As above, so below

Integration

A fungus using K to clear parasites could hold the secret to the brain-body disease connection

Bacteria operating in fracal patterns observed by the late Dr Eschel Ben-Jacob

Pochonia Chlamydosporia is a fungus recently discovered to use ketamine for flushing parasites out of its host plant’s roots.

Discovered and hyped only recently, there are two eyebrow-raising elements to this. 

Firstly ketamine is a ‘designer drug’, or as elite space commando and neuroscientist Andrew Gallimore wrote on Twitter, “a perfect example of a purely synthetic molecule. The arylcyclohexylamines, of which ketamine is the prototypic example, are a product entirely of the human mind... Oh wait…”

Did the fungus get hold of it via the mycelial network? Is biology categorisable to the extent that a substance arrived at in lab tests can be naturally occurring but not yet discovered? Or did the Reality Switch Technologies Gallimore writes about come into play, somehow?

Some ketamine killing parasitic worm eggs

Secondly: Pochonia Chlamydosporia uses ketamine as an anti-microbial agent. A robust two-parter in Psychedelic Science Review dug out a 1987 study where ketamine did a great job killing bacterial heart lining infections in rabbits – and stopped the rabies virus breeding in rats.

In 2002 ketamine was tested against market antibiotics and crushed Staphylococcus aureus, a common opportunistic bacteria that causes all kinds of nastiness, from pimples and impetigo to MRSA and pneumonia… and has become 80% resistant to antibiotics since penicillin was invented in 1943.

The 2020 report from the un-putdownable Parasites & Vectors journal tested ketamine against agricultural anti-wormer ivermectin, which used to be advertised on TV back in the West Country to give you an idea of how widespread its farming use is. Ketamine performed equally well.

But what has actually captured the imaginations of many in the space is that this means ketamine counts as a ‘plant medicine’. I eagerly await the complex mythologies, concept albums, groundbreaking scientific discoveries, artistic genres, philosophical insights, and bespoke geometric fabric designs that shall surely now emerge from the ketamine subculture, such as it currently is.