EP 160: The Power of Fungi | Paul Stamets

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We face in life, day in and day out. Hi, welcome to the Radical Responsibility podcast. This is your host, Fleet Moll. And today, wow, what an episode we have for you with Paul Stamets, one of the best known mycologists in the world. And maybe you've had the good fortune of watching the documentary film Fabulous Fungi. If you have, you're familiar with who he is and his work. He's identified countless new, previously unidentified fungi in the world, and in particular mushrooms and, and even in particular some of the psychoactive or psychedelic mushrooms that contain psilocybin. But his work is not just about the psychedelics, but about the whole world of mushrooms and fungi and, and the way that we've, you know, as human beings, there's this deep understanding that we've co evolved with fungi and that the mycelium, the networks underlying the world of fungi and mushrooms, in the same way that many of us have heard that groves of trees, in particular certain types of trees, are all connected under the earth in these vast systems that are somewhat similar to our own neural networks. The same with the fungi and the mycelium, the, that underlies how mushrooms and fungi flower in their visible form that we see. And you know, how all this has co evolved and you know, really it brings us back into relationship with the earth, literally, you know, part of the hubris of, I think, just how we evolved as human beings. With these incredible supercomputers on our shoulders, we naturally developed a kind of hubris and began to imagine ourselves completely separate from the natural world and then able to dominate the natural world, which has led us to the current situation we're in with human caused climate change and all the really existential threats therein. And so Paul Stamets is really bringing us back into relationship with the earth in such a beautiful way and he is absolutely brilliant and his research is phenomenal. So this is really one of the most fabulous and interesting conversations I've ever had. So please give it a listen. But Paul Stamets, welcome. Paul.

Well, glad to be here, Fleet.

Well, I'm excited to have this conversation today and we're really thrilled to have you be part of this summit with the amazing work that you've been doing for so long. I'm going to share your bio and then we'll jump into the conversation. Sound good?

Excellent. Great.

So, Paul Stamets is considered an industry leader in fungi production, habitat and medicinal use. He lectures extensively to deepen the understanding and respect for the fungal organisms that literally exist under every footstep taken on this path of life. The visionary leadership of Paul Stamets has led to significant breakthroughs revealing the power and potential of beneficial mushrooms and importantly, mushroom mycelium. Some of the research by Paul and his team have led to innovative mycological solutions, including the endless potential for the use of fungi in everything from water filtration, mycofiltration and ecological rehabilitation, mycoremediation, and to harnessing the power of beneficial mushroom mycelium in the form of supplements to support human and planetary health. Notably, he has partnered with the Department of Entomology at Washington State University to use mushroom mycelium based extract to help combat colony collapse disorder in bee populations. Yeah, hard to know where to start here, maybe with this summit. Obviously, the world of psychedelic assisted therapy involves both traditional plant medicines as well as.

Drugs or medicines that have been synthesized from plants.

And one of those that's.

Hopefully on its way to being rescheduled, that's in FDA clinical trials now, is psilocybin from the psilocybin mushroom. And so you could say there's this world of, you know, the emerging clinical world that shows so much promise to treat, really hard to treat, human disorders of depression, anxiety, ptsd, addictions and so forth. And surrounding that, there's the traditional plant medicine world that's been around for millennia. There's this kind of renaissance in psychedelics going on, as we know, and then much broader than all that is the whole world of mushrooms and fungi. So maybe we can start there with your interest in that and its relationship to humanity and our sustainability on this planet, and then maybe we'll work our way forward into psilocybin mushrooms in particular and the topics of this summit. Does that sound workable?

Yeah, I think we can weave an interesting story. There's some interesting timelines here that are sort of fabrics of my life and how I've come to this point in time. So I'm a mycologist. That means I study fungi. I've been doing this for a long time. I published my first book on psilocybin mushrooms in 1978. Psilocybe mushrooms and their allies. By my count, I've had 44 years of interest and specialization in this subject. I was originally attracted to mushrooms because of our culinary abilities and would find chanterelles, etc. But I had a real strong interest in psilocybin but before I get into psilocybin, let me give the listeners somewhat of a background.

So, you know, the Big bang happened at 13.8 billion years ago. The earth formed 4.5, 3.8 billion years ago was the example we have right now in the fossil record is called luca, the last common universal organism that we shared. And then from luca, the single celled organism then began to become multicellular. And 2.4 billion years ago.

Is the evidence of the first multicellular organism is found in lava beds in South Africa. And it looks just like mycelium. Filamentous, cobwebby mycelium. If you haven't seen mycelium, just go outside after this interview. Find any log or stick on the ground. It's been there for a few months. Tip it over. There's mycelium everywhere, under every footstep you take estimated up to 8 miles per cubic inch. This, I mean, this is a fabric of cells that's the foundation of the ecosystem. So we go forward from 2.4 billion years ago to 650 million years ago, and that's when fungi gave birth to animals.

We are descendants of fungi. That is really important to keep into context. The fungi went the underground route, externally digesting its nutrients. We went to this cellular route where we encapsulated nutrients within basically a stomach and internally digest our nutrients. Mycelium externally digests nutrients. Animals internally digest those nutrients. This dance between fungi and animals is very elaborate because they also create guilds of microorganisms, bacteria in particular, in some cases other fungi. These communities that are created are the basis of healthy ecosystems, because the fungi have in their vested interest, obviously their own progeny, survival. So they'll create guilds and ecosystems of sufficient complexity to give rise to the flora, to the plants that create the debris fields that feed the mycelium. That ensures the mycelium can then reproduce in the form of mushrooms that produce spores. Mushrooms are oftentimes called. They're called fruit bodies. Like an apple is to the roots of a tree, mushrooms are to the roots or mycelium from which it springs. These mycelial membranes, extraordinarily complicated, sensitive. Every time you take a footstep in nature. I've been saying this for years. The mycelium knows you're there, it wakes up. And humans have an unfortunate, perhaps characteristic of creating the biggest debris fields of any organism on this planet. What's so interesting is the psilocybin mushrooms in particular, and other sapropitic mushrooms follow the debris fields of human footsteps. And human Activities, chipping wood, building houses, building trails. And so with that concept in mind, I pursued this subject a lot. My older brother John went to Yale and I grew up in a small town in Ohio. And John came back from Yale with a textbook called Altered States of Consciousness by Charles Tart. You may know this from University of California, Davis. And my brother had just gone down to Mexico in South America, came back with amazing stories about psilocybin mushrooms and, and his experiences there. And so he had this book. So I borrowed this book from him and John lent it to me for two weeks and I got, I read it voraciously and, and my friend Ryan borrowed, wanted to borrow the book and I said, okay, but I have to give it back to my brother John. So time went on and pretty soon John was asking me, where's the book? It's in my textbook at Yale, I need to bring it back. And I pressured my friend who kept on avoiding the subject and finally he looked at me and said, I can't give you the book back. My father found it and burned it. Your father burned my brother's book? You know, I couldn't believe it, but his father is very authoritarian, very anti altered states of consciousness, obviously, I think epitomizes the fact that in many cultures around the world, the users of sacraments and psilocybin and other psychoactive substances was often ostracized. And moreover, psilocybin mushrooms are a unique sacrament in that they're so ephemeral, they're so short lived seen, they're only seen for four or five days and they're rot. So you have to go, what was that thing I saw a year ago? Now when you see ayahuasca or you see peyote or other subs, other plant medicines, you're in contact with them for months, years. So you have a familiarity factor. But something that's so powerful but so ephemeral recedes in your memory. It's really a subset of the cognoscente, the subset of shamans and people who are very tuned into the ecosystem, who are the specialists being able to identify these mushrooms safely because there are many poisonous, deadly poisonous mushrooms out there.

Some of these are very difficult to identify. But the good news is there's over 116 psilocybin active species identified so far in the world. Over 116 spanning all continents. And I think it's a bridge across cultures and continents and over time. So in European history, North African history, and obviously in the history of Mesoamerica and The Mass Effect shaman Maria Sivino, who gets huge amounts of credit for generously and kindly.

Supporting R. Gordon Watson on the rediscovery. I mean, they already discovered this, but R. Gordon Watson was a new kid on the block, so to speak, is Valentina, his wife, Tina Watson, who is a Russian doctor who was skilled in mycology and actually taught R. Gordon Watson and brought him into the field of mycology. So, but Maria Sabina, they use one species in particular, and that is a Psilocybe azitocorum and not Psilocybe cubensis. 99 plus percent of the people, at least in the United States, are using Psilocybe convensis because of truffles. They're called truffles. They're actually sporotia of a species called Psilocybe mexicana or tampinesis in Europe and Holland in particular, because of a legal loophole, that mushroom is also in common use. But the fact that 99% of the people are not using psilocybe as a decorum just shows you that the discovery. And why not? Why wouldn't people in their own regions discover these psilocybin mushrooms, especially Lastoscopic cubensis, which, if you've not collected it in Louisiana, Texas, or in India or in Thailand, all over the world. This thing's called golden tops because they are golden. They can get this big in size. You can see them from hundreds of feet away. This is not something that is invisible. It's very, very easy to spot these from a distance. And because the bluing reaction on the stem and the dark sport colors, that pretty much makes that species particularly easy to identify. And it tends to grow for a longer period of time. They can pop up and they rot in four or five days, but you might get several flushes, but over a season, and because they're pastoral, it's easier to find mushrooms in a pasture than it is in a dense woods. So for all those reasons, Psilocybe cibensis, which is easily grown Psilocybe as a decorum, is not easy to grow. I don't know if anyone has grown it indoors, other than one or two examples in a laboratory, but no one's ever grown this to scale. So it's interesting to me that there is so many cultures with such a deep history and so many species of psilocybin mushrooms growing around the world.

And when they're doing, do you know, for the clinical trials, if they're. I don't know whether they're using a synthetic porous Psilocybin or whether they're using powder that's in, in capsules, I know they're using capsules.

There's a big disconnect. And I've known Roland Griffiths for a long time. In 1997 I think he reached out to me to grow psilocybin mushrooms for his clinical studies at Johns Hopkins. And if you go to clinicaltrials.gov there's over 101 clinical trials registered for using psilocybin@clinicaltrials.gov and yet virtually all these studies until 2 or 3 just recently, over 95% of these studies are all using psilocybin the molecule. Yet there's a giant divide, a chasm between the scientific, clinical, therapeutic research using the molecule, which is disconnected because virtually no one out there.

In the citizen science realm is using the molecule. They're all using psilocybin mushrooms. And so this is where we have seen tremendous evidence of the entourage effect of the psilocybin triptamine analogs that enhance neurogenesis, neuroplasticity, neurogeneration. And that's much of my research has been focusing on that. So we think the entourage effect of these other triptamines that are naturally co occurring with psilocybin. Psilocybin is a pro drug, I think most people know, for psilocin dephosphorylate. Psilocin docks with your five HT2A receptors and other receptors, but psilocybin doesn't make it into your bloodstream typically. So that's where we think that the natural form offers this, this effect that I think is going to be more beneficial. In fact, we have really strong evidence that it is more beneficial. But we're leading towards clinical trials. And as you may have know, we've published two papers in Nature this past year. One November 28th on microdosing and another one on June 30th. So that's my first book. In 1978, my brother John. So the first conferences we did, this is one of the conferences that I organized. 1979, I did 40 years of, actually 32 years of conferences on psilocybin mushrooms. So I want to point out just a few other articles here. What's really interesting is that only one psychedelic was associated with a reduction in opioid use disorder. That was psilocybin, not ketamine, not lsd, nothing else. This is the most common one that's being grown. You can see it's growing there on elephant dung in India, easily cultivated. We launched a citizen scientist initiative where users could self report as at microdose me. We have over 20,000 people that are in this study right now. We published Our first article November 18th.

Basically is a qualitative study. Your age, your sex, your sexual preference, your income, your motivation. There was a strong correlation to motivations to reduce anxiety and depression. But I also popularized a stack combining sulfide mushrooms, lion's mane and niacin, nicotinic acid, the flushing form. Now there's a lot of evidence of lion's mane mushrooms, the erinacenes. They're a molecule that regenerates myelin on the, on the sheath of axons. I populate a website for physicians and researchers called mushroomreferences.com so you can look up the four clinical trials on lion's mane related to dementia and potentially putatively Alzheimer's. And then I chose niacin because psilocybin is a vasoconstrictor, niacin is a vasodilate. So I thought, well, to counteract vasoconstriction, more psilocybin being channeled to the neurons will be beneficial. And also you take high doses of nicotinic acid, then you feel itchy. So I knew it was stimulating the nerve endings. And oftentimes neuropathies present themselves as a deadening of the fingertips and the toes. But moreover, I also wanted to create the ant abuse for psilocybin, like ant abuse is the alcohol. So microdosing could be over the counter, potentially, or less regulatory hurdles. Because a microdose by definition means non intoxicating, no intoxicating effect. So by having 50 milligrams of niacin and 1/10 of a gram of Slosby cabensis. Now, 1 gram of Slosby cabensis is 10 milligrams, 10 milligrams is a liftoff dose. Most of the studies are 25 to 40 milligrams. Those are heroic therapeutic doses. So 1 milligram, 1/10 of the liftoff dose, 10 milligrams that correlates to 110 of a gram of Slosby cabensis. So the idea was with 110 equivalent of Slosby convensis or 1 milligram stacked with niacin and lion's mane, this would be sub intoxication. And I came up with this idea in 2014, 2015. So we had I think 8,000 people in this study. Initially the stack became very popular.

And just go forward, you probably have seen this study with alcohol use disorder and substantial reduction in binge drinking with people using alcohol. So in our study and this relates to alcohol use disorder and opioid use disorder. This just gives you those numbers, but it shows you that 74% of the respondents were between 1/10 of a gram of psilocybin to 1/3. That's 1 milligram to 3 milligrams equivalency of psilocybin. So we published our second paper that was in Nature Scientific Reports and as you know about, I think 7% of the articles submitted to Nature get published. So it's very, very critically peer reviewed. We found a substantial reduction with 8,000 participants in this case when they take the stock in reducing depression and anxiety. But those are subjective and subjectivity is a huge issue And I'm not a psychiatrist, but the more I talk to psychiatrists, it's such a very complicated field of medicine that has so many other co factors it's very hard to disambiguate. So in our test we had a psychomotor test because I wanted to say, well, all this criticism about depression and expectancy and the placebo effect and make note with the observational study, there's no placebo involved. These are people self reporting. So the finger tap test is how many times you can tap your two fingers in 10 seconds, is a test that's used for Alzheimer's, dementia, traumatic brain injury. Extremely well known many of you listeners. If you've had a head injury, you've had the tap test. You know, people with Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, unfortunately is a slope to decreasing taps. You can tap a lot more when you're in 20s and obviously in your 80s. It's an agility that's declining due to neurodegeneration. This is what we found and we published, which was so astonishing is that we got one signal that was outside of subjectivity. This is in the 55 plus year olds with a stack compared to psilocybin in any other form combined with chocolate or other substances. Uniquely the stock. This was published in Nature. The increase in tapping went from 48 to 68, 69 taps in 30 days with a P value of significance of 0.004. Now in context that means there's 1 and 250th of a chance that that's just random noise that will account for that. So we think we have found a psychomotor benefit that's related to neurogeneration. So when we saw this data and my seven co authors, they wouldn't show me this data, I had no peak underneath the covers. The data they Thought was too good to be true. So they Acid tested it three ways and it was 0.001. It went to 0.004. A minor adjustment. But this has been published, you know, June 30th of this year in Nature. And so when I got these results back about a year, a year and a half ago, I thought, okay, what's the mechanisms of action? So we started looking at MAP kinases. These are protein receptors which when they're activated or docked with psilocin or biocystin, nor biocystin, other tryptamines activate nerves to regrow. So tracking nerve growth factors, you're probably well familiar with that. But BDNF is a brain derived neurotropic factor. It's in the hippocampus, it's called tract B's. The hippocampus is where newborn neurons are stimulated from forming from stem cells. This is a big deal. Thought in age that you couldn't grow any more new nerve cells.

We started this synergy testing. This is all done at Eurofins, which is a multi billion dollar laboratory that tests medicines preclinically. And you can see a little bit of liftoff with track A there with psilocin and niacin. That's predicted some the red in the blue, you put the stack together and there's massive synergy between niacin and psilocin. And then we did it at a higher doses. Now we're in that three, that one to 10 milligram range, which I always said was a microdose. 10 milligrams is a liftoff dose. So we saw that a dose response occurrence. And then we started looking at combining lion's mane, psilocin and niacin. And this is where it's an extraordinary result. None of these had any activity at this concentration. And the concentration you see here is really, really low. For Psilocin it's 0.04 milligrams where as I mentioned, 1 milligram is considered microdose. So even at these dilute amounts there is no activity in activating these protein receptors for neurogenesis with either of those components. But together there is synergy, a massive amount of synergy. Then of course track B, what I'm most excited about. And so in this case we have psilocin and niacin, no activity stimulating track B in the hippocampus for BDNF together, massive synergy. Now this has also been implicated for neuroplasticity, depression and physical activity. When I'm looking for the mechanisms of action or the modes of action. What can explain this increase in 55 plus year olds? Now obviously with the background of neurodegeneration, age related you can see signal when you're young, at your prime, it's really hard to see the signal. It makes sense that we would choose an aging population so we could see in the background by the contrast. So we then also have this again 20 times effect with track Cs. The point is, across the neurological receptor landscape we have an entourage effect. And when I show this thing, it's called maximum calculable value. It's when the three components have no activity, but in combination they have massive activity. We have more than 50 examples of maximum calculable values with norsilocin, bayocystin, Nora, biocystin. And when you take psilocybin mushrooms, you're benefiting from all those combinations. When you take psilocybin by itself it goes to psilocin, which as you can see has very little activity. There's one receptor that's slightly activated, but nothing even close to what the synergy that you see here. So this entourage effect of the natural form of these other tryptamines in combination with these lion's mane derivatives, erinacenes is one of them. And niacin is extraordinary. I point this out because. And then we also activate anti inflammatory cytokines, interleukin tens. We have not only neurogenesis but we have neuro anti inflammation. Now we need to prove this clinically but there are several pillars of evidence here. We have the TAP test and you can't explain. I mean I have never heard anyone being able to explain the TAP test in 55 plus year olds with a stock as being placebo or expectancy. This is a psychomotor test and six regions of your brain, I actually studied this, are involved in tapping your fingers. You see your fingers, you ideate, you send a signal, you begin to tap your fingers. It goes back into your brain as a feedback loop, you develop a cadence.

There's a lot of parts of the brain are involved in this. This is why I think this entourage effect, activating this wide diverse set of neuroreceptors is really quite exciting. We have that psychomotor test, we have the MAP kinase data that you see here. That's pretty exciting. And then we grew the neurons, brain neurons out in petri dishes and we then spiked them with exposure of these compounds. And we also saw the synergistic entourage effect way above the added expected effect of the stack of three substances. So anyhow, I just thought that would be, you know, help to frame the conversation here that we are planning clinical studies. But the entourage effect, both of the psilocybin analogs and both in combination with niacin and lion's mane, is important. Now of note, if you go to clinicaltrials.gov type in psilocybin, you'll see 101. Maybe there's more now from last week. Clinical studies registered type in niacin as a secondary search term. You'll see 11 clinical studies, including Johns Hopkins, including Yale, including other.

King's College in the uk, et cetera. They use niacin as the active placebo control opposite psilocybin. They went 180 degrees away from what I'm doing. Moreover, I've talked to the clinicians. A placebo is supposed to give you true background comparisons. Every clinician I talk to in 20 minutes, every one of those patients know they took niacin. They feel hot, they're itchy, and moreover, you're trying to treat depression. What's the ethical responsibility of the clinicians increasing depression by tricking the patients? And they're taking niacin now, they thought they were going to get psilocybin or hoped they would. And now you've exacerbated the degree of depression by disappointing them that they took a placebo. So there's a whole bunch of problems with the clinical studies that are being published right now. It boggles our minds, those of us in the microdose community as scientists, because all the microdose studies that have come out, they're using a half a gram of psilocybin vensis.

And they use it two weeks apart. These are liftoff doses. People know what they're getting because they can feel it. So it is again, a microdose is a non intoxicating dose. You don't feel anything. What you do notice colors are brighter, your mood is better.

You'Re more optimistic and you're a nicer person. And I think psilocybin makes nicer people.

So fascinating and I'm curious. So a couple of lines of question. You can say where you want to go. One will be, you know, what's it going to take to take it from this kind of research you've been doing into clinical research. Two is the direction with the microdosing kind of heading in the direction of eventually legal supplements that people could take on a regular basis.

Or.

And then three, you know, what's the relationship between that kind of research and the benefit of psilocybin in these combinations with your stack and so on, as opposed to the kind of therapeutic use of psilocybin or other psychedelics where people are, you know, taking those heroic doses and perhaps having experiences which allow them to surface and heal traumas, to witness them from a, a different place in which there, there is a real change of mind, a change of consciousness and real healing. So is there any relation, are these just two different, completely different lines of research, two different possible benefits in the world?

So it's a great question and I've been thinking about this a lot now. There is a spectrum, everyone is in a spectrum of mental challenges, mental illness, et cetera. The psychiatrist doctors see sick people so that pre selection of their client base is they're coming to you because you are a doctor. They have a problem that needs medical attention. I absolutely agree with all the psychiatrists and clinicians and physicians out there that psilocybin assisted therapy makes a big difference. For those people highly traumatized or highly challenged by a psychiatric illness going to a psychiatrist, they need help.

But all of us have a little voice in our heads. A lot of us don't need to go to a psychiatrist, but we have some unresolved issues. We can become our own psychiatrist internally to reconcile a lot of these issues without having to go to a clinic. Now that's just the way it is, folks. I mean, there are a lot of healthy, normal people out there who have minor issues who can resolve those issues through their own psilocybin news. Absolutely true. With alcoholics, opioid addicts, with people suffering from ptsd, et cetera. Of course, therapy helps far better. But the interesting narrative happening in Canada where I am now is the popularity of having a large therapeutic dose with a therapist and then microdosing. And this comes from Roland Griffiths, did a great study in one of his first studies, when they checked with patients 14 months later, 70% of the patients got great benefit, 30% of people did not, they didn't like it. But 14 months later, the very act of re remembering that positive experience was therapeutically beneficial. Well, what happens when you're re remembering you're activating neurological pathways that are resident from the experience that you had 14 months earlier. So it dawned on us and dawned on many of these thought leaders involved deeply in this field, combining macrodosing with microdosing. In the same way that microdosing then re stimulates the neurological pathways that became resonant or when that switch was turned on, when you have A new series of pathways to work with. By revisiting that, you restimulate those so they become more resonant and more dominant for your progressive healing. So I really think the combination of both is appropriate. I think that therapeutically assisted high doses psilocybin is absolutely essential for those people who are in grief, who are challenged, who have this need. But again, I'll just repeat this for emphasis. Psychiatrists see people who are sick. Psychiatrists and lots of people are not seeing psychiatry who are sick, I admit that. But a lot of people out there are healthy, normal adults and we all have some sort of trauma in our lives, but they don't raise to the level that you need. You know, pay thousands of dollars for a therapist when you can internally self heal with the right set and setting, with the right guide. All these other things added on. The important communication I'm presenting here is that psilocybin should be available for the commons, it should not be commercialized where it takes $6,000 for a weekend treatment and that's the only opportunity. So the declanization and legalization of psilocybin. There's 21 states now that have bills or ballots that have been looked upon or ruled upon for the decolonization and legalization of therapeutic use. 21 states in the United States. That's a phenomenal number. So the tide is changing very rapidly. But I see this.

The bottom line here. For me and any government official watching this, please take note. Psilocybin reduces crime. Psilocybin reduces partner partner violence. It's been massive studies with DSHS, over 200,000 inmates. Psilocybin was statistically significantly related to the reduction in burglary, larceny, theft and violent crime. Psilocybin makes better citizens. Psilocybin makes more law abiding citizens. Think about the savings to society in reducing crime, addiction, et cetera. This is a paradigm shifting medicine. And Roland Griffiths and his colleagues just published an article not to over promise psilocybin. That's what of course all scientists, when the cat, you know, the genie's out of the bottle and everyone's so popular they're going to say oh my gosh, we're over promising, we may under deliver. So it's just natural for scientists to say hold back. Everyone's promising this, we don't know it yet but at the end of the article it says but future clinical studies will determine the positive effects of psilocybin therapy. Yes, that's true. It's good for scientists to cover themselves. But the preponderance of evidence that's accumulating really month to month is all steering towards this as being one of the greatest societal medicines that has ever been discovered. And it has a long history going back thousands of years.

So I like the way you described it that we're all kind of on this spectrum of mental challenges and maybe even more so in modern life, because modern life has gotten exceedingly more challenging in so many ways.

But for many of us it may not rise to the level where we need to be in a, in a therapeutic setting, under medical care and so forth. But are there ways that we can take care of ourselves and heal ourselves? So in that vision of microdosing and decriminalization or legalization, and where this could become perhaps a supplement that could be available to people.

Then.

Is it a regular maintenance, kind of like you mentioned, improved mood.

You know, becoming nicer people? Basically, basically some, some neurological benefits that improve mood and behavior and so forth.

Are those sustained in any way? I mean, it seems like some, some of the experiences people have with, you know, major doses of plant medicines and psychedelic drugs create changes of consciousness. Now of course you can have amazing experiences, as many of us did of my generation, your generation, back in the 60s and 70s, we didn't suddenly become necessarily super nice people, even though we thought we had, you know, seen the divine. But, but still there's a change of consciousness. Perhaps it really did change how we saw the world and how we relate to the world. Certainly the connection with inter being interconnection and realizing that we, we don't live in an inanimate world that's there for us to exploit.

And so again, I'm thinking of what, what could be really a life changing kind of experience versus is this a supplement that you would take? And as long as you keep taking it, you're going to have these benefits. But if you stop taking it, the benefits would wane over time.

I have two answers.

Not that that would be a deal breaker at all. I'm just curious.

Well, I see health and disease and a multifactorial equation. We have coefficient factors, multipliers strung together. The other side of the equation is health or disease. Well, the big super F of x co factor here is age. We all suffer from neurodegeneration in age. I don't think anyone will dispute that. So given the fact that neurodegenerative benefits are being seen putatively, again have to be studied and approved clinically and approved by the fda, all those caveats. This is preclinical it just speaks to the fact that as your neurodegeneration progresses in age, we may be able to ameliorate that and indeed change that.

So when you think about psychomotor skills, think about a piano player, think about a guitar player, think about a violinist, think of anybody doing computer work with their fingers. These are all digitally active exercises that are directly related to psychomotor skills and directly related to the TAP test. My answer to you initially would be that, yes, as a nootropic vitamin, this something could be helpful to slow the progression of neurodegeneration across the landscape. May not be the solution. It may increase intelligence, which is my belief. I believe psilocybin makes you smarter. I hope that's the case or makes you think you're smarter. But the other answer to the question on this website that I populate, mushroomreferences.com, the four clinical studies, two of them showed when you're taking the lion's mane, the benefit for lion's mane only.

With mildly cognitive decline patients. This is, I think, done in Japan and also in Taiwan. Good studies, small clinical ones, but they showed that when the patients stopped taking the lion's domain, they regressed back to their progression, unfortunately, to less cognitive ability. That speaks to the fact that we're always nature's a numbers game. So is health time variable is the F of X that affects this formula. And so my answer, just hypothetically, is that the repeated use of this over time would benefit you more than not. Again, we have to prove this clinically with controlled studies, but that's what we're planning to do. We have a Parkinson's study that we're designing for 2023, because that is one that we think has a tremendous unmet need and something that we can address.

Well, and that seems like such important research to address.

The really huge challenge we have societally now with various forms of dementia and Parkinson's and Alzheimer's and so forth. I know there's a lot of research. There are gene editing research, gene replacement, there's stem cell research going into. And there's a lot of. A lot of researchers feel like they're really starting to understand the aging process and what in the epigenetic factors that turn off what will keep the mitochondria producing energy at the cellular level and what begins to diminish that. And so they're coming at this from a lot of angles. And it really does. There's a lot of people speaking before, you know, the idea of the Fountain of youth was always kind of a, you know, it felt like a cul de sac of some kind of avoidance or something. But now there are a lot of people postulating there's no reason why people won't be living to 125, 130, 150 years. Whether that's desirable or societally, how we're going to deal with that, who knows. But nonetheless, they do seem to be getting into the roots of aging at the southern level. And so I'm curious about if there's any cross fertilization between those lines of research and the research that you're speaking of in the kind of anti aging world.

Oh, absolutely, because the anti inflammatory properties of these fungi have been very well established and that's what a lot of our research is focusing on, albeit cellular assays at this point in time. But we see cell signaling, Interleukin 10s, Interleukin 1ras. These are anti inflammatory cytokines. So there is a stimulation when you, as you know, when you get cut or you have an injury, you have cell regrowth, but co occurs with inflammation. So how can you have cell regrowth and you buffer the inflammatory response? Those are two thoughts are thought to be somewhat in contradiction medically, but this is where these mushroom substances offer some unique opportunities for exploration. Looking at the neurogenerative combined with the neuro anti inflammatory properties. So this is something that we have a particularly strong interest in. In January to March we have a major announcement. Once it is published and you and I can revisit this conversation then.

Well, that's great and I look forward to that. So you're on the pathway then to take this into randomized clinical controlled trials that is that a pathway that doors still need to be open or is that a pathway you're very much on at this point?

No, we're working with four or five institutions right now on collaborations. So you know.

I've been in stealth mode. Even though I'm out there a lot.

I've been very quiet. I talk about the research, but I don't talk about my future plans much. But these plans will be noted by everybody who's a stakeholder in this scene soon enough.

I have a long history in the martial arts. The aikido approach has always been the best. Twitter wars are frankly embarrassing folks. I mean, I don't know what is going on with these scientists that get involved in Twitter wars when it can be so congenial. Instead they throw spirits at each other and it's just really, I Think it speaks to the worst of the male ego in most cases. Most all these cases that I know is egotistical men throwing spears at each other. I think they should take more psilocybin.

Well, we need to reconnect this whole world of psychedelic assisted therapy with the plant medicine world and the traditional cultures and perhaps with the mycelium altogether. So that's another question I have for you is.

You know, maybe taking this and it's been really fascinating to hear about the research that's been going on and really encouraging and that you're moving forward with that. So maybe stepping out of the research realm for a moment and back into.

You know, I don't know whether it's depth biology or the spiritual realm, but the relationship between the mycelium fungi and human beings. It would seem like there's some full circle thing happening here that is to our benefit. And it would seem like there's something deeper going on. I mean, there's going to be what we can measure in test tubes and clinical trials and brain scans, but it seems like maybe there's something deeper going on relationally at the level of inner being or something like that. Curious as to your thoughts about that.

Well, this is where I think science and spirituality is converging. I mean, how can you not feel spiritual looking at the, the incredible photographs of new galaxies and, and how expansive the universe is and, and all the light coming in as a coincidence in time of us just being here, seeing things hundreds of millions of years ago. I mean it's, it brings up all these, these incredible subjects and I think this is where I can't be fired. I'm self employed. I don't have to worry about tenure. So I can push the envelope far further than academics who have to be a lot more circumspect. But every great inventor in history has always faced pushback from conventional wisdom. By definition, innovators are in the minority. It's the minority of the population. And this is why I think ethnic biodiversity and also diversity of opinion is a fertile milieu for paradigm shifting discoveries. I say that as a preface because I believe this is a window into a one giant consciousness of which we all are. Part of my last deep psychedelic journey. I received one word in my other psychedelic journeys. They are oftentimes. Paul, Be an eco warrior. Stand up for the planet.

You can do it.

We're depending upon you. You know, your species needs to wake up. You're causing so much damage. You know, lead come with solutions. That's where most of my Ideas have come from some of these, from tripping. You call it therapy, I call it tripping. But the one word that came to me from my last experience, which was totally profound to me, and I was going, wow, what a blessing that I just got a one word synopsis. And the word was existence. We always exist. Our atoms always exist. We are reformulated right now in the presence of a Homo sapiens, a species. But our atoms were before us, our atoms will follow us. The fact that we all are part of this one giant molecular universe and our insights in psilocybin give us a window into a greater understanding of consciousness beyond ourselves. I see science and spirituality converging. I think it's at a time critical when we need to invent new solutions to get us out of this huge problem that we've created. And all those people who died of climate change, I think after the summer, most of them have sort of changed their attitude, like, oh, maybe humans do affect climate change. Well, no shit, Sherlock. You know, you cut down a forest, it gets hotter, right? I mean, it's unfortunate. It distresses me that we have to have these kindergarten like discussions that holds back the progression of science. So we need innovators, we need thought leaders who need people pushing the envelope. We need people who take the risk of failure for their ideas because we only need a few of those ideas to work that can save hundreds of millions of lives. It's worth taking that risk. That's where in academia, unfortunately, many of the academics I know privately tell me they're envious of me because I'm not shackled. I have the freedom. And I had a professor, Dr. Michael Bug, who was greatly entertained by my ideas, but he never humiliated me. Not a single time did he make fun of me when I was wrong. He made fun with me, he laughed with me, but I never felt shamed. And I know so many academics that are shamed by their superiors or the old guard who are to feel disruptive by someone eager to express a new idea. And they go, no, I looked at that, that didn't work. Well, always question authority. And if authority responds with humor, grace, information, and creates a dialogue, well, that nexus that no crossing could be fertile for new ideas. And so I think psilocybin is fantastic for creativity, community interrelationships, amending cultural and racial bridges that we so desperately need.

You know, and everything you were pointing to in talking about that interconnectedness and the convergence of science and spirituality.

And, you know, unmistakably the images coming back from the Webb Telescope I mean, who could not be in awe of seeing those? And it's also clearly obvious that this is all intelligence, it's all intelligent and it's all intelligence. And, and I would assume you'd say the thing, same thing about the mycelium. And.

I would assume there might even be some micro macro, I don't know which is the macro. I suppose looking at the Webb telescope's gotta be the macro. But even looking at those patterns and then looking at the patterns that you find in mycelium, I'm curious if there's any of the kind of fractal patterns in mycelium that show up throughout nature. But there's clearly a relationship between all.

Of this, I've been talking about this for 30 years and my book Mycelium running in 2005. I, I drew. It's not just a metaphor, it's a structural constant, is that networks survive better than individuals. And so neurons, mycelium, the computer Internet with all the nodes are crossing, you know, and the organization of matter in the universe, dark matter, you know, as well as, as planets, all of these form networks. And so I believe single cells, matter begets life, life is single cells. Cells become multicellular, they branch and when they start branching and forking, if there is an assault here on this branch, it doesn't harm the whole organism. It has elasticity for evolution and adaptation. So these network like designs not only are self evident, but they're self perpetuating and evolutionary successful because of their resiliency and adaptivity. And that's why we have new pathways of being able to think. With psilocybin, we're breaking addiction. We're not wired with one neuron from A to B. And this neuroplasticity which I'm so excited about, and this is what we're seeing with the entourage effect, is activating not only new neurons, more branching neurons, more opportunities for synapses and more opportunities for neuroplasticity. There's alternative routes for you to solve problems that you did not have before because they were not activated or they've been resident but you were not aware of it. I think that this is going to raise our consciousness in a huge way. I'll reiterate this. Psilocybin reduces crime.

What government official does not want to reduce crime? I don't think any, unless maybe there's a few. But maybe they need psilocybin therapy.

I'm sorry.

Yeah.

If you're getting elected with tough on crime politicking, maybe not having crime wouldn't work out so well. So.

My last question. This has been absolutely fascinating. I'm so happy to bring your voice into this summit and hopefully to create a lot of conversation and dialogue from all the different perspectives that we're representing here, including yours, which is a very important one and a very broad one.

In terms of.

This stack that you've developed becoming a nutraceutical or a supplement of some kind and the possible benefits of that. I'm curious whether there's research going on as well in terms of prevention of dementia as well as enhancement of the quality of life, longevity, neurogenesis, neuroplasticity. We also know that things like exercise, mindfulness, mind training, plant based diet, there's so many things that can contribute to that. So I'm wondering if there's any research going on in terms of a very holistic, integrated approach to all this, which these kind of supplements would be one part.

Great question and I'm a huge shout out to Dr. Andrew Weil, University of Arizona School of Integrative Medicine, now the Weil Center. I'm one of the keynote speakers with him in January in Tucson. I advise physicians in particular, if you want to attend, please attend. But this fits in perfectly with the Weill philosophy also espoused by others, you know, Deepak Chopra, Dean Ornish. But you know, Andy really is way out front and has been out front, I think, a long time. And, and this fits it perfectly as a puzzle piece in the integrative medicine landscape that just activates. So what I think this is a catalyst. And exercise, meditation, all that stuff. When you are happier, you spread happiness and your immune system is upregulated. When you are depressed, it's been shown you're actually immunologically depressed and you depress other people around you. So the pebbles in a pond. When you throw a psilocybin pebble into the social pond of consciousness, you spread goodwill that reverberates. That's why we're having this conversation.

Absolutely. Well, thank you so much. This has been absolutely fascinating and we appreciate your work so much and that you were able to make time to be part of this summit that we could connect with you there on a remote island in British Columbia. And it all worked out. So thank you so much and wish you the best with your work and we will have that next conversation after your next research comes out.

Yeah, thank you, Fleet. Just a call out to everybody out there. Please be nicer, more cordial and kinder to each other. We all are motivated by the same end goal is to improve mental health and physical health. So let's not get side railed by egotistical rants. Let them wash off you and extend a hand to friendship and kindness. I think we'll all be better because of it. Thank you.

Thank you.

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