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Scientists Finally Unlock the Recipe For Magic Mushrooms (gizmodo.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Aside from being a schedule 1 drug, scientists haven't fully understood the chemistry behind how mushrooms produce the chemical psilocybin -- until now. A new study may finally lay the groundwork for a medical-grade psilocybin patients can take. Gizmodo reports: "Living things make molecules through a series of chemical reactions, similar to how car makers produce cars on assembly lines. Enzymes act as the workers/robots, speeding up the reactions by helping put the pieces together. Actually making psilocybin requires mapping the biological factory. A 1968 paper (obviously it was in 1968) offered a proposed order of events leading to a finished psilocybin molecule, by adding radioactive elements and watching what happened to them on the assembly line. The researchers thought that maybe tryptophan, the amino acid everyone wrongly says makes you sleepy, was the first piece, which then went through four successive steps to become the finished product. The new study shows that the 1968 paper got the order wrong, and introduces the responsible genes and enzymes, the workers that do the specific task to get the final product. This time around, mapping the factory required sequencing the genomes of two magic mushroom species, Psilocybe cubensis and Psilocybe cyanescens. Then, the researchers found exactly which genes produce the required enzymes and spliced them into E. coli bacteria. Using those enzymes, they were able to rebuild the factory and create their own psilocybin." The study has been published in the German journal Angewandte Chemie.
Producing it via this method is not at all required to start using it therapeutically. The only reason they are going to such great lengths is so they can patent it and have monopoly "rights".
More proof that our perverse "intellectual property" system is precisely what is making the perverse outcomes.
The point in making it genetically, not via extraction from mushrooms (which is very, very very cheap) is so that you can tweak the molecule a little, and then get a patent approved for it, and then put it through FDA licencing, in order to get an exclusivity period while the patent is valid.
Purely political alas.
Generally speaking, psychedelics aren't the best choice for hiding from reality. You are likely to end up with a heavy dosage of reality, possibly more than you feel you can handle. Now, alcohol and opiates, those will let you hide from reality.
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You can probably order spores of Psilocybe species by mail, possibly legally. Depending on where you are, the illegality usually comes when you grow the spores, which is easy to do with little equipment or effort; the key is to keep everything sterile so other fungi don't get a toehold.
Tryptophan isn't "wrongly" said to make you sleepy - it does make you sleepy. The myth is that it's tryptophan to blame when Americans get sleepy after a Thanksgiving feast, when in reality most of the blame lies on the mass consumption of carbohydrates. Turkey is no more tryptophan-rich than many other meats, such as chicken.
Ever since, I've been suspicious of Jesus and very careful around chlorine.