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Unexpected encounter with Unknown Lichen in Stockholm

DoktorD

Esteemed member
Dear Nexus. Some two months ago I was walking by the sea here in Stockholm one early morning. I sat down on the rocks right by the water and prepared to roll a joint with some hasch. When I looked down on the rock surface, I saw some cyan blue green, slightly glaucous lichen growing on the rocks. I believe they where in their sexual phase, as the small lobes where curled outwards and they where covered in what seemed like spores. I remembered someone in here (trypthumane) had told me about lichen some time back. And I had read some scattered reports about some lichen containing tryptamines like psilocybin nmt and dmt.
I scraped some of the glaucus green off under my nail, just about 10-15 mg of material I recon, and put in the joint (idiot idea, dont do this! Spores will fuck you up badly!) well, I smoked it, held it in for a long time. And lying on the beach by the sea and a clear morning sky above me, I closed my eyes. My sense of time really expanded, and light DMT-ringing in the eares. When I opened my eyes, the sky had geometric patterns dancing around, really intricate like psilocybin/5-meo type of geometry. A lonely swan came flying towards me and landed splashing water around it 20 meters out in the sea. The effect where unexpectedly strong and stayed with me for about 3-4 hours. Not very pleasant for this time of day and all. Had some trouble navigating and auditorial hallucinations where distracting me while walking home.
Now some days ago I went into the forest right above the beach where I experienced the first encounter with the lichen. I sat down, smoked a joint of weed. When I put it out, I wanted to save the last of the stuff, but it fell out of the joint. So I picked it up and found a thick twigg at my feet with a depression in the wood where I put the weed and lit it and inhaled it from above. While I was inhaling, I saw the same kind of lichen was all around the weed, also presumably in sex-mode with spores on it. This experience was indeed stronger than the first. A spider bit me in my cheek just when it hit me. It didnt bither me that much, I mean I took his home and used it as a pipe, though it was a bit of a scare. This experience was strongly visiual with lots of open eye geometry everywhere, sometimes overwhelming in the thick forest. Also a lot of faces/forms/breathing in the bark of the treas and illusions, where I could see strange things and scenes under a tree or in the distance, that was something completely else when I got close.

This is a photo of the tree with the same kind of lichen, which the twigg came from. I am planning of making a tea soon from the lichen and avoid the horrible effects of inhaling the spores.


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interesting experience report.
I did not know that lichen can be psychoactive.
It would be interesting to know the strain/type of the lichen.
Also do lichen exist which could potentially be dangerous to ingest?
The statement "unknown" has an unwell off-taste for ingestion imo.
Take care.
 
interesting experience report.
I did not know that lichen can be psychoactive.
It would be interesting to know the strain/type of the lichen.
Also do lichen exist which could potentially be dangerous to ingest?
The statement "unknown" has an unwell off-taste for ingestion imo.
Take care.

Iceland doesent have many indegenous psychoactive plants but its an old custom to make some kind of "stone-tea", actually boiling stones with lichen growing on them. I read an old experience of it as somewhat a harsch experience between LSD and peyote.
Indeed, there should be dangers out there in the unknown flora. If not phyto-/fungal- toxins, they absorb different heavy metals like lead and cadmium.
Hope to have the time to get some reading done and maybe an excursion with teaboiling soon. To identify the species of lichen is prio one.
 
This is groundbreaking... Please find out what species this lichen is. Lichen tea is a traditional remedy over here. I have drunk one such species and it has an "ancient" pleasurable taste. I could experiment with combining it with rue.
 
Dear Nexus. Some two months ago I was walking by the sea here in Stockholm one early morning. I sat down on the rocks right by the water and prepared to roll a joint with some hasch. When I looked down on the rock surface, I saw some cyan blue green, slightly glaucous lichen growing on the rocks. I believe they where in their sexual phase, as the small lobes where curled outwards and they where covered in what seemed like spores. I remembered someone in here (trypthumane) had told me about lichen some time back. And I had read some scattered reports about some lichen containing tryptamines like psilocybin nmt and dmt.
I scraped some of the glaucus green off under my nail, just about 10-15 mg of material I recon, and put in the joint (idiot idea, dont do this! Spores will fuck you up badly!) well, I smoked it, held it in for a long time. And lying on the beach by the sea and a clear morning sky above me, I closed my eyes. My sense of time really expanded, and light DMT-ringing in the eares. When I opened my eyes, the sky had geometric patterns dancing around, really intricate like psilocybin/5-meo type of geometry. A lonely swan came flying towards me and landed splashing water around it 20 meters out in the sea. The effect where unexpectedly strong and stayed with me for about 3-4 hours. Not very pleasant for this time of day and all. Had some trouble navigating and auditorial hallucinations where distracting me while walking home.
Now some days ago I went into the forest right above the beach where I experienced the first encounter with the lichen. I sat down, smoked a joint of weed. When I put it out, I wanted to save the last of the stuff, but it fell out of the joint. So I picked it up and found a thick twigg at my feet with a depression in the wood where I put the weed and lit it and inhaled it from above. While I was inhaling, I saw the same kind of lichen was all around the weed, also presumably in sex-mode with spores on it. This experience was indeed stronger than the first. A spider bit me in my cheek just when it hit me. It didnt bither me that much, I mean I took his home and used it as a pipe, though it was a bit of a scare. This experience was strongly visiual with lots of open eye geometry everywhere, sometimes overwhelming in the thick forest. Also a lot of faces/forms/breathing in the bark of the treas and illusions, where I could see strange things and scenes under a tree or in the distance, that was something completely else when I got close.

This is a photo of the tree with the same kind of lichen, which the twigg came from. I am planning of making a tea soon from the lichen and avoid the horrible effects of inhaling the spores.


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Thanks for the fascinating report! Is there any chance you could get some more detailed pictures of the species concerned? This would help a great deal with identification.

We have a couple of psychoactive lichen threads on file here, so psychoactive lichen aren't completely unheard of. There's also a very rare psilocybin-active species, Dictyonema huorani, to be found in the Amazon area.

Given that lichen are symbiotic lifeforms with both an algal and a fungal component, this gives two sets of metabolic systems to give rise to candidate psychoactive compounds, not to mention the interactions between the two. Cannabinoid substances are found in certain simple plants, notably the liverworts Radula complanata and R. Perrotettii (iirc), and at least one species of seaweed, being a macroscopic form of algae, has been found to produce DMT.

There's still plenty of scope in the field of ethnopharmacological lichenology (try saying that quickly three times after smoking a pipe of lichen!)
 
Thanks for the fascinating report! Is there any chance you could get some more detailed pictures of the species concerned? This would help a great deal with identification.

We have a couple of psychoactive lichen threads on file here, so psychoactive lichen aren't completely unheard of. There's also a very rare psilocybin-active species, Dictyonema huorani, to be found in the Amazon area.

Given that lichen are symbiotic lifeforms with both an algal and a fungal component, this gives two sets of metabolic systems to give rise to candidate psychoactive compounds, not to mention the interactions between the two. Cannabinoid substances are found in certain simple plants, notably the liverworts Radula complanata and R. Perrotettii (iirc), and at least one species of seaweed, being a macroscopic form of algae, has been found to produce DMT.

There's still plenty of scope in the field of ethnopharmacological lichenology (try saying that quickly three times after smoking a pipe of lichen!)
Thanks for input. I will try to take better photos soon. I am not very familiar with the taxanomy of lichen, but I am quite certain that it is Parmeliopsis Ambigua. Certainly in the Parmeliaceae, as it has those flat rounded lobes. But dont take my word for it, photos to come.

I'll try after a pipe, beacause I have no ide about the pronounciation of the word lichen at all. Its not a word you hear everyday and english is not my native tongue😅
 
Interesting, I heard legends about psychedelic lichens decades ago, thought it is just a urban myth.
I read some citations from a 1980s paper saying that several tryptamines had been isolated from an amazonas lichen species. Dont remember where or when Im afraid.

But right now Im on my way from the forest, picked me aboout 200 mg of the lichen. Too bad my battery was too low to take a photo with my phone with flash and its pitch black here now. Gonna try to simmer it for a minute or two in a tea mesh and drink about half ot it.
 
I read some citations from a 1980s paper saying that several tryptamines had been isolated from an amazonas lichen species. Dont remember where or when Im afraid.

But right now Im on my way from the forest, picked me aboout 200 mg of the lichen. Too bad my battery was too low to take a photo with my phone with flash and its pitch black here now. Gonna try to simmer it for a minute or two in a tea mesh and drink about half ot it.
mentions the 1983 Davis & Yost paper.

This one got discussed a fair bit, especially after the 2014 follow-up paper of Schmull et al.

'dictyonema' as search term:
'lichen' as search term:
 
Thanks!

This is the material I picked. 140mg, some small piortion of it pine wood. Made tea and didnt let it sit for more than 3 minutes, then drank half a cup. One thing you should take in account is the possibility of it containing high amounts of heavy metals.

The taste was almost nothing. A hint of poppy straw, earth, forest, and some slight bitter metalic taste.

I dont do much psychedelics at all these days. My yearly consumtion consist of about 1-2 shroomadventures each fall. If you got the message, hang up. Wasnt that Alan Watts? Anyway, I dont have the time to do a lot of psychedelics anymore, its life. Something is happening with this this lichen right now though. My HPPD senses are tingling as hell. Going to drink the second half of the cup.
 

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Hi! The tea I made didnt really get me there, or I fell asleep before anything really zanged, Im not sure. Definitely some activity, but looking at the pictures of the species I used for the tea I m doubting it was the same as on the miscievious twig I happened to burn and smoke.

Well it didnt kill me at least, just had a lot to do at my new workplaces and havent had time to do another experiment till yesterday. The green glaucus part in the center of the photo with no visible lobes, that I presume is spores or polyps or something like that, of this parmeliopsis or parmelia species is the part i used. I scraped off maybe 50 mgs from the trea and put in my mouth for 5-10 minuter and swallowed. I dont recomend anyone trying it, or at least you should take in consideration that I dont know what the species is or if they or look-alikes may be poisonous. I believe they also may contain heavy metals and other hazardous compounds.
They tasted quite bitter and metallic. The effects came on very hard, and after finally swallowing the last of the mterial, I realized that the peak may yet to come and got a light panic for a short moment. Indeed interesting effects. My two earlier experiments that where truly successful had simillar character: time dilation, brightening of colors, breathing and some melting, faces in trees. The most pronounced though is the outer world to be made of symetric patterns, like every shape falling within symetric webs covering the visual field.
Sitting on a rock, I thought I wouldnt be able to walk home for a long time. Meditating for a while, then opened my eyes and saw a large tuft of grass growing in front of me. Looking at it, I saw it falling into bright yellow triangles, as it was growing out of a Zelda triforce kind of pattern in the ground. The ochre-yellow of the grass was bright yellow, while the stoned behind had gotten a purple tone. Then suddenly I saw myself in the jungle at night fighting in the Vietnam war at nigth. I percieved it as an earlyer life very real in the moment. It made me think about my life right now: I always feel a longing to the front. Sometimes I get a strong actual feeling that I should actually should go to the front and be a medic or somehing like that. That my skills are not put to their fullest in this time and place, and beacause of suffering from quite severe PTSD after saving a homeless guys life, I know how to manage that kind of situations. My thoughtstream during the trip was at a similar level, and I realized I should learn how to not always seek the extreme in every situation in life, learn to balance and sublimate feelings for situations so I can enjoy life while not risking my life and safety.
Overall judgement of the Lichen so far: A hard teacher, not for evereyone.


Posting now so I can go inside, its cold.
 

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Some more presumed Parmelia-lichen and other wonders of the nature that day.
 

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Mother Nature callin you. Kind of magic experience..isn´t it? Think you´ll never forget these days at water and in the woods.
Because of your report I spend some time reading and looking for Lichen. I wanted to throw in..: Isidium..could be the spelling of what you called spores. And so far I got it right, it is kind of spores and sex ;-). There is one Parmeliaceae, the ParmaImshaugia aleurites even called Isidien Napfflechte in german. Looks very similar too.
 
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Here is the lichen species that I see most abundantly in the habitats that I hang around. It grows both on rock and on Pinus brutia.

Feeling a call, I tried smoking a very tiny amount, probably a small fraction of a gram fresh. It is very difficult to cleanly scrape off bark, and I am very new to smoking and I am not good at it. Anyhow, I am convinced that I experienced a faint trance, a clearing of the senses and awareness turning inward, beyond placebo.

I am guessing it is Parmelia saxatilis, at least something in Parmeliaceae.
 

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I don't know about workable tryptamine content in this species; I am open to drinking a substantial amount on top of rue to investigate one day. What I have discovered so far is that I love the smoke, not necessarily for inhaling but as incense. It definitely feels purifying and bringing in love energy. The smell (and taste) is so intriguing, so ancient. It's good to know that it has proven medicinal qualities.
 
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