Hello Steemit community!
I’m Fabulous Fungi (@fabulousfungi) and this is my introduction post.
That white fuzzy stuff on the Petri dish is Oyster mushroom mycelium growing on agar
As my username suggests, I'm crazy about mushrooms.
My interest in mycology started when I was 17 years old. I was working in Spain in a city called Calpe. The pay wasn’t great but the city was near the sea and I got free food and accommodation included as part of my job. One day I decided to go to the beach at night after my shift to watch the sunset, have a couple of beers and relax, since I didn’t have to work the next day.
When I got to the beach I saw a group of people partying near a campfire. Three guys in particular seemed to be having an especially good time. Two of them were chasing the third one, who was holding a box to his chest while he ran like a maniac trying to outrun the other two. Eventually they noticed me and they approached and asked me to join them.
As a welcoming gift, they offered me a chocolate from the box the guy was holding and they insisted those were really good chocolates. I assumed they had been smoking weed and that’s why they were enjoying those chocolates so much and since I wanted to meet new people, I ate one. No big deal, right?
I eventually realized I was feeling more and more talkative and random thoughts and ideas were coming to my mind all the time. I’m generally a shy person and I find it really hard to make friends and talk to people I’ve just met, but I was having such a great time that I brushed those thoughts off.
About one hour after I had the chocolate, one of the guys asked me if I was feeling ok and I told him that I was actually feeling really good. That’s when they admitted that the chocolates were more than just chocolate. Apparently they had bought some magic mushrooms, grinded and mix them with chocolate to make their treats. I had never had any psychedelic drug before but since there was nothing I could do at that moment, I decided not to worry about it.
We kept talking for a couple of hours and the effects of the shrooms started to wear off. The other guys eventually got tired and decided to split, but before they left they gave me a second chocolate for me to keep enjoying the night. I ate it almost immediately after they left and the effects of this second one were even more intense than the first one.
I spent the rest of the night walking along the beach enjoying the beauty of everything that surrounded me. After I got tired of walking I decided to sit on a rock and put my feet in the sea and it felt amazing. The water was warm and it made me feel like my feet were floating in space, and the sound of the waves almost felt like the sea was trying to talk to me. I stayed in that state until the sun rose. I remember staring at the sunrise with tears running down my checks, feeling grateful for everything I have in my life.
It was such a great experience that soon I was learning how to grow my own magic mushrooms. I discovered Shroomery and from there I learned about Paul Stamets’, Peter McCoy’s and Tradd Cotter’s work and I got interested in mushrooms in general, not just the psychedelic ones. I was hooked and still am.
I’m amazed about the complexity of fungi and their potential for so many different applications: food, art, recycling, bioremediation, mycomaterials… Mycology is my passion and I’m in the process of building a biolab to grow my own mushrooms in a more scientific way that what I’ve been doing so far and I have a couple of ongoing projects (for example, trying to use fungi to control deer tick and Emerald Ash Borer populations) that I’ll be sharing here as soon as I get any results.
I have also published two articles on Steemit. Check them out here:
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Thanks a lot for reading!!! ❤️🍄