I was looking at the molecular structures of DMT and psilocybin and noticed they are almost the same, and after some investigation I found this video of David Nichols explaining that the difference is that psilocybin has oxygen and phosphate which make it orally active.

So let me get this straight. Does this mean that psilocybin is nothing more than an orally active version of DMT? If yes, then wouldn't that mean that they are identical effects-wise? Or in other words, would a 40mg dose of psilocybin be the same as a 40mg dose of DMT, in terms of intensity and general characteristics? (with the exception of duration)

no, your'e way off here, they're quite different

From the research ive done,
They are very similar in many ways and different in some ways as well.

Molecularly, they are very similar

Trip- pretty different but also similar in some ways.

smoking DMT will take you to a place where you will wonder what the hell is this place.
mushrooms wont necessarily do that.

watch a bunch of terrence mckenna videos on youtube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAFVtd8NMHw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZlnjbuAwH8

Well, ok. I guess I'll get all kinds of different answers on this. But the thing that got me thinking about all this is that I recently did shrooms for the first time in about 15 years. I did 1.5g and was surprised at how similar it was to my typical sub-breakthrough DMT trips, the usual CEVs, colored patterns against a black background and entities approaching me, deep thinking, and all that.

Evolutionary speaking. Mushrooms have developed psilocybin to be more fit for human consumption than your typical DMT-containing species. Being a frantic addict of listening to Terence Mckenna on youtube I recall him saying mushrooms are more like humans in personality more than any other plant spirit.

And to be perfectly honest just realizing now that psilocybin is the ONLY dmt-like substance that is fit for human consumption without MAOI (assuming it it is true what i'm saying), it is quite remarkable and maybe they have been designed this way for a reason.

Altho in my personal experience. Eating mushrooms has not always felt like the healthiest thing to do!

I also think it is weird that my shrooms can actually become green and becoming food for other fungi. Can anyone just give me a quick heads up that this is normal? Or is mushrooms the only fungi that allows itself to be eaten by Fungi. That or i'm completely off the ball here..

I wonder if 40mg of psilocybin does produce the same effect that 40mg of dmt has on the human body.

Quick google search on dosage, leads me to think it actually is the same dosage wise. Mushrooms just last a whole lot longer. But it's not conclusive, you never know how outdated some information is on erowid and what is considered a Heavy dose in this schema.

"smoking DMT will take you to a place where you will wonder what the hell is this place.
mushrooms wont necessarily do that."

Eating a full dose of mushrooms will take you to a place where you will wonder what the hell is this place.
DMT wont necessarily do that.

Yes they are very very similar and both take one to hyperspace..Psilocybin is essentially an orally active DMT experience for me. Psilocybin can be a bit more humerous in it's character but it's not a given. It would be hard to really tell the 2 apart at the peak of a large dose for me.

You can take a light dose of DMT and just have some visuals or mental effects..or you can take a large dose and go to hyperspace. Mushrooms are the same way. One is not stronger than the other for me.

The receptor affinity is a little bit different, but experientially they feel almost identical for me. Mushrooms can be a little bit more mentally difficult at times.

Doses are not the same. 40mg of psilocybin sounds like a really big dose. 40mg of DMT would not be as high of a dose.

"And to be perfectly honest just realizing now that psilocybin is the ONLY dmt-like substance that is fit for human consumption without MAOI (assuming it it is true what i'm saying), it is quite remarkable and maybe they have been designed this way for a reason."

5meoDMT and bufotenine are both orally active without any maoi.

Yes but we can't eat frogs, can we?

Mushrooms are really very accessible. My only concern is that sometimes they urge me to puke. I'm glad that only actually happened one morning on a really empty stomach.

..a phosphorus atom is a fairly big difference between psilocybin and DMT..

5meo/bufotenine are closer in this regard..

the rapid metabolism of DMT suggests it may be a lower toxicity level than psilocybin..

and there are (AFAIK) no phosphorus containing endogenous amines..
.

This.

I find mushrooms are very similar to oral DMT, the difference is just in the dose. I don't mean pure psilocybin, obviously. I don't have to eat more than five or six grams of mushrooms to get to that place, whereas my largest pharma dose didn't take me nearly that far. Most people chicken out with the dosage with mushrooms. Even experienced trippers are wary to eat more than say six or seven grams at once.

I agree that rapid metabolism of DMT does suggest a lower toxicity level than psilocybin, but that is certainly not yet evidence that psilocin IS actually toxic to the body. It could be that shrooms last longer to aid in the experience. And maybe because they are not endogenous because they don't serve any biological purpose to us. And they are of no value to us other than the experience itself. Making it more beneficial if that would last longer than 15 minutes.

Also, psilocybin is converted into 4-Hydroxy-DMT (psilocin). And i'm not particularly studied or anything but i think this might indicate that psilocybin is actually more acquinted with human metabolism than DMT is. (Which I think is very unlikely because DMT is an endogenous chemical and psilocybine is still not)

I do want to point out that the symbiotic relationship which psilocybine has with human metabolism is noteworthy and it might be interesting to look further into that

Yeah I've been suspecting that mushrooms can do the same as DMT with appropriate dose. I just didn't know if I was in a small minority in believing that.

It's just that mushrooms are not normally associated with full blown out-of-body experiences the way DMT is. I guess it's because most people are simply not taking high enough doses so they would never know, whether they chicken out (which is understandable), or they don't know it's possible so they don't try.

thanks for the replies, btw.

Hehehe, I certainly chicken out when it comes to taking large doses of mushrooms. The largest I took once is half of what people take from averagely strong mushrooms and I woulden't call my experience outer body but I would certainly call my experience out of this world.

they are very similar, but there are noticeable differences.

just like the compounds are similar, but there are some differences (namely, OH/PO chains).

psilocin is the closest thing to DMT i have tried, though oral dmt i found quite different (maybe it was just from the ayahuasca vine - it felt a lot more intuitive and feminine, as opposed to the rational, masculine, humorous personality of the shroom).

Anytime I eat shrooms, my CEV's are very similar to what I see on DMT. If I meditate, I can push this further, and even have a Body Deconstruction Experience, though they aren't as intense on mushrooms.

Anyone who is looking for the DMT experience essentially has it in mushrooms. They are too similar IME to give much of a differentiation between them. Psilocybin IS DMT.

A bit off topic, but it's probably good to bring into mind that psilocybin is a prodrug that needs to be converter to its active form aka psilocin (via dephosphorylation) before it passes the blood brain barrier and exerts its effects in the CNS.

On-topic, I also find that mushrooms are very similar to dmt. I'd go as far as stating that the mushroom trips (as well as acid trips) have turned more dmt-ish after the encounter with dmt; In the beginning of my dmt affair I was amazed by the difference to mushrooms, yet when I tried mushrooms after dmt a lot of dmt-ness was there to be found.

Whether this is conditioning or not, there sure needs to be some caution when people who have tried both compare these two.

very interesting thread, Psilocybin is certainly the most similar substance ive encountered to dmt and should b since only moleculary one step away, but i wouldn't go so far to say dmt is psilocibin. I found them very similar regarding visuals, myb dmt slightly brighter, but pretty different in their spirit and effects on the body in my experience.

What evolutionary advantage would mushrooms have to produce psilocybin? Because that ensures they'll be eaten by humans? Sounds like dogma to me.

There's a bigger chance that shrooms produce psilocybin as a defense mechanism or as a metabolic by-product.

Aargh guys, let's not go into an evolutionary debate or why mushrooms have psilocybin in the first place! Obviously, if an organism has a trait that is appealing to humans, this is potentially advantageous but can also be detrimental. If said organism can be domesticated and cultivated, then the trait is advantage (think p.cubensis) but if said organism is resistant to domestication (think p.azurescence or p.semilanceata) then the trait can be a huge disadvantage, such as in the cases of over-harvesting. Throwing the word evolution around so lightly is not very wise IMO.

I have had similar experiences.

However, the way I felt when it happened was that these things had always been a part of the mushroom experience for me, but prior to DMT, I had filtered them out as jibberish/white noise/etc. I realized that I had been seeing these things before, in the corners and backgrounds of my experiences, but had no context or "understanding" or really conscious awareness of seeing them until DMT smacked me in the face with them. After that, when I encountered them again on mushrooms, it was like, "OH! I know those! I remember seeing those on mushrooms before and they're totally "from" hyperspace."