I recently was gifted a small amount of synthetic psilocin and I found the experience to be amazing!!! Almost identical in every positive way to eating fruiting bodies but with a quicker come up, no tummy issues whatsoever. It has a slightly shorter duration, but I actually love that aspect. I don’t have to worry about planning out a whole day. Got 4 hours to spare? Gobble up 15-30mg and you will be back to baseline with a wonderful afterglow at the 4hr mark.
A++ experience for me
I’ve heard haters and “all natural” folks scoff at anything synthetic but I absolutely prefer it! Hands down. I hope I never have to choke down a dusty ass dinosaur bone ever again , or eat some weird metallic tasting chocolate bar or funky gummy.
Id assume the industry will see more synthetic as time goes on since it’s more shelf stable (fruiting bodies contain water and enzymes that break down actives making them lose potency quickly) and dosing can be exact and reproducible rather than, in the case of fruiting bodies, ranging from 0.1-1+% actives.
As a drug consumer it is always your responsibility to confirm purity of the substance consumed. Lots of labs around can confirm that for you for most any substance.
By hplc there were no additional impurities in my sample. Safety first!
Have you ever tested the fruiting bodies you eat for bacteria or toxic molds? Many of the compounds produced by these are toxic impurities just like there could be minor toxic impurities in a synthetic product. All about perspective.
As for the synth. Far from “one pot”. It’s a multi step reaction.
All that being said I prefer the clean experience of eating pure psilocin as opposed to eating fruiting bodies covered in trichoderma mold and starting a trip with a gut ache.
Great post. I’d prefer psilocin extracted from mushrooms over synthetic. That connection to nature effects the trip for me! If I wanted synthetic I would go for old reliable L. Thoughts?
Anthony speeter synthesis, for 4-subbed tryptamines. You need LAH or better vitride and oxalyl chloride. So not the easiest synthesis, and the precursors are expensive. Dmt synthesis (or 5-meo-dmt, DET, MiPT, etc) on the other hand can be synthesized very easily quickly and very cheaply via eschweiler Clarke reductive amination
I’d venture to say that 75% of the L out there isn’t L, more likely a DOX analogue or something of that nature. Too hard to obtain the starting material for making L
I think 4-benzyloxy-indole is the cheapest precursor for 4-subbed tryptamines and it’s still 1400+/kg, at least last time I checked. Hoffman’s old paper where he synths psilocin, psilocybin and 4-aco-dmt has the writeup. I believe it gets debenzylated in the last step when you reduce with lah/vitride. Someone should crunch the numbers and see how much cheaper it actually is(or isn’t) to synthesis vs extract, when you take into account the solvent/reagent costs, practical yield and scalability of both processes.
I def have enjoyed natural mushroom extracts as well! Kind of a bitch to store because of how hygroscopic it is tho. Also doesn’t have the shelf life that the fumerate salt has so not as well suited for the impending industry.
I’m not saying it’s cheaper and it’s def not easier than growing fruiting bodies. I prob wouldn’t start with the benzylated starting material if I were doing the synth. More possibility for impurities and harder to scale.
Maybe I’m wrong but I thought that 4-ho-indole was made from 4-benzyloxyindole and that’s why it’s more expensive. Starting from 4-benzyloxyindole is slick because it gets debenzylated at the same time when you reduce it. I think even with the expensive starting materials synthesis is still probably much cheaper then extraction, at least at the kilo level, but I’m not familiar with how one would go about scaling up mushroom cultivation and a/b extraction. As the mushroom industry develops I could see a huge automated facility that uses some kind of giant soxhlet extractor to extract being cheaper and more scalable then synthesis.
Never tried synthetic psilocin but I’ve had wonderful trips on 4-AcO-DMT. I would “lemon-tek” the 4-AcO-DMT by dissolving it in lemonade, in hopes that it would turn into psilocin. Who knows if it actually did but either way it made me feel awesome, very clean and quick hitting
I don’t believe soxhlet will ever be the move for large scale, but you are definitely right that an automated facility could use other methods for extracting and purifying actives from fruiting bodies. I believe most start with 4aco indole. I don’t believe the cost is significantly more than the benzylated. I’ve heard of people having issues with the last step when utilizing the benzylated starting material
, or eat some weird metallic tasting chocolate bar or funky gummy.