Fantastic Fungi by Paul Stamets

Author:Paul Stamets
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Earth Aware Editions
Published: 2020-04-14T00:00:00+00:00

A DIVERSE COMMUNITY

The mushroom community is made up of different threads. There are those who relate to mushrooms as mindblowers, those who love to forage, and those who love to cook with them. Then you’ve got researchers at places like UCLA and NYU who are using psilocybin as therapeutic aids. It’s quite a diverse culture.

“People like you and me are just doing it themselves, learning how to forage and research and experiment on their own.”

Historically, interest in mushrooms was mostly culinary, along with some scientific interest and artists drawn to their startling imagery, but that was about it. The counterculture brought the psychedelic component to the surface, and now each of those groups has been growing and morphing. Within culinary circles, for example, certain mushrooms, such as shiitake, oyster, chanterelles, and morels, are suddenly cool and hip and everyone wants in on them.

Foraging in general, for plants, herbs, and other wild things, is on the upswing. But the idea of growing and harvesting mushrooms for their medicinal properties, converting them into teas and tinctures and the like—that wasn’t happening ten or twenty years ago. That particular area has exploded. And now—again, thanks to Paul Stamets—people are starting to use fungi and mushrooms to clean the planet, applying them to oil spills and toxic waste sites. This mycoremediation has huge potential.

All of this has been driving interest in mycology, and it’s not the academics. People like you and me are just doing it themselves, learning how to forage and research and experiment on their own. The field has really benefitted from these citizen scientists.

So, there’s a lot of momentum. Mycelium and mushrooms and fungi are becoming the new “new thing.” In 2018, there were attempts to get a measure to legalize psychedelic mushrooms on the Colorado ballot. I thought, “You’ve got to be crazy. That’s never going to happen.” And then I remembered, “Oh, wait a minute. I vividly recall telling people ten years ago that cannabis would never be legal.”

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