A fungus in Pablo Escobar’s hippopotamus dung: a work of art as a path against depression
As in the Creation fable, the hippopotamus drawback in Colombia started with Adam and Eve. Both, female and male, had been the primary specimens of that species that Pablo Escobar, the most important drug trafficker in the nation’s historical past, ordered transported in the eighties from Africa to his resting place, Hacienda Nápoles, in Magdalena Medio. Two females quickly joined the group and, in a matter of a few years, the animals proliferated in the world, reaching greater than 250 immediately. Its existence is one of the nonetheless seen faces of Escobar’s opulence. But Camilo Restrepo, a paisa artist who skilled the horror attributable to drug trafficking in his youth, has a completely different imaginative and prescient: in the dung of these hippos he grows mushrooms with psychedelic properties that carry with them the hope of being a complement to conventional medicines with which he retains the nervousness and depression he suffers at bay.
Throughout his profession as an artist, Restrepo (Medellín, 52 years outdated) has criticized the fight against drugs promoted (or imposed) by the United States over 5 a long time and which, he says, has precipitated monumental harm in Colombia: it has unleashed a very massive and bloody battle that has allowed a lot of cash to succeed in the fingers of individuals who have dedicated crimes to have it. That has been the background of an concept that he has hammered on for not less than 15 years from the platform of art. The most up-to-date of his works, which incorporates himself as half of one thing that seems like an experiment, was born from a query in September 2024, after an exhibition in Miami: what if the genetic mutations of Escobar’s hippos have additionally precipitated mutations in their feces?
The query arose when serious about the genetic range of what scientific tv networks have known as the cocaine hippos. That is, people who Escobar had dropped at Colombia. Restrepo says that there are hippos in Magdalena Medio that have already got malformations as a result of inbreeding to which they had been subjected. This implies that they’re not the identical as African hippos or pygmies, the 2 subspecies of the animal. “The exhibition ended with the question of whether a fungus could grow in the hippopotamus shit, which is what is damaging the ecosystems in the country, that would be different from the hallucinogenic mushrooms that grow in the dung in Colombia.”
Once the query was posed, the mission received underway. With a paradox behind it: if cocaine is a narcissistic drug that exalts the ego—the person talks extra, thinks she or he is extra clever, the one who dances higher—the mushrooms born from hippopotamus dung have the alternative impact. “In the shit of the hippopotamus, which is the waste of drug trafficking, a mushroom with hallucinogenic properties ends up being born that, unlike cocaine, dilutes the ego.”
—What is that dissolution like?
—The individual there feels that their self is diluted, they really feel nearer to nature or the divine. That is why there are mystical experiences. One is like all the pieces and nothing, that are situations that will also be achieved with meditation.
These dissolving properties of the ego should not a discovery by Restrepo, nor a novelty. Therapies with hallucinogenic mushrooms have been investigated for many years, though the battle on medicine prohibited their use. But there may be information: psychotropic mushrooms are additionally used to deal with addictions. “Cocaine addiction, which contributes to consumption and this entire war on drugs, could be cured by taking mushrooms,” he explains. “Instead of being a vicious circle, with this therapy to stop using it is now a virtuous circle,” he provides.
With all that intention behind, the Paisa artist created his set up Hypopotamensiswhich has already been exhibited in Bogotá or Medellín. To do that, he recreated a drug seizure in the type of these ready by the National Police, with a desk on which the proof of the crime and lots of blocks of seized cocaine are displayed, with one caveat: in Restrepo’s work, what ought to be cocaine is hippopotamus dung. Several of the weather used for mushroom cultivation relaxation on the desk. His concept was to point out that this picture, so repeated by the authorities to point out outcomes in the battle on medicine, in the tip is proof that they’re really dropping it. “It’s about criminalizing a dung, a jar, a pressure cooker… the most absurd elements. It was like laughing at the Police, and also showing the seizure of bales, which for me is as if the police were minimalist artists.”
Beyond art
This time, Restrepo has gone past the work of art and the exhibitions, and in addition consists of a scientific half, due to which he himself appears much less like an artist and extra like a biologist skilled in fungi. Beyond the technical side, he explains that his most up-to-date work has two factors of origin. One is to spark a dialog in regards to the failure of the battle on medicine and the utopia of a drug-free society. The second is of a private nature: “I was a person who lived miserably inside his head, until a series of situations forced me to take medication. That line is against the utopia of personal perfection.” With this, he provides, he seeks to oppose the calls for of modern life, which dictate that one should be related, vital and that it’s forbidden to make errors.
So that Hypopotamensis turned one thing tangible, he spent months working amongst excrement. In November 2024, along with Chavito—his assistant, who insists on being known as that—they discovered the primary mushrooms in the dung. In April 2025, they found the primary silocybe cubensis (the hallucinogen). Since then, the gathering of excrement has been a fixed: in Doradal he has 150 kilos, which is added to a different 300 kilos that he has taken to his dwelling. Medellin to proceed cultivating the mushrooms with very meticulous situations of humidity, temperature and lighting, looking out, in a path of trial and error, for the hallucinogenic mushroom. “I did a laboratory at home and used the pressure cooker and the stove, and that became crazy. They told me it was going to be the next coronavirus.”
Hypopotamensisa work that goes far past its set up, nonetheless has two phases to finish. The first is the use of “narcofungi” as a method to heal and face the issues of nervousness and depression that Restrepo has suffered. “I take psychiatric pills. Until I was 38 I lived believing that I was the coolest guy in the world, with that imposter syndrome, I thought I was the most brutal. I beat myself up all my life,” he remembers. At that point, whereas he was finding out for a grasp’s diploma in the United States and hit all-time low with depression, he was placed on medicine. “From that medication and meditation I managed to feel much better.” Now, with the mushrooms he has been on the lookout for for months, he hopes to enrich the therapy that retains him away from that I former.
“This is not a fight with medication”
Catalina Echavarría is a psychologist specialised in remedy with amplified states of consciousness. But she can also be the spouse of Camilo Restrepo and his associate, not solely as a partner, however as a skilled. She has witnessed her husband’s enchancment, and has accompanied him on the path that has led him to place apart the struggling he suffered for years, by appropriate medicine and meditation, yoga and rest methods. The concept, now, is to experiment with the dung fungi. The dose: between 5 and 6 grams. Not a lot in order that the expertise is so robust that it prevents remembering, nor so little so as to not obtain the dissolution of the self.
—What is that shot for?
—It helps you have got one other perspective on your self, on life, human beings, demise, nervousness. The self is given new that means, and when it’s restructured, it turns into weaker.
To accomplish that, Restrepo should discontinue a standard medicine that forestalls mushrooms from doing their job as soon as ingested. During the shoot, you’ll all the time be accompanied. Your blood strain shall be taken, your respiratory shall be monitored and your entry into trance shall be noticed: “It could be a good trip, a bad trip, I don’t know what you will find.” Echavarría explains that the expertise won’t be dangerous, as a result of it’s solely studied and its complete surroundings shall be managed: the dose, the quantity of time, the music, the area. They additionally hope to be accompanied by a physician. “If nothing happens, if bad things happen or if wonderful things happen, we are going to capitalize on it and use it. For me, as a therapist, whatever is perfect.”
Echavarría clarifies that the expectation shouldn’t be that Camilo will have the ability to cease the medicine after the macrodose. “It’s great that you take them, because your brain needs them. It’s not a fight with the medication, it’s a complement to having a better quality of life,” he explains. And from the expertise, contemplate all the pieces that arose in the trance and extract all of the doable advantages. To get hold of them, it’s advisable to take a new shot inside one or two years.
And after the shot, the end result: creating a firm, initially fictitious, known as Hippopotamensis, which is able to supply the chance of making inventive installations and therapeutic mushroom photographs. Who wouldn’t it be geared toward, to a larger extent? To the identical purchasers of the narcotourswho go to Medellín with the need to really feel one thing of the prison aura of Pablo Escobar. The supply for narcotourists can be a therapeutic with narco-mushrooms. “It is very ironic to appeal to that drug tourism that comes to Colombia to consume cocaine, to eat the peladitas from here. What they would be offered would be an experience with hallucinogenic mushrooms that were born in the narco-dung and that may lead to healing… or not.” In a few weeks, Restrepo hopes to have the reply.
