a mushroom with a story

book review by Samuel Oslund

Salvage capitalism, ecological assemblages, and precarity… These are a few concepts that Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing fleshes out in The Mushroom At the End of the World, a genre bending book that tracks the global economy by way of the Matsutake mushroom.

As a farmer, I have noticed that my own ways of thinking and seeing the world have shifted with each passing season. I have felt something akin to love for an animal that I knew would one day be dinner, have felt tremendous connection to invisible soil critters and life webs as I hoed through pea patches. Social scientists refer to this process as affect, the suggestion that other-than-human-beings (plants, animals, earth elements) can impact and shape our ways of being. 

psilocybin cancer anxiety study

Richard- Psilocybin Cancer Anxiety Study from T. Cody Swift on Vimeo.

Tony- Psilocybin Cancer Anxiety Study from T. Cody Swift on Vimeo.

The Phase 2 trials have just been completed at NYU and Hopkins, largely supported by funding from Riverstyx Foundation and the Heffter Research Institute. Final analyses are underway, already showing acute and sustained reductions in anxiety and depression scores, even months after treatment with a single, high dose of psilocybin. We are now working with the FDA to design a Phase 3 safety and efficacy trail, which will provide the merits to reschedule this medicine to be used by trained psychologists and psychiatrists in a supportive clinical context.