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Speaking of Martin Ball!
Here is a new podcast in which he responds to various aspects of the Usona study, among other things.


https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/entheogenic/episodes/2023-04-24T10_00_00-07_00

May be time for bingo...

https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/common-logical-fallacies

But in all seriousness, care to summarize some of the main points you found compelling?

What would make the thread more robust?

You may want to review this report:

https://erowid.org/experiences/exp.php?ID=109250

Martin Ball should not be trusted as an authority on this subject for many reasons, but one of them being that he was advertising their sacrament.

These are all excellent points ayalight.

It's especially concerning that a church would argue for not being sure what exactly is in their sacrament, as that opens up all kinds of possibilities for exploitation. It's a violation of consent to give someone something that is misrepresented. For example, if someone thought they were drinking ayahuasca that contained caapi and chacruna but it also had datura. This takes agency away from the vulnerable person (in this case the one who is receiving the sacrament).

The actual production of the substance itself raises other legal questions given that both psilocybin and 5 Men DMT are illegal. Again to my mind it seems premature to create and promote a church when so many outstanding questions need to be considered and resolved. In my view it's best to be patient, do research and quietly build a community instead of marketing it to a wide public.

This was my first concern long ago when I first heard about the church. The possession of TWO illegal substances puts everyone at risk and muddies the waters in determining what the sacrament is. If they need to grow psilocybin mushrooms and they need to feed mushroom substrate 5-MeO-DMT, then it requires quite a bit of backend preparation to make the sacrament.

I am all for freedom of religion and spiritual practice but it should be done ethically, with an understanding of power dynamics involved and keeping the best interests of church members in mind.

Welcome Ayalight! Great to have you here.

The church has clearly said in multiple places that their sacrament contains (and is) psilomethoxin, not psilocybin. They are now backpedaling of course but there's plenty of evidence showing that they were making that claim.

The levels of psilocybin, psilocin, and baeocystin were comparable to those found in typical cubensis mushrooms.

People claiming that the article was "AI Generated" are referring to the mention in the acknowledgements section that ChatGPT helped write the article. However, ChatGPT did not perform any of the analyses, or the relevant science. There are no problems with software helping write a manuscript.

Welcome

The Church of Psilomethoxin has issued a statement on their website in response:
https://psilomethoxin.com/psychedelic_capitalism/

Although the statement says that the church has never claimed their sacrament to contain psilomethoxin, there is content on their website to suggest otherwise [see attachment].

Good question. This is what Dr. Sherwood had to say about that question:

"That's a great question!
Although psilomethoxin had not been produced as a standard (this is underway and hence why the manuscript is a preprint), we were able to search for the presence or absence of it based on its proposed molecular structure and its exact monoisotopic mass. By comparing the retention time and accurate mass of the ions detected in the sample with those of known tryptamines, it was quite clear that psilomethoxin was not detected in the sample (and would have been if present)."

[Fungi Fiction: Analytical Investigation into the Church Of Psilomethoxin's Alleged Novel Compound Using UPLC-HRMS]

New analysis and article just published:

Fungi Fiction: Analytical Investigation into the Church Of Psilomethoxin's Alleged Novel Compound Using UPLC-HRMS

Abstract
The Church of Psilomethoxin claims to produce a novel tryptamine by adding 5-MeO-DMT to the substrate of cultivated Psilocybe mushrooms, which is then biosynthesized into psilomethoxin, the church's sacrament. In this study, we investigate the validity of this claim using comprehensive analytical techniques, namely ultra-performance liquid chromatography with high-resolution mass spectrometry (UPLC-HRMS). Authentic reference standards for structurally related tryptamines were used for comparison. Our findings revealed no evidence to suggest that the compound psilomethoxin is present in samples of material that the church is offering to their members online. Psilocybin, baeocystin, and psilocin, were, however, unambiguously identified in the sample, suggesting that the claims regarding the biosynthesis of psilomethoxin may be misguided. The implications of these findings should be critically considered within the context of public health and safety.

https://chemrxiv.org/engage/chemrxiv/article-details/64358de9736114c96352edf9

Thank you for sharing this important report, famine.

We have sent a sample for analysis as well and will be publishing it here as soon as it becomes available.

Welcome to the forum, and I'm sorry to hear you've had such a difficult experience. We have a whole section on integration support. Definitely check it out and consider posting your experience so that others can benefit from your experience.

Wishing you all the best,
HV

Please don't promote this church until there is GCMS evidence. We have submitted a sample of the sacrament for testing and will post an update once we have an analytical report available.

Do not trust the Church. A bunch of criminals with false promises. GCMS and other analytical techniques DO NOT DECOMPOSE 4ho5meodmt. All analysis at the moment show no 4ho5meodmt present in their shrooms. A lot of mycologists tried do this years ago and failed. Only base tryptamines were successful.


If they can send a sample that shows 4ho5meodmt in the analysis. Only then believe them.

Do you have any analyses you can post to the forum?

Welcome!

Sometimes we have to change our mediocre job as part of integration, or be part of systemic change!
For me, that has been a helpful thing to consider when it feels like there is a big separation between the god-like realms of perfection and daily life.

P.S. Post your experience/trip reports in the appropriate section:
Here for toad secretion experiences: https://forums.5meodmt.org/index.php?board=5.0
Here for synthetic experiences: https://forums.5meodmt.org/index.php?board=4.0
Here for integration discussions: https://forums.5meodmt.org/index.php?board=9.0