Author Topic: Psilocybin Production  (Read 66906 times)

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adroit_synth

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books
« Reply #20 on: January 24, 2004, 02:41:00 PM »
SWIM just ordered stamet's book and is awaiting it's arrival. He will buy the other suggestion as well. He would like to add that his method utilizes a rotary vane pump to supply vacuum to dry the mycelium as well as to strip the extract of poisonous solvent. This curbs oxidative/thermal damage to psilocin. Works magnificently fast.

As for the shroomery, I have seen misinformation on there already, but I always seek confirmation on everything before I implement it anyhow.


paranoid

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The point adroit_synth is trying to make is...
« Reply #21 on: January 26, 2004, 01:00:00 AM »
The point adroit_synth is trying to make is that he is trying to simply produce mycelia for the purpose of psilocybin harvest.  There is no fruiting involved because there is no desire to produce shrooms.  This is an experiment to gauge the efficiency of psilocybin production via a much simplified and inexpensive method.

As for temperatures, P. cubensis is a semi-tropical species and does well in hot temperatures, but keep it under 30°C for best results.  Don't fuss too much about temperatures yet, but try to keep it consistent.  Again, this is a control experiment - tweak the process after it has a baseline value.

Keep us informed of the results here please, I've been waiting for some time around here for someone to try this!


adroit_synth

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Exactly!
« Reply #22 on: January 26, 2004, 12:01:00 PM »
sYnThOmAtIc: I almost forgot. I am young, I just turned 7 yesterday. :o  I hope this makes you feel better about my ignorance or lack of experience. :P

paranoid: It is about time I had someone chime in here on my wavelength! You are precisely right! SWIM now has 4 PF TEK cakes at 84-86F (which everyone claims is the best temperature) and 4 at room temp, 70-75F (which his book, Psilcybin Production and the PF TEK both recommend). He will post his results as soon as colonization time permits. His next experiment will compare the PDY LC method against the BRF substrate at the temp that proves to yield more alkaloids in his ongoing experiment. Anyone interested can look forward to many more similar experiments dealing with ease of production and efficiency, as he plans to optimize and simplify his production methods to facilitate faster magic-mass-production. Anyone not interested can do it their own way and fruit or not at whatever temp, in shit if they want. Just stay off my back for trying to improve things a bit. >:(


Trenchcoat

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i read somewhere that magic alkaloid ...
« Reply #23 on: January 26, 2004, 09:27:00 PM »
i read somewhere that magic alkaloid production doesn't start until pinning is initiated. many people have shared your pipe dream. i used to think it'd be a great idea to do a liquid culture in 55 gallon drums and extract from the filtered biomass. haha. the mushroom cultivator says that one study found sclerotia from p. mexicana (strain A) is the most efficient means of producing the biomass. why not grow sclerotia then extract from that. you still wouldn't have to mess with fruiting. fun!


adroit_synth

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alkaloid production
« Reply #24 on: January 26, 2004, 09:58:00 PM »
Well as for exactly when it starts, there appears to be some discrepancies. It will not start ever if conditions are not conducive. Or lets say that conditions were good (nutritionally) and then they cease to be so. hmm. This reminds me of what happens when pinning occurs. Where do you suppose the chemicals to make the alkaloids come from at this point? Or why would the organism bother making them for it needs to make spores to propagate now? Well the answer to both, IMHO is that alkaloids are produced almost from the beginning to prepare for propagation. The psilocin acts as a phosphorous storage or carrier molecule increasing the concentration and bioavailability of it for MASSIVE DNA production encompassed within the spore creation stage. Primordia and aborts are known to be more potent. Why would they have the most alkaloids if they just started synthesising them? Well thats probably the way I am goin to feel about it until someone shows me a competent study indicating otherwise. If you could show me where you read this I would be excited to learn from it.


Mr_Bronson

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Alkaloid concentration
« Reply #25 on: January 27, 2004, 01:44:00 PM »
Manufacture of a tryptamine for the purpose of phosphorous metabolism seems rather over-complicated. Isn't the main purpose of tryptamines as a nerve-agent against predators?

Lilienthal

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adroit_synth: Mycelium usually does not ...
« Reply #26 on: January 27, 2004, 02:58:00 PM »
adroit_synth: Mycelium usually does not produce usefull amounts of alkaloids, that has been shown over and over. Better try to find and read the existing literature before waisting time and resources  :) .

Psilocybin as a phosphate carrier is a funny (but absurd) idea  ;D . Read under the keyword 'secondary metabolites'. It's obvious that such alkaloids are produced as deterrents (e.g. against insect larvae), even if can be difficult to proof that in individual cases.

Mr_Bronson

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Fruiting
« Reply #27 on: January 27, 2004, 04:14:00 PM »
It would be interesting to know the trigger for fruiting. Perhaps it would be possible to trigger fruiting in a liquid medium with the correct conditions. Bubbleplate referred to a semi-liquid medium.

Post 484452

(Bubbleplate: "Fruiting Mr. Bronson", Tryptamine Chemistry)

adroit_synth

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Ok
« Reply #28 on: January 27, 2004, 06:19:00 PM »
That's it. SWIM'll fruit 'em. I suppose what intrigued him most was the idea of having psilocybin/psilocin doses similar to what Hoffman synthed back in the day. I have read reports of Timothy Leary taking the pure psilocin from Hoffman and it seems as though it is a better experience. Perhaps it was the mind that was being altered, but my idea was that the trip was not hindered by other poisons that may be present in the mushroom.

As for the phosphorus carrier idea, I was going off a suggestion in the hydroponic thread that Mr. Bronson posted a link to above. The idea seemed plausible to me but Lilienthal's points seem even more legitimate. I have very little knowledge of why organisms do the things they do and was definitely getting in over my head there.
 
So there! SWIM's main source of alkaloids will be the carpophores, but he is going to harvest some mycelium to obtain the magic free from many other compounds within the mushroom. He will see first hand if it is a better trip or not. Of course he could just extract the alkaloids from the fruit but he would rather not risk it until further confirmation is seen by him b/c of the inherent loss involved with extraction procedures.


Mr_Bronson

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Giving it a try
« Reply #29 on: January 27, 2004, 08:56:00 PM »
adroit_synth: No harm in a couple of experiments. I am currently trying a couple of liquid cultures with different nutrient concentrations just to see what the effect is. Supposed you can control things so that the nutrients run out at some stage, or you cold shock the system or rinse through with sterile water - maybe you can trigger fruiting. Maybe there is a plant hormone to do it. No harm in trying. I've had a culture growing for 10 days with H2O2 and no sign of contamination yet.

adroit_synth

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Re: Giving it a try
« Reply #30 on: January 27, 2004, 09:27:00 PM »
Well that is what I thought but almost everything I have said in this thread is rediculously funny or just plain absurd (or both) to most bees that have replied. After a while, one does get discouraged. I do need to read more and regretfully admit that I did not fully utilise the search engine before starting this thread. Give it some time but I will link to any relevant info. If you guys say that fruiting is the magical path to the magical alkaloids then ok, I will follow the yellow-brick road. SWIM will still conduct experiments however. Perhaps some other bees could suggest some variables to experiment with (keep it simple b/c SWIM is just getting the hang of this). He is eager to give back to the hive and at a loss of ways to do so. I look forward to further correspondence with you Mr. Bronson, detailing your progression with the liquid culture.


Mr_Bronson

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I'll keep you posted
« Reply #31 on: January 27, 2004, 10:33:00 PM »
I am still a mushroom novice, especially wrt submerged culture. I just picked up that the key is to get sclerota or fruiting bodies of some kind. Anything interesting happens and I'll post to the forum too,

Urupeh

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Micelia has useful quantities of alkaloids
« Reply #32 on: January 28, 2004, 05:57:00 AM »
Swim just eat the cakes and noticed that they where active, than he make another test, grow the micelia on wheat and wheat+rice, the experiment was carried in thinny polipropilene-plastic-bags whith only 50g of this substrata, everything was pressured-cooked nearly 20min. After the total colonization, the bags where open and the material was used in diverse recipes, the best was to ad dried grapes, nuts and honey, another salty recipe was only ad garlic, pepper and a little salt and fry them in butter, the meal provide a wery potent trip. Perhaps for extraction the micelia+substrata is a waste of solvents when you dont have  acess of bulk quantities, but only for personal use the "meal method" is very good. Swim tried to grow them in liquid (malt-extract +minerals)but the strains dont produce much biomass, swim thing the fungus like something "hard"to grow on...

paranoid

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While I have no available refs on hand, I have
« Reply #33 on: January 29, 2004, 10:52:00 PM »
While I have no available refs on hand, I have read that mycelium, although certainly on several order of magnitude less potent than basidiocarps, do indeed still produce a significant amount of alkaloids - however I'm not certain if it's primarily psilocin or psilocybin.  I'd definitely try it out at least - worst case scenario, you at least have a culture to innoculate a new attempt.


praeseodymium

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Makeitworthwhile, choose a strong species
« Reply #34 on: January 30, 2004, 07:32:00 AM »
According to Paul Stamets' excellent and beautifully illustrated Psilocybin Mushrooms of the World (IMHO Paul is the Shulgin of Psilocybes) the strongest species are, in order:

Azurescens   2.5  :-[
Baeocystis    1.6
Bohemica      1.5
Semilanceata 1.4
Cubensis       1.3
Cyanescens   1.3 :)

This is not as simple as it seems though: There are 3 main psychoactives: (1)psilocybin, (2)psilocin (1 with OH instead of phosphoryloxy) and (3) baeocystin.

The effects of each is different and the different trips thereby had are often attributed to this, as well as the fact that the actual concentration in a single strain will vary considerably depedning on substrate, conditions etc.so the above scale is only a guide. In particular note that these figures are from dried specimens, and unless care is excesised in the drying process a lot of goodies can be lost. Personally I bioassay a carpophore before making assesments about the potency of a particular flush, because I have encountered so much variation that one is really making educated guesses until one tastes..... I'll say this much though: I have handled shrooms so strong that I could actually feel the effects from the tiny amount absorbed through my skin, and while that's generally restricted to Azuresens, I have found cyanescens strong enough to do this as well. Conversely, one patch were less than half as strong as what was normally expected. This is typical of wild strains, and applies less to cultivars.

It also varies greatly between these species as to the proportions of each alkaloid.
Azurescens, by far my favourite (very clean, powerful) has over 80% of it's actives as psilocybin, and the remainder equal portions of psilocin and baeocystin.
Semilanceata has about the same proportion of psilcybbin, almost no psilocin, but a significant amount of baeocystin present.
Cubensis has almost equal proportions of psilocybin and psilocin and almost no baeocystin at all.
Cyanescens has about 65% psilocybin, 30% psilocin and 5% baeocystin.

Older mushrooms can give much less agreeable onsets than fresh, new ones, and leave you more exhausted and feeling trashed.

For home cultivation there are other factors to consider, and one important one is the aggressiveness of the mycelium of the cultivated strain. Cyanescens is probably the most forgiving in terms of tolerance of conditions; once it gets going this stuff is fast if he strain isn't too old- strains lose their growth aggression after a while, though this is less prevalent with mixed strains, as apposed to pure cultures.

Primordia formation- the precursor to pinheads- is stimulated by slightly different means in differnt shrooms. In general the CO2 concentration needs to be kept lower along with that of other metabolite gases, so the airflow is increased, the humidity kept around 95% especially throughout the pinning, and possibly a temperature drop is needed as well.

Mycelium growth is generally done in darkness; some species of mushroom require light to stimulate primordia development, so a 12 hour lighted cycle may also be necessary.
If you're serious about this try and get hold of Paul Stamets and J.S. Chilton's Musgroom Cultivator (which has been mentioned before)- it is one of the best books on growing mushrooms, and specifically includes several Psilocybe species.

I guess yu already know this but the greatest enemy of mushroom cultivation is contamination: you need to get good with sterile technique and don't gamble with contaminated cultures- it could be anything, including some very nasty bacteria.

Psilocybin is so similar to serotonin (once described as the reality filter neurotransmitter, although that's probably more a mainstream bastardisation than anything) that there have been times when I have wondered if the brain works better on a very small dose.
Probably that's just me being crazy. :P  

There's a story I was going to omit but I can't help myself now. Tee hee.

There was this one time when I was posessed by the peculiar notion that I should test this theory I had on the efficacy of psilocybin as a neurotransmitter- I was feeling pretty lethargic after a fairly long day but had to do an all-nighter, and I knew I had to be finished before 7am the next morning, and I was honestly ready for bed. So I stopped by a favourite spot on the way in to this particular locus of employ and under the half-moon and partly cloudy sky, ingested 4 lovely, juicy cyanescens. And went on to build a LAN in record time whilst tripping off my dial. What the fuck was I thinking? I'm not sure.... "This will be a great story I can tell my kids" perhaps?

Don't do this at home. I didn't  ;)


paranoid

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While interesting, this is not exactly arcane...
« Reply #35 on: February 01, 2004, 01:08:00 AM »
While interesting, this is not exactly arcane material.  It also is not especially relevant to the discussion at hand, in particular considering that the debate here is focussing on the level of alkaloid production in mycelial cultures of P. cubensis.


adroit_synth

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Update
« Reply #36 on: February 03, 2004, 05:57:00 PM »
The PF cakes are colonizing now. :)  :)  :)  Eighty-five is far superior to room temp as far as germination and colonization speed go, however with no quantitative test SWIM have nothing to say of the affect temperature has on alkaloid production (thinking maybe it is like shocking a cannabis plant, makes more cannabinoids). Looking into simple chromatography methods, but there is not enough hours in the day to progress as fast as I would like. Thats about it for now, kinda busy elsewhere so SWIM is gonna fruit these out and get back to ya with some experiments for the next batch.


cublium

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Likl off-topic but...
« Reply #37 on: February 03, 2004, 10:30:00 PM »
Do spores spores stay unharmed by sub zero C temperatures?Cub ordered some from US and wants to try some shroom growing.

Urupeh

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temperature
« Reply #38 on: February 04, 2004, 10:56:00 AM »
Swim like to make adventures to colecting psilo-shrooms in all over his coutry, and he notice (apart from the individual strain diferences)that in the regions of lower temperature and in the colder times of the year, the mushrooms apear to be stronger, long time ago in his dreams swim cultivate on every grain he could find and in compost made whith horse shit, and in the colder months the same strain apear to be more powerful in the desired effects. (just to clarify swim in his weird dreams was living in a country of tropical and subtropical clima). By experience swim thing it is more easy and funny to collect than to grow when the interrest focus on extraction, but growing is better if the intend of the experience is to eat the raw (or dreid)mushrooms, because sanitary and higienics play an important role.

Mr_Bronson

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Spores and other stuff
« Reply #39 on: February 09, 2004, 06:19:00 PM »
cublium: received wisdom on the preservation of hydrated spores (spore syringes) seems to be: do not freeze them (refrigerate only). I haven't tried freezing, but bacterial spores survive - why not fungal?

aroit_synth: the liquid medium became contaminated: smelt ike yeast and was bubbling like crazy. Was using honey amongst other things, so maybe I could have made some hallucinogenic mead. Used it to fertilise the compost heap. Will try again this weekend with more H2O2. I'm careful with sterility: bad luck or bad procedure somewhere.