This is a review of the audio version of "Psilocybin Mushrooms: A Comprehensive Beginner's Guide, Tips and Tricks to Grow Magic Mushrooms and Advanced methods to cultivate high quality psychedelic magic mushrooms"1 by Edward Lewis, which was published on Everand.com on August 2, 2023. Please note that there are two text versions23 of a book also called "Psilocybin Mushrooms" by Edward Lewis but with unique subtitles, both published on Everand on the same date as the audiobook.
The third sentence of the author's introduction to this book begins as follows:
"Psilocybin mushrooms are surprisingly easy to grow."
What?! Readers will find this statement increasingly hilarious as they make their way through this book of highly detailed steps, any one of which could spoil the growing process if mishandled or ignored. The PF Tek technique alone has 10 "sterilization steps," four "inoculation steps," a list of supplementary equipment requirements for creating an inoculation box, and then an imposing 7-step guide to the fruiting process. Here is step two of that latter septad:
"Use some of your rubbing alcohol to clean a fork. When the alcohol has evaporated, you can use the fork to gently scrape at the dry vermiculite layer. Please note that you're not scraping it off. You're simply trying to scrape to the bottom to make sure all the mycelium gets everywhere."
This is no-doubt accurate and extremely useful stuff, but Lewis surely flatters stumblebum readers like myself when he says that the mushroom growing process is easy!
This is nitpicking, of course. I am sure that Lewis made the book as easy as possible given the subject matter. It's just that self-doubters like myself are going to have to take a deep breath and resolve to follow his instructions methodically and without whining, lest our tendency to despair mid-project should scuttle our efforts - for, alas, there are apparently many things that can go wrong in growing mushrooms: bacterial contamination, fungal destruction of mycelium, excess humidity, insufficient humidity, excess light, insufficient light, lights illuminating the wrong parts of the shroom, etc. -- and, of course, excess police officers showing up on your property and ordering you to get down on the ground with your hands in the air.
Technically speaking, however, the mushroom growing process might be called complex rather than complicated. Perhaps that's what Lewis meant when he said it was easy.
Be that as it may, my substantive criticism of such authors as Lewis concerns their philosophical assumptions, not their practical advice. Lewis joins authors like Michael Pollan4 and Julie Holland5 in giving a very generous spin to Richard Nixon's outlawing of psychedelics. To hear these authors tell it, Nixon was truly interested in public health. And so Lewis writes the following about the 1970s era in America:
"Psilocybin's popularity wasn't slowing down, largely due to the hippie movement. This left the government no choice but to completely ban the use of psilocybin."
No choice, Edward? No choice?
Had "the government" read books about other cultures, they might have known that psychoactive drugs have been used for millennia and that there is statuary dedicated to such use in Mesoamerica dating back to prehistoric times6. True, pharmacologically clueless politicians promoted a Chicken Little narrative designed to make parents fear for the safety of their kids, but we know from long and sad experience that the government has never been interested in the health of Americans per se7. There is always a more sinister reason for the promotion of drug laws: namely, to crack down on minorities in the only politically acceptable way. That's why Nixon8 called Timothy Leary "The Most Dangerous Man in America," rather than "The Most Risk-Taking Man in America." Nixon did not care about the health of Timothy Leary 91011 or of any other hippie. He wanted those people to rot in jail where they would not be able to protest the Vietnam War or to vote Drug Warriors like Nixon himself out of office.
No choice, Edward?
Why did the government assume that a plant medicine would destroy the brain in the first place? That would not have been the first guess of any nature-friendly indigenous culture, all of which, as ethnobotanist Richard Schultes told us, have used psychoactive drugs for a variety of sociocultural and medical reasons12. A government could just as well have looked at psychedelics and said:
"We have to spread the use of these love-promoting drugs insofar as our world is on the brink of nuclear annihilation!"
No choice?
Why did the government choose to arrest people rather than to educate them?
No choice?
This is a very naïve conclusion on Lewis's part, one that shows that he has been bamboozled by the full-court press of Drug War propaganda that he has been subjected to since childhood, like every other American. The fact that even a proponent of magic mushrooms like Lewis has adopted these views shows how insidious a lifetime of brainwashing can be.
In his book on Nazi Germany, William Shirer13 warned of "the dread consequences of a regime's calculated and incessant propaganda." We live in the age of just such propaganda, manifested in the government and media's demonization of psychoactive medicine and their refusal to recognize any positive uses for drugs (in the past, present or future). The dread consequences of this propaganda campaign, which does not stint at indoctrinating children, can already be seen in the fact that our public officials now openly call for the assassination of "drug users"14 - after previously being happy with merely jailing them for decades and confiscating their houses and property.
Conclusion? I give Lewis' book 5 stars for its practical suggestions and 1 star for its philosophical assumptions.
This is why the foes of suicide are doing absolutely nothing to get laughing gas into the hands of those who could benefit from it. Laughing is subjective after all. In the western tradition, we need a "REAL" cure to depression.
Suicidal people should be given drugs that cheer them up immediately and whose use they can look forward to. The truth is, we would rather such people die than to give them such drugs, that's just how bamboozled we are by the war against drugs.
Scientists are responsible for endless incarcerations in America. Why? Because they fail to denounce the DEA lie that psychoactive substances have no positive medical uses. This is so obviously wrong that only an academic in an Ivory Tower could believe it.
That's why we damage the brains of the depressed with shock therapy rather than let them use coca or opium. That's why many regions allow folks to kill themselves but not to take drugs that would make them want to live. The Drug War is a perversion of social priorities.
The DEA outlawed MDMA in 1985, thereby depriving soldiers of a godsend treatment for PTSD. Apparently, the DEA staff slept well at night in the early 2000s as American soldiers were having their lives destroyed by IEDs.
Laughing gas inspired the philosophy of William James. Outlawing N20 is outlawing academic freedom. Laughing gas should be available for the suicidal. Drug prohibition is not a victimless crime.
Peyote advocates should be drug legalization advocates. Otherwise, they're involved in special pleading which is bound to result in absurd laws, such as "Plant A can be used in a religion but not plant B," or "Person A can belong to such a religion but person B cannot."
I, for one, am actually TRYING to recommend drugs like MDMA and psilocybin as substitutes for shock therapy. In fact, I would recommend almost ANY pick-me-up drug as an alternative to knowingly damaging the human brain. That's more than the hateful DEA can say.
We should start taking names. All politicians and government officials who work to keep godsends like psilocybin from the public should be held to account for crimes against humanity when the drug war finally ends.
The reasons that people use drugs are psychologically obvious. Academics gaslight us on this topic and invent new diseases to explain away our desire to live large.
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