Fungi Friday Flashback

Greetings, fungi lovers! Today I want to share with you an old picture from my archives. More specifically, from my mushroom cultivation days. I am no longer allowed to cultivate mushrooms. This is due to an incident involving the mushrooms pictured above. Have you guessed their identity yet? Hint: they contain psilocybin and psilocin. Yes, they are P. cubensis, otherwise known as magic mushrooms. The compounds in these mushrooms are hallucinogenic and let's just say I had a little incident where I stayed acting silly and climbed to the roof of my house.
I was caught and all my cultures and equipment, and even my journal, were confiscated. I don't remember what initially possessed me to take on the endeavor of cultivating them but I was quite good at it.
These poor, misunderstood mushrooms find themselves in a tough legal spot. The mushrooms themselves aren't illegal where I live, it's the 2 psychedelic compounds they contain that are. However, their spores are legal to buy online, for microscopy purposes only of course 😉.
It was fairly simple for me to grow them. The entire process took about 2 months. I won't discuss the process in detail, but it basically involves inoculating the spawn, waiting for it to get colonized, and then keeping the humidity at a level that would promote fruiting, after which you can harvest. Oh and everything must be sterile.

Sometimes I tell the story of what happened that fateful day I was caught to friends of mine in the neighborhood, to which they respond, "That was you?!" Then they often ask if I can teach them how to do it and one time I did. The problem is these people aren't as dedicated (or clean) as I was and they often fail, with their cultures usually getting contaminated with other molds. That's the equivalent of getting to grow tomatoes but your garden is overrun by other weeds. The mold is competition for the mushrooms but also you could get very sick if you ingest these molds. As many of you already know, many fungi are poisonous.
I'm still somewhat scared of magic mushrooms. It's an influence you can't control and it's difficult to discern reality from hallucination. It's also hard to gauge how much to dose, unless you have a scale.
I'm not advising or encouraging anything, but should these special fungi ever find you, make sure you're in a good "set and setting". Set stands for mindset. Don't take magic mushrooms if you're in a bad mental state and also don't if you're not in a safe space. Some people like to do it with another person who will stay sober so that they can babysit them, which is a good idea. In some parts of the world they are still considered medicine just as the ancients regarded them.
A few years have passed since my incident. Things have calmed down. I can say the M word now. I guess it was a learning experience. I wish I had more pictures to share but that's all that survived.
Thanks for reading, and stay safe!