Some Reasons Why I stopped working on Psiloscoby

Given that psychedelic research has been historically taboo and repressed, it feels necessary to preface this list with the assertion that these reasons are very personal and not intended to condemn anyone's behavior or interests.

I am very glad and appreciative that more conversations and deep research is being done on psychedelics. I just don't want to do it anymore, and I want to share why.

1. The Enzymatic Pathway for Psilocybin Expressed in Yeast was published.

This alone was not enough to make me quit, I was still excited about scobification, increasing routes of access, enabling access on one’s own terms, and expressing pathways for other psychedelics like 5-MeO DMT and mescaline in yeast. But for better or worse, losing the novelty factor did affect my motivation.

2. I Became Embedded in Psychedelic Community and Witnessed People...

2. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. Declare epiphanies, without signs of integration, growth, or psychological improvement.

               2. Mistake recreation for deep therapeutic work.  

I don’t know that epiphanization is necessarily bad, and I know that entertainment and deep work are not necessarily mutually exclusive. But these patterns indicate some lurking ignorance or naivety rooted in the culture of frequent psychedelic use.   

Witnessing these patterns revealed the need to have a lot of conversations and experiments about the cultural container that psychedelics exist in —  many guides and researchers are doing this hard work. 

This demands an entire career and lifetime working to understand psychedelic use. But if you dedicate your entire career to understanding, you must unbiased, what if your experiments show that they consistently harm rather than heal? As a scientist, you must be unattached to the outcome. This project wasn't about synthetic biology anymore. 

3. I experienced my own values and boundaries change too much too fast as a result of psychedelic use. 

4. I noticed some Patterns of Abuse.

I learned that psychedelic abuse often has an overarching theme of blurred boundaries that fester into really awful power dynamics and dependencies in these types of relationships:

Mentor : Student

Therapist : Patient

Researcher : Subject

Shaman : Spiritual Seeker

Psychedelic's propensity to make users more open minded (during and for long after the trip) is a double edged sword. If you’re mentally "stuck" being open to new perspectives and framings can be revelatory, and massively helpful to getting unstuck.

But the openness can also be a slippery slope into choices you-maybe-wouldn't-have-made-if-not-for-the-drugs, which can cause soul shredding self-doubt, blaming, and discombobulation on consent.

I became increasingly convinced that getting into such a vulnerable and suggestable mind-state with a near stranger — therapist, guide, shaman, date, or clinical researcher —  especially a near stranger who might be from a VERY different culture or world view from yourself is a hotbed for harm.

Set and Setting is not only about lighting, decor, music, comfiness, and intention. It's also, do I want to be influenced by this context? This person? How can you decide if you don't know your guide? How do you maintain boundaries if you do have a relationship intimate enough to trust them?

Some excellently storied specifics of these dynamics can be found in The Cover Story Podcast, which really helped me understand this realm of abuse.

5. Would I introduce Alcohol to the World?

I kept asking myself, if you had the opportunity to choose to introduce alcohol to the world, in the same way that it is consumed today, would you? 

On one hand, alcohol facilitates so much connection, comfort, cheers, romance, celebration, art, and culture. On the other hand, it is devastating. It enables abuse, moral wanderings, destroys lives, causes tragedy and death. 

If forced to answer the question, even though I personally have a great relationship with alcohol and appreciate it being in my life, I would not choose to introduce it to the world.

Even though psilocybin and other psychedelics are very different to alcohol, our consumption habits are frightening enough for me to not want to contribute to enabling widespread casual consumption of psychedelics.

I felt tension between casual and revered use. I witnessed the former most.  People who spoke of reverence and informed use always seemed to have lurking ignorances.  

5. A Moment that Haunts me... 

After explaining my work at a party, someone asked me to convince them to take a psychedelic. My entire body (silently) screamed, “I don’t want to convince anyone to do that!”

6. My Favorite Villain is Dr. Felix Hoenikker 

Dr. Hoenikker from Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle is my favorite villain because he is a scientist that just fiddles around. He had no nefarious intentions and embodies some values that I aspire to. He is genius, curious, and empirical. But because he didn't consider the humane and societal implications of his work, these positive qualities led him to be the ultimate (unintentional) villain who destroys the Earth via scientific play. 

Throughout the project my scope shifted. It started with an idea of a technical innovation that could create a good cultural container for psilocybin use that is rooted in ritual, community, and reverence. Then I learned about and witnessed more psychedelic consumption habits and gave up on believing psychedelics could help more people than they harmed. So I clung onto the science scope: metabolic engineering is cool, I can discover more pathways, its a gateway drug to synthetic biology. But this scope was a deep conflict with my core values and wasn't motivating.  

5. The pathways for 5-MeO DMT and Mescaline were elucidated and expressed in yeast by academic labs.

Academic labs just beat me to the punch again! This was demotivating. 

6. Ultimately my body wasn't in it anymore.

Labwork is really hard, and working alone is really hard. It demands incredible mental fortitude. I probably came up with every possible excuse to keep trying:

1. Psychedelics can help people

2. I want to enable access on your own terms

3. This project can set the stage for future metabolic engineering

4. Psiloscoby is a beautiful gateway drug to synthetic biology

5. It is good that someone like me, with a nuanced and holistic perspective on psychedelics is working on this, that means I can do a good job of introducing psilobucha to the world.  

I thought doing something with my whole heart meant acknowledging the doubts. But eventually the reasons to not continue working on this project significantly outweighed the  reasons to keep going. I wonder if I could have realized this sooner or if it was a necessary process.

Now, I've decided increased access to psychedelics will most likely cause an equal amount of harm as good in the world, and that effect just wasn’t worth throwing my body at the problem anymore.