0:00:00.0 April Pride: Hey, I’m April Pride, your host on The High Guide Podcast. This is the show for women who have an open and curious mind, and this is a show all about women changing their lives, thanks to altered states of consciousness. If you’ve been listening to the podcast, you know that I’ve been sharing shroom strain reviews featured on our website. When possible, I include a personal trip tip, like my take on Thrasher PE, or Thrasher Penis Envy, detailed in today’s show. Spoiler alert, the review on our website and my lived experience are incongruous. Why? Potency. More specifically, a loss of potency. So we’re going to get into predicting and protecting potency in this episode, as well as the Signal exchange that ensued when I confronted my supplier about this bum batch.
0:00:47.3 AP: Spoiler alert, I have a new supplier. Don’t worry, we’re back on track with Ecuador, a strain available this coming Tuesday night, June 13th at the Cloud Room here in Seattle, 5:00 to 7:00 PM. I’m so excited about our featured guest, a product specialist and psychedelic facilitator who’s been a plant medicine advocate and innovator long before it was celebrated and convenient. Now for the word of the week, followed up by quick text exchange with my former fungi go-to, and then we’ll get into the High Guide’s Shroom Strain Review of Thrasher PE, followed by my own trip report for this magic mushroom variety, and we’ll wrap up with trip tips to keep your stash, that is your magic mushroom stash, potent and full of potential.
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0:01:30.7 AP: Word of the week is potency. The strength of an intoxicant or drug as measured by the amount needed to produce a certain response. On the potent end of what constitutes a standard dose, 2.5 grams of psilocybin mushrooms should produce a certain response that is arguably going to be described as, “I am high,” or “I am definitely high,” or “I am very high.” So when I took this amount of the strain, Thrasher PE, with a group of women, and we all remained, sadly, definitely not high, I immediately questioned the potency of the batch. Furthermore, if you’ve been listening, you know that PE denotes that this strain is a derivative of Penis Envy, a strain with three to four times the potency of, say, a Golden Teacher, another strain that we’ve featured on this podcast. This was not our experience.
0:02:17.9 AP: I slept on this thought and while I sipped my coffee the next morning, I decided to reach out to my supplier on Signal. So what happened when my mushroom “cultivator” was questioned about the potency of their product? First, they brought out the test results. No document with a date, just a text with the fact that this batch of Thrasher PE tested at 1% psilocybin and that in comparison, a strain like Hillbilly, which we’ll cover in a future episode here on The High Guide, tested at 0.6%, and APE or Albino Penis Envy, we’ve covered in episode 61 on this show. Next week, I’m sending a Hillbilly and an APE that I have here in Seattle to be tested, and I’ll be curious to see how they compare, just as an aside. Another aside, these were the biggest mushrooms, these Thrasher PE, that I’d ever seen. It’s like, okay, you know how you have the most massive, beautiful strawberry and you take a bite and there’s absolutely no flavor, but you can eat a very small strawberry found in the wild and it’s amazing. Yeah, the flavor falls flat with massive strawberries. I think it’s kind of exactly the same with these Thrasher PEs. Then my cultivator, the real guns came out.
0:03:26.4 AP: This was a real text to me. “And April, I know of no drug dealer giving refunds. Let me know when you find one.” Ouch. It gets better. The group I was with declined to take a Lemon tek shot as I suggested. It was just a suggestion. Instead, as a group, we all opted to consume with chocolate ice cream. Psilocybin and cacao is a combination to explore in its own episode, truly. Plus, I don’t consider myself an authority and I welcome new ways to imbibe the fungi. I explained none of this before the aforementioned drug dealer offered, “Also, every sitter I supply to follow the spiritual path, they do Lemon tek, and never ice cream. That is anti-ethical to the spirit of the mushroom.” In my head, April’s head, I was thinking this. Number one, it was dairy free. Number two, when did the fun leave the fungi? And number three, the spirit of the mushroom can preach what’s anti-ethical. But you, you cultivator of convenience, you may not. Then I got very serious about finding a new supplier.
0:04:24.1 AP: It’s also why I am very open about our shroom strain reviews on The High Guide being, well, simply, I hate to say it, but generic until we pair them with a trip report. And even still, who’s to say what gives when so many factors are at play from cultivation conditions, storage conditions, physiological conditions for today, because we know that five women didn’t get high and they were all transparent about their SSRIs, we’re going to dismiss physiological as an issue. The rest of it, I just don’t know. I do know that this back-to-back review with my report will be illuminating regarding just how divergent expectation and experience can be when it comes to all psychedelics and the shelf life of natural psychedelics is significantly less than their lab made cohorts, like LSD. Okay, let’s move on to the review of Thrasher PE known as an exceptionally stable choice.
0:05:16.1 AP: Thrasher is a variant of a variant, originating with the Homestead or Melmac PE. Melmac is named for the home planet of the alien in the sitcom ALF, for any of you, I guess Gen Xers, probably, remember ALF, variety of the Penis Envy mushroom. What are the effects of Thrasher PE? The effects of the Psilocybe cubensis produce many of the typical effects of psilocybin-containing mushrooms. Users report fractals, geometric patterns, and color shifts, even at lower doses. At higher doses, Thrasher can blast you off the planet while still leaving your mind and cognitive processes clear and unhindered. The appearance. Oh man. Go check out thehigh.guide Instagram because we posted an image of these fungi freaks in our IG stories. Definitely take a look.
0:06:00.8 AP: Duration. Although quite a bit more potent than many magic mushrooms, the Thrasher PE follows the same general timeline as its less potent cousins. The onset tends to come up between 40 and 60 minutes after consumption. Trips last between 5 and 8 hours. Dose. Dosages can vary even within different members of the same variety. Thrasher PE, due to its origins in a laboratory, is a more stable variant and is generally more intense than most other cubes. As a result, even the most experienced psychonauts will want to start low with this variety. Okay. What I just read you is the trip report you can find on thehigh.guide. What I’m about to share with you is my own lived experience consuming Thrasher PE with four other women. I’ll give you a little bit of context. I was hosting this journey, right? It was gonna be at my home. We were prepared to tuck ourselves in, wear eye masks, listen to a very intentionally created playlist.
0:06:53.5 AP: We planned to meet at 2:00 PM. I think it was on a Wednesday or Thursday, and we planned to be eating vegan soup together around 8:00 PM. We started with a gram and a half of fruit bodies, each consumed in coconut milk chocolate ice cream. An hour passed, and then another 30 minutes passed, so we took… And then another 30 minutes passed and we felt nothing, so we took another gram. Another hour passed. Literally, we felt no signs or effects of the psilocybin, so we called it a day and broke bread, concluding that the medicine gives you what you need, and on that day, it certainly was not to enter into an altered state. Fine, and that’s when I went to sleep and slept on the idea. I think I’ll contact my well-respected cultivator and get some answers as to what could maybe be going on, and that’s when I found out they were actually a drug dealer.
0:07:39.7 AP: For the purposes of this episode, let’s assume potency was compromised. Yes, psilocybin mushrooms can lose potency over time. The main psychoactive compound in these mushrooms is psilocybin, which naturally degrades over time due to factors such as exposure to light, heat, and oxygen. This degradation process can result in a decrease in potency. As a general rule, listen on as to the shelf life of magic mushrooms in various forms. Fresh mushrooms are considered to be the most optimal way to consume your psilocybin mushrooms, but they also have the shortest shelf life of 3 to 10 days. Dried mushrooms, which you typically will be purchasing, have an average shelf life of 6 to 12 months. Microdose capsules have an average shelf life of 12 to 18 months, as do mushroom chocolates. Mushroom honey has the longest shelf life of 2 to 3 years. And I leave you with today’s trip tips to keep your fungi fresh and the magic alive.
0:08:32.2 AP: To minimize the loss of potency, it’s important to store psilocybin mushrooms properly. Here are some guidelines for storing them. Number one, keep them in a cool, dark place. Exposure to light and heat can accelerate the degradation of psilocybin. Store your mushrooms in an airtight container in a cool, dark place, like a refrigerator. Use airtight packaging. Oxygen can also contribute to the degradation of psilocybin. To minimize exposure to oxygen, store the mushrooms in an airtight container or vacuum-sealed bag. And finally, dry them properly. Moisture can promote the growth of mold, which can further degrade the potency of mushrooms. Ensure that the mushrooms are thoroughly dried before storing them to prevent moisture-related issues. Despite taking precautions, it’s important to note that psilocybin mushrooms will inevitably lose some potency over time. Therefore, it’s generally recommended to consume them within a reasonable time frame to experience their full effects. Thank you for listening to this episode of The High Guide. I’m your host, April Pride. Please check out our website, thehigh.guide, for our shroom strain reviews and guide to psilocybin. Tune in next Friday for another episode of The High Guide, a show all about women changing their lives thanks to altered states of consciousness.
