What up familia and fellow fungal explorers, it's Sebastian, the founder of The Mad Mycologists! For those that sort of know me or don't know me at all, I wanted to start this first forum post with a little bit of an introduction of myself without it being too much of a Sebastian-centric highlight. I just want y'all to know the guy behind the curtains! And I like to encourage a friendly space for genuine personal connections here if people are open to it.
So to give a little bit of an introduction for myself, my name is Sebastian Munevar and I'm an England-born/Florida-raised native with indigenous roots in Colombia and Puerto Rico. I'm an easygoing guy with an ever-evolving perspective and a deep passion for all things off-grid, self-sustaining, tumble n crumble the old world system, cannabis, anime enthusiast, and seeker of anything near the rabbit hole of esoteric concepts/history. I graduated from Eckerd College with a Psychology Degree that never got used aside from using it to build my own psychological tool-belt for how I see the world and for creating more understanding in the world of biopsychology with how it relates to the biological effects of entheogens on the mind and body. Since graduating, I've remained in St. Pete, FL where I run my business full-time out of a local kombucha brewery called Beech Kombucha. Ironically, kombucha is where I started playing first before I found mushrooms. I was actually fermenting kombucha in Pamplona, Spain in 2019 and I would bring my samples to the public university's lab to look at the bacteria under a microscope. My professor was so chill and friendly about it lol. He would let me show up after class and geek out with him about it. And I was lowkey pretty hype that my homemade kombucha was showing a greater probiotic density than the kombucha sold in Spanish health stores. Kombucha was all that I explored until I eventually found Lion's Mane on Instagram and I decided to hop down that rabbit hole. After that, the rest was history and I dropped all of my kombucha toys for everything mushrooms! Now we're 5 years in and having a lot of fun with it!
Fast forward a year later, I started The Mad Mycologists back in November 2020 with the intention of creating a line of unique and nuanced functional mushroom products for people to incorporate into their lifestyle and daily practices for enhancing their overall health and well-being, but I also created the brand with an element of community in mind for the people to collaborate and converse together (Hence the plural 's' at the end of our name despite the fact that it's only me running the show). The Mad Mycologists is meant to be a name that considers everyone seeking to be their own citizen mycologist and create strings of community threads that connect fungal explorers with a network of like-minded folk that simply want to explore the realm of mushrooms together with curiosity and collaboration in mind to bring more clarity and findings into the field of mycology.
With all that said, WELCOME TO THE FAM!
I'll be occasionally posting my own questions and ideas to share with y'all in due time and see if any of us are exploring the same things. You guys are welcome to sign in/create an account and start making your own posts. It helps to have many eyes on the same idea or project. I want this to be open access for what we're willing to share here. And keep your cards close if you choose to. It all depends on what your plan is for that idea. Overall, we truly have the potential to accelerate the uncovering of findings in this field by taking the power of citizen science into our hands and ask questions that might not have been asked yet. So with all of that said...
Have fun and mush love familia,
Sebastian Munevar
Founder of The Mad Mycologists