Rev Hooman: The Hidden Risks of the Underground Psychedelic Market

0:00Bom dia, bom jorno, salam alaikum and shalom. What's up everybody. Happy Friday. Welcome back to the Miko Pranour podcast. I'm your host Dennis Walker. So yeah, we're going to get down to brass tax right now. And first huge, huge shout out to booming acres. They are industry leading purveyors of all in one mushroom grow bags for exotic and gourmet mushrooms. They've also got a whole range of myology supplies to set you up on your path to becoming a mushroom cultivator or leveling up what you already got going on. Check out booming acres dot com. Also a big shout out to full canopy genetics, award winning and research driven mushroom genetics. You pair those genetics from full canopy with your all in one grow bags from booming acres and you're in business. Check out full canopy genetics dot com. Please rate and review this episode right here wherever you're listening, whichever platform. And thanks for being here. I think you're going to learn

1:03something today. I learned a lot from this conversation without further ado. Let's go ahead and get this show on the road. Okay, Pasa, Mufasa. What's up everybody. I'm delighted to welcome Rev Human, a cultural technologist and the founder of Enthiology project who's got a ton of different irons in the fire and ongoing projects. We're going to discuss today. Welcome to the microprinor podcast. How are things, Rev? Good brother. How are you? I always love interacting with you and we're also small and trying to get out there and we're also like silenced. So thank you for doing this. Oh, it's been so fun to get to collaborate with you on these incubators that we host weekly. You've always got such good input. Of course, I've visited you in San Francisco and got to see how you operate there. And I've tried a number of your awesome products from the Magic Mike Chatbot, which we can talk about. I'm through your Aminita gummies, which you've got right there. Of course, there's the Lionsman gummies, numerous other projects. You've got so many different lanes. It's really hard to pick one to start with. But I've always started off talking

2:05a little bit about Enthiology project. Just set the context for people. What is Enthiology project? So Enthiology project is a 501 C1A religious nonprofit organization dedicated to psychedelic preparation and raising awareness about the positive benefits of Enthiogens and also the pitfalls of Enthiogens. And so the most bad trips can be associated with poor preparation. And that's usually because the underground 80% of the underground seeking psychedelics or Enthiogens find it about 20% of the time. And that 20% is largely unsupported completely. So the reason I started Enthiology project was I was making products. But then I realized, wow, there's a lot of people making underground products as well. And they're not supported. What do we do if somebody has a really negative, they have like bipolar disorder in their family history or they have borderline or they're, you know, they could be on the edge of psychopathy. And a negative journey could just

3:07throw them into that. That's exactly what happened to me off of a gram and a half of psilocybin mushrooms is that who knew that I thought I was like I, I never thought I was going to feel like I'm Jesus and I'm here to save the planet. Yeah. And that's partially what led you to this current project where you're working on labeling integrity and COAs and testing because we all know this underground product market has exploded. And you can get mouth sprays that have different novel trip domains in them. And you can get a hundred different varieties of chocolate that are dose differently. And you've got psilocybin chocolate. You've got four ACO DMT chocolate. I've seen 12 gram bars. I've seen one gram bars and they've got different strains. And this is really a scramble right now because so many people are accessing these products. But there's not really any kind of quality control outside of a few noble initiatives. And you've got one of those. So what are you doing to work

4:08towards creating a more uniform transparent and accountable system of labeling and measuring underground products? Well, I've debated at length with people in the what I call industry, the professionals. We're not trying to figure it out. But we debated it length as to what are the ethical standards that we follow. Like if I create standards, are you going to follow them? How do I police that? How do I make sure you're continuing to follow these standards? And who am I to even come up with standards? Like, what do I, am I there? No, Guru? Like, do we create a committee get a bunch of people to help that cost time, that cost money? Everybody's busy trying to make it in this space. So it was really challenging to do that. And I don't think there is a simple answer to that. But we can definitely make it more of a quantitative process rather than a qualitative one where we just like, Hey, take this much and tell me how you feel. Now we can do lab testing,

5:15get COAs, certificates of analysis. And you can see that indeed it's organic, psilocybin, or it's non-detect. And there's other stuff in it. Like, it doesn't detect psilocybin. So a lot of guys out there are using like medicine and ethnocin and you know, these five ACO derivatives or these spin-offs. And it doesn't come up as detectable. But if you check for psilocybin. But if you're checking for medicine, metocin, it will show up. But they're not checking for that. So this is how they're getting around all of this. And the standards to check for these weird new novel psychedelics aren't necessarily stable or out there enough or worth buying for the lab to be able to test for it. So now everybody's doing non-detect. If there isn't psilocybin in it, then you're really not getting the real thing. And if it's 100% psilocybin, it's either extract or it's synthetic. But either way, you want to have some kind of COA lab result

6:19and we're equitified this. Now here's the other problem. Let's just say I do have a COA. And my seeker, whoever I'm sitting with wants proof of that, right? Or I'm an underground microdose producer. Are you going to now take a COA that is evidence that says psilocybin, psilocybin, and give it to someone and say, here, I did this. I made this. And here's proof of what's in it. Take me to jail. It's just a little sketchy for people out there in underground. So there needs to be a way to share information without putting a QR code necessarily on the product. Because if I do that, if I say psilocybin and they can easily trace it back to the producer, it's 10 to 20 years of jail time. It's not a joke. It's decriminalization doesn't mean legalization. It doesn't even mean regulation. Nobody can produce. It makes the consumers feel safe for

7:25possessing, but there is absolutely no legal pathways for underground producers that are plant touching. Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up. That's something that I was discussed in the double-blind underground shroom workshop recently. And to my knowledge, you put out the word mitosein, and there's only one brand that I can think of. And that is beyond shrooms. And they also do beyond Molly that actually labels their product as mitosein. And that's again one of these novel tripdermines that has a lot of similar characteristics to psilocybin, synthetic psilocybin experience. And that's to me, one of the more interesting angles there is to actually say that because there's so many products that are claiming a proprietary mushroom blend or labeling themselves as even an ammonita chocolate, which is something I definitely want to talk to you about. It feels like ammonita has piggybacked in a lot of ways up the popularity of psilocybin and magic mushrooms, where now you have a number of different products that are purporting to be ammonita.

8:29I don't agree. I don't think they're truly getting ammonita. They're getting maybe a dash of ammonita with a whole lot of medicine or one of these other synthetic analogs. So let's just say if I have a medicine infused product and if I put my name on that, even though it's not psilocybin, you had Robert Rush on the show. He talks a lot about this. Is that there's an analogs act. And if it can be shown that the molecule is chemically similar enough to the band substance, it's still jail time. So these people are just really, they were just skating. There's a taking total risk in gambling, hoping they're not going to get in trouble. And you know, at some point, with regulation, just like with cannabis, a lot of people in cannabis were getting in trouble because they were selling mushrooms alongside a cannabis. And so they would come after the cannabis and say, oh, let's see what else you have here. What's all this? You know, 600 pounds of shrooms. We'll take that.

9:33You know, I was ahead of that direction to talk about how ammonita is a cover in a lot of ways for anyone knows what. But let's talk about the ammonita product market a little bit because I think there has been more people becoming interested in ammonita muskaria. And I'm one of those people. And I've been fortunate to connect with ammentara recently rebranded. They were Minnesota nice ethno botanicals before. They reached out to me and offered to educate and send me some of the product. And I was kind of hesitant because everyone I've ever talked to for many years with ammonita muskaria would put some distance between themselves and ends. I had a bad experience. I had a really intense experience, not to equate bad with intense. But there's always been this reputation around it. Like people are interested in ammonita muskaria, but they kind of fear it. And they kind of don't understand it. And it's kind of wildly unpredictable and very different than psilocybin, right? But it still gets lumped under this magic mushroom quote-unquote label,

10:36which to me it is a magic mushroom, but very different than what people are thinking about most people. When you brand a chocolate bar or a gummy and say, magic mushroom gummies, most people, I don't think really want a intense ammonita muskaria experience because they get really far out there. But I do think there is a place for that product and for that mushroom for sure. And people are starting to catch onto it. Now that's something you've been experienced with is producing ammonita, synthetic products, muskimal, etc. And you probably have a greater degree of knowledge than a lot of people in this subject. So yeah, can you talk a little bit about the ammonita muskaria product market? Yeah, I'm an e to muskimal. So muskaria comes from the active ingredient muskimal. But most of the controversy around ammonita has been ibiotenic acid. And so the lack of decarping the fruit body ultimately doesn't convert all the ibiotenic acid into muskimal. And ibiotenic acid

11:36can just really make you kind of sick and ill. But it's not like poisonous. But I have tried the fruit bodies versus the synthetic. And the fruit bodies are just really low in concentration. Like four to 11 percent depending on the species. And so I don't think people are quite getting enough muskimal. It's often they'll make a tea and the heat of the tea helps the decarbed the ibiotenic acid into muskimal so that you know you don't get ill on it. But I've had a synthetic experience. And that is just way deeper. And ammonita muskimal is more like ketamine than it is magic mushrooms. Because it has somewhat of an analgesic, relaxing, pain relieving, property to it. And so we have found that people enjoy ammonita if they suffer from insomnia,

12:40if they're parimenopausal. That's really a big one. Now just any kind of sleep disorder. You know, inability to take naps in low doses muskimal can really be transformational for people that need rest. And so when a lot of the seekers are in a bad state of mind and they're either depressed or they're suffering whatever mental issues, sleep is always a challenge. You know, things that keep you up at night. Muskimal is great for that. And I had I took too many gummies one time when I made a batch and I was just like, wow, this is so delicious. And then about two hours later, the movie was talking, I was thinking and the movie would talk back to me. And I was, I had a little bit of a trip. And it really was, I mean, it was, it was ego dissolving. You know, when I came to, I had a lot of, I like took the turn to my friend and I'm like, oh my gosh, I'm so sorry for this and this and this and this and this and just like, oh my god, I've been waiting for you to say that. I was like, but I had no idea that the muskimal revealed it. So it's a different

13:43journey. It's definitely revelatory. You know, my name is rev. It's not people think it's reverent, but really stands for revelation because I guess so freaking many on these, on these different end-tugings. So that's the difference. I think where microdosing is in the morning, amonita's at night. Yeah, I've been benefiting a lot from it for the restful qualities that you just mentioned and different tinctures made from amonita. So really fascinating mushroom for sure. And I think it's starting to get its due recognition. Of course, it's always been there. People are familiar with it. But again, it wasn't and hasn't been something that's really entered the psycho knot lexicon outside of a few fringe cases, but it's starting to become more popular. And it's lower doses too. I really am a fan of these lower doses. I did have a macrodose experience, kind of accidentally. I had a tincture that I would take one dropper from this tincture. And it was lovely. It was the sweet spot of amonita. And then I dipped in the dropper and it didn't get

14:45a whole bunch in it. So I kind of thought, oh, it must be towards the bottom. It must be running out. So I must not have just done it accurately because then I unscrewed the cap and I drank it. And it was all the way to bed that was in there. And I ended up having a very intense lucid dream that carried over into walking around my house. And I had to ask my wife. It makes you sleepwalk. Yes, it totally does that. You're some non-saving. Yeah. And there was a lot more that happened. That's just the oversimplification. But it was enough to see, wow, that really kickstarted some kind of extraordinary internal mechanism that bridged my deep sleep with dream, with waking reality, some hybridization there and a lot of other insights as well. So needless to say, it's not an experience I wanted to rush back into though, right? So you're not prepared. All of these other wonderful things that are happening, one of them that depending on how you look at it is extremely exciting and slightly dystopian and terrifying is this merging of AI and psychedelics. And I feel

15:50like a lot of people in this quote industry, you use air quotes. It is pretty much an air quote industry. There's a psychedelic industry, but really it's just kind of a loose collection of interests. There's no banking. There's no legally approved classic psychedelic outside of very few state models, et cetera, et cetera. But there's somehow this industry and a lot of people involved with it. But one of the debates I've been seeing is about AI, people who are embracing it and integrating AI into their workflow and going heavy into AI and psychedelics. And then there's of course people who are rejecting it outright and saying, this is fundamentally stripping all of the wonderful things of what makes psychedelic work, which is humanity and art and connection with each other. Of course, I think the answer is going to lie somewhere in the middle of all these things. But you've been pretty heavily leaning into AI. So can you talk about some of the ways that you've integrated AI? Oh, yeah. I've been called the Trump lover and equated with Epstein. I mean, like, come on, people. I wanted to do a discussion about the intersection between AI and psychedelics

16:54and explain and demystify AI. And it had a really negative reaction in the industry to the point where my dear friend, Dan, I got my mumbarded and doxed by the industry over, you know, this is terrible and you can't do this. And so I think that people believe AI is something isn't. And it's certainly not this, it's not a consciousness. It's not an intelligence. It can't be autonomous. It doesn't think it truly is a black box. And that black box has to be trained to literally do every single thing. You know, if you say, check the web, you have to teach it and train it and connect it to the web so it can connect to like an AI connection to the web, not like we browse a web. It has to, it does back on server calls and things like that. And so AI isn't going to take over the planet. Not, I mean, I don't believe any computer can be equivalent to human consciousness.

17:56I think human consciousness is miraculous. It's magical. I think we exist in the quantum realm as to who I am, who revives his soul is in a quantum. It's in nothingness. There isn't a physical form. So I don't think we are God-like creators enough and know enough to create a black box that can be that conscious, that can just take over. Yeah, you know, in both contexts, both psychedelics and AI, they're both very disruptive technologies that fundamentally require people to rethink what it means to be human and what it means to interact with the world. And in that way, for example, chat GPT, it's something that I've been a pretty late adopter of. And I think that's good in general, trying to see how it shakes out, how people are using it. And I've found a couple of good ways to integrate it into my workflow. And I often challenge myself. And this is one reason I like having

18:59different avenues or projects. As you can try one of them integrating AI and see how that works for your workflow. And you keep another one separate. Like, I don't really have a meaningful way to integrate it into podcasting yet. And I can definitely do that. Like, there's a whole panel on Riverside with AI integrations where I can make a thumbnail with AI. And I can have a episode description. I can generate episode titles. Another example is there's a ranking system when we do these podcasts. And there's short clips. And it'll tell me which clips have the highest chance of going viral. But I have a little bit of skepticism around that because it just feels like if the race to the bottom, if you will, allows anyone to do this, if anyone can create this content, then it's going to create a lot of homogenous content. So I put it some distance between that. But for other things, I can see value. Like, one thing I will do is I'll write an article. I'll do writing myself. And then I'll ask AI to edit not even edit. I'll ask it to analyze and give me

20:05feedback. And it actually really helps because it'll give me some clear ideas. And in this way, I'm able to continue creating from my perspective, but having a separate pair of eyes. I've always kind of said, I like to, well, I think Kerawak or one of those authors said, right, drunk, edit sober, right? And I kind of like to be like, right, sober and edit high. It's a similar thing. It gives you a different perspective. And there's a flow. But anyways, that's one example of how I've been experimenting with integrating AI. And I'm sure there's a lot more ways that it can be really functional and useful. So yeah, I mean, how about some of these other products that you're making? Pretty much every time I see you, you've got a new product and a new SKU and you've got a new website. And it just feels like you are compulsively creative. And would you say that I'm a fair assessment. I'm ADHD. I'm ADHD. That's why. Now there's just there's so much to do. And I

21:06can't hire people to do it all because I'm not rich. But I wanted to expand a little bit on AI if you wouldn't mind. So what I see AI being really beneficial for as far as so you have a couple of different communities. You have your producer community that is, you know, in the industry we call them pros. And then you have coaches and then you have seekers. And all of them are looking for one another. But that's it's really hard to facilitate that union because it could be considered illegal to do so if somebody is facilitating a certain substance. So AI as far as businesses, the number one utility for AI right now is chat box and chat box agents. So agentic AI is where you give the chat box, the LLM more agency more ability to do so. So that you mentioned, make it thumbnail for example. You could have a chat box that could be trained to have a set of

22:12workflow instructions that goes grab a thumbnail, give it a title, write a description, post it on YouTube. Those can be trained behaviors. But one of the most common uses right now is customer service or just awareness raising. This is what we use AI for is people that have the same FAQ questions that you get tired of answering. You can replace all of that now with a chatbot. So what you could do is you could take all of your FAQs, you could upload it into a chatbot. And then you just send people there, the chatbot can answer all the questions, it can do bookings, it can do intakes, it can pre-qualify and it can arrange the meeting and do the reminders etc. So for businesses it's creating economies of scale and efficiencies that never existed before. So I think it was Mark Cuban that was saying or sorry it was Elon that was saying that if you're a complete AI enabled company you are going to crush every body. Because you can't

23:18hire that fast and chatbots cost is going up. But the companies that have integrated AI into their processes and replace a lot of their legacy back end systems or integrated them, they're just going to be leaps and bounds more efficient. The reason a lot of psychedelic influencers like Paul Austin is getting in you yourself. But now people getting banned more shadow banned because the AI is able to sense the context in which you're speaking. So even if we don't say certain words it can still get the just stuff in and say no this isn't something that we want to risk. On the flip side for the regular folks, the seekers who are wanting psychedelic support, AI is great for research but platforms like Chatty PT and Anthropic, they're designed to keep you in the system, right, in the platform engaged. So it's going to mirror the user and tell them whatever they like that's that's ingenious. That's such a good idea. Wow. So the chatbot is your

24:21biggest fan and it can lead you to believe that you're more right than you might be. And you can go down rabbit hole, especially if you're on something and you can get really, really paranoid, we call it AI and do psychopathy. Just like Silas Ivlin can do psychopathy, so can AI. And if you go too far down a rabbit hole and you're just set on believing a certain thing, AI will help you believe it. So there's guardrails that are necessary to avoid that if you're going to support people in a psychedelic context. Yeah, that's really well put. Thanks for that. Appreciate it. So I'm also curious about chocolate. So you made great confectionaries. I've been very satisfied, very impressed with your tempering as someone who also has a mushroom chocolate company. I got to say you got some pretty good products there. So yeah, what's the story on how did you learn how to become a confectionary wizard? Oh, thanks for asking. This was all part of my, you know, my not coming to

25:25Jesus, but coming out of Jesus and going to Jesus phase. I had to realize I'm not here to save the planet, but I'm here to help out, you know, so I can be part of the collective. I started after my first microdose in the basement of the monarch in San Francisco. This guy from Colorado had some Reese's peanut butter cup looking, but they were like, he took a cupcake wrapper and he blended the mushrooms and chocolate and poured it in there and then folded it over and it looked like a little puck. I was like, what is this? He's like, it's mushroom chocolate. I'm like, I've never had it in chocolate. And I tried a little piece of it and I gave a piece to my friend and we had never danced that hard in years. And he kept saying, dude, why did you give me Molly? I didn't give you Molly. I gave you a microdose. It was just right for you and me and I had the my previous experience previous to that was with a couple of Liberty caps at some warehouse party years before and it was

26:28really bad. I had no idea what it was that I was consuming. So that was kind of like a trauma in and of itself in addition to the big trip I had. And I only had a trip on about a gram and a half of mushrooms of psilocybin mushrooms, but it had a somewhat adverse. The reaction was good. The next day I felt awesome, but I was too awesome. I'm ADHD, you know, I might have some borderline issues and so you know, just family related genetic related and I also was able to learn more through genetic testing, which we'll talk about. But I was just I was too amped up. So I decided to kind of pour myself into something to commit myself into becoming the best at whatever I'm going to touch instead of just half-ass it because I was depressed. And so I started growing and I, you know, tried like auto-growing model to have computer control, misting and all of it. It just it was weighed overkill. I was over-engineered, but I learned a lot from that and I because of that

27:28awesome experience, I wanted to create that for others. And so for my friends, I started, you know, making mushroom chocolate. We won't say what kind of mushrooms, but they started really enjoying it. And through that experience of becoming really awesome at confections and just really growing gathering and giving, I started seeing problems, potential ethical issues. Like if I was a mushroom guru, if I was selling like if I was like polka-god, I would have an ethical responsibility to be there for my consumer if they have some kind of adverse reaction or or difficult integration. And that is just almost impossible for a small team of underground producers to do and they're also not necessarily qualified to do that. AI however and chat bots with also using rag, which is retrieval augmented generation. It uses your documents to answer instead of hallucinate answers. It's through that that we're able to ensure that people are getting the right

28:31kinds of information and the right support. And if they need to reach out to someone in the one, two percent of cases that I've seen, there is help. And everybody has an ethical responsibility. If you're plant touching and if you're serving, there's a preparatory process or research, there's we do genetic testing, we do psilocybin pre screening through silo screen. And we get an acuity score because I want to find that case that's like me that that one in a stack of that everyone's like, hey dude, just take another five grams. I mean that's what the underground told me to do when I was integrating. But I was in this really neuroplastic delicate state. I had no idea what to do, but I learned the answer was meditate, calm down, show the F out. But all these guys have an ethical responsibility and most people just don't have the time or energy to do that. Chat bots really lower the cost of that. So you can upload all of your FAQ questions and send them to your chat bot. They get usually their answers all answered there. And in that one, two

29:31percent of the outliers, well you can have a specialized coach or somebody that's trained in like trauma informed psychedelic aware coach that can give them preparatory support and integrative support. So what we wanted to do is at least deal with the prep part. And preparation requires lab testing. But lab testing was a pain in the butt to do. Labs are not, they're technical as far as testing products, but they don't have really necessarily have good websites or backend systems to make ordering easy or you don't know how long it takes to generate a report. You don't know if there's a if an expedite is possible. So there's a lot of issues or like what services they offer. And then when you want to order a test, you have to print something out and fax it to them or scan it. Like it's just too much work. So a lot of people end up giving up. So testing along with coach support, along with preparation awareness training for seekers,

30:35along with analytical genetic type testing, along with pre screening assessments can create like somewhat of a psychedelic profile for someone. So that if a coach wants to know their background or history, they just ask the chatbot. And the chatbot says, okay, well, you know, Dennis has, you know, history of this. And yeah, these experiences and he's taken this many doses and this is his mood over the past year. And that ties into Nthio DNA too. That's something you alluded to as genetic testing. And I think this is a very novel concept. So just for background and context, I first found out about it when you had mentioned to me that you got this new kit and it's the saliva and it's interesting because we have these cultural tropes that say, for example, cannabis makes you mellow. Well, that's not my experience where I have my experience with cannabis as it makes me hyper alert. If I take too much, I'm paranoid, right? It's totally different. I don't function

31:37in the grown social situations. And I remember for years, people saying, it's on your mind, man. But I'm like, no, it's not, bro. I'm here. Yes, it does all my mind. And also it's so limiting as a, and I do love cannabis, but I had to learn over years. Like probably don't hit the blunt three times when you're out of the party or else it might take you out of that whole reason you're there, which is to socialize. And I'm sitting on the couch and I can't form a coherent thought or sentence. Anyways, I think what you've built right now kind of speaks to that where different substances are going to impact people in different ways. And it really depends on your genetic profile, family history, their set setting, cultural matrix, so on and so forth. They go above and beyond. Just I'm in this nice space. And there's some incest lit incense and there's candles. No, it's something that is coded within you. So you built something that kind of helps people map that out. Can you tell us about it? Yeah, absolutely. So I thought I was sensitive, highly sensitive to psilocybin because, you know, I took some, I took a not a very large amount, but for all I know,

32:41it could have been like really strong apes that I had. Maybe there were two ex potent, you know, but I thought I was sensitive to it. And it turns out through genetic testing, we test for 11 different antigens, you just basically take your little swab and you swab each cheek and then you drop it in this little return envelope. And eight weeks later, you'll get a psychedelic genetic analysis. It's for me, it said that I'm less sensitive to psilocybin. And that made me think differently. So I reached out to dynamic labs and just to ask him some questions and we replaced all this, you know, support with chatbots for this now. But I asked him, well, look, I'm not that sensitive according to the results. Then what happened to me? I had a crazy trip. It's like, well, you probably had poor set and setting and no preparation. I was like, man, that is totally true. You know,

33:41I didn't, I didn't prepare. I didn't know anything. And I didn't know what the word integration meant. So the results made me rethink this. And so I'm a little bit more cognizant or it made me think back, okay, what did my sister say back when I was integrating? What did my mom say to me? Like, what was my environment and my setting like back then? What was my set like back then? You know, and did I have any intention in having that trip? Or did I just want it to have a good time? So all of that led into my negative experience. But the genetic testing, if you're going to go to Costa Rica and do ayahuasca, don't you want to have a best guess? At least some kind of baseline is to like, am I super sensitive to DMT and I began? Well, if I am, I probably shouldn't drink six cups. Yeah. And once upon a time, the only way people could describe dosage as using these little symbols, right? Which is kind of a funny joke people make now. It's like, how strong is this? It's two sparkles.

34:47What does that mean? Do you want a unicorn level dough? Or do you want like a gnome dough? You're like, what? As if as if I know what that even means. Right. Let's talk a little bit about the gas station gummy market. This is a fascinating one because I can appreciate multiple sides to this argument. Or one is that the regulatory framework is so busted and broken around measuring and the statutes related to substances that even with something like the analog act that you have products that are all over the place that people are buying, not really sure what's in them and not really sure the dosage in a lot of cases. But also, at the same time, that is an access point for people. There's this system that suppresses the availability of things like psilocybin mushrooms. So if somebody wants that experience and they go out of their way to the local gas station and by, I'm not going to name drop brands, but there's

35:49a couple big ones. But one of these bars, chocolate bars that's promising them a transcendental experience. That's also there going out of their way. The consumer wants that. And this idea, which I've talked about on the podcast a few times, of the government telling you what you can and cannot put in your body is a very recent, like within the last hundred odd years or so. And B also is not necessarily backed by science or built around safety because if it were, you wouldn't be able to possess toxic eminence of fluidies mushrooms. That's one thing that blew my mind like, wait, I can possess lethal toxic mushrooms. That's totally legal and fine. I can have them. I can handle them, but I cannot possess legally in many places psilocybin mushrooms, which have millennia views. If it were really about safety, wouldn't you think that these toxic fungi and so on and so forth would be outlawed? That's just a quick aside there. But yeah, the gas station market is fascinating. And a lot of people feel some type away about it. So what are some of

36:49your thoughts on all of these different products that we're seeing? What you already mentioned a few brands. Don't get me started. I've written that length about synthetic products. And so I call I call this the head shop space. It's pretty much the it's the alternative to it's the alternate way to get high if you can't get access to the scheduled substances. And because of the mischeduling of psilocybin due to the massive ignorance of the legislative body that created those laws, people have to turn to these head shop products who don't give a crap about your health, your wellness, and they don't care about integration, preparation. And most of these synthetic alkaloids are they're not psilocybin. They're not they're similar to psilocybin, but they're still different. They are not researched. They are considered research chemicals. So any individual, in my opinion, that would go and consume a gas station product in order to get high, has a

37:53lot of they have a lot of inner demons that they need to address. And those people will not I don't believe they will take they will take any kind of preparatory measures or have any awareness of set setting intention. It takes a special type of person to come to the conclusion that I need help. I need to improve. I need to diminish my ego. I got to stop being a jerk to people. And I don't think those are people consuming gas station products. So you know there's there's all kinds of poisons out there that people that are in a dire strait will consume just to feel relief from the dire straits they're in, but their intention is not healing. And so I don't if it's not in a gas station, they'll they'll drink it under drink something under the sink. You know, so I think better gas station than drink drain O or something like that, but there are people that will do anything to get high. And I think there's a market for that. I went to the

38:56champs show a few years ago in Las Vegas. And I thought this is going to be like Kumbaya and mushroom people and yeah, all kinds of people here to support, you know, our future of psychedelic therapy. And it was the furthest thing from it. It was mostly adult products. It was, you know, tree house was there. They had a giant booth probably costed 20 grand just for the space. And it was like 20 grand just for the booth. And they had this beautiful retail kind of store. And I was like, God, Lord, how much product are these guys making? And most of what they put in their products is, I think it's five five ACO MET. And I was the medicine. I was absolutely disgusted. I didn't want to be there anymore. We really didn't have anybody that was interested in wellness products at all. It just seemed like whatever head shop product, you can sell it the lowest price to get people

39:57as high as possible. We really don't care. So I was just really turned off by that. And I just, it was a wake up call about what, what, how the world works. And, you know, maybe if I'm awake, it doesn't mean others are. Yeah, it was fascinating for me to be over in Europe earlier this year, or last year in October, and Athens, Greece. And I'm on this pedestrian street and the capital of Greece and walked by this head shop and outside they had this displaced, displaced case where they had one up bars. And I saw a couple of these brands. I saw tree house. I saw one up in Naples, Italy, in Athens, Greece. I've seen them in Mexico City. But it kind of speaks to how global some of these products are. Now, of course, you can, as far as I understand, just buy the packaging. So these might be not just one company, but some of these companies have real global reach. And as an example of the scale, diamond shrooms, which many people will be familiar with that name, they incurred the ravage of the CDC or the FDA, any number of agencies, because a bunch of people got sick allegedly

41:05from these diamond shrooms products. I believe in the summer of 2024. But they're batch size. I've come to find out for each of these products they're producing is about two million at a time. So like two million bags of gummies or two million diamond shrooms, chocolate bars, et cetera. So again, these got to go somewhere. So are they getting backdoored overseas? Are they getting distributed to smoke shops? That particular brand, not anymore, probably, but it's a pretty big market. So I guess this is a nice dovetail into talking about something I really wanted to dive into with you, which is synthetic versus natural, because this is something to across the board that evokes a lot of strong opinions and perspectives. Some people really like synthetic products, be they trip to mean, or muskumol, et cetera, because of standardization of dose can apparently be easier. And because the effects can be more predictable versus something like a natural amany to Muscaria or

42:09psilocybin mushroom, where it's kind of variable. Like you get just inconsistency and potency across batches. And sometimes you might have a really intense experience other times. You might take a big dose. And it's super mellow. And I'm personally pretty interested in both. I tend to default towards the natural substances. I think there's an intelligence there. I think if it more as an entity or being than a product, believe it or not. But also, I don't just throw the baby out with the bath water. I've had great experiences with synthetic products as well. So that's something I know a lot of people in the space are talking about. And like, you know, one side thinks the other side is outdated or obsolete. But can you talk a little bit about some of your perspectives on natural versus synthetic, be it amanyta or aco for acodmt, etc. Yeah, absolutely. I have a lot to say on this. So when you get into higher, larger economies of scale, like if your diamond shrooms or a polka dot, it's absolutely impossible to have organic whole fruit bodies or extract. The cost

43:16will skyrocket. So I'll just give you an example. The synthetic, synthetic silicin or synthetic alkaloids are usually 99% pure and about 10 to 100 times cheaper than the organic alternative. And you don't have to wait. It doesn't take, you know, eight weeks to grow and dry and etc. So working with potent, consistent alkaloids in its pure form is the most consistent way to dose. And it's the, really, the only way to establish a supply chain that can sustain those giant economies of scale. And the, and the, you could not sell a chocolate bar wholesale. Remember, these gas stations are getting it for 50% usually of the, they market up 100% usually. And if they, if you can't do that, it's not worth selling. So if I have a $10 chocolate bar

44:20that costs me, you'll usually just to make it organically, cost me $15 with real mushrooms. And it costs me 50 cents with synthetic alkaloids. What are you going to choose? And as far as what I think about how they feel, well, the, the thing about certain other kinds of mushrooms is, there's a couple of factors. There's the potency of the mushroom itself and also shrooms very drastically in potency. Even if you have a clone next to another clone in the same monotub, one might be stronger than the other. So it's just random environment, genetics, it's lots of things. So there are other minor alkaloids, you know, the fail systems and, et cetera, those can add to the experience. So I find the people that say it, it has, it has a spirit. It's, it's not like synthetic. Well, that's because, yes, it was alive, but at this point it's dead. It's dry. And the, the other alkaloids are probably adding to your

45:23experience. I've tried a silicent fumarate, which is, you know, it's just a natural, a synthetic way of bonding silicent together. So it doesn't degrade. And it's very intense. You can take a small sublingual, put it under your tongue, your flying in 15 minutes, you're in your macro session, or you can do a micro, but it's very, very consistent. You're not going to have any variation with a synthetic product. However, the problem and the huge risk is that when I saw the diamond shunth diasco, they tried to pass it off as if it was like E. coli or something like that. I don't think that was the case. I think if you just pour an extra cup of the, of the pure medicine in a batch, you can, you can overdose people really, really, really easily. You know, because it's 99% pure. Like you get an extra gram and it's like too much, right? So unlike, fruit bodies, which are a lot more forgiving because they're like usually 1%, even if you use an

46:27extract, it's maybe 3%. It's really hard to spike a dose. And if you know, you're going to also, it's very expensive. So you're going to be really careful with that. But with synthetics, cheap, you, you, oh, shit, it's, I added a little too much. Let it go. You know, I don't want it to get in trouble. We don't want to reject a giant million unit batch or however many don't let it go. And I think that's what happened is that I had a, I found the doctor that was treating those people that were coming to the hospital and he had randomly put out something on tick talk about these strange symptoms. You know, they're like vomiting and they're just feel terrible. And it's like, I don't know what's going on with me. And it seemed like they're experiencing some kind of psychedelic reaction. But they don't know that necessarily this was supposed to be psychedelic or at least to this extent. I'm pretty sure that's what got them in trouble. And because they do non detect alkaloids, they didn't go and, and put these guys in jail. They just basically, you know, from a food standpoint, from a safety standpoint, they shut them down.

47:30Yeah, I'm also curious if you know anything about the chain of custody for some of these research chemicals. My understanding is that they're produced in China. And that's something that some people will use to kind of vilify them, right? The sort of invoke the xenophobia. Like the Chinese chemicals they're putting in things. But also I've had Mitchell Gomez on the show who is a very well known harm reductionist. And he talked about how you can send a drawing of a theoretical molecule to laboratories in China. And they could send you that molecule, produce it, manufacture it, send it to you in six weeks, turn around. So yeah. And they care not a lick about safety or anything. You pay for it, you get it. Is that the case you would say with some of these non detects that are coming out, which I know people are so stoked on these from a producer standpoint. Like I was at a trade show in Miami a few years ago, probably saw you there. And they have the non detect psilocybin mushrooms. And they just have like ounces or pounds of mushrooms out on

48:35the table in Florida, which of course, it's highly illegal there. And when people ask about it, they say, oh, there's no psilocybin in here. And there were smoke shops that were selling these mushrooms. So you could buy mushrooms. Of course, this could just be a cover probably where they say, yeah, here's our COAs and it tested for 0% psilocybin or psilocybin. But it has all the other alkaloids in there that I don't think that norbeo system, et cetera, are shown up on any criminal statutes or anything like that. But yeah, what are some of your takes on these the whole non detect market? And is this something that is going to just keep getting wilder and weirder? I don't think so because there are going there are ways of detecting it. If you if you want to pay enough money, like the DEA has a lab that can detect all of that because they will pay for they haven't like how much it robert say it was like a six billion dollar budget. They have a whole lab. They can they they have they'll pay for the except, you know, the rapidly depleting standards in order to detect yours. And so at some point, the after we have more diamond shroom incidents,

49:39because it's going to happen because they just they're not required to lab test or anything. They'll make a lab test that is a specific non detect it's a trick. It's a trick like let's just say you have caffeine in your product and I tell you, hey, Dennis, I want to say this is a non detect product, but I want to test for psilocybin. Do you think it'll have psilocybin in it? No, it'll it'll have a certificate that says there's no psilocybin in this. And then you'll take you'll eat the bar or whatever and you'll you'll get speedy and go what was this? So they, you know, not testing for something doesn't authenticate anything. It's just it's just it's just a it's a hilarious loophole that allows people to make a living and not worry about going to jail, but still being an ethical dog, you know, you're just being terrible to mankind. That's on that's between them and their creator, you know, but I can't live that way. Yeah, wild times, that's for sure.

50:41It's been amazing being a part of this growing movement as some people call it or industry as other people call it, you know, when I first went to a psychedelic conference, it was meat delic. It was called which was put on by yeah, yeah, in Vegas. And I got invited by one of the sponsors and was just flabbergasted to see all these different booths and products. And then that really was a pale than comparison to what I saw at Wonderland. That was sort of like ground zero for psychedelic commercialization and just starting to see that's that's that's my that's my favorite wonderland. We all still chat and ever since that Wonderland, we're also like wonderland. Yeah, I've been to two of them and then they discontinued it, but I know that there are lots of other players who have stepped up to kind of throw their hat in the ring for being a psychedelic trade show. There's a big one in Berlin that's coming up. It'll be May 15th. So depending on when this gets released with trip expo, TRYP, but what's interesting to me is from

51:46what I can tell looking at trip expo, it looks a lot more like a trade show. And I mean that and that some of these conferences are really deliberately research focused and medicalization focused. And I think that's sort of to drive the legitimacy and to have cooperation with government, things like that. Like I've been invited to ICPR and the Netherlands. It's the probably preeminent psychedelic research conference over there. But from the outside looking in because I didn't actually go, that one is really focused on medicine, research, etc. But from what I'm seeing from trip expo, I'm sure they have that dynamic, but it looks more like something that's grounded and culture and real world use. And that's another fundamental disconnect. And maybe it's just out of convenience for one or the other, but it feels like a lot of the kind of policy reformer saying like Trump's executive order with IboGain and with Compass Pathways lobbying for the approval of their

52:46psilocybin asset. Like these are really grounded in this clinical approach, of course. But there's not a lot of acknowledgement of the fact that so much psychedelic use happens outside the clinic. And in community context and with with productization, the fact that there are so many CPGs now and consumer package goods where you can buy LSD and you can buy MDMA gummies and things like that. Like even one of these prominent figures you mentioned earlier was posting on LinkedIn about where you can buy LSD online. And it was one of these kind of break the matrix moments where it's like, wait, you know, I knew that, but I think a lot of people maybe they're vaguely aware of it, but to actually see, whoa, there's a branded LSD producer and Colorado like this is, and of course, we always have to put the caveat out there that none of this, and that regard is legal anywhere. Like it's not decriminalized. LSD is not decriminalized, but there's a sense of a lack of

53:46enforcement and a lot of people taking advantage of that, fascinating times all the way around. So I'm sure we could dive deeper into this territory, but I also want to be respectful of your time. So, no, no, I got time. I also wanted to see if we could do a screen share and do a demo of some of the stuff. Well, we can, but I want to say this is primarily going to be an audio podcast. So I think it would probably lose a little bit of a luster. I'm sure I can put some clips out, but you know, this is a good time to promote the incubator that we do on Thursdays. Revs been coming frequently every Thursday. We've got the micropreneur incubator, and it's a bunch of people hanging out having these types of conversations. We're having right now on the podcast, but an interactive capacity so that invite goes out on the micropreneur newsletter every Thursday. And yeah, man, so yeah, what are some of your thoughts about this like risk assessment around productization and around the market? Because it feels like a lot of people are just like blindly confident. Like maybe in some regards, they don't even know that things are illegal. Like you go to a decriminalized city,

54:51you set up shop, you get this big public profile, and it's not strictly legal, but there is non-enforcement. And those are different things. So what are some of the considerations for like risk analysis and strategy for people who are involved in that? That needs structure for sure. And it also requires funding. So I think there are a lot of the reasons why you see a lot of ketamine clinics and more professional medicalized audiences in these trade shows is because it's really difficult to get funding for psychedelic or plant touching substances. And that's why I think a lot of the money that came into psychedelics few years ago was much derived from cannabis. And they were kind of realizing that because of regulation, they can't make any profit margin, their tax and all this other stuff, and expected key prices low. And so they decided, well, what can we pivot into? So maps last year wasn't all that busy because I heard that a lot of the cannabis people just bailed on the industry because they were not generating enough of a return.

55:54And you know, this industry isn't really to generate profit. You barely can survive. It's a lot about healing. And the expense associated with getting a proper like facilitation, mental health integrative support, like let's say in Colorado and now emerging in, sorry, Oregon and emerging more in Colorado is the cost of it. So if I have a clinic, if I have to have, you know, there's a facilitator and then there's the facility, those are two separate entities, those have expenses. Some states require an extra person to be in the room to make sure they're safety. That's an extra expense. Journeys can be three to four or more hours. That costs. And it's highly personal, you know, most of the rooms that you'll go to, if you want to have psychedelic therapy is just a, it's like, it's like a massage room kind of, you know, but instead of a table, you have it,

56:55you know, chair or something comfortable, but it's still impersonal. And I feel that because of the cost and because, you know, mental health and wellness is so stigmatized to the point where I really don't want to talk to human necessarily, people will opt to do their psychedelic therapy at home. So that's why I think a lot of these ketamine kids, you know, you can get these, you know, trokeys and take it at home. It's really doctors that have legal right to distribute drugs and not get in trouble and they just, you know, ship it directly to you and still you don't get all that much support. I mean, you can get it, but they don't really, most people don't necessarily opt for it because they just want to take the substance without necessarily doing the work. It's just like therapy, it's just like anything else, not everybody does the work, not everybody's intention is to be a better person, to be a happier person. I didn't even think I'd be right to be happier, I had to earn that somehow. So doing psychedelics, it's personal. So at home, it's a lot more

57:59comfortable. And if I could get a hundred dollar microdose bar and then follow some tips and do my research with, let's say a chatbot. And I can have my genetic analysis done and have the chatbot analyze it. And I can do my pre screening and have a chatbot support me with what that means. Then I don't need anybody. I can just do this by myself. And if I feel like I need more than the support that I have here on, let's just say a psychedelic platform. I can reach out to a coach and set up an appointment and dig deeper. But this, I really believe it should be completely up to the seeker as to how they want to lead their journey. I don't think they should be told how to lead it. Nobody can be told what's the proper ideal dose of optimal dose. We can do analysis and we can just really, we have to just trial and error to figure out what someone's optimal dose is based on their background, their support systems, their genetic sensitivities. And so

59:01I find that the corner cases like mine where I had a completely adverse reaction is very small. I would say under 10%. But you know, in those cases, there are people that really do want to look deeper into it. But the other problem is that audience is still not very aware of what psychedelic therapy is even about or what antigens are even a good for. So because the awareness is so low, the coaches often don't have enough business. They don't have enough referrals. And so they can't sustain themselves doing psychedelic assistance or therapy full time. The ones that are out there doing it full time, that's amazing. They're accomplishing something that people wish they could do. And everyone says there's so much demand. But there aren't any channels to connect the people, the 80% of people seeking psychedelic help find it 20% of the time just because shadow banning SMS blocking emails being sent to promotions instead of their inbox. The cyber warfare against

1:00:05drugs is still very much alive. And so giant money making complex. We've covered so much interesting territory today. I think this is a good place to put a pin in it. And I'm sure we could talk for another hour. But I do encourage people to join us at the incubator and come and chat with Rev because he is often there and we dive into these topics in a communal format. So how about as we start to wrap up today, I'd love to leave you this time to promote anything you're working on that you haven't already or double down on certain things you have. You've got so many different projects and they're all tied together under the anthology project. But yeah, you want to share any other upcoming events or products or calls to action with the audience today? Yes, yes, yes, but please. So our website is nthio.info, e-n-t-e-o-dot-i-n-f-o. And on that, you'll see all the resources that we provide the community. So we provide a membership.

1:01:09We have a conscious healing research community. And we built a new platform called Nthio-i-m. It's Stancer Anthogenic Integration Manager. And it's primarily responsible to get a seeker prepared for their psychedelic journey and connect them with live human coaching support. AI is not a replacement for humans. AI is a superpower. It makes you bionic. The nthio.dna sensitivity test can be ordered from that website. And after the eight weeks that you get your results, you'll get a dna report analysis. But most people don't necessarily, they have a lot of questions about it. So they can go over to nthio.info and it will train their report and it will answer questions about it. Then we also have silo screen dot me, which is a psilocybin pre-screener. And it asks a few questions and it gives you a score from zero to 100. And the higher the score, the higher your case acuity is, which means that you need a more qualified professional to deal

1:02:13with your case. For me, I needed a nurse practitioner or a psychiatrist because of my family history. But who knew? So the silo screen that's core is a quantitative measure that can tell the coaches immediately if there is a corner case that we need to be cautious of. And that's what we're really concerned about. Our first project is much EPT. You probably heard of that. We built that a few years ago as our first rag or retrieval augmented generation chatbot. We loaded 650 papers in it. And it worked really cool. It was amazing. It helped me give a name to what I was experiencing, which was psilocybin, and do psychopathy. There's also other names for it now. That's what the LLM told me back then. So once that was successful, we realized that there's a lot more parts that need to be there. So we built nthio.in with over 50,000 documents, which includes science, law, patents, and traditional wisdom as a foundation to answer any question that somebody might have about the history of psychedelics.

1:03:18The law is around psychedelics. What patents are out there? And it'll be one, it'll answer everything in one place. And it show you the documents that it used to generate that response. So you can actually go and audit that, you know, what, you know, is that source reliable? And you can come to your own conclusions instead of assume the LLM is right. So yeah, everything's on there. We also, we're on our can distributors. So if anybody is a hundred-duction people, we distribute that for free. And then we also built limbs, which the producer community, I would really encourage them to check out. It's limbslimms.inthio.info. And this will allow you to conveniently order lab testing. We have psychedelic panels, functional panels, cannabis panels, mescaline, aminita, genetics. And so you couldn't, you go see all the labs and you can pick one that's your favorite. Order a test real easily online. You print out the mailing instructions, everything's confidential. We maintain the chain

1:04:20of custody so that, you know, nobody's name is on anything. And when we generate the COA from the lab, the certificate of analysis, you can share that directly with people so that you can ensure, you know, I wouldn't suggest putting on your website. But if someone's, you know, a little sketchy about what, what you've made, you show them the results and say, this is what's in it. And they can, anybody can take the COA number and go to our website, type it into Verify a COA. And you can see and authenticate that COA online. The other problem with COA is, is I can fake it. I can just make it up. I can just change the picture and say, here, what would you know? That, that stops. So my, my way of self-regulating is, is to allow people to conveniently do lab testing. And in much cheaper price now, used to be about 150, 1, 250 for potency test. Now it's like $65. And so that's going to encourage more properties. And as people have more awareness that they should even ask for a COA, this is going to become more popular. And the transparency that this gives is has not existed before.

1:05:28Thanks for the rundown, man. Always appreciate tapping in with you, looking forward to continuing this conversation at the incubators and rev human cultural technologists and founder of Enthiology Project. Thanks for joining me on the micro neural project. Oh, I'm also, I'm also on SoundCloud. Go, go listen like DJ. Go DJ. Peace out, man. I'm great. Psychedelic. Psychedelic DJ. All right, dude. And that is a wrap. Thank you for sticking around to the bitter end. It's very sweet of you to commit so thoroughly. Don't be a stranger. Let me know what you thought of this episode. And please consider checking out the substantial backlog while you're at it. You can reach out to me via email, micropreneur at gmail.com, or hit me on any of the numerous social platforms that I'm currently active on. At micropreneur podcast is the handle on Instagram and Twitter. Thank you all very much for sticking around. Have a wonderful day. I'll see you back here next week on the micropreneur podcast.