Psychedelic Truffles

The overly zealous ban on magic mushrooms in the Netherlands left an interesting door open - psilocybe fungi in the form of sclerotia, a dense, truffle-like mass, remain legal and have taken over the market.  The ban essentially did nothing except hurt a lot of existing businesses while creating an opportunity for a lucky few.

The lucky winners were the proprietors of Magic Truffles, who had a culture of these psychedelic truffles, so-called philosopher's stones.  A series of videos (and text), Hamilton and the Philosopher's Stone, tells the tale.  They can produce up to 18,000 tons a year.

The history of this formerly rare fungi goes back to the slightly crazed doctor and mycologist Steven Pollock, who found a specimen around Tampa, Florida and named it psilocybe tampanensis.  Pollock was later murdered under mysterious circumstances (Harper's, pay wall).

In the article about Pollock, I found it fascinating the lengths that a later researcher went to in order to spread and preserve the strain, i.e. "with news of the coming of Hurricane Erin he quadrupled production, inoculating fifty-pound bales of straw day and night ... dispersing billions of spores into the stratosphere."