Tag Archive for: magic

psilocybin magic truffles

One of the most important factors leading to a beneficial magic truffle session is finding a dosage that is well calibrated to your intention. I would argue that it is of equal importance to the set and setting when it comes to a positive outcome.

As magic truffles are kinda new in the psychedelic world compared to classic magic mushrooms, the doses are not well understood.

Below, I’ll share my calculations to match the doses of synthetic psilocybin used in 4 major and influential studies to the corresponding dose of magic truffles. Synthetic psilocybin is easy to measure and dose compared to raw mushrooms, and is therefore used exclusively in clinical trials. Below, I share my calculations.

psilocybin magic truffles

Doses Used In Clinical Research

1. Psilocybin-occasioned mystical-type experience

Psilocybin-occasioned mystical-type experience in combination with meditation and other spiritual practices produces enduring positive changes in psychological functioning and in trait measures of prosocial attitudes and behaviors – Roland R. Griffiths, Matthew W. Johnson, William A. Richards, Brian D. Richards, Robert Jesse, Katherine A. MacLean, Frederick S. Barrett, Mary P. Cosimano, and Maggie A. Klinedinst (2018)

Participants tripped twice, with a month between each session, with:
(1) high dose of 20 mg
(2) high dose of 30 mg
Doses calculated per 70kg bodyweight.

Study paper

2. Psilocybin with psychological support for treatment-resistant depression

Psilocybin with psychological support for treatment-resistant depression: an open-label feasibility study – Robin L. Carhart-Harris, Mark Bolstridge, James Rucker, Camilla M.J. Day, David Erritzoe, Mendel Kaelen, Michael Bloomfield, James A Rickard, Ben Forbes, Amanda Feilding, David Taylor, Steve Pilling, Valerie H. Curran, David J. Nutt (2016)

Participants tripped twice, with a week between each session:
(1) low dose of 10 mg
(2) high dose of 25 mg
Doses regardless of bodyweight.

Study paper

3. Psilocybin produces substantial and sustained decreases in depression and anxiety in patients with life-threatening cancer

Psilocybin produces substantial and sustained decreases in depression and anxiety in patients with life-threatening cancer: A randomized double-blind trial – Roland R. Griffiths, Matthew W. Johnson, Michael A. Carducci, Annie Umbricht, William A. Richards, Brian D. Richards, Mary P. Cosimano and Margaret A. Klinedinst (2016)

Participants tripped twice, with 5 weeks between each session:
(1) high dose of 22 or 30 mg
(2) very low (placebo-like) dose of 1 or 3 mg
Doses calculated per 70kg bodyweight.

Study paper

4. Psilocybin in the Treatment of Tobacco Addiction

Pilot Study of the 5-HT2AR Agonist Psilocybin in the Treatment of Tobacco Addiction – Matthew W. Johnson, Albert Garcia-Romeu, Mary P. Cosimano, and Roland R. Griffiths (2014)

On a 15 week course participants tripped 2-3 times:
(1) moderate dose of 20mg at week 5
(2) moderate or high dose of 20 or 30 mg at week 7
(3) optional session with either 20 or 30 mg at week 13
Doses calculated per 70kg bodyweight.

Study paper

Converting to Fresh Truffle Weight

magic galindoi psilocybin truffles 15g packet

One 15 g pack of truffles

The exact psilocybin content of truffles is, as far as I can find, unknown, but going off of the calculation that 1 g of fresh truffles will contain between 0.75 and 1.75 mg of psilocybin (link), we have a reasonable window with which to find a comparable dosage of fresh truffles. Keep in mind that potency may vary by strain and that individual tolerance varies depending on both physiological and psychological factors (more on this another time).

The information below is presented as a rough guide and calculated with fresh truffle weight. (If your truffles are dried, the equivalent dose will be significantly less. Fully dried truffles are approximately ⅓ the weight of fresh truffles. So for example, if the fresh truffle dose was 13g, you could calculate 13 / 3 =  to get a dried truffle dose of 4.33 g.)

The best way to find the dosage right for you is through personal experience. Start low, document your sessions, and gradually work your way up.

If you are considering to go DIY and organise your own session at home or without a sitter, remember that the psilocybin sessions in the research studies mentioned are accompanied by psychological support before, during, and after each session.

Pure (Synthetic) Psilocybin Doses Converted to Truffle Weight

10 mg psilocybin – Low dose

10 / 0.75 = 13.33
10 / 1.25 = 8
10 / 1.75 = 5.71

6 – 13 g fresh truffles

20 mg psilocybin – Moderate dose

20 / 0.75 = 26.66
20 / 1.25 = 16
20 / 1.75 = 11.43

11 – 27 g fresh truffles

25 mg psilocybin – High dose

25 / 0.75 = 33.33
25 / 1.25 = 20
25 / 1.75 = 14.29

14 – 33 g fresh truffles

30 mg psilocybin – High dose

30 / 0.75 = 40
30 / 1.25 = 24
30 / 1.75 = 17.14

17 – 40 g fresh truffles

Final Thoughts

Generally speaking, I’d recommend lower doses for recreational trips, creative thinking, and active problem solving, and scaling up to higher doses for therapeutic experiences, deep inner journeys, and peak mystical experiences.

Safe journeys!

headphones eye mask psychedelic therapy equipment

Music can play a huge role in psychedelic sessions and knowing how to use sound to shape and influence an experience is extremely valuable.

If you’re looking for pre-made music playlists for a therapeutic psilocybin journey geared towards introspection and personal growth, welcome, you’re in the right place.

headphones eye mask psychedelic therapy equipment

Two key pieces of equipment for a standard therapeutic journey

This post has links to six playlists that have been made specifically for use with psilocybin (magic truffles or magic mushrooms) with a little info on each of them and their creators. 

Playlists:

1. Psychedelic Therapy Playlist 1 – Mendel Kaelen
2. Psychedelic Therapy Playlist 2 – Mendel Kaelen
3. Sacred Knowledge – Bill Richards
4. A Playlist For Psilocybin – Kelan Thomas
5. Psilocybin2 – Kelan Thomas
6. A Playlist For Psilocybin – Matthew Baldwin

About These Playlists

Phases

These playlists are specially designed so that the lengths are matched to that of a psilocybin journey and take into account the various stages of a trip such as: onset, ascent, peak, return. There are variations on this depending on the creator of the playlist.

psychedelic music playlists phases journey baldwin therapy psilocybin beyond prague presentations

The phases of a psychedelic trip according to Bonny & Pahnke, the length of LSD is compressed 33% for psilocybin

Playlists are extremely useful in that you can press play after eating/drinking/ingesting your magical fungi and then not have to think about selecting music for the rest of the session – you just let it play out and ride the journey.

Although exploring different types of music intuitively and in the moment can be great on psychedelics, having to get up and try to find suitable music can be very difficult on higher doses and detract from the experience.

Read more: How To Set Up Music for Psychedelic Sessions (+ 6 More Playlists)

Language

These playlists all contain music without words in English (bar a couple of reasoned exceptions); this is the general standard in psychedelic therapeutic work to avoid ‘hermeneutic contamination’, to use Matthew Baldwin’s phrase; ‘to discourage the rational mind from following the content of the words’, as Bill Richards puts it.

There seems to be a general consensus in the field that understandable lyrics can be distracting and limit the experience.

Without further ado, let’s get into them.

Mendel Kaelen

Mendel Kaelen is probably the biggest name in the world when it comes to created playlists for psychedelic work (admittedly not the largest field, but still). A neuroscientist and music nerd, Kaelen created these playlists, which contain ambient and neo-classical music, for the groundbreaking psilocybin for depression study at Imperial College London.

mendel kaelen psychedelic science music

Kaelen presented at Psychedelic Science

Though they were created for the depression study, they can also work magic for non-depressed people too; I and many I know have journeyed to these amazing playlists, powerful stuff. The second one is an excellent playlist and would be my first recommendation.

You can read more about how he created these playlists in an article on Vice here.

Psychedelic Therapy Playlist 1 – Mendel Kaelen

Psychedelic Therapy Playlist 2 – Mendel Kaelen

Mendel is now working on Wavepaths, a person-centered music solution for psychedelic therapy. As a member of their community, I’ve attended a number of their deep listening sessions and find them to be a useful tool to go inside and develop a mindful listening practice.

Bill Richards

Bill Richards is a founding member of the Johns Hopkins psychedelic research team in the US and one of the most prominent names in the world when it comes to psilocybin research. His psychedelic psychotherapy research is wide ranging, from treating addiction to inducing mystical experiences, and Richards values music as a way to support a person’s experience.

“I make the best musical choices I can, trying to separate the ‘very good’ and the ‘excellent’ on the basis of years of experience with many different people”
Richards on compiling the playlist

There’s a lot of classical music in this playlist (Bach, Mozart, Vivaldi, Brahms) and a few tracks that I have to say are just inspired choices towards the end.

You can read more about Richard’s choices and how he compiled the playlist here.

Kelan Thomas

  • A Playlist For PsilocybinSpotify | Youtube (make sure there are no ads if listening through youtube)
  • Psilocybin2Spotify

I first heard of Kelan Thomas in an article about his first playlist and was excited to see Mogwai (awesome Scottish post rock) and Dirty Three (violin, guitar and drums together in rumbling, flowing rock) on there – familiar names I didn’t expect to see, as well as some other stuff that falls somewhere between ambient and post rock; one of my all time favourite genres that I’ve long wanted to make a psychedelic playlist to, feeling its epic and instrumental style would lend itself perfectly to cosmic journeys.

music concert

I tried the first playlist to a classic therapeutic style journey (setting intention beforehand, using eye mask and headphones, with a sitter) and had a beautiful journey, finding peace, contentment and joy on the journey and in the musical choices. I was moved in that I wanted to thank all the musicians who made the music on that playlist, and to Kelan himself for creating the playlist.

As it happened, a couple months later, whilst setting up a room at Insight conference in Berlin, I noticed the name tag on an early comer in the room – it was Kelan Thomas! I  told him I’d used his playlist and was able to thank him personally for putting it together before chatting a little about it and his choices; interestingly he described it as a ‘decolonising’ playlist in the world of psychedelic therapy.

He also told me he had made a second playlist which I could find on his spotify. I tried it recently and had one of my most beautifully expressive journeys to date. 

A Playlist For Psilocybin


Psilocybin 2

Matthew Baldwin

Matthew was a fellow student of Kelan Thomas in the Certificate in Psychedelic Therapies and Research Program at CIIS in San Francisco, and is clearly a scholar on the topic. He presented one of the talks I found most interesting at Beyond Psychedelics last year which you can watch here:
The Art Of Creating Musical Playlists For Psychedelic Work

music playlists psychedelic

Matthew presenting at Beyond Psychedelics 2018

Myself and co-retreat maker Tuk tried this playlist out during research for our retreats with New Moon and I was very surprised by a lot of the choices, this is certainly the most divergent of the playlist here on this list. This playlist emphasizes organic (instead of sequenced electronic) types of music.

Safe And Wondrous Journeys!

The relationship between music and how it affects consciousness and mood is something I find super interesting and consider creating playlists to be an art.  Do you have any tips? Personal preferences? Favourite music to use for a session? Would love to hear others thoughts on this. If you know of any playlists I’ve missed or have your own to contribute, leave a comment below.

Read more: How To Set Up Music for Psychedelic Sessions (+ 6 More Playlists)

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altered conference uk psychedelic society weekends

I stop in front of a stranger to look them in the eye and say ‘HOO. AAH. YOO!’ as he simultaneously does this back at me. We smirk at each other, and then walk on to do the same to another of the 300 or so people in the room. A few minutes earlier, to the collective sound of all of us humming and singing glossolalia, we held silk ribbons up in the air as we focused intentions on them before tying them to a large tree branch in the middle of the room.

altered conference berlin psychedelics

This was my Friday morning a few weeks ago at the opening ceremony of Altered 2017: a two day international psychedelic gathering/conference. Berlin, synonymous with breaking boundaries and divided people coming together amidst political change, was symbolically the perfect city to host an event like this. With psychedelics becoming an increasingly hot political topic and the growing global movement steadily working towards seeing the counter-productive and repressive laws which prohibit their use, dissolved too.

Uniquely Altered

altered conference uk psychedelic society weekends

Altered was quite different to the psychedelic conference I went to in Copenhagen – what was a straight laced, well organised and heavily academic event held in a university. Altered, by contrast, was far more manic – with rooms and workshops overfilling, timetables changing, and held in a hotel with a confusing and labyrinthine layout. If the Copenhagen one showed the high conscientiousness and clear analytical thinking that psychedelics can provide, Altered showed the other side; the creative, chaotic, and magical.

Spellcasting For Beginners

Speaking of magic, I went to an hourlong workshop on the second day called ‘Spellcasting For Beginners’ led by a guy called Felipe Duarte. It was pretty different to anything I’ve done before so I’ll describe it briefly for the curious.

With about 40 of us there, he started with some music and we all danced to a sweat (breaking a sweat was essential to the magic working) before sitting down to briefly meditate and then do unconscious writing while we were asked questions about our desires in life. We then had to write down our greatest desire and refine this to one sentence. We then removed every vowel and repeating consonant from the sentence and using these letters created our own magical symbol and word.

Back into a circle we all sat around with everyone chanting their magical word over and over until the collective cacophony of the room reached a swooning, flowing fever pitch and we all ripped our pieces of paper into tiny little pieces.

Spell cast.

Slightly different from a talk on the results of clinical research then. I’m naturally pretty skeptical on this ‘magic’ stuff but I’ve reached no conclusions and regardless it was a fun and interesting hour and something new. Having to dance to sweat and do unconscious writing also forced me past discomfort too. I plan to attend more workshops at the next one.

Volunteering

I was a volunteer at the conference and it definitely added to my experience of the weekend. It was a great way to meet other people and at the same time get a peak behind the scenes to the organization of the whole thing. I helped with setup at the hotel the two days prior and met a lot of people involved, so by the time of the actual conference, the hotel was full of familiar faces and new friends and it felt strangely like home. As well as the set up I also volunteered on the 2nd day and spent a few hours at the welcome and info desk. This forced me to skip talks and workshops and meant that, between groups arriving from the tram, I had time to sit down and get to know some pretty cool people and hear their stories. If I hadn’t done this I would’ve just gone from talk to workshop to talk, trying not to miss out on anything and ironically missing out on connecting with others in the rapidly growing psychedelic community.

changa ketamine giorgia gaia experimental alchemy altered conference berlin

The Movement Is Growing Fast

A lot of things in the world are changing very quickly and perception of and interest in psychedelics is one of them. Altered is another example of this. Last year Altered was 6 speakers and 50 guests over 1 day. This year it was 35 talks, workshops and rituals across 2 days and 3 rooms, with around 400 guests, and an after-party. The pull was big. As well as an international group of resident Berliners, people had made the journey from surrounding cities and countries – I met people who had made the journey from Vienna, Budapest, Copenhagen, Holland, France and the UK.

Hyper Connectivity

The reach of the event and coming together of people shows the hyperconnected nature of the movement which played its part in my being there too. After Copenhagen, I’d planned on skipping this one but then my Danish buddy Vik was going with his Berlin based brother – a duo who I’m overdue starting an art project with – and then through research for a piece on drug policy, the lovely Ros Stone put me in touch with the founder and organiser Dax – who offered me a place to crash. It seemed that I was supposed to be there, so after securing a free ticket by signing up to volunteer and finding some cheap flights, I was on my way. It was the people I was in touch with who got me there.

The brain on placebo, left, the brain on psilocybin, right – mirrors connectivity in psychedelic world.

Even at the level of this conference, I got a sense of the disintegration of hierarchy and separation – another psychedelic action making its way out to the macro level. At Altered there was no clear distinction between speakers and attendees, or heads and guests. To me it felt like there were just a lot of psychedelic enthusiasts with everyone participating, some presenting and others not.

Psychedelic Use Doesn’t Equal Virtue

“Psychedelics do not guarantee wisdom or a clear recognition of the selfless nature of consciousness.”
– Sam Harris

With all the nice words said, it has to be acknowledged that not everything is compassion and oneness in the psychedelic world. There are definitely some big egos in the movement. Through becoming more involved with the community it’s become clear to me that growth, maturity, and wisdom certainly aren’t inherent in psychedelic use. I’ve seen conversations turn into bragging contests about who’s had the most trips, taken the biggest doses, or tried the widest variety of substances. I’ve also met people who are just dicks. When I hear someone bragging about how much they’ve learnt, how much pain they’ve overcome, or saying something like ‘I can now access any state of consciousness at any time’ (that’s a direct quote from a ‘healer’ at another event), I can’t help but smile and think ‘well how much did it teach you about humility and honesty?’.

There are, of course, countless people who’ve never touched a psychedelic and who show more of these virtues than some of the most well-seasoned psychonauts. As one of the speakers at the Copenhagen symposium put it; ‘there are people who’ve had hundreds of psychedelic experiences that are still assholes’.

ego

I think this is worth remembering, as apparently psychedelic people can easily feel superior or on some kind of higher level than non-initiates or those with less experience. Personally, I don’t care too much about how many trips you’ve had, I’m interested in what you’ve learned and how deeply you’ve learnt it – how it informs your character and how you live your life.

While psychedelics have the ability to facilitate a mental reset capable of freeing one from conditioned patterns of thought and behavior (which may play a role in the species wide reconditioning needed to prevent our own ecological self-destruction), they are clearly not a panacea. They are just tools. Like any other tool or technology, they can be used for good or bad. A hammer can be used to build a table or hit someone over the head. Chemistry can be used to create medicine or a poison. The internet can be used to connect and educate, or spread lies, distract and shorten attention span. Psychedelics can potentiate minds and offer opportunities for greater awareness, but even if that opportunity is taken, what’s done with that increased awareness is another question.

Browsing psychedelic forums online you’ll come across countless claims of ‘ego-death’, but while the ego can lose power or even totally dissolve during peak experiences, it can strike back with a vengeance, re-emerging even more powerful than before. The ego is supple and can re-contextualize even the most powerful transcendent experiences, leading people further into competition and another ego-ic game. A type of spiritual chicanery or spiritual materialism.

“As Daniel Pinchbeck pointed out […], the fact that both the Mayans and the Aztecs used psychedelics, while being enthusiastic practitioners of human sacrifice, makes any idealistic connection between plant-based shamanism and an enlightened society seem terribly naïve.”
– Sam Harris, Drugs & The Meaning Of Life

More sinister than the mere boasters are those who are using promises of enlightenment and healing as a way to take advantage of others. A look at the stories of dodgy shamans who’ve touched up trippers or self-described healers charging exorbitant prices whilst living a life of luxury should ring alarm bells for us all.

Engaging The Shadow Side Of The Movement

This is, in Jung’s terms, the shadow side of the psychedelic movement. As in any field, it’s important to acknowledge and be aware of the charlatans, bullshitters, and manipulators out there seeking to gain power and money for their own selfish desires. How to deal with them?

shadow

It’s my belief that these people should be called in and have what they are espousing tested. This doesn’t need to be an aggressive attack but rather the opening of a discussion. With open and honest communication the truth will come out. If you come across someone with specious or spurious claims or saying something that contradicts what’s been previously said, I encourage you to question with curiosity to dig out the truth. I also think it’s best to try to judge people based on their character – how they speak, act and treat others – rather than any claims to experience and knowledge.

With that said, I’d like to hear others’ thoughts on this shadow side and how to engage it. Please post your thoughts in the comments below, and don’t hesitate to send me a message. Until then I’ll give my own rather broad version of advice:

Keep seeking, keep questioning!