For individuals experienced with the journey of psychedelic fungi, the proverbial Lemon Tek for Psilocybin Mushrooms may be an interesting and unique experience. A new way to dive into the journey these little fungi connect us to.
What Is Lemon Tek
The lemon tek is a method where one allows their psychedelic fungi to macerate (soak) in lemon or lime juice for as long as 20 minutes. This not only intensifies the experience but also helps mask the taste of the mushrooms. Many individuals’ biggest struggle with psychedelic fungi is the taste, and this can help mask their strong funky taste.
The conventional thought is that lemon juice works similarly to our stomach acid. The pH of gastric acid sits between 1.5 to 3.5. While lemons & limes have a pH between 2.0 and 2.6. So the thought runs that a lemon tek helps to begin the process of the mushroom breaking down, which leads to a more intense experience.
Lemon Tek Duration
A regular shrooms experience takes 30-90 minutes for noticeable effects to kick in, with the peak hitting around 3 hours after ingestion.
The lemon tek speeds this timeline to noticeable effects after 10-45 minutes and the peak occurs within a couple of hours. Both of these timelines can be made faster by consuming on an empty stomach.
The lemon tek method is anecdotally acknowledged as being the more potent experience. Furthermore, while a regular shrooms experience may have a wavy onset (comes and goes), a lemon tek oftentimes has a more concentrated experience that can also end more suddenly.
Some say the lemon tek can last 4-6 hours, whereas some others say even shorter. This is, in contrast, to a regular experience which tends to be around 6-8 hours.
First-time users are recommended to acquaint themselves with the regular mushroom experience before looking to explore a more concentrated and intense one.
How to Lemon Tek
A special note is that limes and lemons are ideal as they are in the ideal pH range, whereas fruits like oranges and pineapples, which sit between 3.2 – 4.3 pH, are less acidic and ideal as a result.
With this in mind, all one needs to lemon tek is:
- The shrooms
- Roughly 1-2 lemons or limes per dose of mushrooms
- A grinder
- A cheesecloth
- A glass
A reminder that lemon tek can facilitate creating a more intense and full-bodied psychedelic effect. As such, users should err on the side of caution and start with half their regular dose. One can gauge a mushroom’s strength by first consuming an amount, and then on a separate occasion trying a lemon tek, assuming the effects aren’t too potent.
Lemon Tek step-by-step
- Grind the mushrooms to as much of a fine powder as you can. Some individuals find a spice or coffee blender to work well.
- Place the powdered shrooms into a glass. Squeeze the juice from a lemon or lime and ensure that this juice completely covers the powder.
- Now let the mushrooms sit in the juice for 20 minutes while the reaction takes place. Stirring occasionally.
- Now there is a choice between downing the mixture like a shot or adding water and drinking, but either way, the user must be ready for the effects.
- One may also use the cheesecloth to strain the mushroom bits out, which can help reduce nausea, for those especially sensitive to the indigestible chitin of the mushroom.
One can also make tea with a lemon tek. Simply add the mixture to a cup of hot, but not boiling, water with a teabag after removing the mushroom material. Simply add a sweetener and ginger to taste.
What Are the Benefits of Lemon Tek?
- Significantly faster come-up: As the conversion of psilocybin into psilocin takes place outside the body, the uptake time in the body is much more rapid.
- More powerful high: Though this is disputed, most users report the effects coming on stronger and harder than when eaten plain or drunk as a tea.
- Shorter-lasting high: For some this is a benefit, for others a drawback. As the conversion has already happened, the body can process the psilocin faster.
- Tastes better: Chewing grams of dry shrooms can be tiresome. Turning them into a thick, lemony shot can make them easier to consume.
- Reduces nausea: The acid in the lemon juice is thought to break down some of the chitin in the shrooms’ cell walls. This is one of the main suspects for the nausea experienced on magic mushrooms (if you suffer very badly from nausea, mushroom tea might be for you, as you need not consume any chitin).
Faster Digestion = Faster Effects
The resultant effect of lemon tekking is that psilocybin and psilocin are more readily bioavailable. So that when they reach the stomach, the consumer can feel their effects more readily than when consuming raw shrooms. As we know that regular consumption means the stomach spends 1-2 hours simply breaking down and absorbing the psilocybin mushrooms.
So the experience from a lemon tek is one where most of the chemical digestion, for whatever reason, has already occurred, as witnessed by the sudden onset of effects. As soon as the extract enters the stomach, the substance can be digested.
Most of the active compounds psilocybin and psilocin exist in the cell walls. These walls consist of chitin, whereas plants have cell walls made of cellulose. This chitin doesn’t break down as well as cellulose. Therefore when someone lemon teks psilocybin mushrooms, the acidity of the lemon or lime juice helps to break down these cell walls, before entering the digestive system.
In addition to this, many people lack chitinase, which is the active enzyme that helps our bodies break down chitin. A lemon tek rather conveniently helps solve this problem.
Another major bonus is the inclusion of Vitamin C and its host of antioxidant effects. This assists in preventing any oxidation of psilocin which means we are helping to preserve the potency of any constituent psychedelic compounds, especially while going through our body’s digestive system
