Psilocybin

Aajonus described consuming psilocybin alongside a mixture of hashish and marijuana while under the guidance of his youngest uncle, Lanny, who was studying for his doctorate in psychology and working as a Teaching Assistant at UCLA. The experience began with what he described as a pleasant phase, during which he and his uncle communicated what felt like telepathic exchange. That phase passed, his mind returned to its normal state, and he then found himself in an extremely adverse reaction.

The physical consequences he recorded were specific. His blood pressure dropped dangerously low. Despite it being 86 degrees inside his apartment, he was freezing. His lower back pain, which was already a chronic condition for him, intensified toward what he described as approaching unbearable. He named these symptoms as the direct consequence of the drug experience rather than as coincidental events. The entire episode served in his later recounting as an illustration of why manufactured chemical hallucinogens carried real physiological costs, particularly for someone who was already dealing with multiple health conditions.

In a separate context, Aajonus described being put through LSD experiments at UCLA, where researchers attempted to use the drug as part of a program they brought him into while he was dealing with serious illness. He reported that he was given 720 micrograms of LSD in one account and 732 micrograms in another, quantities he described as sufficient to send a hundred people, or ten people, into full hallucinations. He was completely unaffected. He was dropped from the program as a result. He did not frame this immunity as something positive, noting that when the program ended his memory had worsened and his overall condition had not improved. The immunity itself, in his reading, appeared to reflect the degree to which his body was so saturated with prior chemical and pharmaceutical damage that even a massive dose of a powerful psychedelic could find no foothold.

Aajonus addressed naturally occurring psychedelic compounds most directly in the context of germinated and rotted grains, where ergot, a black mold that grows on grains, can produce compounds he identified with LSD. He described his own experience with this: when he was consuming rotted grains as part of a protocol to address advanced glycation end products accumulated from years of heavy cereal eating, he experienced hallucinations because he was getting ergot in the preparation.

His position on this was unambiguous. He said directly, "I was having hallucinations and you can't have good conversations hallucinating, you know." He did not frame the hallucinogenic effect of ergot as beneficial or desirable, even incidentally. He described it as a consequence to be aware of and avoided.

He noted that the ergot-induced high from molded grain could be "a nice high," but he qualified this immediately by saying it "doesn't really ground you into reality." This is the closest he came to any neutral acknowledgment of the experience, and it was paired with a clear reservation. He also observed one specific circumstance where something like this effect appeared with clinical significance: people who had consumed large amounts of LSD previously and then ate the ergot-containing preparation experienced recurrences of hallucinations, suggesting the molded grain was pulling stored LSD out of their tissues and causing it to re-express.

He also described the historical behavior of Norsemen who allowed their cornbread to mold to the point of producing LSD, then ate it until they vomited and proceeded to engage in violent raiding and pillaging. He used this as a concrete example of what chemical distortion of the mind through naturally occurring psychedelics actually produces in behavior, linking it to the same category of neurological disruption he associated with alcohol.

The overwhelming majority of Aajonus's material on mushrooms concerns the death cap mushroom (Amanita phalloides), which he accidentally consumed in 1981. This experience is entirely separate from psilocybin or psychedelic mushroom territory. He was careful to distinguish between mushroom varieties. He noted that "other mushroom families will make you sick or hallucinate," explicitly placing hallucinogenic mushrooms in a class separate from the death cap. The death cap he identified as the only mushroom that kills. Other amanitas and other mushroom families, in his framework, produce sickness or hallucination but not death.

He did not provide any detailed protocol or therapeutic use for psilocybin-type mushrooms. The hallucinogenic effect was acknowledged as something that happens, and was treated as an adverse or destabilizing consequence rather than a useful one.

Aajonus's underlying framework for all hallucinogenic substances, whether manufactured or naturally occurring, rested on the concept of grounding in physical reality. He described the ergot high as something that "doesn't really ground you into reality." His critique of psychotropic pharmaceutical drugs ran along the same axis, treating any compound that distorts the nervous system's normal signaling as something that works against the body's capacity to perceive accurately and heal itself. The value he placed on clear sensory perception was connected directly to his understanding that the body's instincts, when functioning properly, guide appropriate food choices and health decisions. Anything that distorted those signals was, in his framework, working against the body.

His experience with 720 to 732 micrograms of LSD producing no effect on him he did not celebrate as resilience. He noted that his overall condition had worsened by the end of those experiments. His position was that psychedelic and hallucinogenic compounds, whether psilocybin, ergot-derived LSD, manufactured LSD, or related substances, did not serve any constructive role in the Primal Diet framework.