A trip after taking magic mushrooms or magic truffles can be one of the most life-changing and breathtaking moments of your life. Anyone who has ever experienced such a blissful trip will agree. But at the same time, having a bad trip can be one of the most terrible, scary, or terrifying moments. So what if we could find a way to eliminate bad trips? Sound impossible? Well, not according to a group of scientists in the North American city of Issaquah.
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The end of bad trips?
Let’s start by noting that if you want to be sure you never experience a bad trip on magic mushrooms, the first and most important option is not to take them at all. But come on, we both know that’s not going to happen, right? A psychedelic experience like the one that psilocybin-containing magic mushrooms or truffles can provide is by far one of the most amazing things anyone can do in their lifetime. Or as Terence McKenna himself put it: “I think dying without having had a psychedelic experience is the same as dying without ever having had sex. It means you’ve never figured out what it’s all about. The mystery lies in the body and the way the body functions in nature”—Amen!
But there’s good news for you psychedelic-loving psychonauts. Researchers at an American company called CaaMTech believe they’ve identified the molecule that influences the likelihood of a positive psychedelic experience. That’s exactly what their recent work was about: finding—or rather, creating—the perfect “magic mushroom.” A mushroom with no risk of a bad trip. Sounds amazing, right?
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Creating the perfect magic mushroom
When it comes to research on psychedelic mushrooms, CaaMTech is still in its infancy. But we can’t underestimate their latest discovery, which has been under study for over a year. What those geniuses were trying to figure out was determining the properties of various compounds in magic mushrooms, in the hope of optimizing existing ones. They were trying to figure out which chemicals caused which effects—primarily to create the perfect magic mushroom for medical use.
“We believe that preventing bad trips can increase the success rate for patients,” Andrew Chadeayne, founder and CEO of CaaMTech, told the online psychedelic magazine DoubleBlind. “We want to find a way to at least give people the chance to increase the likelihood of a euphoric experience,” he continued.
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Aeruginascin to the rescue
Don’t even try to pronounce it, but it’s a substance called aeruginascin that—according to the researchers—is somehow responsible for how a psychedelic trip is experienced. Aeruginascin is considered one of the chemicals that work together with psilocybin to create that special hallucinogenic trip. Scientists believe this compound has the potential to drastically reduce bad trips or perhaps even eliminate them entirely. Something many people will consider amazing—though many psychonauts also find great value in bad trips.
German mycologist and chemist Jochen Gartz also believes this specific compound could be the future of psychedelic mushroom use. “Aeruginascin is now a hot topic in this wave of new psilocybin therapy,” he said. It was Gartz who discovered the compound in the 1980s while studying people who used magic mushrooms. He found that while some people reported feelings of deep dysphoria and anxiety, it was primarily users of Inocybe aeruginascens who had an exclusively positive experience; that specific mushroom is believed to contain only this unique compound.
Sounds promising, doesn’t it? If you’re still experiencing a bad trip right now, you might want to try one of our bad trip stoppers.
