^
yes, I also lean towards this interpretation but isn't that generally called a dmt-induced conditioning of the trips? Just to expand on that, mescaline hasn't become any dmt-esque while mushrooms and lsd have. Conversely, mescaline hasn't made mushroom trips more mescaline-esque nor lsd has made mescaline more lsd-esque.

Of course these are all personal interpretations, yet I do feel that mushrooms and dmt have more in common than their chemical structures in the way they influence each other.

so is this statement correct? its worded very simply and my friends could understand

No, of course it's not correct.

A more appropriate statement would be that the psilocybin experience is the closest you can get to oral dmt experience.

Perhaps? But I would hesitate to use such language, only because my subjective experience and memory (both of which are "fallible"...but the best tools at the moment for examining these phenomena) present a situation where I was seeing/experiencing the same things, or at least similar elements on mushrooms, both before and after my DMT experience, but lacked the reference point from which to actually identify them.

I would compare it to, say, hearing a story told in a foreign language before and after becoming fluent in that language. The first time you hear it, you may recognize some words and remember the sound of others, but not actually be able to hear/process the actual words being said, due to not knowing the words themselves, not knowing where one ends and the next begins, or things of that nature.

The second time you hear the story, after learning the language, you can hear and recognize the individual words being used to create the story because you have a reference point through which to delineate the words being spoken and identify them as such. In this sense, the consensus reality of the words being spoken has not changed at all, merely your ability to recognize the components.

You will notice, I'm making no claims about meaning, merely about identifying the elements presented in the speech (or in the DMT/mushroom experience ). In this sense, I would not say that the experience is conditioned, but rather the perception of that experience. Semantics, unquestionably, but a distinction that I feel is important.


I would agree...but I did find that on a large dose of mescaline, I perceived the same body patterning that is a staple of my moderate-to-high dose mushroom experiences, and that for me, appear with remarkable consistency from trip to trip (on mushrooms). I'm not 100% sure what to make of this...I don't think it's one substance influencing the other, and would lean towards a more "holistic" explanation, but presenting such ideas with people willing to discuss them is beyond difficult (I was actually laughed at/somewhat dismissed by one of the Hopkins researchers for attempting to engage on this issue).


I would not disagree with this.

If you ever try higher doses of psilohuasca, you'll find some pretty profound parallels with DMT.

Infinidibulum's comment about conditioning is pretty interesting though- as I bounce between different substances, I find that my reaction to each substance changes. Although there are certain characteristics that are pretty well established between LSD, shrooms and DMT, a lot of the more subjective aspects of each experience will be affected just as much by your personal psychological history as they will by the particular substance. Long story short: you never quite know what you'll get.

Very cool thread!

I have found that DMT and shrooms are nearly identical in experience, as well. When I first started getting into DMT, it seemed to have an effect on my mushroom trips. Once, the come up on mushrooms was very much the same as the rush of smoking DMT. I am talking the carrier tone, electric body tingling, the same chrysanthemum, all of it. They can definitely take you to the same places. They can take you to different places, too.

As for mescaline, well it seems to be quite a bit different. But my last mescaline trip was very intense, and I found myself in some of the same places as I have with mushrooms.

The way I have always explained it, is that they each have the same basic elements to them, just the experience is painted slightly different. They all seem to be different facets of the same gem, the mind in a psychedelic state.

I was also going to say the same thing snozzleberry and inf have already pointed out..

and thats after i smoked DMT my mushroom trips were a lot more DMT like, almost as if they tuned my receptors in, ive given friends DMT for the first time then theve taken mushrooms either shortly after or a few weeks after and report the same thing aswell. i like to think this isnt coincidence.

i also took 4-aco-dmt once and finished off a pipe of dmt that id given someone as they didnt finish it all, i was propelled into a DMT trip that didnt end i was in it for atleast an hour or 2, i had to go and sit in the base of a tree on my own to ground myself!

This is interesting, I had no idea how apparently similar mushrooms and DMT could be. I've only been on low doses of mushrooms. The experience was so gentle and natural on every occasion, the thought never crossed my mind to compare it to the rush of the DMT I've smoked. But now that I reflect on it, I feel as if there was a similarity to the peak of the shrooms to the come-down of spice.


This is spot on, I love it.

I think the point is, psilocybin activates reward pathways, in low doses without causing hallucination. Meanwhile, the mushroom spores are coprophytic, and can survive the digestive process. Goats for example will eat psilocybes when they find them. Thus, by being eaten, the mushroom spore is transported by wondering ruminants, and is then excreted elsewhere. This will reduce competition for nutrients. They are also then excreted ready wrapped in a nutrient bundle which will facilitate their growth.
Evolutionary a sound strategy, though I wouldn't say this would make it necessarily true.

yup, they're very similar to me. I've had breakthrough mushroom experiences that were nearly identical to dmt in a lot of ways

and i agree with the character of mushroom/lsd trips changing dramatically after encountering dmt

i think mushrooms and lsd are incredibly underrated in their ability to propel you into full on out of body immersive dips into visionary realms

Bufotenine is also a relativly quick experience(though longer than DMT) but personally I think it is more toxic than psilocybin(though this is due to other factors I think). DMT and psilocybin are much much more similar than DMT and bufotenine..even if the phosphorus group makes a larger structural difference.

This is what is interesting about psilocybin and psilocin. Bufotenine is very similar structurally to psilocin yet experientially they are not really alike at all..bufotenine lacks most of the deep mental processes that psilocin and DMT both share..

There is other alkaloids in mushrooms though that should be concidered in this duscussion. If someone could ingest pure psilocin it would be a better comparison. It's like taking an acacia with a mix of different tryptamines present and using it as an example of pure DMT.

And then there is chiten, uric acid and possible micotoxins present in the mushrooms in trace ammounts that could add to some of the discompfort that people experience that leads to more anxiousness etc. Mushrooms definatly make me more anxious than DMT..this is the main different between them for me. Things get kind of crazy on mushrooms.

The character of mushrooms never changed for me after DMT. The first time I really vaped a solid dose of DMT it was like going into the peak of my largest mushroom experiences. Mushrooms were always a deep hyperspace breakthrough for me at large doses. This could be due in part to the fact that I live in an area rich with wild psilocybe cyanescenes and was eating them a lot.

thanks infundibulum

while DMT and psilocin have similar structures, they're not the same...the hydroxy group is quite polar, giving it a different binding characteristic than dmt, it has different affinities at various receptor sites.

Smoking mushrooms is no way to test similarity of trip to vaped DMT, so can anyone offer a credible legit experience of vaping pure psilocin ? Not that many people are in possession of such a product and at this point most home extractions are quite crude indeed, and the product needs to be analyzed for purity for X method before we give it credibility. I have heard the idea thrown about and some vague experiences, but nothing of much worth. Perhaps I have been looking in the wrong places.

Ayahuasca and mushrooms felt identical to me every time I had them. Besides the usual differences from trip to trip, there was nothing key that stuck out to me. But that's just my experience. Binding affinities may be very different for each molecule, but it does not seem to radically alter anything if (in my OWN personal case) at all.

P.S
I expect most will disagree for whatever reason. But in a similar way a lot of people talk about 'jungle spice' being a totally different trip (is DMT not always different?), even though analysis has shown it is just mostly impurities with a tiny amount of a beta carboline.

^good points, orion,

I think that by default we're comparing oral dmt (be it pharmauasca/ayahuasca/aya analogue) to oral mushrooms here; any other comparison just doesn't make much sense, especially when there are no reports on vaping psilocin. At this level of of comparison, one needs to take into consideration not only the molecular differences of dmt and psilocin, but also the fact that oral dmt is almost always administered with harmalas.

So oral dmt and psilocin experiences can look cunningly similar but still this is comparing oral dmt+harmalas with psilocin. A better comparison would be dmt+harmalas vs mushrooms with harmalas and those who've tried both would probably agree that they are even more similar (true?). Conversely, one could say that dmt and psilocin are different per se and that harmalas added to dmt make it more mushroom-like?

Bottom point is that the inevitable addition of harmalas into play complicates the situation, just as other metabolites in mushrooms can skew the comparison. I wonder how dmt and psilocin would compare in IV injections (complete with does-response curves and subjective experience reports), as this would show how truly similar or different they are.

I had an over-large dose of mushrooms several years ago, which caused me to travel outside my body, experience my death, and visit the land of the dead. This caused me to be rather afraid of mushroom power for awhile there. Then, about a year later, I vaped my first large dose of DMT, and it sent me to the exact same experience. Curiously, the physical location I had been at while with the large mushroom dose was a huge part of my DMT trip which took place thousands of miles away. This caused me to feel that maybe all psychedelics are the same at a high enough dose (seen plenty of people saying that lately), or psilocybin and DMT are basically the same due to their close chemical relationship.

However, in retrospect, I feel that the first experience was traumatic due to taking such a high dose in the wrong environment, and that DMT simply has the power to take you anywhere you need to visit, and at the time of my first DMT trip my attitude on tripping was all messed up due to the mushroom trip and in recognizing that it sent me there to deal with it "once and for all".

Something I learned in observing afterward the differences between rue/mimosa journeys and mushroom journeys was that the mushrooms were a LOT less powerful, and that the main important differences can be characterized like "mimosa is all lesson and no play, mushrooms are fun but not always instructive."

Also, I have experienced plenty of rue/mushroom combinations, and it is usually more intense, grounded, longer-lasting, and generally more instructive than with mushroom alone, with the one drawback of being somewhat tired throughout. Rue with mushroom is in my experience not nearly as intense as rue with mimosa, even given access to plenty materials to explore the higher dosage area.

well theres been a few reports here and there of vaping psilocin i think...iirc nen888 has tried it and it worked

my snuffed dmt (with a low dose of rue harmalas eaten 20 minutes before dosing) breakthrough was by far the most similar to a hyperspace dose of mushrooms IME. The duration was just a bit shorter and it was much rougher (mostly due to the incredibly intense burn..i have a sensitive nose )

Very true.

By the way I mentioned vaporizing as I just can't help wonder, if oral is so similar, why not inhaled too ?



I bet it works, I can feel it in my plums. Did nen888 make a post about this I can read ?

DMT without harmalas is closer to mushrooms in my opinion. It just happens that to activate oral DMT you have to take harmalas..if you take the bare minimum ammount of harmalas and then enough DMT to be active that is close to mushrooms for me, but a little bit different. The difference is small enough that in a double lind study I think many people would not tell tham apart, aside from the durration.

Mushrooms with harmalas becomes more ayahuasca like.

Even vaping DMT is like mushrooms for me..the first time I vaped DMT it was like a really condensed and sped up mushroom trip to hyperspace. All the main elements of the deep mushroom experiences were present though..it was just like taking that trip at light speed.

Jim Dekorn vaped it and said it was inbetween a vaped DMT and oral mushroom trip I think..meaning to me it was hyperspacy like DMT and psilocin but longer than vaped DMT, and probly way shorter than oral psilocin. Thats what I would assume anyway.