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The Church of Psilomethoxin: Fantasy Chemistry Gets Fact Checked

Article · April 2023

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Mario de la Fuente Revenga

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Opinions | The Church of

Psilomethoxin: Fantasy
Chemistry Gets Fact
Checked
(https://psychedelicalpha.c
om/news/opinions-the-
church-of-psilomethoxin-
fantasy-chemistry-gets-
fact-checked)

Opinions | The Church of Numinus Launches New

Website to Enhance its

Psilomethoxin: Fantasy Client Experience

(https://psychedelicalpha.c

Chemistry Gets Fact om/news/numinus-

launches-new-website-to-

Checked enhance-its-client-
experience)

Numinus Wellness Inc.

 April 17, 2023 - Reports Q2 2023 Results
 Opinions (https://psychedelicalpha.com/news/category/opinions) (https://psychedelicalpha.c
om/news/numinus-
wellness-inc-reports-q2-
2023-results)

atai Life Sciences

L ast week, a preprint publication appeared to show

that the sacrament of the self-styled Church of
Announces First Subject
Dosed in the Phase 1 IV-to-
Subcutaneous Bridging
Psilomethoxin contained not a shred of the elusive
Study of PCN-101 (R-
compound. Here, psychedelic researcher Mario de la
Ketamine)
Fuente interprets this purported fact-checking as an (https://psychedelicalpha.c
example of self-regulation within the psychedelic space. om/news/atai-life-
sciences-announces-first-
subject-dosed-in-the-
phase-1-iv-to-
subcutaneous-bridging-
study-of-pcn-101-r-
ketamine)
 FILAMENT HEALTH AND
PHARMALA BIOTECH
ANNOUNCE RELEASE OF
GMP MDMA CAPSULES
(https://psychedelicalpha.c
om/news/filament-health-
and-pharmala-biotech-
announce-release-of-gmp-
mdma-capsules)

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O n Wednesday we woke up to an announcement that

many had suspected but could not confirm: the claims
made by the so-called “Church of Psilomethoxin” regarding Quick Links
the nature and content of their “sacrament” were false—to say
 Psychedelic Stocks &
the least. Companies (/psilocybin-
stocks-shroom-stocks)
What distinguishes the psychedelic renaissance we find  Latest Psychedelic News
ourselves immersed in is that the very agents of change that (/news)

propel the renaissance should also act as its safeguards. If the  Jobs in Psychedelics

community is able to promptly take out the trash—keep it (https://jobs.psychedelicalpha.com/

Follow us on Twitter
clean and tidy—it might signal that we are doing at least a few 

(https://twitter.com/Psyched_Alph
things well, after all.

The self-styled Church of Psilomethoxin presents itself as Newsletter

(https://web.archive.org/web/20230411143151/https://psilom
Your email address
ethoxin.com/) a non-profit with the goal of “furthering our
spiritual development”.
SIGN U P

The website reeks of quackery from the very first impression,

written in a confusing style: mistaking metaphors for axioms
(i.e., the glorification of 5-MeO-DMT as the God molecule);
providing deliriant propositions as to how Psilocybe
biochemistry works; all the way to the bastardization of the
term “church”—a rather unusual term for an enterprise that
essentially equates to the exchanging of mushroom powder for
a fee via a .com domain.
The psilomethoxin part of their name refers to their claim
(https://web.archive.org/web/20230227010642/https://psilom
ethoxin.com/our-story/) that the fungal material they
distribute as capsules contains such chemical; as the result of
an alleged biotransformation of 5-MeO-DMT fed into the
Psilocybe mushroom mycelium.

Thanks to an excellent, and technically sound,

(https://chemrxiv.org/engage/chemrxiv/article-
details/64358de9736114c96352edf9) report
(https://chemrxiv.org/engage/chemrxiv/article-
details/64358de9736114c96352edf9) from the Usona Institute,
appropriately titled “Fungi Fiction”, and a preceding
anonymous one (https://forums.5meodmt.org/index.php?
topic=51254.msg56809#msg56809), we know the Church’s
sacrament (or, product) claims to be false. As a pre-print, it
lacks peer review, but its validity goes beyond question as it
describes a well-established technique in the study of
tryptamine derivatives with appropriate controls and internal
standards.

Not only is the biotransformation of psilocybin and 5-MeO-

DMT to psilomethoxin enzymatically unlikely, there is no trace
of it in the material supplied by the Church – which only
showed the expected psilocybin and psilocin. To add insult to
injury, there is no trace of 5-MeO-DMT in the analyzed
sample, either, which calls into question if it was even
introduced in the first place. Let’s double up the bet on
potential fraud.

So, there’s no psilomethoxin in the Church of Psilomethoxin’s

wares. But what if there was?

In that case, we could have graduated a potential fraud to a

full-blown crime against public health. Psilomethoxin is the
perfect candidate for a metabolic path capable of wiping out
every serotonergic neuron in the brain. Very much like the
chemically-induced parkinsonism by MPTP
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPTP) and hydroxydopamine
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxidopamine), and lesions
resulting from dihydroxytryptamine
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5,7-
Dihydroxytryptamine)exposure. We are not talking about a
transient inconvenience: it is irreversible brain damage that is
at stake. Fortunately, we are aware of anonymous watch dogs
notifying this unconfirmed, but well-founded, concern to the
DEA even before either chemical content analyses were
published.

“
Our claims to the existence of
Psilomethoxin, at this time, are solely based
on faith

R ather than working toward implementing better harm

reduction practices with those that expressed concerns,
the Church published a response
(https://psilomethoxin.com/psychedelic_capitalism/)
dismissing them as individuals with a vested interest in their
downfall. In their attempts at countering Usona’s analytical
evidence we witnessed the use of surreal arguments such as,
“our claims to the existence of Psilomethoxin, at this time, are
solely based on faith”. As an analogy, cyanide would strike as
an odd choice for idolatry to most.
The Church of Psilomethoxin is not the first threat, nor the last,
to be encountered in the ongoing exploration of psychedelics in
the 21st century. But it serves as a good example of how the
very people immersed in making the renaissance of
psychedelics possible can operate as safeguards: watch dogs
that don’t hesitate to lift a pointing finger, with the power of
industrious fact-checking to segregate hoaxing and deceit
from legitimate efforts.

We may harbor suspicions of gatekeeping, but it is important

to highlight that many actors in the psychedelic research
community are keeping watch at both ends of the power
spectrum. Besides putting upstart bad apples in check, heavy
lifters in the psychedelics space have also succeeded
(https://psychedelicalpha.com/news/inside-the-challenge-to-
deas-proposed-scheduling-of-5-psychedelic-tryptamines) at
keeping the DEA from overstepping its scheduling authority.
Gatekeeping doubts dissipate when the community is coming
together to call out those that ignore the most basic practices
and procedures to protect others’ safety, actively dismiss
requests to thoroughly test their material while fostering
“bioassaying”—read: human testing— and hiding behind a
flimsy wall that mixes faith with physical chemistry.

Patent wars, ethical issues including those related to

vulnerability under the effects of psychedelics, inequality in the
access to care if and when psychedelics become approved
therapies… all deserve consideration as ongoing challenges to
integrate psychedelic drugs in our society harmoniously.

But I would differentiate challenges from threats. The former

needs to be worked on while the latter needs to be confronted
head-on; as these threats are capable of throwing us back to a
time in which the only piece accessible to the layman is the
trope that “acid will fry your brain”—a piece that might not be
so fictional in the case of actual psilomethoxin, though.
All in all, it is comforting to see that the odd amalgam of
people that make the psychedelic renaissance possible is
moving forward, and in doing so revealing the existence of
safeguards. And so, it seems that there are few things that we
might have gotten right. Maybe, psychedelics are here to stay
this time.

Editor’s note: The Church of Psilomethoxin’s homepage is, at

the time of writing, redirecting to another website for an event
they are hosting titled, “Entheogenesis: womb of sacred
synthesis”. As such, we have used archive.org links to
psilomethoxin.com webpages and are making the
organisation’s response to the preprint paper available as a
PDF here (http://psychedelicalpha.com/wp-
content/uploads/2023/04/Psychedelic-Capitalism-Scientific-
Inte...pdf).

Mario de la Fuente, PharmD, PhD, is a passionate

psychedelic researcher and drug developer. Driven by a
fascination for understanding how ordinary chemical
matter can elicit such profound effects on the intangible
subjective experience, Mario has immersed himself in the
complex interaction between the chemistry and
neuropharmacology of classic psychedelics and other
enigmatic compounds for over a decade. This curiosity
has yielded over 30 publications
(https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?
term=de+la+fuente+revenga&size=50)and inventions to
this day. He is an Affiliate at the Virginia Commonwealth
 University (https://www.vcu.edu/) and the founder
of GONOGO (https://www.gonogo.solutions/), a
consulting firm that supports drug development for
neuroscience.

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