Beware of "nonsense" in the psychedelic community (Patreon)

Before I get into the actual topic of this post I want to send out a big THANK YOU to all of the long time supporters here as well as people that have just discovered my content, it has been a surprise to see so much interest recently. Sadly I have been having a hard time keeping up with all of the messages I receive on a daily basis, please be patient, I always respond to every single message but it might now take longer than it did in the past.   😁❤️🙏

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OK, onward!  There is a VERY LONG history of sketchy behavior in the psychedelic community, everything from scientific fraud, to serial mental and physical abusers, sexual abusers, government funded programs where psychedelics were unethically used (like MKUltra), and nearly ENDLESS numbers of "gurus" and cults leading people astray, not to mention all the mythology and wacky belief systems with no foundation in reality.   One of the ways we can (hopefully) avoid the mistakes of the past is simply by knowing more history.  There is a lot of new interest in the psychedelic community these days, and many people have little to no understanding about these things.  I generally like to focus on positive topics and this will indeed be my default, but in the interest of protecting the community, I want to also educate people in a way that may help avoid harm.  DO NOT FALL for the shenanigans that inevitably crop up in the psychedelic community (or in life in general).  BE a healthy skeptic, question everything.  If you are interested in taking a much deeper dive into "the dark side" of psychedelic history, I suggest James Kent's ten part podcast he created under his "Dose Nation" name, starting with #1 of 10.

The first of the last ten episodes of DoseNation. James Kent presents "The Beginning of the End". Topics include How to Kill a Blog, The Darker Side of Psychedelic Culture, personal stories from earlier times, and reflections on personal interviews with Terence McKenna and Kat Harrison from 1993.

I actually hesitate to link to James Kent's podcast, I consider James a friend and we have actually had several pleasant email exchanges over the years, but he is also a lot different from me.  James has become very disillusioned with psychedelics to the point where you would easily get the impression from listening to his content that he believes psychedelics are a net negative to the world.  This is an extreme swing of the pendulum and obviously NOT what I believe.  I know there is potential for good with psychedelics, but people have to understand them better than they have in the past, and use them properly. Science will play a key role in maximizing the benefit and the modern era of researchers have done a lot in this regard.  We as a community need to look out for one another and shine a light on problems and bad actors before lives are negatively affected.  I also believe psychedelics should be used sparingly, and with great care for maximal benefit, it pains me to see them abused and I'm also not happy that the most popular YouTuber in the realm of psychedelics is essentially a "goof" and very poor example for others to follow ("psyched substance" approaching 3 MILLION subscribers).

Anyway, James has produced about 20 hours of content that could be a good listen on a long road trip or flight or on your daily commute if you want to learn more about the sketchy past of psychedelic history to counterbalance some of the naiveté of the new generation of psychedelic enthusiasts.

All of that intro was simply to lead into this - I have recently taken it upon myself to do some investigative journalism into one specific new group that has arisen within the psychedelic community, The Church of Psilomethoxin.  Why?  Because more than one patron has contacted me about this group, and my "spidey sense" (or red flags) was immediately triggered.  I felt compelled to dig deeper in the interest of protecting the community and maybe I can use this as a teaching moment so others in the community will see this stuff from a mile away when it inevitably arises in the future.

Reference: https://psilomethoxin.com/ The church’s website has some of their back story and details about membership application and fees ($55 annual fee at the time of this writing, looks like that has gone up a lot since), it does not disclose the price for the actual product they sell as “psilomethoxin” but they sell it to members for $175 for half ounce and $300 per ounce according to a member who I am in contact with).  For more background information see the wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4-Hydroxy-5-methoxydimethyltryptamine (especially the links toward the bottom under References).

On November 30th, 2022 the church reported having 500 members and things seem to have grown since then, they are even planning a big festival in Austin Texas on April 15 with bands and speakers and they will even be offering "the sacrament":

(this actually sounds pretty fun, not gunna lie!)

They are sending out this “psilomethoxin” product all over the United States and its co-founder claims they have sent it to “thousands” of people (reference below).

While the background story on how they allegedly produce psilomethoxin is perhaps plausible on the surface to those with little understanding of fungal biosynthesis, I was immediately skeptical about it nonetheless.  They claim to feed 5-MeO-DMT to psychedelic mushrooms (via putting it into the substrate) and the mushroom allegedly takes it up and hydroxylates it creating 4-HO-5-MeO-DMT, they claim the idea was “endorsed” by Alexander (Sasha) Shulgin (which may even be true, but I've seen speculations from Shulgin in the past that didn't pan out so this is not new and Shulgin himself was likely misled as I will describe).

Furthermore they claim their methods result in mushrooms that produce only 4-HO-5-MeO-DMT and no psilocybin or psilocin - my immediate thoughts were “how could they possibly get the mushroom to not produce any psilocybin whatsoever?”  Then my thoughts were, well maybe they are somehow removing the psilocybin after processing, otherwise how could it possibly be a legal product as they claim?  But no, church founder Ian Benouis reveals (interview below) that they do not do any processing other than drying and powdering the mushrooms.   But I had my doubts that the process they describe would even work in the first place.

This idea of making psilomethoxin from mushrooms was ultimately inspired by a published paper from Gartz: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2614674/  Over the years many people have tried and failed to reproduce Gartz's results and this paper is widely regarded as nonsense to be quite frank. It is an example of how one misleading paper can lead to YEARS (or even DECADES in this case!) of misinformation.  In all these decades since his paper was published, no one has ever been able to validate Gartz’s work.  I’m also told (by James Kent) that Gartz was notorious for stealing work from other mycologists and publishing before they could -- so there may actually be a long chain of sketchy behavior behind all of this, one sketchy thing leads to another.  Gartz also got many people excited about aeruginascin but that too is now viewed with great skepticism (aeruginascin likely cannot cross the blood brain barrier).

I initially contacted the Church of Psilomethoxin last year through their website, requesting a small sample for high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) analysis as part of a community review but the group completely ignored me (the first red flag).

I didn’t think much about it after that, until I saw the following interview with Hamilton Morris https://youtu.be/p-bkFf6f6qc

At 56:38 Hamilton talks specifically about psilomethoxin (responding to a question that brought it up)

“I did look at a sample of that material and I’ll say the results are not conclusive at the moment.  I did not detect it in a first analysis but I’m going to look again and see if I can find it…”

(this was a new major red flag for me)

The cofounder of the church is “Ian Benouis”:

He describes himself as “a West Point graduate, former US Army officer, Blackhawk helicopter pilot and combat veteran”.  It also says he is an attorney and was formerly a Pfizer sales rep.

Co-Founder of the church, Greg Lake is also a lawyer (sometimes he uses the name George Lake):

You can see an hour long interview with Ian here (UPDATE: This video was taken private because the organization that posted it no longer wants to be associated in any way with Ian or the Church of Psilomethoxin, but I saved a copy, if you want/need to see it contact me).  Not sure if it really means anything but I noticed Ian touches his nose a bunch of times and I’ve read this is a sign someone may be lying.

At 17:10 he is asked “How long is the experience” and he answers “It seems to parallel the same hours as a psilocybin experience” (another red flag).

At 28:30 he says they have shared this product with “thousands of people” (and “tens of thousands of doses”) and the people who have tried it admit it is not like 5-MeO-DMT, it doesn’t have a sharp peak, it’s more smooth (Me: essentially people describe it as a low dose or microdose of cubensis mushrooms, another red flag)

39:17 He says you don’t have to do analytical testing (chromatography/mass spec etc to measure things) because you can just bioassay it (eat some yourself) and “figure it out” haha.

39:40 he describes dosing and the range mentioned is identical to cubensis mushrooms (coincidence or another red flag?)

At 45:00 he describes how wonderful it is to short circuit normal drug testing protocols and just give it to thousands of people and collect anecdotes instead, apparently informed consent is a good substitute for safety studies and animal testing and scientific rigor.

At 46:00 mark he makes the claim that there is NO psilocybin in the product (the basis for claims that the product is completely legal/unscheduled).  He also claims it’s not subject to the analog drugs act because it’s not a hallucinogen.

I put the call out for anyone to send me a sample of this group’s alleged psilomethoxin product so that I could have it properly tested (I’m friends with several testing labs that specialize in mushroom testing).  It didn’t take me that long to find someone willing to send a sample.  Here is a picture of the shipping label used by the church (presented just as evidence that the sample did in fact come from them) but note they use the name “Church of the Sacred Synthesis” on the package which is a legal entity linked to Ian Benouis and George Lake as per opencorporates.com (not sure why but the officer registered as “Ian Benouis” was removed then they added “Kemal Ian Benouis” but according to this source they are the same person: http://www.theamericanmuslim.org/tam.php/features/articles/benouis_kemal_ian/

The product is being shipped out of Austin, Texas which is where Ian lives according to his LinkedIn page.

It is a fine gray powder that looks and smells exactly like every mushroom powder I’ve seen (nothing notable or unusual about it):

I immediately sent the sample to a lab for testing (I'll keep the lab anonymous unless they decide they want the exposure, but hard to say if there will be some backlash or retaliation from all of this). Anyone can easily send their own sample to a lab for testing (labs that specialize in mushroom testing include: TrypLabs, Tryptomics, Rose City Labs, Flourish Labs, Hyphae Labs, Altitude Consulting and MagicMyco to name a few. In Europe Energy Control seems like a good option).

Anyway, the results came back and the product these guys are selling looks like nothing more than a run of the mill psychedelic mushroom dried and powdered, probably a cubensis mushroom based on the alkaloid analysis.  It contained 0.87% psilocybin and 0.13% psilocin which is a pretty typical result for cubensis mushrooms.  Furthermore, there were NO unusual spikes on the chromatogram that would indicate the presence of anything novel/new/unexpected.  In other words, it appears there is ZERO “psilomethoxin” in this product.  The product is obviously totally illegal for this group to be selling in the U.S. and they put their members at legal risk by distributing it to them (most of whom will be completely ignorant of the fact that they are in possession of something that could get them into trouble which only elevates their risk as they will be less likely to take any precautions).

It would be hard to imagine but perhaps Ian and Greg have avoided doing the proper analytical testing just so that they can have "plausible deniability", they know its psychoactive, and they know it could potentially help people (because psilocybin has been proven to help people) so maybe the thinking is "We can just not test it and hope no one does and we'll just pretend its psilomethoxin for legal purposes''?

Notice in that hour long interview linked above, Ian doesn't talk about analytical testing at all, he describes testing it on himself by just taking it starting with small doses and he says something ridiculous like (paraphrase) "I knew it was psilomethoxin because I could feel my teeth tingling and that's what happens when I use 5-MeO-DMT" (seriously?).  He says he has never tried more than 1.5g, they ask him how long the experience lasts and he says "the same as psilocybin" (haha) and he talks about feedback they've gotten from THOUSANDS of people and they all say it's nothing like 5-MeO-DMT and it has no sharp peak, and it's basically just like a microdose or low dose of cubensis! (because that’s what it is). In the interview he even “poo-poo’s” analytical testing. Furthermore, their website basically says “we tried to do testing but IT’S NOT POSSIBLE” (WOW!! So they actually admit they have no scientific evidence!): https://psilomethoxin.com/psilomethoxin-the-history-testing-pharmacodynamics-and-pharmacokinetics/

“We have performed GC-MS multiple times on our sacrament and to date, no one has been able to detect the molecule using this destructive testing process… Our church personally bioassays each batch of our sacrament for efficacy and safety.” So instead of doing proper testing, they are doing TASTE tests?  Unbelievable!  How have they gotten away with this for so long without any real testing or any scientific evidence? They don’t even hide it!  This is insane.  I’m saving a copy of their statement from their website below because it’s so ridiculous and incriminating that I’m sure they will edit it soon:

Also I have received reports from members of the church saying this product “stains blue” anything they put it in (which is a pretty good indication of the presence of psilocybin which dephosphorylates to psilocin which oxidizes and causes bluing when in the presence of bluing enzymes naturally in the mushroom).  A patron of mine wrote: “Well I became a member of the church so I could get some psilomethoxin. I took 3 grams. Now I’ve tried 5-MeO DMT and I certainly do know what psilocybin feels like and that stuff they sent me felt just like psilocybin. A mushroom trip. Was nothing novel to me! I’m convinced this church is a scam. What they preach is not what they practice!”

BOTTOM LINE: The Church of Psilomethoxin is an embarrassment to science and the psychedelic community.

Why I’m conflicted about sharing all of this:  The people involved are pretty much just giving out psilocybin to other people that “essentially” want what low dose psilocybin does, the effects have pretty much been accurately described by Ian and others in interviews.  This “church thing" may in fact be some kind of back door way of making psilocybin more accessible to people and essentially decriminalizing psilocybin for those willing to go through a church to access it. Psilocybin has shown all sorts of medicinal promise, in fact it was recently rescheduled in Australia and for the first time it can be prescribed by doctors to treat depression.  The United States is expected to follow suit (phase 3 clinical trials are already underway) and many jurisdictions in the U.S. have already decriminalized psilocybin.  I don’t really see this group as putting anyone in harm's way because the safety profile of psilocybin is well known and it’s safer than alcohol, also this group is promoting quite low doses, and it doesn’t seem like a mentally abusive cult or anything like that.  Ian seems to have a history of helping veterans through the use of psychedelics or supporting organizations that do this, and I give him respect for that.

But what they are currently doing is very sketchy, they are either lying about what the product is and essentially defrauding people or they are just being dumb and not really bothering to find out what’s in the product, either way, that’s bad.  Ian is also promoting dangerous behavior related to drug testing as well as the entire junk science myth of making psilomethoxin from mushrooms.  They are also selling this product for approximately twice the “street price” of cubensis mushrooms so not only a deception but a rip off.  I’ve seen too many charlatans in the psychedelic community and it really needs to stop.  The only way to stop this is to shine a light on it. Plus let's be honest, it was only a matter of time before someone started testing this product, you can only get away with this level of madness for so long.

Also there is at least the possibility that this is not a deliberate con by the church and its officers, those guys may genuinely believe they are producing psilomethoxin (4-HO-5-MeO-DMT), I have no idea.

For what it’s worth, I actually feel BETTER knowing they are just giving people regular powdered cubensis mushrooms, as we know they are safe.  If they were actually sending out psilomethoxin I'd be much more concerned (testing a new drug on thousands of people without any proper safety data is insane! The things Ian says in that interview about drug testing are equally absurd!

There are legitimate safety/toxicity concerns around 5-MeO-DMT which would logically extend to psilomethoxin (perhaps even more so due to the much higher doses presumably being used compared to vaped 5-MeO-DMT).  Reference: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3028383/

There are also theoretical concerns that psilomethoxin could cause long-term lowering in serotonin and norepinephrine functioning if it is metabolized to 4,5-dihydroxy-DMT. Several dihydroxy tryptamines are considered neurotoxins to serotonin and norepinephrine.

Here's an older paper identifying 4,5-dihyroxytryptamine as a neurotoxin: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF00306720

And here is a paper showing 5-MeO-DMT is turned into 5-HO-DMT by CYP2D6, suggesting the same thing might happen with psilomethoxin: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2879007/

I don’t want to see these guys going to jail.  If they stopped the lies and just renamed it to "The Church of Psilocybin" I'd be OK with it.  Of course they would be legally challenged but that case could go all the way to the Supreme Court.

Ian and Greg, if you are reading this, it may not be too late to make something good out of this mess.  Become psychedelic legal pioneers and  contribute something of lasting value to the community.   It would actually be a pretty amazing accomplishment if you could pull off a new legally protected church that uses psilocybin, and who knows, perhaps the time in history is now right for this challenge. Plus arguing your case in the supreme court could be the achievement of a lifetime.  Think about it seriously and do the right thing.

NOTE: I resisted publishing my investigative notes for a while because I feared retaliation and I don’t particularly want to be dealing with lawyers or “true believers” from some sketchy church. Also I could not rule out the remote possibility that the lab I used made a mistake, or the sample I received was not representative of the product other people receive from this church (maybe it was “just a bad batch”).  However as of the time of this post, I have now received MULTIPLE reports from totally separate labs having tested their own independently obtained samples of this product with identical results (i.e. its just a regular mushroom containing psilocybin as the primary alkaloid, nothing novel).  So knowing there are already at least three labs saying the same thing about separately obtained samples, convinced me to go public.

But the final straw was seeing that the Usona Institute tested their own sample and published their results to ChemRxiv under the beautiful title:

And here is their conclusion (same as mine):

UPDATE: The Church of Psilomethoxin has issued a response to the Usona testing which is "next level" unhinged!  Another page I have saved before they remove it because it's so ridiculous and incriminating.  My favorite line from the response is: "Our claims to the existence of Psilomethoxin, at this time, are solely based on faith, bolstered by our and our members’ own direct experiences with the Sacrament."   I'm rolling my eyes, this is really their defense??  Beyond that they seem to be going with "it was probably a fake/adulterated sample and/or smear campaign from an evil capitalist" Ugh.  It scares me that they are already talking about "legal action" against Usona and others talking negatively about them.  If Ian or Greg read this, I just report the facts:

You should just be cool with being a psilocybin church, there is nothing wrong with that (and its what you are, stop kidding yourself, your faith can't change psilocybin into psilomethoxin, haha).  Your statements saying it is 'scientifically impossible' to confirm the presence or absence of psilomethoxin in your product without a reference standard are patently absurd and woefully ignorant.  You do a disservice to the psychedelic community with this nonsense.  Embrace psilocybin and carry forth, no need to concoct crazy stories.

UPDATE #2 I actually corresponded directly with the Usona researchers, they are working with Dirk Hoffmeister to try to produce psilomethoxin using mushrooms despite it now looking quite improbable that it's even possible (it surprises me that Dirk even thinks this is worth trying but he is far more of an expert than anyone involved thus far).  They tell me they are also in the process of creating a synthetic psilomethoxin reference standard, which I was happy to hear, then they can finally document where on the HPLC chromatogram it will show up in relation to other common mushroom alkaloids.  Maybe they can also do some human trials so we can know what real/actual psilomethoxin does (I bet the experience will not be like psilocybin and the duration will be very different as well).

UPDATE #3: Looks like the church changed its name shortly after they were exposed for the psilomethoxin hoax/fraud.  Now they just go by the Church of the Sacred Synthesis and they have a new website address: https://thesacredsynthesis.com/

UPDATE #4: They removed all of the incriminating parts of their website as I suspected they would, thankfully I saved them to the Internet Archive Wayback Machine so I'd have proof, links to the archive have been added to the above post. Why do I need proof? Because Greg Lake has contacted me to let me know he is suing me for defamation. So much for free speech and free press? I guess their true colors are showing now, instead of doing the right thing, they are attacking our community with frivolous lawsuits. Thankfully Texas has wonderful anti-SLAPP laws so I'm not too concerned, I believe any competant judge would throw this case out after just minutes of review. But still this could be a huge waste of my time and potentially $ too (but I may be able to force these guys to pay my legal expenses). If it DID actually go to court I think it would be hilarious, these guys will be thoroughly humiliated:

UPDATE #5: As if we didn't have enough evidence already, Usona has informed me that they have actually synthesized real psilomethoxin, something the Church of Psilomethoxin should have done from the very start. Anyway, now that we have a reference sample we can tell exactly where and how it shows up in analytical testing. Also Usona, working with a well known and reputable lab in Germany, attempted the psilomethoxin biosynthesis experiments in Psilocybe mushrooms (by adding 5-MeO-DMT to the substrate), and no surprise, but there was once again no evidence of psilomethoxin formation. Furthermore the psilomethoxin they did synthesize proved to be extremely unstable, just as a past researcher had described (Julia M, Manoury P, Voillaume MC; Bulletin de la Société Chimique de France 1417-1423 (1965) "No 209 - Recherches en série indolique. XIV (*) - Sur des méthoxy-5 hydroxy-4, méthoxy-5 hydroxy-6 et méthoxy-7 hydroxy-6 tryptamines") so even if the biosynthesis idea had been legit, it is very unlikely the psilomethoxin would survive drying and powdering.

UPDATE #6: In Monty Python like twist, team Psilomethoxin shouts "we're not dead yet" by bringing out their in house science advisor Adam McKay, who apparently finally decided to actually test the product they have been making claims about and selling/distributing all over the country! I think they completely MISSED the main points that I made in the above post. It doesn't even matter if there are trace amounts of psilomethoxin in their product (but so far I have seen no evidence of this) the main point was that their claims that the product does not contain psilocybin/psilocin and that it's legal is complete and utter BS as has been confirmed again and again by every lab that has tested their product. It clearly contains typical amounts of psilocybin and psilocin for common psychedelic mushrooms, the powder itself stains blue and one can observe the psilocybin dephosphorylate into psilocin in the lab. Even a simple inexpensive do it yourself chromatography test can be used to show the typical mushroom alkaloids present in their product.

Notice in the interview Adam does NOT reveal what % of their mushroom powder they claim to be psilomethoxin (he should know this considering he stated in the interview that he synthesized a reference material). They also completely avoided the elephant in the room, that the product contains a rather large quantity of psilocybin and is not legal nor is it what they claim, nor do they label it properly, nor is it legal for them to sell and distribute all over the country. I really don't care if it has psilomethoxin in it or not, in fact its worse if it does, that means they are selling a potentially dangerous product to people without having performed any safety or toxicity analysis whatsoever. I don't know how the guys that started this church passed law school and the bar 😂. 

It blows my mind that they seem to be claiming they never did any proper lab testing before selling the product and shipping it to hundreds if not thousands of people all over the country. They never bothered to send the product to an independent lab to get a certificate of analysis? They claim in the above linked interview (paraphrase) "wah wah, NOBODY would work with us so we couldn't get any testing done!" 😂, you have GOT to be kidding me. Even in this article I posted links to 7 labs that will do testing for a small fee (many of these labs have been operating for YEARS and certainly would have been viable options).

It's also perplexing to me that they would think it OK to send a new drug out to anyone willing to buy it from them, hundreds if not thousands of people, without even properly determining what's in it or even if it is toxic! What they did with the Church of Psilomethoxin is OUTRAGEOUS and DANGEROUS and they broke so many laws it's absurd (product labeling laws, giving people drugs without proper testing or analysis, sending schedule 1 controlled substances through the mail to hundreds if not thousands of people all across the country, selling schedule 1 controlled substances, etc). The best thing they could do is forget this whole mess and move on, they are lucky to not be going to jail over it. Instead they want to prolong the madness, attack the psychedelic community, and drag people to court. They are only bringing more attention to their reckless enterprise.

UPDATE #7 Since this post was originally made, more labs have come forward with their own independent analysis of the Church of Psilomethoxin's product, using samples obtained from more church members. I'm documenting these for legal purposes. It appears that the church may be trying to intimidate and silence critics by threatening legal action, so I have saved all the records before various sources are intimidated into removing them. Kykeon Analytics did a very thorough analysis and include on their website a 5 page PDF analytical report with full details and graphs: https://www.kykeonanalytics.com/newspages/church-of-psilomethoxin

PsychedelicPassage had a sample analyzed by Energy Control in Spain: https://web.archive.org/web/20230925090719/https://www.psychedelicpassage.com/what-is-psilomethoxin-where-did-it-come-from/
The active ingredients detected were psilocybin/psilocin

(That's 0.79% psilocybin equivalent [PCBE] which is about average these days for cubensis mushrooms).

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