GoKawiil“This is probably the most important video I have ever done,” William “Willy” Myco tells his nearly 2,500 paying Patreon subscribers. The video, posted on Halloween 2024, offers viewers step-by-step instructions on how to produce what he claimed is “100 percent pure LSD.”
Wearing a baseball cap that said “Mycelium Familia” over his shaved head with his brown beard peeking out from beneath his mask, he declares his tutorial on synthesizing the psychedelic over the course of three days to be the “world’s first.”
“It has been a dream of mine to record this process so everybody has the scientific knowledge they need,” says Myco, which is short for mycologist, a scientist who studies fungi, in the video. (He doesn’t share his real last name, and he spoke to WIRED on the condition we wouldn’t use his last name due to the illegal nature of some of his work.)
When the process is finished, the video shows his chemist collaborator holding out a lab flask of a greenish-blue liquid, but no test of the substance is conducted on camera to confirm its identity. Nonetheless, Myco issues a stark if hyperbolic warning about the final product, telling viewers, if it “touches your eyes, skin, mouth … you better cancel your plans for a month, ’cause you’re not going to be able to do anything.” (Most LSD trips wear off after a day, though there can be exceptions.)
Willy Myco posts videos showing people how to synthesize drugs. Courtesy of TTF Media LLC
It was once unthinkable to post a video on the internet demonstrating how to synthesize a controlled psychoactive substance. But the masked psychedelic educator has released more than 120 how-to videos over the past decade which run the gamut from the attempted LSD synthesis to explainers on cultivating psilocybin mushrooms, extracting mescaline from mind-altering cacti, and preparing DMT vape cartridges.
In addition to his Patreon, which had more than 14,500 subscribers, Myco sells mushroom genetics, merch (in the LSD video, he wore his own branded hoodie with the slogan “Love My Country But Fuck The Government”), and offers consultancy services for mushroom growers. His YouTube channel, called “Willy’s World,” had over 96,000 followers but was taken down after WIRED reached out to the platform for comment. YouTube spokesperson Boot Bullwinkle said it was removed “under our terms of service, which prohibit creating new channels after a termination.”
Myco responded on Instagram: “YouTube is back on their BS again. Channel had zero strikes whatsoever, I post super censored and safe content there … So if you’ve ever asked why I put all my energy into my patreon channel … this is why.”