Space (on) Mushrooms 🌌

We gettin' cosmic in the cosmos?

Oct 07, 2022

Preface

At the end of a raunchy tale about fungal-insect mind control drug sex, I alluded to the idea that magic mushrooms are using humans to spread their spores around. That’s cuhhhrazy right? No, because it’s actually aliens using psilocybin as tool to spread spores around, develop consciousness in other beings across the universe.

This theory, Psilocybin Panspermia, is propounded by our man Terrance McKenna, and fits nicely together with the Stoned Ape Theory on human consciousness and advanced civilization development.

As a lame scientist I have to admit that I do not believe that an extraterrestrial or other higher power blessed humans with psilocybin. However, I do admit that the implications of the Stoned Ape and Psilocybin Panspermia theories are actually straight up legitimate. In this issue we’ll focus on the space stuff.

Me, a scientist, sitting with the extraordinary coincidence that psilocybin and humans happened to exist at the same time and that this single molecule could have both aided our development as conscious social beings and help us colonize space.

Space Travel

A long trip into the universe: Psychedelics and space travel is the title of a paper that crossed my desk the other day. It is short and definitely worth a full read, but I will sum it up in brief Tab style.

Why they wrote it

Space travel is technologically feasible 🛰
Human health and well-being during long-term space missions is the next hurdle we must overcome.
NASA has identified over 30 health risks to humans in space which span both physiological and psychological domains 🩻
NASA is developing technologies to optimize health and well-being of astronauts, including preventative measures.
Paul Stamets said, “NASA and anyone else working and looking at the settlement of space, you should consider that psilocybin mushrooms should be an essential part of your psychological tool kit for astronauts to be able to endure the solitude and the challenges of space and isolation.” 👨🏽‍🌾

Stamets deciding which mushrooms to bring to space

Physiological well-being

The arguments from this area are shaky, but I will still summarize:
Authors claim that plants, animals, and fungi that contain psychedelics are “healthier” (hmm…🤔)
We could engineer psychedelic mushrooms to not produce psilocybin (Why? There are plenty of other nutritious, non-psychoactive mushrooms that could be cultivated).
Sterile environments hurt gut microbiomes, triggering nervous system inflammatory pathways. Psychedelics could help modulate gut-brain axis (I’ll buy it as a hypothesis)🦠

Psychological well-being and enhancement

Neuroplasticity induced by psychedelics can ameliorate declines in motor function and cognitive health 🧠
The psychedelic experience can help crew members establish and maintain effective and stable relationships with each other 👩‍❤️‍👩
Psychedelics can ameliorate the psychological pressure of long journeys by offering enriched states of consciousness, enhanced cognitive flexibility, heightened creativity, enhanced ability to attribute meaning, empathy, enhanced insightfulness, and self-awareness.
The experience of space travel has induced similar feelings of transcendence, insight, and unity to psychedelic trips 🌏
Experience with DMT could be a sort of “training exercise” for transcendental experiences, entry into other realms, and contact with other entities 🧙‍♂️
Psychedelics can help manage depression and end-of-life anxiety for those who inevitably will pass on multi-generation space journeys.

My Take

The thesis of this paper is “Psychedelics, and psychedelic mushrooms in particular, could play a role in supporting human adaption to space through the promotion of neuroplasticity, modulation of inflammatory pathways, and in improving general wellbeing.”

It is existentially terrifying to imagine myself floating through a void, in a solid metal structure, joined by a tiny community of other humans, the grim reaper waiting to reap at the smallest mistake. Tripping in this environment could literally go in any direction. However, there are are parallels here to our early ancestors. They too were banded together in small communities navigating a natural world which they didn’t understand and too could meet death upon making the smallest mistake 💀

I see the utility of psychedelics in space travel for psychological well-being. The fact is that we are not adapted to space travel, and so we are going to need tools to cope. Magic mushrooms improve our well-being here on Earth, and fungal spores can survive vacuum conditions and space radiation. Also the implication that we could use DMT to train astronauts to meet aliens is wild and should be a thing 👾

I mean, look at us thinking we even have a choice...this was the mushrooms plan all along 🍄👽

Read the paper here 🚀

Space Colonization

We have potential uses for fungi in space at each stage of their life cycle.

Spores

Fungi start as spores, microscopic structures that are extremely hardy and can survive in space. The spores of any cultivatable species of mushroom can be transported for long periods of time and germinate on any appropriate substrate.

Mycelium

Mycelium grows underground, collecting water and nutrients for growth and the eventual development of a fruit body (mushroom). Mycelium is very good at getting into tiny cracks, breaking up dense substrate such asteroid rock and turning it into soil. Some mycelium, such as that of the Oyster mushroom, can convert hydrocarbons in this rock into useable biomolecules. With a little boost from an expert astromycologist, Oyster mushroom mycelium can plausibly terraform asteroids, and maybe planets. I say plausibly because NASA is currently funding a project to do just this.

Reishi mushroom mycelium is unbelievably strong. In an interview with Paul Stamets in Scientific American, he claims that a block of Reishi mycelium broke a steel hydraulic press designed to test the strength of the blocks. Design firms are already using mycelium to test as building materials, partially for their strength, and partially for their insane insulation capability. With a little water and nutrients, mycelial walls can be repaired and regrown into new formats.

Mushroom

Here we loop back to a point the space travel paper makes about nutrition and spacebound sustainable agriculture systems. I won’t expound too much, but edible mushrooms are super easy to grow, are an excellent source of nutrition including protein, and can be transported via spore without taking up any space. Whether or not we bring the trippy kind, mushrooms are definitely coming with us to the stars 🌌

Conclusion

Here’s the full quote from the beginning:

“You develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the Moon, international politics look so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, ‘Look at that, you son of a bitch.”

- Edgar Mitchell

The first half of this quote alone could be in reference to space travel or consciousness travel. Whether psilocybin was sent here or just happened to be here, there is an intriguing similarity in how we describe the exploration of these two realms, these final frontiers.

To be honest, I often feel bogged down trying to keep up with the daily stream of psychedelic news and developments here on Earth. It’s nice to step outside once in a while, stare up at the stars, and imagine the grandkids trippin’ with the man on the moon.

I appreciate your feedback on how I did breaking down this science. Let me know in the comments:

From around the (my?) psychosphere 🪐

Note: Others do psychedelic news way better than I do. For almost in-the-moment coverage of the psychedelic field, I go here and you should too 😎
PsychedelicAlpha
The Trip Report by Beckley Waves
The Microdose

I’m going to start curating this section with random things that I am up to/interested in that I think you should also check out. Here’s some things I’m especially into right now:

⚛️ PsyDAO is building a decentralized organization to fund psychedelic research. I’ve slowly ramped up my involvement in web3/decentralized science, and might write about it here soon because it is important to everyone who does, follows, funds, or benefits from science. So everyone. Join their Discord here.

🌎 While you’re at it, another Discord community to check out is How To Use Psychedelics, run by long time Tab reader Lou. He has developed a vibrant community which values support, curiosity, education, and responsible use. I’ll see you there!

📽 I just finished watching Undone. It is a breathtaking show about existential crisis, family trauma, and spiritual awakening with a backdrop of both Latin American and Eastern European Jewish mysticism. The animation is done with rotoscoping, which is really cool, similar to the film adaptation of A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick (another good one for this crowd).

🍯 What’s the Deal with Mad Honey?

🧪 Science Picks:

Tunes for your next flow state

🔥 Anvetta - Downtown Tulum Radio

🤟🏽 Have a swell weekend friends 👽