This is simply a confluence of thoughts regarding psilocybin & animal foods. Please don’t take anything personally. I am not trying to offend anyone, but I tend to be quite good at it.

When I got home from dropping off my tiny human at school, I sat down to journal. My journal app prompted me to write about what my favorite thing is about myself…

My Answer?

My brain.

That the app chose this question to ask was a source of amusement to me, because I had just spent the drive home thinking about the history of, and reasons for, the evolution of the human brain.

There are two theories that have stuck with me as to why we, as a species, had a sudden giant leap in brain size a few million years ago…

On the One Hand, There is the Mushroom theory…

That eating psilocybin mushrooms growing from wild poop piles in the savannas helped us expand our thinking. There is some evidence of this (in the possibly-probably just coincidence sense of the word). Our old-ass ancestors did in fact find and consume psychedelic mushrooms for their psilocybin content during that evolutionary period. Of course, we have no way to know if that affected us long term.

On the Other Hand, There is the Animal-based-food-consumption theory…

In the time-frame in question, our hunting tools and methods had grown sophisticated enough to now make hunting our primary source of food. The increase in both protein and fats from fish and mammalian sources gave our brains the fuel and components needed to dramatically grow in an evolutionary short period of time.

Then, My Weird Little Brain Thought:

meat & mushrooms, baby!

What if Both Were Essential?

The components from animal foods were needed to physically grow our brains, but the psilocybin was needed to forge our actual neural networks. We have functional MRIs that show that’s literally what psilocybin does while under the influence (see this study, or this article that summarized the study along with a second study)… Mushrooms with psilocybin connect areas of the brain that otherwise remain unconnected in our sober lives. This is where imbibers get the sensation of really “seeing” the world and their minds “expanding”, because that’s literally what happens. We also know that, when used to treat depression in a therapeutic setting, the effects are long lasting because the patient is forming new synaptic connections.

So, why not both?

Which also may mean that, if they survive, the dolphins will take over the planet when we kill our selves with our own environment. They have an arguably more advanced communication method (they basically have nature’s version of video calling, projected right into each other’s brains).

And, most importantly, they like to get high.

I rest my case.

Want to know more about my weird ass brain?

giggle ass-brain.