Chip Baker: Oh, well, someone like Oklahoma, if someone was interested in decriminalizing nature, they could contact decriminalizing nature.
Josh Kappel: Yeah, great. But when they removed Peyote from the measure, because I’m requesting The Native American church, because the whole day there’s a [inaudible] shortage and so and so the whole thing is like, well, people who have these steep long traditions and using Peyote and if used it, you know, as part of their sacrament for youngs, to probably get first before everyone else comes in and just try to take it just for fun.
Chip Baker: You know, the whole world needs enlightenment. Understand it’s a scarce commodity. So that’s a great line. The world needs enlightenment is just too scarce commodity.
Josh Kappel: To scarce commodity– Which is why we smoke joints.
Chip Baker: Smoke joints. So Alright, so back to so back to Oakland. So Oakland listed cannabis as an F antigen. Man, you know, I’ve been thinking about this, and I’m kind of serious. I’m kind of joking. Do you think I could be a cannabis shaman?
Josh Kappel: Yeah, I do, Chip. I do, I think yeah, there’s an interesting folks and there’s actually a lot going on cannabis therapies.
Chip Baker: Oh, dude, it’s I mean, I finally grew up by smoking weed. A couple years ago I finally got it in my childhood. Now cannabis is therapy, man. I mean, that’s the whole part about why it’s medical.
Josh Kappel: And there’s you know, it’s like there’s a lot that’s happening with like this group medicinal mindfulness was doing these cannabis circle. Like an ayahuasca circle, there’s a lot that’s happening you know, cannabis as your therapeutic or religious substance for sure.
Chip Baker: Cannabis is medicine, man. Yeah, it’s true. You know, the most beautiful thing about cannabis is you like, got two or three of your friends and you’re smoking out and like, your heart all starts beating the same you’re all breathing the same air you like on the same wavelength, the same wave. And, you know, it’s easy to communicate that way. You know, I don’t know how many times have been like Alright, we’re having a difficult time a less goes moja. Right? And, you know, whoever’s involved, whatever like smooths out you calm down a little bit. Okay, fish sticks aren’t that bad after all– the argument–
Josh Kappel: Or even like back when we used to meet new people still, you only met him for the first time as Hey well, if we smoked together, everything will be fine. It’s like such a gatekeeper of good people. What’s super interesting about mushrooms is like, there’s also like, kind of legal to get mushroom spores? It’s kind of interesting. So it’s–
Chip Baker: Kind illegal, like, so okay, we’ve talked about this. we’ve researched it a minute and I once told you Hey, I think Georgia and California the only place you can’t buy spores, is that true?
Josh Kappel: Yes. Taking astep back, it’s like, it all starts in 1971 with the UN Single Convention Narcotics, and they made psilocybin an illegal, but they didn’t make mushrooms containing psilocybin to be or that it makes spores that lead to mushrooms containing psilocybin to be legal. So to possess spores of mushrooms violently psilocybin. And because there’s like 400 varieties of mushrooms that make psilocybin and so it’s like, you don’t even know which one you’re working with. And so they serve just copy that language in most states in the US. So it’s so spores aren’t technically illegal and a lot of places they’re not specifically prohibited, except for California, Georgia, or if there’s like a clear intent to use them to grow mushrooms, but that’s the things get a little bit a little bit dicey. Yeah. The Spanish is called a legal like in between legal and illegal gathering this is a kind of a legal–
Chip Baker: So it’s, like maybe legal to possess store spores in many states, in Denver in Oakland. You can grow mushrooms, propagate mushrooms and you can consume them. Are there other communities where you can do this? I heard like Eugene or Portland or somebody like that was trying to do it too.
Josh Kappel: Yeah, there’s been a lot of communities who have been working, you know, to try and decriminalize ethneogenes and mushrooms. You know, depending on where you count them, there’s can be hundreds, you know, people who are working. We saw one in Santa Cruz, there’s one work in Berkeley. You know, there’s a pushing Chicago. There’s been a lot of a lot of movement to sort of follow suit. And like I mentioned earlier, my technical lawyer is not legal to grab options in Denver. It’s just the lowest law enforcement priority. The police are prohibited from spending money on on arresting.
Chip Baker: Is that decriminalized?
Josh Kappel: Yeah, it’s like it’s as decriminalized as it could be for a city, but it’s still a crime.
Chip Bake: Right. So basically, it gives the local law enforcement a way out of not dealing with much term crimes.
Josh Kappel: And there weren’t that many arrests before. But–
Medicinal Mushrooms in the Future
Chip Baker: That’s the whole beauty of it, there wasn’t a problem with it before. And you’re just like sticking your toe in a little bit with like, hey, lowest-priority, okay, so medical mushrooms, when’s medical mushrooms, Josh, because that’s the next thing, right?
Josh Kappel: What’s interesting–
Chip Baker: Medically prescribed mushrooms–
Josh Kappel: You’ve seen a lot of really successful research coming out of Johns Hopkins and Hafner Institute [inaudible] you know what I’m saying–
Chip Baker: Oh yeah man–
Josh Kappel: That is finding that your psilocybin has been effective in treating resistant depression, and also addiction, you know, amongst a whole other host of different ailments. You know, since you there’s such incredible breakthroughs happening so the FDA actually gave breakthrough drug status to psilocybin and for the depression. There’s two groups compasses one there–
Chip Baker: Whenever you eat mushrooms, you laugh, and laughter is known to get rid of depression.
Josh Kappel: Exactly. If you laugh until your cheeks hurt, the chances of being depressed are difficult.
Chip Baker: We’re making light of it. But if if you haven’t ever, if you’ve never experienced mushrooms or you’re you’re like, you know questioning what we’re talking about, and it really does give you an introspective into things that, you know, you might not have seen that exactly the same way and use properly. Mushrooms are incredibly therapeutic. That is 100% for sure.
Josh Kappel: I think that’s right. And you know, and it’s, there’s so powerful with the mind that they have the ability to sort of break habits apart. And that’s nice. I searched compass and this nonprofit Usona both have got, you know, breakthrough status from the FDA, to engage in clinical studies for the treatment resistant depression. It’s really it’s really phenomenal. There’s a study, I might slightly misquote the numbers were was 60% of the people who use silent treatment. diction quit smoking six months later. And that and like, chances is the highest like smoking, is the most successful anti addiction drug for smoking. It comes in like 38% and obviously there’s psilocybin one or how many treatments was it wasn’t that many it’s like 60% six months later.
Chip Baker: Wow. Well, there you have it. If you want to quit smoking cigarettes, you’re gonna have to once monthly have a psychedelic experience with some mushrooms for six months, and you’ll quit.
Josh Kappel: I don’t know if that was exactly the protocol, but you know–
Chip Baker: No, I mean, mushrooms are just so fun. It’s hard not to joke about uh, you know, have a good time with it. But it is really serious and I know you know many people that have fought for the laws and like yourself. It is a serious situation and mushrooms are like really incredible therapy, credible and therapeutic natural medicine very similar to cannabis very mild–
Josh Kappel: And they grow everywhere grow. They are all over the place. Well one you should– Have watch some Fantastic Fungi, Paul Stamets movie?
Chip Baker: No, I haven’t seen it yet.
Josh Kappel: It’s a good one. But my cilia connecting our whole world together. It makes sense it’s like mushrooms are like such a consciousness expander, so you dive into your consciousness in ways that not many other drugs really gives you– or at least not like that.
Chip Baker: I know man, I think I’m going to hang up this podcast right now and eat some mushrooms. Yeah. [inaudible]
I think micro-dosing is a really great way to expose people to psychedelics a little bit. time because they can. It’s kind of like CBD, right like, Oh, I could try weed without getting high. Oh, I could try my luck in high but then they like get a little high and like well maybe once a week you know I think I could use a full dose–
Josh Kappel: Yeah. [inaudible] a couple of times
Chip Baker: So mostly the path, I grew up with mushrooms like I said picking mushrooms and we’d make mushroom tea right fresh mushrooms you boil up tea. And then it began, you know, dried mushrooms. And then it turned into you know, mushroom chocolates. Chocolates that had extracted mushroom or ground up powdered, whole whole plant material. And now there’s extracts of mushrooms. You know, mushroom goo, mushroom paste. Things are really progressing and changing quickly. Have you have you been talking to anybody on that front of where where they think mushrooms might go for the for the consumer?
Shrooms for Consumers
Josh Kappel: Good question. Good question. You know, the, we have come across a couple different people who you know, have been wanting to explore different mushroom related brands. You know, the difficulty being is that you know, it’s like right now there’s this the protections there’s a state law protections I think, if this measure in Oregon that would decriminalize illegal as being medicinal use of mushrooms passes, then I think we’ll actually start to see you know, companies start to create mushrooms in the CPG products. And you and you do see sound like there’s again Venice and Golden Gate Dolores Park, you see some like, you know, some branded mushroom chocolate product for sure. But it’s not legal yet.
Chip Baker: This has a potential to change the world. And you know, I saw California in Denver do that. California and Colorado do this with medical cannabis. And the medical cannabis just seeped into all the whole medical cannabis community across the world and the knowledge and the expertise and the technique and the strains. Wow, we’re just fixing to see so much cool stuff with mushrooms the same stuff we saw with ganja, right the past 2025 years is going to happen with mushrooms now right that’s gonna be so many cool ways and deducted in the strains and like, Oh, it’s gonna be so cool.
Josh Kappel: Yeah, I mean I think it’s super interesting. You know, you mentioned mushroom tea. Like I’ve been waiting for someone to like bottle mushroom tea. Like no one stepped into that world, yet. Or what about other things you hear some of along the microdose in lines and start these like bio hacking flow state blends that are like, Hey you want a little of this psilocybin. A little bit of lion’s name, you want a little bit, you know, sort of like perfect like–
Chip Baker: Ginger and some an adaption adapted ins and total herbal cocktail.
Josh Kappel: Yeah, exactly. For your brain.
Chip Baker: Yeah, that’s true, man. Oh, it’s man. It just puts a smile on my face. I remember the first time I heard about mushrooms and here’s how it when older kids said something like, Oh yeah, you can eat these black mushrooms and they get you high. And I said no. And I went looked it up the library, though. Huh? Well, maybe. And it was right the library books are right. Wow, man. This is so cool you–
Josh Kappel: I like how your first mushroom though kick you to the library–
Chip Baker: Yeah, totally. Well, I mean, it was the original Google. Right? It was original Google.
Josh Kappel: That’s right. Go look things up in books.
Chip Baker: Yeah. Hey mom. I’m gonna go walk five blocks and go to the library. And then look up psychedelic mushrooms psilocybin mushrooms totally. Or make in Georgia and I asked hippie, old hippie friends parents and whatnot. They kind of lead me in the right direction. How’d you find out about mushrooms? People were like, Oh, it’s like mushrooms are gonna get a you get a high. And you just and you use like, oh, it makes feel good. Sure. I’ll take it.
Josh Kappel: It’s like Hey, try this, you know it changes your consciousness and there’s like– I actually grew up super religious. I was like, once you sort of like live religion, it’s like, I want to try everything they told me not to.
Predictions for Shrooms
Chip Baker: Yeah, I spent a fair amount of time in church myself. That’s for sure. It’s Yeah. Man. So I mean, it’s happening all over the country. If you got any predictions for shrooms here in the US?
Josh Kappel: I think what’s also happening to– My point of view of shrooms predictions, we have to take a step bigger. We gotta go higher up into the clouds. There’s other countries, you know. So it’s like, there’s a lot of sort–
Chip Baker: Oh yeah, like Thailand
Josh Kappel: Or Jamaica. You know, there’s a society like professional retreats in Jamaica, you know, so there’s a lot more It’s sort of happening on like the grand international scale as it comes to developing psilocybin and the freedom to use mushrooms and you saw it too It’s like you have like Amsterdam has has smart shops forever they ended up though walking it back together really by the truffle. The truffles are still great though. There’s a time I was in Spain and then some smart shops there and they got these wet mushrooms. And the only palate like mushrooms is that you have to keep them refrigerated as they go really bad and–
Chip Baker: Black mushrooms
Josh Kappel: Yeah, turned into like when we wanted to eat the mushrooms anyways, but as little– as we had to be ready to change them with whiskey and I ended up at this carnival and island community in Spain is the darkest carnival in the dark– Anyway. There’s beautiful [inaudible]
that’s it.
Chip Baker: Doors of perception broad are all around us.
Josh Kappel: But I think, you know, I think we’ll see your prediction lies, I think we’ll see more communities sort of loosen the prohibition on nature, on the entheogens and on the mushrooms, I think we’ll see, you know, Oregon or another state like that passes statewide measure that will really provide a lot of protection. You know, it’s like how, you know, like when you’re talking about like the legalization of drugs, it’s like most arrests or state arrests, so you really need to change state law. I mean, it’s a federal law too. But we haven’t got there yet for cannabis. I think we’ll see. Like you’re seeing Compass, you’re seeing Usona, develop psychedelic pharmaceuticals. I think that’s gonna be a big push forward, even maps, you know, is taking MDMA through different studies.
So, I think you’ll see it like more and more accepted. And I think there’s a lot of like pushback that there’s a lot of folks that say, like no, like, let’s not patent or protect psilocybin, that’s like trying to patent weed, you know, it’s like everyone should be on the ground and use it. What does this actually look like? I think there’s still a lot of like, controversy around it all. There’s also a lot of a lot around therapeutic protocols like the ethics of mushrooms, they have psilocybin in therapy, but I think will develop it off. I think it’s like, we’ll get there.
Chip Baker: Man. I think that the self help group is going to take a really big push in this, and you know, self help at home therapy. You know, groups of people that do entheogens, or ie mushrooms are going to start to spring up, there’s a community that’s already there associated with this, people already want it. So I know that’s already happening. And that’s just going to get bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. And, you know, they’re almost like, almost like churches or Tupperware party type of things, you know, and it’s some of it might be more fun. Others might be more therapeutic, but there’s already these things that exists throughout the country that’s going to keep growing. Meanwhile, access is going to increase because the communities in Colorado and California are really going to start to propagate mushrooms, right.
The propagation technology it’s going to like, like expand by leaps and bounds. More brains are going to get involved with just like what happened to cannabis, you know, all the same, techniques are there, and they’re only people and be like, oh, we’ll do it this way. We’ll do it this way. Oh, we’ll do it this way. All of a sudden, like, you know, 10-15 years later, we’re going to have specialized propagation equipment specifically for mushrooms, the spores, you know, the strains are going to be like, you know, like really endless, just like ganja is right now. And you know, man, even those places like, you know, that doesn’t legalize or decriminalized mushrooms or have medicinal mushrooms are going to be flooded. Because, man, I don’t know if you’ve ever grown mushrooms, they just keep on growing and keep on propagating themselves. And that’s what’s going to happen in California and Colorado.
Josh Kappel: Yeah, I said, and there is there’s so many so many varieties of mushrooms. Like hey, these mushrooms are for your nootropics you know, make your brain smarter and these mushrooms are to you know, to go as crazy br experiencer. Yeah, lay in the park with these ones. The interesting, the indicas and sativas of mushrooms.
Chip Baker: Yeah. Oh man, it’s exciting. You know, I was looking at mushrooms recently to grow and just see which ones were the most like popular or the– And what I found out was the the Golden teachers, the Island Coast, hose are all mushrooms that came from Georgia, or on the coast there and South Carolina like all right where I was from, and I was picking these mushrooms as a kid, the same varieties and I look at them in books now and I can see it. And man, it’s just amazing that those have now become like, some of the most predominantly grown mushrooms in the country in the world and just out of this small little ecosystem. And now that it’s so much bigger, it’s just all strains and varieties of mushrooms. Just gonna. It’s just gonna blossom.
Oh, Josh, this has been an awesome real dirt, real dirt on shrooms. It’s been great, man I know we’re going to have a ton of questions about this one people are going to ask a lot more I’m probably going to have around two. You know, and I’ve got some great guys over at Monster Mushrooms monster mushroom grow kits we sell those there Cultivate Colorado, anybody who wants a mushroom grow kit. Look up cultivatecolorado.com or lookup, cultivateokc.com and you can buy a mushroom grow kit online right now. Boom even you, Josh, even you.
Josh Kappel: I thought you’re sold out.
Chip Baker: Oh, I’m sold out today but not tomorrow. Oh this is great!
Josh Kappel: I do wonder. I mean, now’s the time grab it and you’re stuck at home. Do you think more people are eating psychedelic at home now with COVID or less?
Chip Baker: Oh, I think there’s more psychedelic use right now. Because you’re like, there’s like no better time– to sit at home I sitting in the freezer. [inaudible] We got some time to kill. I mean, I think maybe psychedelics help prevent the COVID? I think it does. I mean, you know, another claim by Chip, of course, it doesn’t.
Josh Kappel: Not evaluated by the FDA.
Chip Baker: And, you know, I don’t know, I do think probably some people are a little scared of taking psychedelics right now during the COVID. But, you know, it’s dark out there, but then you know, man, that’s the thing about psychedelics is they do show you the light and you know, as the grateful dead saying over and over again, you know, you get shown the light in the craziest places, if you look at it right, and that’s what psychedelics do. Yeah, that’s right. Josh it has been great. Thanks for joining me.
Josh Kappel: Thanks, Chip. Thanks for having me.
Chip Baker: All right. Hey, if you guys liked this episode, or you want to listen to others, download them at The Real Dirt podcast on iTunes. And hey, if you’re looking at this video right now, you might be looking at it on YouTube. But if you’re not going to my YouTube channel, The Real Dirt podcast, and look up all of the videos that we have and the interviews we have now, hey, there are two channels. I can’t get rid of one. But log on to the one, subscribe to the one that has all the videos, all the most current stuff. And, you know, we’ll keep you up to date. Thank you again for joining me here on The Real Dirt. It has been a pleasure. And yeah, I hope to hear from you soon. Real dirt!
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