Bienvenue, mes petites poules, it is once again time for another MycoPunks MycoPost™ du jour and we fancied writing about something a bit silly so here we are: a bit of a chat about what we imagine the French would call “tek au citron”, or “lemon tek” if you don’t speak the lingo. This isn’t us saying “go and do this” because depending on where you live that may or may not be a crime, it is us saying “if this isn’t a crime where you are then yeah it’s goddamned rad”.

We mentioned in our handy mycology glossary that for some fuck-unknown reason every technique in mycology gets colloquially called a tek instead and it honestly feels like it is one step off going back to the 2010s and using the phrase “bants” endlessly (likely at Nandos with Bradders and Tall Lee) but we will try to ignore the screaming inner voice and just plough through regardless. Deep breath.

Lemon Tek: Fuck no I can’t do it

The Lemon Technique: Yeah nice that’ll work

It is a way for people who have chanced their way across some fizzy mushrooms to consume them in a method a bit different to stuffing your chops with a handful of dried mushrooms. There are lots of ways of doing this sort of thing, because not everyone enjoys the taste of multiple grams of dried mushrooms: you don’t really want to heat them up too much (don’t go above 125℃), but you could add them to chocolate, honey, on a pizza, anything really. You’re either going to be trying to mask the flavour with some strong sweetness, or to take advantage of the mushroomy flavour with something savoury. 

You can also whack them in with some lemon juice, and watch the science happen! This is all a little anecdotal, but pretty much everyone has the same experience and the theory makes sense, so we’re gonna go with it until disproven. 

Lemon Tek

Ingredients

• Your chosen dosage of dried fun mushrooms
• 50ml freshly squeezed lemon juice

Method

1. Grind up your mushrooms into a fine powder using a blender, a coffee grinder, a nutribullet, or something like that
   
   
2. Squeeze your lemons - don’t go getting any pips in there, pips aren’t tasty
   
   
3. Combine mushrooms and lemon juice together. You can do this in a glass if you want, or in a small bowl. Stir well, you want it all to be mixed in as evenly as possible
   
   
4. Leave the mixture to sit for half an hour, give it a nice stir every now and then
   
   
5. Wow yes that looks tasty (it does not) - if you’ve mixed it in a bowl, decant into a glass, and get it down ya
   
   
6. Probably best to sit down and put some gentle music on really

What seems to happen is that the citric acid in the lemon juice reacts with the psilocybin, and creates psilocin. This is dephosphorylation - psilocybin is a “pro-drug”, which means it doesn’t have an effect on you itself, but your body converts it into something that does (psilocin). You adding the citric acid results in a bit less work for your gut to do, which also helps with the nausea (or so we have heard).

There is also a quicker onset of effects with a greater intensity, but a reduced duration. Anecdotally, we suppose this is because everything is “ready to go”, so instead of your stomach needing to do the hard work you have given it a helping hand. Super nice of you to look after your body in such a holistic way, top work. 

Variables! As you can see there, it ain’t like the mushrooms have a particular preference for lemons, so feel free to substitute the lemon juice for other citrus fruit if that’s your thing. Bear in mind that an orange isn’t going to have as much citric acid in as a lemon or a lime, but this means if you wanted to you could probably experiment and find out the perfect mixture for your needs. Orangutan Trading Co, god bless the little miscreants, have furnished us with their favourite variation and it goes like this:

Marg Tek

Ingredients:

• Chosen dosage of fun mushrooms
• 50ml freshly-squeezed lime juice
• 50ml tequila/mezcal
• 25 ml Cointreau/triple Sec
• Cigarettes, a few

Method:

1. Follow the steps as for lemon tek above, using the lime juice instead, up to 5
   
   
2. Now add your tequila or mezcal. I recommend Madre Espadin Mezcal, it’s great
   
   
3. Add your Cointreau/triple sec. Yes we know the ratios are wrong for the 3/2/1 style of marg but this isn't that, it's got mushrooms and maybe mezcal in
   
4. Get it down ya
   
   
5. Smoke some cigarettes and wait a while. If you don’t smoke cigarettes (very virtuous), give them to a friend that does

So there ya go. Move to Brazil and whack some in a Caipirinha, top stuff. We should write a cookbook really, with bangers like this...