Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
[HAMILTON'S PHARMACOPEIA]
[AMSTERDAM, THE NETHERLANDS]
Today is Queen's Day in Amsterdam
and I have three containers of psilocybin containing truffles.
I'm gonna start by taking eight grams of this 15 gram container
because that's what the man at the Smart Shop advised me to do.
And then, I suppose I'm going to go out and walk around on Queen's Day,
which is incredibly chaotic and disgusting
and probably the worst possible place to take them.
This is the first time I've ever consumed a psychedelic truffle.
You can't really get these in the United States, as far as I know.
It's actually much less than I would eat of a mushroom.
Doesn't seem like very much at all.
Okay.
[HAMILTON MORRIS AND THE PHILOSOPHER'S STONE PART 1 OF 3]
[24 HOURS EARLIER]
Yesterday I arrived in Amsterdam,
doubtlessly one of the sickest places on earth to get blazed on dank nugs.
But my interest is not solely confined to blazing dank nugs.
Amsterdam is fertile ground for all manner of psychoactive substance.
I came here to find the Psilocybe Tampanensis Sclerotium,
or Philosopher's Stone Truffle.
It was not until the infamous mushroom ban of 2008
that the psychedelic Sclerotium gained widespread popularity,
due to the fact that its effects and chemical composition
are almost indistinguishable from the Psilocybin mushroom.
Mushrooms were once completely legal
and since the early 90's, the Netherlands led the world
in the development of commercial psychedelic mushroom growing techniques.
But everything changed in 2008
when the Dutch government banned Psilocybin containing mushrooms,
responding to a number of highly publicized deaths,
misguidedly blamed on the innocent fungus.
Truffles escaped the ban unscathed
and hold a place inside the hearts of all true Dutch.
I am here to learn about how these strange protuberances are cultivated
and why they have not been banned.
There are no better people to consult than the Truffle Brothers,
two of the world's leading experts
in the mass production of psychedelic sclerotia.
I visited the brothers' farm in Hazerwoude-Dorp,
formerly the second largest mushroom farm in the Netherlands.
[MAGIC TRUFFLE FARM]
Having survived the mushroom ban,
the Truffle Brothers now dominate the psilocybin containing fungus industry.
I sat down with Murat and Ali
to discuss the secrets of the Philosopher's Stone.
[ALI & MURAT THE TRUFFLE BROTHERS]
First of all, my name is Ali.
Next to me is sitting my brother, Murat.
We are, in fact, known as the Truffle Brothers.
You're here at the farm of MagicTruffles.com.
We produce sclerotia, also known as Magic Truffles.
-And how did this company get started?
Interesting story.
Long story that started somewhere around 1993, '94, I guess.
I learned mushroom growing in Belgium.
Mushrooms for eating, normal white button mushrooms.
That was my occupation before I started with these mushrooms.
So I had quite a great network in that area, in that field.
One day a friend of mine comes up to me and says,
"Look what I found."
He shows me a petri dish with spores.
"That's interesting. What kind of mushroom is it?"
He said, "Well, it's a magic mushroom."
Eh...never heard of it.
So, I took a closer look.
I went to a friend of mine who owned a laboratory,
a mycological laboratory,
and asked him, "Can we do something with these spores?"
He said, "Well, let's give it a try."
And after two weeks, there was one mushroom in the aquarium.
But it was a giant mushroom.
It was about this tall.
We were looking at it and said, "Okay. Let's harvest it!"
-And you were operating a pizza restaurant beforehand, you said?
In that time, yes.
The life cycle of a mushroom begins
when two spores of opposite mating types germinate in the growth substrate
and send out threads called Hyphae.
The hyphae form a clamp connection
where genetic information is exchanged,
and then expand into a web of undifferentiated threads called Mycelium.
If the conditions are right,
the Mycelium organizes itself into a mushroom
with special reproductive cells called Basidia,
which catapults spores into the air and give rise to new mushrooms.
-And you bought this property?
Not in the first place.
First of all
we started in my place in the bedroom of my daughter,
with several aquaria this time.
After the one aquarium, I started to get her aquariums.
Start searching on the street at night
with people who were throwing out their old aquariums.
Like, "Yeah, there's one. Let's take it!"
My daughter's rooms was filled with,
I think, about 12 aquaria or something. -Or something like that.
And we started to grow mushrooms in there.
Then we rented our first place in a town called Lelydorp,
not far from here.
We made some sheds out of plastic foil, with shelves in it.
And there we started our first "professional growth."
Yeah. Right after that we moved to a bigger place with 10 growing houses.
But it wasn't enough.
The demand was so high that we couldn't make enough mushrooms.
And then, we saw this, which was far more ideal.
-And what were you growing...
what sorts of mushrooms were you growing before the mushroom ban?
We had several species of the Psilocybe Cubensis,
and the Panaeolus Cyanescens.
-And that was what you sold more than anything?
More than the truffles you sold mushrooms.
Yes, truffles were just for the connoisseur for the...
It was a side product in that time.
[VICE CONTINUED IN PART 2]