The Rise of Psychedelic Truffles in Amsterdam

[MUSIC PLAYING] HAMILTON MORRIS: Today is Queen's Day in Amsterdam, and I have three containers of psilocybin-containing truffles. I'm going to start by taking 8 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. [SIGHING] 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 of a mushroom. It doesn't seem like very much at all. OK. 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 '90s, 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. 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: 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 are here at the farm of magictruffles.com. We produce sclerotia, also known as magic truffles. HAMILTON MORRIS: And how did this company get started? ALI: 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. And so I had quite a great network in that area, in that field. And 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. And I'd 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 says, 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 [INAUDIBLE] this tall. And we were looking at it. I said, OK, let's harvest it. HAMILTON MORRIS: And you were operating a pizza restaurant beforehand, you said? MURAT: At that time, yes. HAMILTON MORRIS: The life cycle of a mushroom begins when two spores of opposite mating types germinate in a 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 catapult spores into the air and give rise to new mushrooms. And you bought this property? MURAT: Not in the first place. ALI: First of all, we were in the-- MURAT: We started in my place, in the bedroom of my daughter. With several aquaria this time. After the one aquarium, I started to get our aquariums. ALI: Start searching on the street at night and people were throwing out their old aquariums. Yeah, there's one. Let's take it. MURAT: My daughter's room was filled with, I think, about 12 aquaria ALI: Something like that. MURAT: Or something. And we started to grow mushrooms in there. Then we rented our first place, in a town called Leiderdorp, not far from here. We made some sheds out of plastic foil with shelves in it. And there we started our first professional growth. ALI: Yeah, yeah. Right after that, we moved to a bigger plays with ten growing houses. MURAT: But it wasn't enough. The demand was so high that we couldn't make enough mushrooms. ALI: And then we saw this, which was far more ideal. HAMILTON MORRIS: And what were you growing-- What sorts of mushrooms were you growing before the mushroom ban? MURAT: We had several species of the psilocybe cubensis. And the panaeolus cyanescens. HAMILTON MORRIS: And that was what you sold more than anything? More than the truffles you sold? MURAT: Yes. Truffles were just for the connoisseur. It was a side project in that time. HAMILTON MORRIS: To better understand the prohibition of the sacred mushroom, I go to meet criminal lawyer Karem Canatan, who explained the nuances of Dutch drug law. KAREM CANATAN: OK. Well, first of all, like many countries, we have class A drugs and class B drugs. So that that's not different from any other countries. So we have lists of drugs that are illegal-- to buy it, to use it, to bring it over the border to trade. It's completely illegal. Then we have a small portion of drugs-- in Holland, we call it the "soft drugs"-- where you have weed and hashish and the joints. Or we call it joints, because we smoke joints. I don't know if that's the correct term, but we have which is called like a tolerance policy by the Dutch government. And they have on paper saying that if the amount isn't bigger than so-and-so much, then it's allowed to have it, it's allowed to smoke it, and you are allowed to sell it. So up until around 2007, it was OK to use the magic mushrooms. HAMILTON MORRIS: These were the salad days for mushrooms. But a series of unfortunate incidents where mentally ill tourists hurt themselves turned politicians against the sacred mushroom. And they began to legislate a ban. [SPEAKING DUTCH] HAMILTON MORRIS: And there had been scattered mushroom incidents in Amsterdam for decades, it was not until the death of a 17-year-old French student named Gaelle Caroff that lawmakers began taking serious steps towards banning the sale and consumption of psychedelic mushrooms. [SPEAKING DUTCH] [SPEAKING FRENCH] HAMILTON MORRIS: After the incident with Gaelle, others followed. A Frenchman, supposedly under the influence of mushrooms, ritualistically sacrificed his dog with a pair of kitchen shears in order to free the dog's mind from its corporeal shackles. [SPEAKING DUTCH] ALI: He said, well, I was on mushrooms. He had psychosis. And it had nothing to do with mushrooms. He wasn't even close to mushrooms. Since these products are legal in this country, it's very easy to hide yourself behind it. [SHOUTING IN DUTCH] HAMILTON MORRIS: With prohibition looming on the horizon, protesters swarmed the parliament building, armed with Super Soakers filled with psychedelic mushroom spores, which they used to spray the surrounding parks and lawns. They demanded their right to consume mushrooms. But parliament ruled in favor of the ban. So in 2008 they banned all of these different genus and species. KAREM CANATAN: Yeah. Well, part of them were already on it. But especially this list from here. The magic mushroom list. And it says here that magic mushrooms are mushrooms who have by nature these and these active ingredients. And then all these species are on the list. ALI: The law changed in 2008-- 1st of December, 2008. Sad day. Saddest day of my life. HAMILTON MORRIS: How much time did they give you after the ban to get rid of your stock of mushrooms? MURAT: 10 days. ALI: 10 days to clear 16 growing houses, all the equipment, and so on. HAMILTON MORRIS: And you were saying all these other different bans have been given enormous amounts of time, years before they have to-- ALI: Mink farms, for instance. They got 10 years to change the plans. HAMILTON MORRIS: 10 years? ALI: 10 years. HAMILTON MORRIS: And you got ten days. ALI: 10 days. Look at that. HAMILTON MORRIS: How did you get rid of the mushrooms? ALI: That was the easiest part, because people were lined up here. the last mushrooms, the last mushrooms. HAMILTON MORRIS: Despite the chemical and biological similarity to the mushroom, parliament decided not to ban the magic truffle. ALI: When the law changed in 2008, we just continued with the truffles that we were already growing in that time. HAMILTON MORRIS: So what is a truffle? And how is it different from a mushroom? MURAT: [INAUDIBLE] for nutrients and moisture. HAMILTON MORRIS: Like all organisms, a fungus seeks to reproduce. But environmental conditions are not always ideal to do so. If the substrate is too dry, cold, hot, or poor in nutrients, the mycelium will grow inwards, forming a tangled clump of globular fungus called a sclerotium. These hard structures are able to survive in harsh environmental conditions until the time is right to send forth mushrooms. Murat offered to give me a guided tour of their innovative sclerotium cultivation facilities. MURAT: We'll start where it all begins. That's the dirty side where all raw materials come in. HAMILTON MORRIS: First, the rye grass seed substrate is sterilized in an industrial-sized autoclave to kill opportunistic bacteria and fungi, which are equally eager to consume the bags of warm, moist nutrients. Then the bags are inoculated with a liquid culture of mycelium. MURAT: This is a class 100 cleanroom. That means that only 100 particles of 0.00096 micron may be present in one cubic feet of air. Normally in an operating room it's class 10,000, so 10,000 particles may appear in a cubic foot of air. HAMILTON MORRIS: Impressive. ALI: If you do everything, like your laboratory work and your growing, under one roof, you get a cross-contamination somewhere, somehow. And that risk was so big that we looked for a proper building with at least two separate departments. HAMILTON MORRIS: Then the bags are transported to an incubation chamber, where a temperature of 28 degrees Celsius is maintained to accelerate the colonization of the substrate. How do you prevent the growth of mushrooms? MURAT: By controlling the temperature and the microclimate in the bag. The microclimate in the bag is not suitable for formation of mushrooms. HAMILTON MORRIS: The final stage is the nursery, where the bags are kept in darkness for as many as five months before the sclerotia are mature. And what is the capacity of this plant at the moment? MURAT: Full capacity, if we worked 24 hours a day in three shifts, 18,000 tons per year. ALI: Something like that, yeah. HAMILTON MORRIS: 18,000 tons? ALI: Yes. MURAT: Yeah. MURAT: I think that sclerotia, to go for the mushroom market one-on-one, by now-- ALI: By now it's one-on-one, yeah. HAMILTON MORRIS: Upon maturity, the bags are opened the sclerotia are plucked from their substrate, cleaned with a soft-bristled brush, and packaged for distribution. It seems your brand is the only brand, except for one another that I saw, that you can get at smart shops in Amsterdam. MURAT: Yeah. That might be correct. There are some home growers, but as far as commercially grown sclerotia, I think we're the largest. HAMILTON MORRIS: Do you have any competitors? MURAT: Everyone who grows a truffle is a competitor. HAMILTON MORRIS: Ah. Each package contains a single serving of fresh, psilocybin-containing sclerotia. MURAT: We deliver them to the shop in boxes of 24. We give the shops 24 booklets so that people get the proper information. HAMILTON MORRIS: Good. Murat invited me to join him on his delivery route and visit the magic truffle storefront in Amsterdam. The Dutch countryside touched us both deeply, but we could not linger on these natural delights. We had important sclerotium deliveries to make. One of the stops was a wholesale psychedelics distributor specializing in *** cacti. We finally made it to the shop, and not a minute too soon as the hoards of truffle-hungry Dutch waited eagerly for their Queen's Day delights. [BACKGROUND CHATTER] HAMILTON MORRIS: Chills and Thrills was not the truffle theme park I was expecting, but I knew the real ride would come later. SPEAKER 1: you? HAMILTON MORRIS: I'm good. I would like to buy some P. Tampanensis. SPEAKER 1: HAMILTON MORRIS: Thank you. SPEAKER 1: you. Enjoy. HAMILTON MORRIS: The truffles require no preparation. And thought the truffle brothers recommended a truffle-based milkshake, I chose to take them raw so that I could savor their essences. That's not bad at all. It's actually kind of good. Well. It has almost a sour aftertaste, but sour is the last taste I would associate with a truffle. Do you want some truffle crumbs? Scarf them down. Mmm. Tastes pretty darn-- uh, like a wet nut. This is a drug? This is a drug? This is technically a drug? All right. KAREM CANATAN: Well, I don't have any experience with the truffles. But if it's not a health risk and it doesn't have any other negative side effects, I would say allow it. And then make sure you can control it. HAMILTON MORRIS: What sort of person buys psychedelic truffles? MURAT: I don't think there's a specific type of person. Age has nothing to do with it. We've had people in their 80s coming for mushrooms. ALI: Yeah, or people who are curious for the experience who think there's more in life than the regular things we see. And there's also the real cosmonauts, who use it for the real spiritual thing, like the shamanic experiences. HAMILTON MORRIS: What category would you put yourselves into? ALI: None. HAMILTON MORRIS: None? You don't use your own product? ALI: No. MURAT: Bummer. HAMILTON MORRIS: While the Mazatec Indians prescribed special conditions under which the sacred mushroom should be consumed, there exist little-known rituals surrounding the psychedelic sclerotium. Their history remains unwritten. Though I feel sweaty and overwhelmed by the chaos of Queen's Day, I feel no compulsion to ritualistically stab a dog and play with its internal organs in a van. Nor do I wish to jump off a bridge to a watery death. I'm glad that the resilient structure of the sclerotium has survived the inhospitable environment of prohibition. And I hope that it sends forth mycelial threads of liberty for many years to come.