How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence

by Michael Pollan

This was the house that mushrooms built, Stamets explained, launching into its story before I had a chance to unpack my bag. It replaced a rickety old farmhouse on the site that, when Stamets moved in, was slowly succumbing to an infestation of carpenter ants. Stamets set about devising a mycological solution to the problem. He knew precisely which species of Cordyceps could wipe out the ant colony, but so did the ants: they scrupulously inspect every returning member for Cordyceps spores and promptly chew off the head of any ant bearing spores, dumping the body far away from the colony. Stamets outwitted the ants’ defense by breeding a mutant Cordyceps-like fungus that postponed sporulation. He put some of its mycelium in his daughter’s dollhouse bowl, left that on the floor of the kitchen, and during the night watched as a parade of ants carried the mycelium into the nest—having mistaken it for a safe food source. When the fungus eventually sporulated, it was already deep inside the colony and the ants were done for: the Cordyceps colonized their bodies and sent fruiting bodies bursting forth from their heads. It was too late to save the farmhouse, but with the proceeds from the sale of his patent on the fungus Stamets was able to erect this far grander monument to mycological ingenuity.