Louis Adam and Jordan Williams - Mycology Now: Spreading Knowledge one Spore at a Time
Release Date: 10/15/2019
PT511 – The Other Side of Veteran Healing: Secondary PTSD and Post-Retreat Family Dynamics, with Allison Wilson & Dr. Grace Blest-Hopley
Psychedelics Today
In this episode, Joe interviews two members of the Heroic Hearts Project team: Director of Donor Development and founder of The Hope Project, Allison Wilson; and Director of Research and founder of Hystelica, Dr. Grace Blest-Hopley. They discuss how The Hope Project – a nonprofit that supports spouses of veterans, Gold Star Wives, and female veterans with scholarships to psychedelic healing retreats, integration, community, etc. – merged with Heroic Hearts Project, and why this is such a necessary part of the veteran healing story: How does a family hold space for a vet returning to a...
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PT510 – Early Research, Psychedelics in Palliative Care, and the Intersection of Science and the Sacred, with William Richards, STM, Ph.D.
Psychedelics Today
In this episode, Joe and Kyle interview William Richards, STM, Ph.D.: senior advisor at Sunstone Therapies, psychologist at the Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, contributor to Vital, and author of . He talks about the first time he experienced psilocybin in a research study in 1963, his early studies on the psychology of religion, working with Abraham Maslow, how he became one of the early psychedelic therapists, and what it was like for all of that to disappear when Nixon came into office and shut everything down. He...
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PT509 – Music for Psychedelic Exploration, and the First 'Choose Your Own Adventure' Album, with Shahar Amit
Psychedelics Today
In this episode, Joe interviews Shahar Amit: psytrance musician who has created what may be the world's first modular album for psychedelic exploration under his project, Held By Sound. He talks about his background in the rave and festival scene, the moment he realized he wanted to make music, and the realization that he could create soundscapes specifically for journeys into non-ordinary states. And he digs into the 'choose your own adventure' framework of the free album: how he actually recorded 3 different albums and figured out how to transition into different moods based on which...
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PT508 – The Veteran Community and Operator Syndrome: Psychedelics and Redefining Pain Management, with Tommy Aceto
Psychedelics Today
In this episode, Joe and special guest, Court Wing, interview Tommy Aceto: former Navy Seal and trauma medic, NCAA athlete, Michigan State Champion Wrestler, and now, psychedelic advocate and ambassador for the Veteran Mental Health Leadership Coalition. He discusses his journey from childhood to wanting to become a SEAL, and the toll that military life and its programming can take on a person: how a life built on high levels of endurance, deprivation, and constantly surviving in a fight-or-flight mindset often manifests in Operator Syndrome, chronic pain, depression, and addiction. Veterans...
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PT507 – Psychedelic Education: Insights, Advice, and Where to Start, with Johanna Hilla & Kyle Buller
Psychedelics Today
In this episode, Kyle and Johanna catch up, interviewing each other about psychedelic education and what they’ve learned, the biggest challenges, and what advice they would give to anyone looking to get involved in the psychedelic field. They discuss: How sometimes it’s not about the substance: If you want to be a psychedelic therapist, do you see yourself doing therapy without the psychedelics? How no part of education is exempt, and becoming truly psychedelically-competent can involve studying psychology, neuroscience, somatics, religion, history, etc. How people’s experiences are...
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PT506 – Decolonization, Difficult Conversations, and the Challenge of Merging Spirituality and Science, with Philip Wolf
Psychedelics Today
In this episode, Joe interviews Philip Wolf: writer, member of Rolling Stone's Culture Council, founder of Cultivating Spirits (the first company in the U.S. to offer legal culinary cannabis experiences), and founder of CashoM, an education company offering a certificate in cannabis stewardship. He discusses his recent Rolling Stone article about the need to divorce ourselves from the colonial mindset that pervades the psychedelic movement, and he talks about the difficult conversation that came about when he asked a very critical group of psychedelic leaders how they felt about the article,...
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PT505 – Bicycle day Reflections, Quantum Mechanics, and the Value in Studying Philosophy to Understand Psychedelic Experiences, with Lenny Gibson, Ph.D.
Psychedelics Today
In this episode, Joe and Kyle interview Lenny Gibson, Ph.D.: philosopher, Grof-certified Holotropic Breathwork® facilitator, 20-year professor of transpersonal psychology at Burlington College, and the reason Joe and Kyle met many years ago. He talks about his early LSD experiences and how his interest in the philosophy of Plato and Alfred North Whitehead provided a framework and language for understanding a new mystical world where time and space were abstractions. He believes that while culture sees the benefits of psychedelics in economic terms, the biggest takeaway from non-ordinary...
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PT504 – Rethinking Drug Education: From D.A.R.E. Scare Tactics to an Evidence-Based Approach, with Joey Lichter, Ph.D.
Psychedelics Today
In this episode, Joe interviews Joey Lichter, Ph.D.: professor in the Chemistry & Biochemistry department at Miami’s Florida International University, and one of the few professors in the U.S. teaching a course about psychedelics at the collegiate level. He talks about his path towards the course, the challenge of creating a curriculum that covers everything in a few months, and the importance of teaching young minds about psychedelics the right away; shifting drug education from the “Just say no!” D.A.R.E. model to a more balanced, honest, and evidence-based approach. He aims for...
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PT503 – Updates from MAPS: Current Initiatives, Psychedelic Science 2025, and Music as a Bridge, with Devon Phillips
Psychedelics Today
In this episode, Joe interviews Devon Phillips: community & partnerships officer for the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS). Phillips works on strategies to tackle the questions: How do we responsibly mainstream psychedelics? And how do we get culture engaged? He's focusing on being the bridge to psychedelics outside of research, facilitating workshops and psychedelic coming-out stories at music festivals and conferences. He talks about harm reduction and drug checking at festivals, the concept of training big names to become trustworthy resources, the differences...
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PT502 – Preserving Psychedelic Legacies: Shulgin Farm and the Shulgin Archive Project, with Keeper Trout
Psychedelics Today
In this episode, Joe interviews Keeper Trout: archivist, author, photographer, co-founder of the Cactus Conservation Institute, and creator of Trout’s Notes, a website compiling personal research and collected data to help ethnobotanical researchers. From an interest in cactus taxonomy, Sasha Shulgin urged Trout to go through his files, resulting in a friendship, and eventually, an 8-year project of digitizing all of these files into the ever-evolving Shulgin Archive. Trout discusses: His relationship with Sasha and The Shulgin Farm project, which aims to make the farm a community resource...
info_outlineIn this episode, Joe sits down with Jordan and Lou from Mycology Now, a company that makes and sells spore syringes for microscopy use. In the show, they talk about the start of Mycology Now, the culture change caused by psychedelics, and personal stories on how psychedelics changed their lives.
3 Key Points:
- Mycology Now is a company that produces premium spores for microscopy use. The goal is to spread knowledge about mycology, one spore at a time.
- We are living in an age of information that has never been experienced before, people have the tools to break the stigma on their own just by educating themselves.
- Psychedelics are becoming a culture change agent, more and more people are becoming accepting of psychedelics, and psychedelics are helping people come together to create positive change.
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Navigating Psychedelics
Show Notes
Mycology Now
- Jordan and Lou are co-owners and creators of Mycology Now
- The company runs out of Florida
- Mycology Now is a company that sells spores for microscopy
- They have two locations in Denver
- The mission of the company is to spread spores and knowledge
- Lou shares how his interest in mycology began
- He says it began with his struggle with depression and suicidal tendencies
- Psilocybin had ended up being the only thing that helped with the struggle, the depression was completely erased
- Jordan shares his story
- His mother was in a relationship when he was about 10 years old with an abusive man
- This man abused narcotics, opioids
- He was abusive mentally, physically and emotionally
- He grew up being convinced that he wasn't worthy of love, and he blamed himself
- About 2 years ago, he discovered mushrooms, and was able to go into the painful parts of his childhood and forgive himself and heal from his trauma
- “Although negative things did happen to me, and to my family, I was not the cause of it, and I should not have to carry that around with me.” - Jordan
- He wants to do everything in his power to bring that to the rest of the world
Shattering the Stigma
- One thing that they have noticed about the younger generation is that they are way more open and have way more acceptance of psychedelics and an interest in self care and mental health
- “We are living in an age of information that has never been experienced before, people have the tools to break the stigma on their own just by educating themselves.” - Jordan
- Joe mentions that in Colorado, psychedelics are a bit normalized to have conversation about
- In Florida, the median age is 55, so there is more of a challenge because people that age grew up in the taboo time of psychedelics
The start of Mycology Now
- It organically grew into a website
- Lou says it was an entity that grew on its own
- Joe predicts that in 2020, we are about to see the Psilocybin movement really take off
- Joe brings up the Paul Stamets Stack, which is Cubensis, Lions Mane and Niacin
- There are testimonials about auditory changes that you can measure, you can increase your ability to hear frequencies
- They bring up an example of a deaf man being able to hear the waves of the ocean for the first time after practicing the Stamet’s stack
Psychedelics as a Culture Change agent
- Some people say its the worst time in history, and other people say this is the best time in history
- There is a hunger of more digestible ways of receiving information
- Psychedelics can help us understand the impermanence of things
- Lou brings up that Paul Staments and Dennis McKenna were the catalysts to his understanding of mycology
- Jordan says that his inspiration and influence came from people at music festivals
- People are very open and authentic when on psychedelics
- Meeting real people with real lives who had profound change in their lives because of psychedelics are his major sources of inspiration
Psilocybin for Cancer and Depression
- Lou’s sister was diagnosed with Metastatic breast cancer with a double mastectomy and was diagnosed with depression afterward
- After talking about the health benefits, she took psilocybin, and laid down and disconnected with her body
- Afterward, she was able to come out of it and talk about her ease with death
- The experience felt like death itself, and having felt what death might feel like, she no longer experiences depression about her cancer
Final Fun Fact
- Johns Hopkins psilocybin study on smoking cessation
- 80% of people were abstinent from smoking cigarettes on a 6 month followup
- Those people smoked an average of 19 cigarettes per day for an average of 31 years of their life
Links
About Mycology Now
Mycology Now is a humble small business dedicated to spreading awareness. They are a company that makes and sells spore syringes for microscopy use. Their Mushroom Spore prints and syringes speak for themselves; always having a heavy spore count.