The Great Jamaican Patoo Journey
The World Health Organization (WHO), recently citing one of its current COVID-19 pandemic statistics from its dark timeline, warned the world that the prevalence of anxiety and depression in adults around the world has increased by a shocking/unshocking 25%. A number that honestly feels light when you put the various ugly aspects of these increasingly dystopian times into context.
Adults are rarely alone in sad company. According to data from youth charity The Prince’s Trust, 23% of young people in the UK say they seek out psychedelic experiences and “will never emotionally recover from the emotional impact of the pandemic”. Existence itself, it seems, is more emotionally charged than ever.
Kevin Bourke agrees: “The world’s mental health has been declining and people need perspective and balance.” Bourke, co-founder of Patoo – Jamaica’s first legal CPG psychedelic line of psilocybin products – has a particularly astute viewpoint on both the rising Interest in and use of psychedelics as well as witnessing the return of tourism culture to its home turf following the devastation of COVID on the travel industry in general.
Particularly hard hit were places like the island’s longtime beach and cliff-lined bohemian playground of Negril in the West End, where I met him in spring 2022 while on the island to recharge physically and mentally. Patoo is quickly gaining ground across the island, with dozens of retail partners across Jamaica stocking their products, from legal cannabis dispensaries like Jacana to locally notorious mushroom cafes, weed shacks to posh resorts like Skylark on the beach or Rockhouse in the cliffs , where Patoo also hosts “Psilocybin Soundbath” experiences for guests.
Courtesy of Patoo
In the gift shops, eye-catching Patoo packaging is spot on alongside tanning oils and sun hats. Think gluten-free, direct trade and locally grown dark chocolate bars, dosed Jamaican honey, microdosed mushroom capsules and more strain-based products developed with Patoo’s R&D team.
“The vibe in Negril and across the island is attracting people looking for post-COVID experiential tourism and wellness, and the Caribbean has bounced back. It’s the perfect time for Jamaica to step up in this space and be a leader for adults seeking these products,” says Bourke.
Patoo’s other co-founder, Charles Lazarus, a 20-year veteran of touring roots-reggae band Rootz Underground Movement, says, “We didn’t invent chocolate dosed with mushrooms, they just go well together in nature, and both are medicine. he says. “The dark chocolate provides oxytocin, the love transmitter, and then you have the Jamaican mushrooms with a very expansive personality.”
A Jamaican owl – Patoo – greets you as a brand mascot and spiritual talisman for the public, and as a brand, the team says it seeks to be a bridge builder between nature, research and commerce. In addition to partnering with island farmers for all-local chocolate and greater harmony with their proprietary indigenous hybrid genetics, their flagship 4-gram dark chocolate bar, Patoo, uses a wild Jamaican variety, which they’ve crossed the mycelium with to be consistent and stable. It also allows them to tightly and accurately control the even dosing of the product (read: you can anticipate the effects for a better experience). And yet their biggest cost is Jamaican cocoa, which is considered some of the best in the world.
In an even more impressive move, Bourke worked alongside Lazarus and her team to conduct the first legal shipment of Jamaican psilocybin using indigenous genetics provided by the Patoo team to the University of Alberta and Health Canada for research into PTSD in the Canadian military was cultivated.
This image of psychedelics as both therapy and fun for responsible adults is changing if the ongoing legalization movement is any indicator. The FDA has called psilocybin a “breakthrough medicine,” and that perspective is increasingly found at the end of a micro- or macro-dose of herbal psychedelics like magic mushrooms. While on the island for my own recreational trip to Negril, I too wanted to sample the indigenous and proprietary genetics that are unique to Jamaica.
Courtesy of Patoo
In the case of Patoo, they offer a way to taste mushrooms harvested naturally in controlled environments – knowing the diet of the cows that produce the substrate for growing manure to ensure the integrity of the mycelium as well as the metabolites that affect and direct the way terpenes interact with cannabinoids in cannabis.
Given all of this, it’s no surprise that accessibility and professional, safe psilocybin products are at the forefront of the experiential tourism trend growing in Negril and Greater Jamaica. Legality means greater variety and standards of consumables, in psychedelics as much as weed. “[Psychedelics] moving extremely fast, it feels different than cannabis,” says Lazarus. “Cannabis has definitely paved the way, showing both the right and wrong way to move an industry like this forward. Psilocybin will challenge the wine and spirits space in 10 years.”
As a brand, Patoo is already making waves on social media as a simple and reliable access point to the island’s already strong psychedelic mushroom culture for years. But Bourke brings another element of connectivity and market understanding. A seasoned branding creative, he helped found Blackwell Rum with his mentor Chris Blackwell (England-born founder of Island Records and the first to release reggae music on a professional label), worked with Usain Bolt’s Tracks & Records restaurant brand and is the co-founder of the music and wellness culture festival TmrwTday.
In other words, he was the first choice to connect me and be my guide to Patoo. I stayed at Tensing Pen, a small independent resort in the cliffs that I’d like to think is otherworldly for people who love dogs (they have a couple of Rhodesian Ridgebacks that roam the area). Bourke, who grew up in Negril, manifested effortlessly at the table my girlfriend and I sat at and settled into the island vibes after the flight from Boston. I was treated to some free Social Dose bars (0.7g of locally grown Hawaiian Cubensis) and the flagship Patoo Bar, dosed with 4g of their proprietary Jamaican Cyanescens strain crossed with APE (Albino Penis Envy).
Each Patoo bar has three squares, each dosed at 1.33g. A square, Bourke said, and “it’s dance time.” Two and we get caught up in fractals and visual distortions and a sense of connection. Three, and he said, “It’s time to chill and have a friend around because you’re going on a trip.” I had already had a long drive that day, I was just looking for a ride.
I also just decided to eat a full social dose after that long day of travel and a few months between psilocybin uses. Scene and setting were set. Hadn’t even started the psychonaut-recommended four-day, three-day rest regiment to allow your brain and system to reset (and deal with increased tolerance). The effects of the whole bar left me feeling like I’d been hit in the head by a wet rowing oar (I hadn’t had a full meal yet, which was against one of Patoo’s consumption recommendations).
Courtesy of Daniel McCarthy
After getting used to the frantic energy and overwhelming sensations a bit, I slipped into a large pocket of euphoria and social connectedness with everything around me, but I was never out of reach or uncomfortable with my surroundings (nothing makes you crazier than holding your hand over your phone while changing your playlist). It was also robust in earthy mushroom flavor.
The dogs and my girlfriend at sunset. The saltfish in the restaurant with a view of the moonrise. The bay at Tensing Pen, battered by ancient waves on ancient pirate coral. Restoring my body and blending it with local ganja which was consumed in large quantities by both the local pharmacy (Jacana) and some local farmers. Damn first day.
The next night, I dove into a 1.33-gram square while driving down the long beach road off the cliffs, while drumming jerk chicken along the way and partying outside rather than inside. Plenty of shady corners away from streetlights and barrages where you usually indulge in the players selection of local mushrooms. A tricky situation, no matter how you cut it.
“If you buy mushrooms and don’t fully know the source, it can affect your attitude. And scene and setting are so crucial when you’re experiencing psilocybin, and commercially it doesn’t make sense to create a product that makes people feel negative about the episode,” says Bourke. “Charles and our team worked out our consistency and dosage so that we could approach this product as both a CPG and a herbal medicine. You can take some Patoo and then come back to it a month later, find that groove and those sensations (and know your limits) and find that it’s repeatable. The dosage is enormous for us and Patoo.”
I relied on this dosage given the visual and auditory overload I would be putting myself in. Namely, Negril’s first all-night beach party, where everyone from the hills of Westmoreland and the surrounding communities flock in to witness a massive DJ set, from the Beatles to trap house beats, with locals dressed as if they’re in go to the club only to be hit with fire ants in front of the stage and lounge area, repelling the surging crowd and leaving an uncomfortable negative space in the crowd…where I was standing.
I didn’t mean to be rude – and with all that 1.33g coursing through me – I enjoyed the evening with my new friends and danced four hours at a time for a guy who doesn’t dance. Granted, the fire ants would maul me the moment I stopped, and the dancing was the white man’s two-stage rocking back and forth and pounding water all night. All in all, the dosage was just right for me. And best of all: repeatable. The next night. And the afternoon after that.
And then back home, just as spring was turning to summer, after a stroll through the Ukrainian sculpture park I live near, alone on my back in the sun, my dog scurrying nearby and not a soul around.
“The paradigm has shifted and evolved, and an entire generation is upset that they have been misled to their detriment about the fractured narrative surrounding psychedelics as a therapeutic option,” says Lazarus. “With the press attention, the resurgence around the holistic approach to living, and the return to organic food, places of high energy and legal psilocybin medicine like Jamaica have become a travel focus for people seeking inner healing,” says Lazarus . “We are proud of this offering to the world.”
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