I spent a few days last week augmenting my normal morning routine of espresso and soda water with some “mood-altering” supershrooms and gummies. It’s all part of a new line of “mood juice” being sold at Toronto’s four Strange Love locations.
I started with the “power” expression, which contains rhodiola, ashwagandha, guarana and cordyceps (two herbs, a fruit and a mushroom). It was tart, refreshing and just sweet enough, likely the result of the guarana, a delicious, caffeine-rich, berry-sized fruit considered a sacred plant by several tribes in the Amazon basin.
While the guarana is probably responsible for the drink’s tastiness, it’s the mushrooms that are driving Strange Love’s “supershroom” initiative. The two other mood-altering drinks (called “focus” and “relax”) respectively contain lion’s mane and chaga: two other mushrooms that are currently trending.
Why? Although they’re not the same as psilocybin (a.k.a. “magic mushrooms”), which have hallucinogenic properties and are currently illegal in Canada, they’re not unrelated. Some people who micro-dose psilocybin (exactly how it sounds, tiny doses every day that are too small to cause a “trip”) add lion’s mane to their regimen, since there has been speculation that both mushrooms can help create new neural pathways.
Much of this follows the work of Paul Stamets, an American mycologist who claims that mushrooms are important to human health, notably our microbiome and brains. Stamets, who has caught the attention of author Michael Pollan, director Louie Schwartzberg and podcaster Joe Rogan, argues that mushrooms possess intelligence. Since we (humans and all animal life) evolved from fungi, mushrooms are our elders, according to Stamets and the architects of our environment. Reconnecting with our inner fungus might help us be healthier, happier and better humans and, although psilocybin is the mushroom that gets the most attention, we haven’t really begun to explore the interconnectedness of the many species that form the “mycelium network.”
As these ideas trickle into the mainstream via podcasts, streaming services and even old-fashioned books, some from the cannabis sector think history is repeating here and that psilocybin is headed toward legalization, too. On the cultural side, mushroom supplements and tonics are chipping away at the stigma. On the more practical side, new research, which allows growers to legally cultivate psilocybin, is starting to push it by establishing legal precedents. The key word here is starting, though.
“We really know very little about the efficacy and safety, although there’s been a wellspring of research since studies have started to get approval to do this stuff again,” explains Norman Farb, associate professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, who’s starting to research psilocybin after decades of studying mindfulness.