mushrooms when millions of copies of Life magazine appeared during the Cold War on the steps of Americans there was an accurate description of how to identify these mushrooms and a great stories of our Gordon Watson's experience unfortunately um Valentina died and also around 1958. so but these two women mycologists I present to you they were tipping points that really accelerated and preserved in this knowledge with all of his problems that many of us know but nevertheless as we move forward you know we have to give credit to these fantastic ethnomycologists Maria Sabina and Valentina Watson so I got first introduced to magic mushrooms for my older brother John he went to Yale he went down to Mexico and Colombia came back with these amazing trips you know literally experience trip reports you know we don't call them trip reports we should have um I was 14 years of age he brought me this book and I just read this book it was amazing it was incredible I loved it and my best friend Ryan wanted to borrow the book and so he borrowed the book I said Ron you've got to give the book back to me you know my brother John's going back to Yale he was on break and he lent me his textbook well Ryan kept on avoiding the subject when I asked for the book back it's that repeated request and finally I cornered Ryan and was at the very last few days my brother was returning he was pressuring me to get his textbook back I said Brian I need the textbook but now let's get it now and he says I can't get it Paul and I said why he says my father found it and burned it I said your father burned my brother's book you know I went I had the oh moment you know what I'm going to tell my older brother which he was not happy at all I was greatly ashamed and very very upset but I thought if that book inspired Ryan's conservative father so scared of Alder States Of Consciousness to have that book be burned then I think I think I found the path that I want to pursue so I went forward I immersed myself at the age of 17 and the studying magic mushrooms going to libraries in the University of Washington in Seattle in the basement most of this of my generation you hunted for information the pages of the books were all razored out and so I was self-taught I did deep immersion and 45 years ago I published my first book on psilocybin mushrooms when I was 24 years of age writing it really when I started when I was on 19. so I do have a long history with psilocybin and from that long history in perspective I feel a very strong Duty and obligation that we keep this movement alive with respect the proper guard rails that we reach across the aisle to those who may be going off the rails to bring them back into the path that will be most sustainable and respectful to these ancient medicines and their indigenous uses I want to give tribute to my father who's a scientist my mother who's a Charismatic Christian a wonderful woman and then my brother John my other mentors or Dr Daniel stunts Catherine skates Michael bug and Dr Alexander Smith so I went on I've published four new species of psilocybin mushrooms and named them philosophy ashtrines philosophy Wylie I which I named after Dr Andrew Weil my dear friend of fibulosa and it's lost to be liniformis variety of Americana and then last week out of the blue quote unquote no idea this was coming I have a new species of silicide mushroom named after me philosophy stametsiai [Applause] and for us the pronounced Latin binomials stemetsiai has a nice Rhythm to it you know is that the cutest little nipple on top too it's such a cute mushroom I love it so it's an Ecuador it's probably the best documented silicide mushroom ever discovered uh Juliana Hershey the fungi Foundation was on the path literally in the Ecuadorian cloud forest with two government officials then the government Judiciary of Ecuador they all had their cell phones and so they found it and they recorded everything so it's amazing there's only two specimens in existence and I've been invited you know with Ecuadorian government approval to go to this Nature Preserve some people ask are you going to eat it no way it's only two specimens in the world has ever been found I'll try convince us you know I'm not going to eat you know but this is a huge huge honor and I I feel even more strengthened in my resolve to to carry this knowledge with responsibility so awesome bees you have purple brown Spore prints generally speaking spores germinate and and you can make a sport print here the taxonomy of salsa mushroom spore color is extremely important dark purple brown spores the black spores are what these mushrooms form we can generate cultures from tissue from spores and then in response to four environmental stimuli typically introduction of water rain flooding coincident with a drop in temperature the mycelium comes to the surface exhales carbon dioxide inhales oxygen exposed to light those four primary environmental triggers stimulate the mycelium to produce the mushroom fruit bodies which then of course produce the spores so the mycelium grows out and like an internet-like design which I'm fascinated by and my friend Patrick hickey um took these micrographs of nuclei streaming through the mycilial networks because the mycelial networks there can be literally trillions of endpoints the breadth of my arms of the mycelium in the ground through epigenesis that little scientists at every little tip and they're doing experiments they found they encounter a new toxin a new food source they can then code for enzymes that can break down that new encounter potentially the food source if they're successful what happens the mycelium streams is being fed and that information is back channeled back into the mother mycelium so these are learning membranes so I believe matter begets life life becomes single cells single cells become strings strings Fork strings interlace mosaics form and inevitably mycelial-like networks will form throughout the Universe it is no coincidence that we've invented the Internet which is a repetition in my mind of a previously proven ecologically successful design that of mycelium that of our nerves in our brain and waxing poetic when you look at the expanse of the universe and looking at dark matter it also forms this internet mycelial-like structure this is the way this is the way of matter this is the way of life we're all embedded in this microverse of inner connectivity the primordial reforming philosophy conventus is the easiest one to grow but because I have an hour and I just came from a talk I only had 20 minutes I felt I really the audience was robbed of the experience that I want to share with you many of you have not collected psilocybin mushrooms before I go there let me ask this how many people in this room have not taken psilocybin mushrooms have not eaten them so about a third of you um so but and I would imagine a lot more of you have not collected soul type in mushrooms so I'm going to show you three short little videos of of my hunting and discovering cell type mushrooms so here's the first one hopefully the audio will work so tech department here we go greetings and meets philosophy Azure lessons is probably one of the most potent mushrooms in the world it contains silicon up to two percent of described mass now think about it two percent of the dry medicine so much are psychoactive crystals why would a mushroom produce so much we all know that it's something that attracted the interests of humans the polluting that you see here is a bruising reaction is indicative of silverson as it degrades and the more blue you see the more cells in there once was now psilocybin defosce correlates into silicon and when you ingest itself becomes a serotonin Agonist it means that this whole side of the number the sultan becomes a temporary neurotransmitter opening up the floodgates of the census now this mushroom is sinuous it's got a sinuous stem which means it bends back and forth is gluing very very strongly and it has these very uh indicative Spore color here on the annular Zone and these four colors purple brown and the mushrooms are bluish those two pieces in combination pretty much the factor determines a philosophy now look how Bodacious the rhizomorphs are at the base of the stem this is a large velocity by far the largest one that I know that grows on wood chips in the Pacific Northwest is now a popular one to have in your backyard it's just fun it's just naturalized in the woods here and this is a beautiful fruiting of them and these philosophies many of the women's philosophies have this Chestnut found a caramel color this one is unique just like these on bows and there is a broad angle and the cap is very circular the losing reaction is just from Impact to rain perhaps this mushroom is one of the most fascinating and interesting ones to grow those who can choose to partake of this mushroom should be worn these are exceptionally potent and oftentimes they can cause temporary paralysis loss of muscle control so that is not a good thing it seems that those people who boil this Mushroom in hot water those symptoms seem to be alleviated but this is a clearly a sacred species and I love this person and touching it there's not a mushroom that I that I enjoy eating uh it's almost too potent for me and um but it is a species that I greatly admire I love touching it I love handling it I love seeing it and it's a great indicator of the habitat in my magical mushroom Forest that is very conducive to spiritual experiences now you compare philosophy Azure Russians the philosophy cyanosis and it is known as the wavy cow you can see the Azure wrestling says the even cap Edge and cyanescence is like the sine wave so here is a wild philosophy cyanescence patch and they grow in the wood chips now if you notice it's just not wood chips there's lichens there's Moss there's a complex microbiome these are primary saprophytes which means they break down Alder and Oak and other types of wood chips as soon as they're rendered available about a year later then they'll start sprouting the mushrooms but you can see how blue the stems are another species a slocityi named after Daniel stunts one of my teachers it's got a little ring and and the ring typically turns bluish it's really interesting but unfortunately there are some deadly poisonous species that grow right side by side with the magic mushrooms this is galorana marginata and in California marginata is deadly poisonous containing the amenita alpha toxins the cyclopeptides that can kill you and I found that collection and when I found that I was startled because I thought most people collecting philosophy soon CI if they saw this collection they'll grab both uh Gallant rhinos have Rusty Brown spores psilocybin or philosophy mushrooms have purple brown spores well then there's philosophy paliculosa well it also grows in wood chips and also gallerina marginata grows there as well so philosophy pliculosa is the only species I found truly in the old growth forest all the other species are associated with human activity very interesting and they're slots is known as a trail follower on the old growth forest so they're very common on Trails very uncommon deep in the forest so they're also in a sense associated with human activity but so many of these psilocybin mushrooms are associated with either a cutting of wood chipping Etc so where is the native origins of these psilocyte mushrooms that grow on wood chips well I suggest you beavers woodpeckers squirrels voles it's lost to be azaressens we found a vol tunnel that was honeycombed with white Azure Essence mycelium I thought wow if I could be that wool running through the iridescent blue my cilial corridors right um so there we think that these chipping behavior and whether these cell type mushrooms actually be called with endophytes living inside of the trees and only when the trees are chipped then suddenly they're stimulated into formation so philosophy semilantiada the Liberty cup it also grows in many places of the world southern Chile it grows in Ireland and of course throughout northern Europe and the Pacific Northwest it loves to be associated with ponds it does not bruise bluish but it has a little nipple so let's go a little on a little mushroom hunt for Liberty cops seasons of Europe in the Pacific Northwest or the most interesting philosophies is one that grows near ponds in the grass and this this field has not had calzone for more than 10 years so cows and sheep can help with the non-necessary and this is philosophy similar they found the Liberty Capital um that's Exquisite a little fruiting here it's got a translucent straight margin you can see the striations they're actually the gills showing through the cap and the cap also has a separable gelatinous pellicle so here is one over here we can look at and as you tear the cap there is a film that is clearly visible and you can say oh that's a really big one that film stretches them breaks so these mushrooms are purple brown spores and separate latinous pellicle and they typically have a sharp umbo or nipple at the very very top of the cap and this a pillow or nipple is not always in every specimen but it's quite characteristic of the species in general so philosophy similon see it many people when they pick someone see it they don't realize that the stem is so long I think it's a mutualistic species one of the rhizomes of grass almost like a pseudomicorrhizal relationship which means it's not obligatory but it benefits from it and the stems often are picked because they're people don't realize that the stem length is way way down so be careful always try to get the base of stem if you can no I am going to boast a little bit that was me filming that whole thing with my camera going like this I realized oh my gosh that was actually pretty good for one-handed shot all of us know what that means right so philosophy convinces is by far the easiest to grow it grows in the subtropics on dung and here on elephant dong hippopotamus dung zebra dung really prefers cows um but this because this mushroom so easy to grow this is the primary species currently used throughout the world now we have to give credit to many people but Dr Andrew Weil was hugely influential in my life and he actually wrote a forward to my book before I even met him philosophy mushroomed in their allies in 1978 but in 1977 he published in the Harvard Botanical leaflets sort of like a a story report of the psilocybin mushroom movement surging in Oregon in elsewhere but primarily Oregon and he saw this as a cultural Phenom phenomenon and because he was a Harvard physician he foretold that Silas mushrooms would have medicinal properties not only from his own use but he was very good in intuiting that psilocybin had a fantastic future for mental health also we want to give credit to Terence McKenna who is a dear and good friend and these are my books but in two of terence's books but it's that psilocybin magic mushroom Growers God that is the spark that this spread information like crazy and as I call it the philosophy Cubans a scholarship fund many of us of my age know this well maybe even currently people will gross loss abuse in their closets at College Etc and they'd use us to pay their tuition pay groceries very small scale uh cultivation but from Andy's work and that of others then we started a series of mushroom conferences and this event today is the continuity the lineage of us sharing knowledge on psilocybin mushrooms so you're all part of this vein of knowledge so we started these actually in 1977. um and this is one I think is from 1979. these persisted we also the conferences were done in Europe and at the cycle activity a conference in the center you'll see Albert Hofmann sashan and Shogun myself and many other experts in psychoactive plants um and so this is a community it's just not just people who are Psychonauts focused on Soul cybin there's a lot of sort of you know crosstalk you know between the different experts sharing their knowledge of neuroreceptors and uses and practices and safety and tragedies and mistakes so we all collectively are are honing our our skills therapeutically to be able to maximize benefit maximize safety minimize harm I am a Merry Prankster and I realized that I knew Ken keezy and the Mary pranksters but I also knew the Psychedelic scientists so at the Millennium mushroom conference that I put on with a friend in 1999 we brought this the Mary pranksters and those of you who don't know about the Mary prank Services is the electric acid Kool-Aid test if you go back it's the Beat Generation evolving into the revolution you know of the 19 of the 1960s and so Ken keezy Ken Babs George uh George Walker Mountain girl married Jerry Garcia and then Sunshine is the daughter of Ken keezy and and Mountain girl we can figure that one out um but it was a wonderful amazing conference that we brought these people together and it was this you know synaptic Junctions were forming a synaptogenesis of these great minds so where we are today now this is spread and the United States and Canada are largely leading the way and there are some pockets in England in the Netherlands and in Germany but pretty much that's the Vanguard of the research but in the United States there is over 22 States I think there's two more states in the past two weeks that have bills or ballots that are various stages of advancing in Colorado of course uh in Oregon the bills have passed they've become law politicians are somewhat hesitant to stick their nuts out to advocate for psychedelic science but this is a people's Revolution Washington State's bill has now been largely killed because of concerns some of which are valid some of which are I think clearly political but when the people speak through a ballot the politicians get a pass the law enforcement gets a pass when the people speak and make rate of law their employees of the people they must enact and protect the law that has been passed so I encourage all of you to be involved in state ballot initiatives this is clearly the way that we're going to be able to spread this medicine far and wide and in Canada has really led the charge especially with the leadership of Dr param Pam Crisco who's here in the audience and many other of her of her colleagues they're doing group psychedelic therapy with psilocybin with end-of-life patients with the Canadian government approval more than 40 patients facing existential fear of death um are going in group therapy eight patients approximately at a time eight therapists with high doses of psilocybin coming out the other end with an extraordinary healing so you'll be hearing more about that so let's look at four meta studies now these meta studies are important to designing clinical studies so clinicians want to see you know are there reports other case reports so during these meta surveys this is with prisoners 485 000 prisoners significant reduction in several aspects of crime larceny theft burglary violent crime psilocybin was the only psychedelic that was associated with this metric then we look at intimate partner to partner violence and this study 1266 community members and psilocybin again was the only psychedelic associated with a reduction of partner to partner violence I always thought if you have a dating app have you tripped on psilocybin okay I think that's a better candidate than a person who hasn't right left right so then another interesting study the associated psychedelics with opioid use disorder again psilocybin is the only one that's associated with the reduction of opioid use disorder and so another study came out on nature relatedness here again psilocybin was the only psychedelic that was associated with a statistically significant increase in nature relatedness I have a little bit of problem to study because I've done high doses of LSD and I felt nature relatedness as well but I haven't felt that with MDMA you know so I think psilocybin and LSD enhances your sensitivity to the health of the ecosystem okay so these are meta studies and this is important because what's happening out there you know can you see a trend is are there associations are the associations random are they significant you know our associations aren't necessarily causation but they can be instead of kind of befuddle you know how do you how do you see you know a true signal well those signals now are being presented in clinical studies there's more than 120 clinical studies registered at clinicaltrials.gov think of that 120 and more being populated every month so with those of you who are Physicians or researchers know this well you have to go through the IRB boards institutional review boards and there's groups of Physicians and scientists who look at is the clinical study Justified is it targeting a disease or a mental health condition that is currently not adequately being addressed like treatment resistant depression is it scalable is it affordable is it likely not to cause harm and there's an FDA statement or an FDA official came out and after his analysis this FDA official said of all the drugs that they or he has ever studied psilocybin is the most potent least toxic substance they've ever seen so now there's a problem with these clinical studies and most of them are high doses of psilocybin is how do you design a placebo double blind control and the idea is you want to give two great patient populations one with a medicine one without so you can do a placebo well I couldn't have said it better than this cartoon [Laughter] which means every clinical study using a high dose of psilocybin and a placebo is inherently flawed I mean this is shocking to me Dr Pam and I saw this instantly and yet we had all these I mean it was the hubris of scientists we can design a clinical study with a playable but they've never done psilocybin I mean no Sherlock yeah so but you know macro dosing and micro dosing are fundamentally different and I'll be talking about microdosing in just a minute so now there are several clinical studies Placebo double line control that do show very interesting results despite the problem of the placebo one is with treatment resistant depression here or major depression disorder these are clinical trials published New England Journal medicine and Jama and so yes there seems to be really powerful medicines for breaking addiction um and another one was alcohol one of the most abused and addictive substances that we know of we do see binge drinking from two sessions of psilocybin at high doses well this is extraordinary because you have this this you know two different groups of people with mental health challenges disorders that are being treated you know with this with a new medicine was really a good results well Dr Roland Griffis and a number of his colleagues propose because schedule one substances mean that there is no medical use high abuse for high potential for abuse and addiction well schedule one doesn't doesn't still happen doesn't fit schedule one it should not be there because it's in schedule one it has inhibited the ability of researchers to move forward so this is why we need to reschedule psilocybin we need to reschedule most of the psychedelics they should not be in schedule one these are non-addictive substances they do not have a high potential for abuse and they do have a very important medical potential application so anyone here knows President Biden please Advocate that he reschedules psilocybin and psychedelics you know away from the schedule one um we'll see folks it's really unfortunate in many ways um I have just received my DEA license for psilocybin I'm really happy about that um and one of the things my Mantra many of you know it I have a mantra nature provides I don't I I am not a psychotherapist I have seen people have bad trips about 30 of the people in these clinical studies do have bad trips I'm not skilled and I feel like you have an incredible responsibility when you give a powerful medicine to somebody else that you be there with them with the skill sets to help them maximize the benefit of their experience and hold them together when they're having a tough time so now um so the psilocybin now has many other uses as well and that leads into microdosing so a macrodose is one percent psilocybin one gram is philosophy commensus dried is 10 is 10 milligrams right so basically one gram and higher is is a macro dose micro doses are one tenth to one twentieth of that they're sub intoxicating or non-perceptual you cannot feel you know you don't feel them sort of in a big way I feel them in a little way so it's a little bit on the margin of being perceptual color is a little brighter I'm in a better mood I'm better with my partner I'm more congenial I tend to make bad jokes more often you know so but I so I it's a mood elevator for me so it's not perceptual well not really in a sense of intoxicating but it certainly is Pleasant and and bouldering you know so okay so we're looking at philosophy uh cubensis mushrooms and we have we had three categories here a low dose and medium dose and a high dose so and you look at the one-third a one-tenth of one-third of a gram Isis which is one to three milligrams about 72 and 16 so you're looking about 86 percent of the respondents in the survey were in this micro dose range so we helped design an app for the iPhone and the Droid a Quantified citizen is that microdose.me I encourage all of you to to join in this app and we wanted to get a very big population of respondents again look at those meta surveys what if we broaden these surveys you know we have lots and lots of people self-reporting you know could they report something we would not see in a smaller subset of 10 or 20 people so we have over 22 000 people now that have signed up for this app and who are self-reporting and the app is anonymous it's gone through review of ethics and then you can type in you know what you're microdosing with what you're adding to the micro dose in this case it's you know the amount but also whether you're stacking it with niacin or lion's mane or chocolate or other material so and there's challenge tests and these are all tests that psychiatrists use to measure cognitive function so these are not just random tests but these are all based in well-established psychiatric testing models well we went ahead and we published in nurture scientific reports two papers and the first paper it's kind of a qualifying paper what's your motivations what are you doing et cetera the second paper is more looking at quote unquote cause and effect or putatively cause and effect and so this is where we started to see some really interesting data Beyond just motivation and we found in this this report that with the motivation for them is primarily we do say anxiety and reducing anxiety and depression increasing performance cognition you know other sorts of metrics like that well we definitely did see an improvement in mood a reduction of anxiety reduction in depression so this is real data people are reporting it now when you encounter Skeptics who try to dissuade this and if you're a psychiatrist isn't your goal to make the patient feel better so they have a significant reduction in depression and anxiety how aren't you helping that patient sometimes scientists get lost in the weeds and so but some of these questions are academically interesting and and have uh are valid so we started looking at something called the stock and I popularized this I had a flash of intuition in the mid around 2015 and I thought well if psilocybin is so close to serotonin is is substitutes a serotonin The receptors but psilocybins of vasoconstrictor niacin to Vaso dilator so I thought with vasodilation a neuropathies oftentimes represent themselves from disaster constriction and addending of the fingertips and the toes that is you could have vasodilation to the endpoints of the peripheral nervous system you could have neuro more neurogenic benefits also niacin you take it you start itching it excites your nerve endings right it makes you red and itch you're super sensitive so I thought wow that's like throughout the entire body um so that's one of the reasons and then lion's mane mushrooms are really well documented for and there are several I think four clinical studies you can go to mushroomreferences.com we populate this specifically for researchers and Physicians so you can very quickly get to get to the medicinal properties of mushrooms not branded just pure science so some of the studies are presented here with lion's mane mushrooms it's the mycelium that is by far more potent it contains a compounds called arenaisines that stimulate not only nerve growth factors but remyelination on the axons of nerves and then another test because my discussions with Dr Pam was saying yeah people feel better they have less anxiety less depression but I wanted to know well can they perform better is there a performance test and she go well yes we have a psycho motor test Physicians constantly often use this um those Physicians Physicians here in the audience you know this well is how many times you can tap your fingers in 10 seconds when you're 22 you can tap a lot more when you're 82. but if you've got traumatic brain injury you have Interruption of psychomotor skills when you have dementia Alzheimer's or age-related neuropathy you decline in your tapping frequency so you can become more you know the question is is there a coordination benefit so we went and this tapping test which I'm not going to show the whole thing here but just shows you basically how it activates and then there's a single tap and there's a double tapping test over a hundred papers published clinically on the the validity of the finger tapping tests as an indication of psychomotor benefit so we've got this massive data set and we have so much data we have it's it's in hundreds of millions of data points now from 22 000 people taking these tests on all the different variables that are involved but something astonished I mean astonishing happened and the researchers called us up said we're not going to give you the data and but we saw something and we can't believe it so they attacked the data three different ways and this is what came out that was so surprising with a top test those people were doing the stamant stock a combination of Soul Simon mushrooms microdosing a lion's mane and niacin in 30 days over the age of 55 increased their tapping ability from 48 Taps to 68 TAPS in 30 days there's no other way to explain this folks that is a psychomotor coordination benefit think of the potential significance of that so this is not something that people feel this is what how people perform how many people elderly fall in their kitchens or in the bathroom and break their hips go to the hospital get an infection and die if we can reduce just falling how many guitar players are able to teach their students when they're in their 70s and there are maestros when they're in their 50s think about the ramifications of being able to improve psychomotor skills in age so when we saw this data we tasked our scientists well what could possibly explain what's Happening Here We narrowed down into map kinases these are proteins that are related to receptors um and if you could at least when they stimulate nerve growth factors and bdnf brain derived neurotropic factors and when these are stimulated they increases facilitation of them docking on the outer membranes of cells actually goes to the nucleus and then cause the nucleus for the nerves to divide so these map kinases are really well studied they're called the ones we focus on track a uh B and C so we sent the individual components of the standard stock and we got some some activity with psilocybin and silicon the expected cumulative addition as you see here red and blue but we put them together we had Synergy in this case 4X and 6 times more at the microdosing levels not at macro dosing that was interesting so we started sending in more and more and more samples over a thousand samples that we have sent in this cost an enormous amount of money to do these tests and these tests are for pre-clinical drug discovery so then we did try to again uh then with a track a all three of them Lions main contained aeronaccines silicon and niacin and we have something really interesting here where the at this dosage rain there is no activity of the individual components but when they're put together they had Synergy this is related to What's called the gunpowder analogy well you have three components charcoal sulfur potassium nitrate that's oxygating 1A exit on the patent office for natural products if you can have three components that do not have activity when combined or explosive like in gunpowder if someone invented gunpowder today and we didn't have it before that would be a patentable natural product combination because they do not co-occur in nature and the human hand of an of intervention puts them together was something that was unprecedented so this is called maximum calculable value when each of the components do not have activity but synergistically put together they do we're most fascinated with track bees now this is an extraordinary Article 28 co-authors published in cell identifying that the antidepressive effects of the anti-depressive medicines the minor major medicines are related to track bees and here we also have synergy maximum calculable value of the components in the stock which together causes Synergy and neurogenesis neurogeneration now I have over a hundred of these so it's not a one-two event one two three event it's an Entourage event you're taking psilocybin and then the analogues these are these are biosystem neurobosystem nor stylusin original these are non-psychedelic tryptamines associated with psilocybin and silicon production and they also have this synergistic effect so across the neurological ecosystem and neuroscape you're eliciting all these excitements of binding affinities in stimulating nerve growth factors in bdnf so this Entourage effect of these components of the natural product and this is why I think the natural product is better than the single molecule and 99 percent approximately of all the all the clinical studies maybe it's 96 now use psilocybin the molecule but 99 and I'm not exaggerating 99.999999 of users in the world are using psilocybin the mushroom so we need that bridge let's divide between scientific clinical studies with using solocybin versus the natural product so then we started looking at anti-inflammatory cytokines and this alysses was called interleukin tens these are anti-inflammatories and anti-neuroinflammatories also they induce endogenous antiviral defenses so this is really interesting they have something that stimulates nerve cell regeneration oftentimes that's associated with inflammation for those of you who are not experiencing this when you have cell division it's just natural they have something that down regulates inflammation but promotes neurodegeneration that is very very cool so my bottom line hypothesis is that niacin is a catalyst for psilocybin now if you remember that slide where I showed 120 clinical trials in the very bottom it said 11 clinical trials use niacin as an active Placebo the reason being in 20 minutes with psilocybin you have liftoff in 20 minutes with niacin you start itching but I've talked to several of the clinicians and they got to keep their mouth shut but the patients go oh I'm really hot and I itch you know you know and I said well obviously they got the niacin but we're not going to say anything um so you know again experience Psychonauts immediately know that that they got the placebo so because there's 11 clinical studies teaching away from my concept using niacin opposite psilocybin I think they missed the Mark I think niacin is a catalyst and niacin's bio-disolation property counteracts psilocybers of construction and then the Entourage effect that I just described also has that so we're looking at what is Delivery Systems that people commonly use this is by far the most popular is making your own chocolates and you're kind of a chocolate party you know of course do this only where it's legal so I want to make sure that I'm compliant here I'm not advocating anyone break the law please follow the law the question and challenge you have is you follow state law or federal law I'll leave that up to you I don't have an opinion I'm just a researcher but I do know from from case reports quote unquote that when you make this chocolate you should be very very careful so children don't get into it somebody visiting doesn't you know find it and go I'm hungry and eats five of these and then you the person like going oh I need some help um so the most clever label I've seen put on these chocolates is laxative that usually discourages anyone from eating them and keeping them out of the reach of children of course is really really important though that's a little bit controversial the psilocybin may be a very very good treatment hopefully and potentially for autism Etc and that being said everything that I've said to you today has to be proved clinically these are hypotheses we have some really good data we have supporting data the tap test was hard to argue against but on the top test think about this with the hundreds of people involved in the top test they're getting psilocybin from various sources illegally variability and potency variability and niacin variability in lion's mane and yet the p-value of significance is point zero zero four that's one chance in 250 that it's just random so with those confounders if you had it more confined specifically to doses logically you would have a better outcome than having it washed with this variability so we may be understating the potential here we don't know until we prove this clinically this is why we are Marching towards clinical trials as soon as we can we hope to have clinical trials comparing the stock versus psilocybin alone versus a I think it should be open label it shouldn't just be a placebo right with a micro notion you can do a placebo with macro dosing your account so maybe you know we have to have some creative thinking and clinicians far smarter than me are involved in this so what does this potentially mean if this proves to be true and again I'm emphasizing we don't know we have to prove this clinically but the pre-clinical evidence and the observational data that we have the prospective observational data we have is pretty compelling pretty exciting so if so both the peripheral and Central and autonomic nervous system could benefit this could be potentially a game changer think of the body intellect in this room especially of us elders who have had encyclopedic knowledge only to lose it through due to dementia or Alzheimer's or other diseases that loss of knowledge culturally speaking is is economically and culturally devastating to be able to preserve that knowledge to hand it to the next Generation there's a sacred sacred Duty and an obligation so I have a group of great scientists that have been involved in helping me in this research and here's 11 of them we've published now 77 articles in peer-reviewed journals not on social Simon of course just a few in psilocybin but Albert einsteinstein I think you know in this wisdom especially as he got older and began to write more philosophically said they're a leap unconsciousness does not come from logical linear deduction is something that happens spontaneously it's like synaptogenesis and you have this Eureka moment and the scientists who connect with their spiritual nature I am not religious but I'm spiritual who could not be spiritual looking at astronomy looking in the Stars I had a recent experience and most of my Souls having experiences are talking about Paul saved the planet we're all one together you know your ancestors are speaking to you your descendants are calling back in time speaking to you you know I get those messages I get those marching orders I get them every time one of my other experiences more recently I came out of the experience with one word I told my partner one word because there's one word of wisdom and I would say so I get chills right now I'm just talking about them because I'm re-remembering the experience and she goes what is it what is it and one word in all big capital letters was existence we all exist we have always existed we will forever exist my atoms will be separated from my molecules and disambiguate and reform our atoms together are flowing throughout the Universe throughout the microverse so in summary I believe psilocybin makes nicer people I believe psilocybin reduces violence I believe still assignment can break the shackles of addiction I believe psilocybin reduces crime when you meet someone who's been traumatized it's just not them it's their partner their family their neighbors their Community people know he's an addict he went to prison she went to prison they were violent they were disruptors in a negative way so it emanates out through Society it causes a shared trauma in the community it's about psilocybin is different when you meet somebody who's an addict somebody who's been violent in fact I've just met numerous seals and I'm high respect to these Warriors who've suffered incredible experiences you know in war here in Austin there's a large group and the seals are flocking to psilocybin there's over 600 I've Been Told in a community going through churches so it's legal Law Enforcement Officers also been traumatized they're being involved a law enforcement officer I met in Vancouver he said they're not arresting people or psilocybin Law Enforcement Officers know that psilocybin produces crime I said well and he goes how I don't understand how does that change you he goes you know we used to go up to people we have to arrest really aggressive and mean and you know intimidating and you know people are scared right and they're frightened they they react I go what's changed now he goes after psilocybin we walk up to them with a big smile on our face there you go how you doing today the person's nervous they're law enforcement and and then okay and he goes I got good news and I got bad news what do you want first he says amazing everyone wants the good news first right well you can finish your cup of coffee what's the bad news he goes I gotta arrest you and he said it's amazing they arrest these people whereas before they're aggressive and adversarial and antagonistic they're having their greatest conversations in the squad car they're happy they're Cooperative they're sharing stories about their children what they like to do you know after work and he goes and the law enforcement officers are no longer traumatized they're long no longer on the edge and Trigger are happy because they feel they're going to be attacked they're relating to the people as with respect and dignity this is what psilocybin does now we wait wax poetic and my I have very high expectations and of course this needs to be proven clinically but I believe Saul Simon is a game changer and we're a critical moment in the evolution of our species to have a paradigm shift in consciousness that we can bring unanimity of all people around the world this is the message of psilocybin as we are all one where all one Community not only of people but of all organisms not only of organisms but with all matter in the universe psilocybin is a gateway into Universal consciousness I think this is our time this is our time to lead the charge with great science we want Skeptics that my best supporters have been my Skeptics we want to be able to reach across the political aisle the veterans and the seals are bringing Republicans and Democrats together because they know that psilocybin Works law enforcement knows that it works the radical Improvement in people who were suffering such negative consequences and re-emanating those and the advantage of psilocybin like a pebble going into the pond emanates and waves go out of positiveness healing kindness and goodness and now the person that's been cured or is better is no longer angry no longer an addict they fundamentally changed it's not only them because their partner is their family it's their Community it's their country it's the world this is our time psilocybin is coming to us literally from the mycilial networks underneath our feet nature is calling up to us it is time for us to take psilocybin and to move it forward through science in the medical community move it with good guard rails but if someone goes astray reaching out your arm and kindness and bringing them back never criticize somebody in public constructive advice and private always praise them for the best that you see in them that'll Elevate everyone I believe psilocybin is the molecule that can create the Paradigm and Consciousness and help save the world thank you very much [Applause] [Music]

Channel: SXSW

Views: 243,979

Keywords: SXSW, South By Southwest, Southby, Fest, Festival, Austin, Texas, Conference, Lineup, Keynote, Speaker, Panel, Interview, Music, Film, Movie, Interactive, Tech, Technology, Gaming, Video Games, Media, Entertainment, News, Business, Creative, Entrepreneur, Development, Red Carpet, Live, Performance, Showcase, Concert, TV, Television, Paul Stamets, Mushrooms, Magic Mushrooms, Psilocibin, Addiction, Dementia, Healing, Pharmaceutical

Id: qry8K7KPHIQ

Length: 61min 44sec (3704 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 12 2023