From Babylon With Love

“Imagine what Iraqi people will say if they see us taking drugs!” says my Iraqi brother Maitham.

I made the mistake of calling Maitham a ‘good friend’ in a social media post during my time in Iraq with him; he bluntly corrected my misinformation, sharply reminding me that we are in fact brothers.

“It’s Cordyceps, nothing illegal” I assure him

I don’t know what’s crazier, the fact that I brought nine vials of various fruiting body tinctures from California to Baghdad, Iraq, or the fact that Maitham is now getting his first exposure to the world of functional mushrooms on the terrace of Saddam Hussein’s abandoned mansion overlooking the Euphrates river in Babylon.

Maitham takes two droppers full of the amber colored liquid, shimmying his shoulders and whipping his head to the right as he reacts to the potent and unfamiliar concentrate.

We left Baghdad at 5 in the morning to beat the typically horrendous morning traffic on our way out to the ancient capital of Mesopotamia - the very place where Hammurabi’s code, humanity’s first known complete written set of legal and moral standards, was originally put into play. The very place where King Nebuchadnezzar condemned Daniel to the Lion’s Den after the humble oracle interpreted one of the King’s dreams in a way that didn’t please the power tripping monarch. Notice that the exotic sounding moniker ‘Nebuchadnezzar’ has ‘Chad’ right in the fucking middle of it.

Maitham didn’t sleep well the night before, and was extremely low on energy - he was fighting exhaustion to show us an unforgettable time in his beloved homeland, which is why we even climbed up the hill to Saddam’s old mansion that he intentionally built above Babylon to flex on history and declare himself the most powerful king of all the ages.

I brought the cordyceps tincture to take some next level promo photos and videos for my friend Eric Mueller, who gave me a few of his dual marc extracts when I was back visiting his mushroom farm in San Diego two weeks ago.

Within 5 minutes, Maitham was in a completely different energetic state. I have video evidence of him unsolicitedly declaring his amazement for how big of an impact the two droppers of cordyceps tincture had on him.

I can say the same about my own experience, but don’t just listen to me or Maitham - my wife Becca also shared that the tincture gave her a significant boost of energy, the likes of which she hadn’t experienced from the other handful of cordyceps products I’d shared with her from people who’ve sent me samples and gift packs of product.

I’ve been demoing various products that people have sent me, and Mueller’s Mushrooms tinctures are the shit. You know I’m not fucking around because I’m not even going to put an affiliate link or anything here, I’m just interested in spreading the gospel of mushrooms - especially when a mycopreneur actually delivers.

Enough pandering and reminiscing about the last week, today is a whole new chapter of this voyage. Today I’m in Kurdistan, the northern semi-autonomous region of Iraq and the ancestral homeland of the Kurdish people. It’s astounding how different Erbil, the Kurdish capital, is from Baghdad or Babylon. I’m meeting up with another old friend here, and we’ll see what acts of fungi diplomacy we can dial in together.

See y’all next week

DW