Took a trip down to Austin TX for the sake of mushrooms and mycology. Central Texas Mycology society and mycelium matters host an conference at The university of Texas in Austin. This was a 1 day event that talk about different topics in mycology, like introduction to foraging, mushrooms as a meat replacement, mushroom farming grants, and mycroremdiation. That was the first part of the conference talks, but the second part of the conference was a bit different. It was a all about psychedelics. It was 3 different talks, one was on the history, present, and future of psychedelics. Another was a panel of individual ranging for activist and veterans talking about the political side psychedelics. The capstone of it all was the research on psychedelic therapy that is happen on UT Austin. Another part of conference where the vendors. There where quite a bit of vendors, more or less selling the same things. Vendor would sell mushroom bags/spore, supplements or nick knacks.

Being from Dallas Texas I took a trip down to Austin to go the this conference. As coming from the north texas mushroom fest I was excited to see the dichotomy of there conference and the festival that I just went too. I made it a 2 day trip, so I would have a day to hang out in Austin. Once I made it to Austin and the conference. I did a bit of exploring and looked at the vendors and the auditorium. But I spent most of my time in there auditorium. I sat through all of the lectures. I have my favorites and least favorites. one of my favorites. Some of favorites talks where the foraging and the grants for mushroom farming. For the non psychedelic talk they where somewhat well put together. The other talks where kinda just people rambling on the top of there heads, but other people might think differently.

The 2nd half of the Talks for psychedelic. This topic is usually taboo subject in our society, but oddly enough this topic is normal for mushroom people and obviously these talks where crowd pleasers. I enjoyed learning about the current state psychedelics, particularly magic mushrooms in the political/scientific sphere and the medical research that is being done at UT Austin.

This conference was a mixed bag for me, I overall did not like it, but there where some things that I like about it. For someone that is new to mycology and wants to have a come and go experience and they live in Austin. I would recommend this conference for them.