Christian Schwartz is a mycologist who was recently interviewed on the Crime Pays but Botany Doesn’t podcast. He has not taken psychedelic mushrooms, doesn’t know much about those species because it’s not where his interest lies.

He also expressed skepticism of the “wood wide web” upon first hearing about it, but as he continued to study all the species interaction, he became just as amazed as the “hippy dippy” types.

I don’t think the Radiolab guys or most of the people they interview are big psychedelic users either. Their episode on mushrooms is pretty awe-inspiring too.

https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/from-...

thanks for the good faith answer, this is reassuring and interesting.

there’s a long history, starting way back with Timothy Leary, of psychedelic drug promoters doing sloppy, dubious science.

but there’s also a growing orthodoxy in some circles around psychedelic drugs — any mention of possible long term negative effects really offends people.

anyway i am glad to see the botanical aspects are understood and accepted by people who aren’t also evangelists.

Happy to share my enthusiasm! I understand the skepticism too, given that we’re into the second wave of psychedelics. All I will say about those is to pay attention to the research being done at John’s Hopkins. It is a reputable institution, and they’re rigorously looking at effects and potential uses without being, to my knowledge, strong advocates based on personal encounters.

It’s important to know that the psychoactive fungi are a tiny, tiny fraction of fungal life. The role of fungi in the ecosystem has really only started to be deeply studied over the past decade or two. It’s kind of like microbiome research writ large. We don’t know what we don’t know, and what we are learning is wild stuff. Like, forests only exist because mushrooms farm trees (see the Radiolab episode).

And even the more...Experienced...advocates are finding wild stuff in the greater fungal world. Paul Stamets, for example, has gotten contracts with DARPA because he’s finding all kinds of very effective antiviral, antifungal, antibacterial compounds in different species’ mycelia. He may have found a simple cure for colony collapse disorder—the experimental results look good. So don’t ignore their contributions when they get results—just maybe skip their TED talks ;)

There's another way to become less skeptical of the rhetoric too: see for yourself. There's no shortage of scientific literature on the safety, so that's a fairly poor excuse to deny obliging your curiosity.