The discovery of my totally natural Psilocybe baeocystis fungal mycelium for a new safer and less toxic therapy was a serendipity. It occurred around 2020, over fifty years after my advisor/mentor and I published my graduate research detailing my isolation of the two new psilocybin analogs we named baeocystin and norbaeocystin in 1968. From 1968 to around 2020, over half-a-century, I did not have anything to do with magic mushrooms. Regardless, I spent two-and-a-half years doing postdoctoral work with Professor Einar Brochmann-Hanssen in the biosynthesis of opium alkaloids and was co-author in five published papers. Then, I was employed and fired by two companies for a total of five-and-a-half years before I became an independent consultant for fifty years.
Around 2019–2020, I decided to promote my new book online, My Life & Rollercoaster Career. Published by CreateSpace/Amazon in late 2018, it combines my memoir with eight years of newsletters (1996–2004) in a single volume. The memoir covers my family, education, life in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the United States, and personal challenges such as inattention and possible ADHD. The newsletter reprints my career experiences, first published monthly, then bimonthly, and later quarterly. I eventually stopped because of my consulting schedule, grant work, and travel. In those newsletters, I discussed both synthetic drug therapy and traditional medicine. Although the two are very different, each has strengths as well as limitations. Used together, their strengths and weaknesses can complement one another.
After I returned from retirement to join LinkedIn to promote my book, within weeks I noticed chatters on psilocybin and magic mushrooms. I rejoined the psychedelic movement and basically forgot about my book promotion. I have then noticed that many businessmen treat their endeavors as if they were ‘goldrush’ adventures. They also don’t distinguish between natural therapy and synthetic therapy, claiming the former scientific but unaware of the experience and wisdom of the latter. After working with a few such groups, I decided to form our PBN Naturals Worldwide Consortium to produce natural PBN mycelia cooperatively so as not to gouge or exploit others less fortunate.
It was only then, when reviewing my long-neglected PBN work, that I realized one of the steps in my routine extraction of the Ps. baeocystis mycelia for isolating psilocybin and analogs involved a rinsing step with clean distilled water before drying the mycelial pellets for extraction. I never paid attention to this step at the time. But now, that simple step is the key to our commercial totally natural PBN mycelia with no synthetic contaminants like chemicals produced by synthetic, enzymatic, and biotech processes. That is the principle I use for our organization – PBN Naturals Worldwide Consortium. Together, we can produce totally natural mycelia containing pure PBN! This technique can be applied to other natural products, especially unregulated herbal supplements where two products from two different companies, with identical herbal ingredients on their labels, can be as different as night and day! The industry is full of products like these. Join our Consortium if you want to help us change things.