Hey! Mycolancer here. I recently started experimenting with higher (but still pretty low) weekly doses to manage my depression and wicked intrusive thoughts about off-ing myself. It was getting so bad that even microdosing based on Dr. Fadimann's protocol wasn't working too well anymore.
I'm happy to say I am doing better now, but I noticed that, just like many of my pals, I'm sweating! Why? So I decided to do some research, as one does. This is what I've found. This is a short synopsis, nothing too indepth, but I hope you enjoy this article regardless!
Let's break down the potential biological reasons for sweating in each of these scenarios:
Increased Heart Rate:
When you consume magic mushrooms, the active compound psilocybin is converted to psilocin in the body.
Psilocin affects serotonin receptors, leading to changes in neurotransmitter activity.
Serotonin also plays a role in regulating heart rate and blood pressure.
An increase in heart rate can stimulate the body's thermoregulatory system, leading to increased sweating as a way to cool down the body.
Changes in Body Temperature Regulation:
Psilocin affects the serotonin receptors in the brain, influencing various physiological processes, including temperature regulation.
Altered perception of temperature may occur, leading the body to believe it needs to cool down, resulting in increased sweating.
Anxiety or Nervousness:
Psilocybin and psilocin can influence mood and emotions by affecting serotonin receptors in the brain.
In some individuals, the psychedelic experience may induce anxiety or nervousness.
Anxiety triggers the body's "fight or flight" response, which includes an increase in heart rate and sweating as part of preparing the body for potential challenges.
General Physiological Response:
Sweating is a natural physiological response to regulate body temperature.
Changes in perception, sensory experiences, or altered states of consciousness induced by magic mushrooms may impact the brain's control over bodily functions, including temperature regulation.
The body may respond with increased sweating as a general response to the altered state induced by the psychedelic substance.
In summary, the biological mechanisms involve the impact of psilocin on serotonin receptors, which can affect heart rate, temperature regulation, and emotional responses. These changes can lead to an increased need for cooling through sweating in various scenarios during a psychedelic experience.
I hope you enjoyed this short article. Remember, to go low and slow if you're not experienced!
Mush Love, Mycolancer
So we all collectively agree that Unavowed is a modern masterpiece and are still debating whether or not it’s Dave Gilbert’s greatest work, yadda yadda. But I’ve noticed that some of my favorite things about Unavowed often get glossed over or completely ignored by other reviews. So here I am to throw my two cents in that nobody asked for about a game I love very much. There will be gushing. You’ve been warned.
This obviously also contains big fat spoilers. You have also been warned.
Player Puppet
Like I’m sure we all have, I’ve played a fair handful of games where the main character is more or less the player themselves. Some are completely customizable, others start out with a character but turn into a blank slate for the player to manipulate and form through dialogue trees. More often than not, these kinds of mechanics end up really clunky or cringey. That character can feel disproportionally important to the rest of the cast, the dialogue won’t flow as smoothly as it could, and most importantly, the biggest draw is in individual choices and paths rather than telling a story with a goal.
But Dave Gilbert managed to use his incredible storytelling skills to make all of those problems simply disappear when it came to Unavowed. And the fact that this kind of gameplay was completely new for Gilbert only makes the end result that much more satisfying.
Yes, it can be argued that the player character is a blank slate sometimes, but the fact that they’ve almost completely lost their memory of the past year justifies this well. The character is just as stupid as the player!
And then when the big twist happens in the third act - that you’ve been playing as Melkhiresa all along and the evildoer you’ve been chasing was actually the human you thought you were - everything just gets blown out of the water. It gives a sense of a lack of control to the player, where almost everything they’ve been building in the game up to this point is turned against them. And oddly, that’s a really good feeling. Because it shows you that the worst is yet to come. That you don’t have everything figured out yet. And in a game where you make impactful choices, fear of messing up is important. Not just getting the “bad ending” for a certain character, but of messing up the story as a whole.
Dave Gilbert’s New York
I know one thing often praised about Gilbert’s dev work is how he uses real world settings, but can we just appreciate that his New York is so different compared to the thousand and one other stories set in New York. (I say all of this as a small town pleb who only visits big cities on vacation and has never been to New York.) Put on a cop drama or rom-com movie or anything else, and their New York is only a pretty backdrop and an excuse for a lot of interesting people to live in the same radius. The characters could easily be dropped in any other big city, and things would play out exactly the same.
Dave Gilbert doesn’t pull that crap, especially with Unavowed. He uses his setting with purpose. The locations are chosen with purpose to reflect the characters who inhabit them and to give a certain flavor to each different mission. It does have some sights that are more recognizable to non-natives than his other games (Lady Liberty as seen above, Wall Street, etc.), but I chalk that up to the fact that Unavowed focuses more on neighborhoods rather than specific addresses. Even still, I think they fit the more grandiose adventure of Unavowed rather than the smaller, quieter stories told in the Blackwell games.
Sharing a Universe
Speaking of Gilbert’s other work, the fact that Unavowed exists in the same universe as Blackwell and The Shivah is just the icing on this beautifully crafted supernatural cake. Though I can’t expect every game reviewer out there to play every game in existence and have eloquent, comprehensive thoughts about them, I am surprised at the number of people who have played Unavowed without playing the Blackwell series. Because playing Blackwell definitely adds a lot more weight to the story overall. Not so much that it detracts the story without that knowledge, but enough that it makes the world feel more rich and whole, rather than patchworking a bunch of supernatural elements together and seeing what it makes. We’re simply seeing this world from a different point of view in Unavowed.
As an achingly enthusiastic Blackwell fan, it is devilishly clever and simultaneously frustrating how Dave Gilbert has crafted this story to reference Blackwell and even bring back a couple small characters, while reinforcing that anything resembling a crossover is impossible. While the role of a Bestower/medium is a very important element of Unavowed, Rosa and Joey are never directly referenced. The Blackwell series is done, but the universe where it happened did not live happily ever after and there is still work to do. Stories to tell. Ghosts to save, albeit in a completely watered down way. (I still feel a little cheated we didn’t get the return of the ghost wind.)
Story time! When I played Unavowed for the very first time, I went with the cop origin story, which I personally think is the best way to play as a Blackwell fan (or just in general). “But the bartender!” I hear you cry. “You get to be friends with Logan!” Yes, yes, but hear me out. As much as I love Vicki, she’s definitely got the smallest personal stake in this whole story. Eli, Mandana, and Logan are already dealing with the supernatural. They know their jobs in the balance of the universe at large. Vicki just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. And playing the route that gives you an established relationship with her really helps why she joins the Unavowed in the first place make a lot more sense. (Okay, maybe I just really love Vicki Santina. Get off my case.)
There are so many more things about this game I could wax poetic about, but these are some I definitely see get glossed over or altogether avoided in other reviews or discussions, so I had to give them some love.
Geochemical signatures include elevated levels of polyaromatic hydrocarbons, polychlorinated biphenyls, and pesticide residues, as well as increased 207/206Pb ratios from leaded gasoline, starting between ~1945 and 1950. Soil nitrogen and phosphorus inventories have doubled in the past century because of increased fertilizer use, generating widespread signatures in lake strata and nitrate levels in Greenland ice that are higher than at any time during the previous 100,000 years.
Detonation of the Trinity atomic device at Alamogordo, New Mexico, on 16 July 1945 initiated local nuclear fallout from 1945 to 1951, whereas thermonuclear weapons tests generated a clear global signal from 1952 to 1980, the so-called “bomb spike” of excess 14C, 239Pu, and other artificial radionuclides that peaks in 1964.
Atmospheric CO2 and CH4 concentrations depart from Holocene and even Quaternary patterns starting at ~1850, and more markedly at ~1950, with an associated steep fall in δ13C that is captured by tree rings and calcareous fossils. An average global temperature increase of 0.6o to 0.9oC from 1900 to the present, occurring predominantly in the past 50 years, is now rising beyond the Holocene variation of the past 1400 years, accompanied by a modest enrichment of δ18O in Greenland ice starting at ~1900. Global sea levels increased at 3.2 ± 0.4 mm/year from 1993 to 2010 and are now rising above Late Holocene rates. Depending on the trajectory of future anthropogenic forcing, these trends may reach or exceed the envelope of Quaternary interglacial conditions.
