Magic mushroom diplomacy

August 15, 2023 12:39 PM

“There was this delicious mushroom dish. I was not aware that these mushrooms had hallucinogenic properties...I learned that later.” Janet Yellen visited a Yunnan restaurant during an overseas visit and enjoyed local mushroom cuisine: jian shou qing, which means "see hand blue", referring to the blue stain the mushroom makes when bruised or cut. The dish is made with a local bolete mushroom called Lanmoa asiatica. When not properly cooked, the mushroom has been reported by some sources to have hallucinogenic properties.
posted by dantheclamman (31 comments total)

Was really hoping to read an account of Yellin tripping balls, but alas.

I do think the world would be in better shape if more of those in power were experienced, so to speak.
posted by hippybear at 1:09 PM on August 15, 2023 [16 favorites]

Chinese lab escape?
posted by Ideefixe at 1:19 PM on August 15, 2023 [1 favorite]

There is no proof that Janet Yellen was developed in a chinese lab.
posted by hippybear at 1:21 PM on August 15, 2023 [20 favorites]

Have you ever really looked at a dollar bill?
posted by scruss at 2:24 PM on August 15, 2023 [17 favorites]

This is entirely not apropos of anything other than my strange brain, but I find it really irritating to listen to Janet Yellen in radio/audio interviews. She feels so slow and deliberate with her speech it nearly feels like a put-on to me. But every video interview I've seen of her does not strike me this way at all. She just seems like a nice woman saying things. It's a very interesting way that seeing body language and even facial movements while talking can greatly affect one's, or at least my, perception of someone.
posted by hippybear at 2:40 PM on August 15, 2023 [2 favorites]

Scruss,

Are you referring to the mushroom on the dollar bill?
posted by njohnson23 at 2:56 PM on August 15, 2023 [1 favorite]

Dude, I'd never noticed that before...

wow

And look at the bathroom floor, it's like moving or something...

"I need to adjust interest rates or something"
posted by Windopaene at 3:36 PM on August 15, 2023 [11 favorites]

I came here to doubt that Psylocin and Psylocibin, the psychoactive components of "magic" mushrooms would survive any heat mediated cooking process. Psylocin is fragile enough that it doesn't appeciably survive dessicating. Thats why fresh shrooms are so very much more potent than the far more common dried form of same.
posted by Fupped Duck at 5:04 PM on August 15, 2023 [3 favorites]

But not all magic mushrooms use psylocibin for their effects. Amanita muscara, for example, have a different chemical that causes trips, muscimol.
posted by hippybear at 5:45 PM on August 15, 2023

Sure, but even if the active components were reduced by 99% 1% of what looks like several cups of mushrooms in the dish might have enough kick to be felt. (Has no idea what a dose of mushrooms normally entails, maybe you have to eat them like popcorn normally?)
posted by Mitheral at 5:56 PM on August 15, 2023

Tired enough tonight to misread
"I came here to doubt that Psylocin and Psylocibin"
as
"I came here to doubt that Pynchon and Pynchon" and started to imagine a really different story.
posted by doctornemo at 6:08 PM on August 15, 2023 [7 favorites]

I find it really irritating to listen to Janet Yellen

From watching What We Do in the Shadows, I’m pretty sure she’s an energy vampire.
posted by davel at 7:05 PM on August 15, 2023 [3 favorites]

Have you ever looked at a dollar bill? I mean, really looked at a dollar bill.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 7:27 PM on August 15, 2023 [3 favorites]

Alternatively, has the dollar bill looked at you?
posted by JoeXIII007 at 11:39 PM on August 15, 2023 [5 favorites]

It uses the eye in the pyramid.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 1:58 AM on August 16, 2023 [4 favorites]

Amanita muscara, for example, have a different chemical that causes trips, muscimol

I could supply a bus full of people come fall (if we have rain as once was usual then -- now I do not know): they pop up all over the shady side of one courtyard lawn. Like mushrooms, if you will. They are so very cute -- bright red and dappled with white. They often come with vertical cream colored stripes by afternoon from when the squirrels and cottontails peel off a taste for themselves.

But you might not want to seek the experience -- a friend ate some a few decades back and just lay there like a log to the point where we made fun of him. Turns out he was paralyzed for the duration and couldn't move. But he heard every word. Oops...

I have read about anthropologists observing Siberian celebrants -- muscimol passes through the kidneys intact, so the rich among the villagers ate the mushrooms while the poor ate the yellow snow.

The downside there were the reindeer, who could smell it from a distance: they made a beeline when they did. People sometimes got trampled.

The moral of the story: be rich and don't eat the yellow snow -- especially around Christmas lest your holidays suddenly turn unhappy beneath the hooves of Donner, Blitzen, Rudolph et al.
posted by y2karl at 8:35 AM on August 16, 2023 [1 favorite]

"jian shou qing" translates literally to "see hand green", not blue. ...except lots of English news sources seem to be saying it's "see hand blue". ...it's kinda confusing. or maybe it's something to do with the color being bluish green (...?)
posted by aielen at 8:55 AM on August 16, 2023

(never mind, I went down a lü vs qing rabbithole and found the answer (or at least a more extended discussion), somewhat). pre-Yellen English mentions of the mushroom seem to be split between green and blue but it looks like this incident has sorta solidified the English translation on the English internet as blue now.)
posted by aielen at 9:16 AM on August 16, 2023

Blue and Green are not well defined colours across cultures and history aielen, another example of that would be my guess.
posted by GoblinHoney at 10:22 AM on August 16, 2023 [3 favorites]

I came here to doubt that Psylocin and Psylocibin, the psychoactive components of "magic" mushrooms would survive any heat mediated cooking process.

A FOAF (friend of a friend) has testified to me very personally that mushroom pizza has served as a quite effective delivery method on multiple occasions for whatever chemical might be in there that allows one to trip one's face off. Hypothetically. So, I have convincing cause -- albeit hearsay, of course -- to doubt your doubt.
posted by slappy_pinchbottom at 12:16 PM on August 16, 2023

But you might not want to seek the experience

Yeah, there are other chems in amanita shrooms that can be bad. I think if you dry them or otherwise process them, those other chemicals get reduced to the point where they don't matter? I got some muscinol gummies, both as microdose strength and in Happy Fun Time strength. I think the microdose ones might have helped somehow, maybe just placebo effect, but the Fun strength gummies did nothing for me at all.

I'm still interested in exploring that space, so maybe I'll find another supplier.
posted by hippybear at 12:44 PM on August 16, 2023

But you might not want to seek the experience -- a friend ate some a few decades back and just lay there like a log to the point where we made fun of him. Turns out he was paralyzed for the duration and couldn't move. But he heard every word. Oops...

There's a whole lot of things you have to do to them before you can ingest them. It's a whole process. If you eat them raw, they're seriously poisonous.

Never done it, only read about it.
posted by panama joe at 2:31 PM on August 16, 2023

I have to say, the fact that "Sec of Treasury eats hallucinogenic mushrooms" taking off as this huge global story really bugs me.

Why is this even a story at all?

It seems that half the people are appalled that some govt official is getting high on drugs, presumably a "gotcha" based on the fact that Democratic politicians are supposed to be enforcing our (extremely important and necessary!11!!!!111!!) draconian drug laws but are in fact imbibing on the side. So moral character defect.

The other half are all, "good on you, finally someone who really needs them has taken the magic mushrooms and maybe she'll have some kind of spiritual enlightenment of the sort she definitely needs right now" blah blah blah.

But for Odin's sake, the plain fact is SHE DID NOT EAT ANY HALLUCINOGENIC MUSHROOMS WHATSOEVER.

She ate a thing that had to be prepared a certain way in order to avoid certain food-related side effects - like ALL SORTS OF NORMAL FOOD ALL SORTS OF NORMAL PEOPLE EAT EVERY SINGLE DAY ALL ACROSS THE ENTIRE WORLD WITHOUT ANY FUSS OR NOTICE WHATSOEVER.

And it was prepared exactly as required and nothing of note happened except that it was very delicious.

If anything, the notable fact here it was very delicious, and that a high U.S. official took the trouble to seek out and eat a delicious local food instead of having their usual McDonald's Happy Meal flown in.

It has literally nothing whatsoever to do with anything hallucinogenic.

If some government official happens to use some castor oil for something, are we going to report that they might be planning to poison the entire populace because castor beans contain ricin, which could be used to poison people? Even though the official never had any beans or any ricin?

If some government official eats some rye bread, are we going to breathlessly report that they might be producing LSD, because ergot can grow on rye and can be used to produce LSD?

I mean, rye bread - what more do I need to say, wink-wink-nudge-nudge. Right?

Stupid, yeah. But no stupider than reporting that some government official ate a completely non-hallucinogenic mushroom.
posted by flug at 7:12 PM on August 16, 2023 [5 favorites]

I do think we'd have a better world if a few G-20 summits were served mammoth mystic magic mushroom pizzas, though.
posted by hippybear at 7:29 PM on August 16, 2023 [1 favorite]

I came here to doubt that Psylocin and Psylocibin, the psychoactive components of "magic" mushrooms would survive any heat mediated cooking process.

This doubt is unfounded - mushroom tea is definitely a thing, and that's made with full-on boiling water. While some psychoactive materials (LSD for example) do break down pretty quickly with certain levels heat, others do very well with the cooking process (see: tea, pot brownies, etc).
posted by FatherDagon at 10:33 AM on August 17, 2023

Apparently the total number of deaths over the years directly related to eating Aminata Muscaria mushrooms appears to be two. The numbers related to eating Aminata Phalloides aka Death's Cap mushrooms by contrast amount to 90% of all mushroom eating related deaths worldwide each year. However, it must be noted that, on the whole, according to the survivors they were very delicious.
posted by y2karl at 11:59 AM on August 17, 2023 [1 favorite]

Might be appropriate here to share this compilation video of the Yunnan police's PA effort to dissuade people from being too adventurous during mushroom season, and the clones/remixes it inspired.
( The lyrics roughly means 'red little umbrella, white little stem, eat it and we all end up stiff on a plank'.)

Yellen invited some young (mostly female) Chinese economists to a private dinner during her visit, and when the group photo surfaced on Chinese social media, the invitees caught a lot of flak from the 'pinkies', unfortunately.
posted by of strange foe at 12:20 PM on August 17, 2023

WaPo: Yes, Janet Yellen ate magic mushrooms. Here’s why she didn’t get high.
posted by jenfullmoon at 1:45 PM on August 17, 2023

I came here to doubt that Psylocin and Psylocibin, the psychoactive components of "magic" mushrooms would survive any heat mediated cooking process.

Psylocibin is fine with heat, but that is beside the point, as Lanmaoa Asiatica do not contain Psylocibin, and whatever psychoactive properties they may have are only reported when they are uncooked.

As far as I can tell, no one knows what psychoactive component hallucinogenic boletes are supposed to have, and I can find no first hand reports of anyone trying them. This seems like there is not really a story here once you get past the headline.
posted by St. Sorryass at 6:39 PM on August 17, 2023

Is it really translated as "see hand blue," or does it sound more grammatically correct in the original?
posted by The corpse in the library at 9:13 PM on August 17, 2023

Why is this even a story at all?

For me, I was intrigued by the history of the dish and the richness of mushroom cuisine in the region.
posted by dantheclamman at 9:06 AM on August 18, 2023