Who Killed Steven Pollock?

Exploring the tumultuous rise and fall of the mushroom kingpin.

and

Mar 02, 2024

Mycology is full of passionate eccentrics. It's unclear if it attracts them or if consuming enough psilocybin creates them. Maybe both.

Medical Doctor Steven Pollock is one such great mycological pioneer. In his 33 short years on earth, Pollock rose to the rank of a world-class mycologist, fixated on making his mark on medicine by showing the medicinal power of magic mushrooms.

"One side of Steve used the mushroom in a continual search for Aldous Huxley's soma state. The other side was a drive to achieve medical greatness in a very traditional sense," remembers Dr. Blum in an interview with High Times in 1981. Blum was an associate professor of pharmacology at the University of Texas, where Pollock worked upon graduating from medical school.

With a huge, bristly brown afro, thick-rimmed glasses, and a bushy beard, Pollock looked the part of 70s magic mushroom enthusiast.

“Had Steve worn a tie, had short hair, worked under a government grant at Harvard, and sold prescriptions to suburbanites, he would still be alive today,” — reflects Dr. Blum.

During working hours, Pollock stuck to his medical pathway, completing an anesthesiology residence, conducting research, and writing grants at the University of Texas in San Antonio, documents journalist Hamilton Morris, who spent months investigating Pollock's death.

When Pollock's duties were complete, he would leave the University's brick facade past oaks, cacti, and succulents to his suburban house.

Morris documents that Pollock would then moonlight as a mycological mad scientist. Driven to bring magic mushrooms to the people, Pollock conducted wide-ranging experiments, colonizing everything from Purina dog chow to truckloads of elephant dung with mycelium.

When asked by neighbors about the smell, he brushed them off, saying it was all part of a 'secret government project,' writes Hamilton Morris.

Cultivating Magic: Pollock's Mushroom Mastery

By 1977, Pollock published the first edition of his infamous mushroom grow guide — simply titled Magic Mushroom Cultivation.

Brothers Terrence and Dennis McKenna had published a magic mushroom growing guide the year before, but Pollock's book brought new data to the table, like cultivation in brown rice flour (BRF), a technique still popular today.

Pollock's work inspired Prof. Fanaticus — creator of the PF tek — which is a method of creating small 'cakes' of brown rice flour and vermiculite in mason jars. This method stands as the go-to mushroom growing technique for a generation of growers, from teenagers fruiting shrooms in closets to DEA laboratories.

Following the publication of his book, Pollock spent several years of his life developing a rare psilocybin mushroom species, Psilocybe tampanensis.

Pollock and Gary Lincoff, another prominent mycologist, first discovered the P. tampanensis mushroom after ditching a mycology conference together in Florida. The men were drawn to the conference to see Gastón Guzmán, a Mexican mycologist credited with documenting over half of all psilocybin mushrooms known.

Lincoff found Pollock in the parking lot examining psychedelic mushrooms he had been collecting nearby. When Lincoff discovered that the Winnabego Pollock drove to the conference was also a mobile mushroom laboratory, the two instantly became friends and drove off to search for more mushrooms — allegedly collecting the very first sample of P. tampanensis in a sandy meadow.

Later, alone in his lab and surrounded only by mushroom jars, Pollock cloned P. tampanensis the same way he’d done hundreds of times before. However, something was different about this sample.

As the mycelium grew, it started forming dense sclerotia — thick underground mycelial growths. Today, we call these magic truffles.

Pollock became obsessed with breeding this unique shroom. He coached the mushroom through selective breeding techniques to produce increasingly larger and stronger psychedelic sclerotia. Pollock saw this new type of magic mushroom as an opportunity.

"It’s hard to imagine a psychedelic treat more desirable than psilocybin mushrooms, but comotillos are tastier, smoother in producing their effects, and yet more powerful at higher doses,” says Pollock in a quote to High Times Magazine. Pollock affectionately referred to P. tampanensis as little sweet potatoes (comotillos), and as their potency became more apparent, Philosophers Stones.

“When fresh, comotillos have a walnut-like consistency, but they are easily dried to an even more durable form — the rock of ages. These magic stones nevertheless remain chewable and potent indefinitely. Comotillos clearly transport the fortunate consumer to states of spiritual transcendence and jubilation far beyond the realm of ordinary psychedelics."

With magic stones and cutting-edge cultivation techniques, Pollock began to dream bigger. Pollock saw his chance to earn a place in history by creating a lab, conducting groundbreaking research, and stewarding FDA approval to use magic mushrooms as a legitimate medical treatment.

The price tag was high — Pollock estimated he needed 2 million dollars. But he was nothing if not determined and developed a plan to get what he needed.

The First Magic Mushroom Grow Kits

In 1979, Pollock founded a mushroom-growing business called Hidden Creek with Tom Van Doozer. The business relationship was short-lived, and according to Morris, Van Doozer stole the original recipe for liquid culture to create his own company (which promptly failed).

Michael Forbes joined Hidden Creek, and the pair began to take out full-page ads in High Times magazine, selling spores and colonized grow kits.

These were huge new innovations in the fledgling mushroom community. With their 'PSI Energy' ad campaign selling $25 and $45 kits, Hidden Creek quickly became the most successful magic mushroom company around.

While everything to date had been above board, Pollock’s ambition was relentless.

Pollock allegedly started giving psilocybin mushrooms to autistic children whose parents desperately sought treatment. The study was rumored to have positive results meant to impress the DEA, but Pollock's business partner, Michael Forbes, dismissed the claim as nothing but a ploy to raise money for the laboratory.

Pollock's father would also later claim Pollock was working on a treatment for arthritis. None of Pollock's data related to these studies have ever surfaced. However, in recent years, research into psychedelics for treating autism and inflammation is currently being conducted with encouraging results.

Even with his own shroom boom, Pollock was a long way from the state-of-the-art laboratory he’d been vying for. Meanwhile, High Times was filling up with full-page ads of competing mushroom companies, fighting for a slice of the new niche Pollock had created.

This is the point at which Pollock's business ventures started to take on a more unscrupulous approach.

An Unorthodox Path

Pollock needed money to fund his lab. He was getting desperate. So, to speed up the funding process, he planted 800 cannabis plants on some land he owned. The cannabis field didn't take long to attract the attention of authorities, and Pollock was placed under government surveillance.

Seven days a week, Pollock woke up early to shake mushroom jars in the greenhouse behind his home. At night, Pollock would interrupt loving-making sessions with his girlfriend to talk about shrooms.

Still not satisfied, the relentlessly ambitious Steven Pollock started other ventures outside shrooms and pot — he leveraged his status as a Medical Doctor to open a pharmacy out of his home.

It wasn’t long before the bright orange prescription slips became notorious around San Antonio, as Pollock began writing hundreds of prescriptions at inflated prices.

Pollock hastily wrote scripts for Dilaudid, Dexedrine, cocaine, and opioids. Some days, there was a line of people streaming out of his house/pharmacy and onto the street. Examinations were not part of the program, with the bottom line driven by Pollock's mushroom dreams.

"All of the money made from writing those prescriptions went into the bank and his Herbal Research Foundation. He didn't own fancy cars or clothes — drink, snort cocaine, cheat the IRS, or live lavishly. His research and those mushrooms were his life and dream for the future.' — said Pollock's father, Walter.

Indeed, Pollock wasn't known for an ostentatious lifestyle, and his moral compass was complicated. Morris writes that Pollock would give free healthcare to children in need and even tried to use mushrooms to help some people with their opiate addictions.

The Dual Life of Dr. Pollock

Yet another side of Pollock existed. He once prescribed opiates to an unconscious woman whom two men dragged into his office, and he started a service removing bullets from people wanting to avoid alerting the authorities. Lacking an examination table, Pollock made due on his kitchen table.

Pollock only accepted cash, and while he did deposit it into at least five bank accounts, 'Dr. Feelgood' as he was nicknamed, was slipping into the underbelly of San Antonio.

"He pressed the outer limits in trying to achieve medical greatness. His style was certainly unorthodox, but he wanted to make the necessary breakthroughs to show the skeptical medical establishment that his pioneering work was legitimate.” — said Dr. Blum. "His immense ego and drive pushed him!"

Between the cannabis grow-op and his notoriety as a pill mill owner, Pollock found himself under the surveillance of five separate government agencies.

The feds destroyed the cannabis crop, and pharmacists in San Antonio began to either refuse to fill prescriptions Pollock wrote or charged clients triple to fill them.

Finally, Pollock was brought before the State Board of Medical Examiners after a formal complaint was filed against him in 1980. He allegedly began cutting off prescriptions after the inquiry but had already created a monster. His now dependent clients were not happy at being turned away.

Pollocks Downfall

Trouble was brewing for Pollock. He may have known the names of undercover officers who had obtained prescriptions with essentially no examination.

Pollock's ex-business partner, Forbes, told Morris that Pollock had hired a local pimp, Archie Lee Johnson, to kill each officer for 5000 dollars.

Forbes thought police uncovered the plot and, in turn, assassinated Pollock, who was becoming San Antonio's public enemy number one. Years later, mycologist Paul Stamets also told Morris that Pollock was “assassinated by the police.”

The Times and Democrat, a small paper in South Carolina, reported days after Pollock's death that the motive was robbery. Patrolman John Livingston was quoted:

"The pockets of his blue jeans had been cut open, and the house had been completely gone through. The bed was overturned, pillows cut open, closets emptied on the floor, and his file cabinets opened."

Pollock’s body was found by his girlfriend after he failed to respond to her calls. He had been shot once in the head, 'execution style,' according to the High Times. Pollock's girlfriend also blamed the police for his death.

Nobody has ever been charged with Pollock’s murder.

Controversy & Cover-Up

When Hamilton Morris traveled to San Antonio to try and unravel the mystery, he obtained a tape, allegedly stolen from a police officer's car, of two men talking about Pollock’s murder.

Morris followed the thread, uncovering statements implicating three men whose fingerprints were found on the scene. The men had no alibis, and one failed a polygraph, but the prosecution inexplicably decided to avoid pressing charges.

When Morris sought government documents, he was told the DEA had destroyed the files, and the prosecutor who should have been responsible could not be found. With no documents and no one held accountable, Morris couldn't solve the riddle either. All three accused men walked free into old age.

Pollock died with an estate worth $400,000 dollars, $225,000 of it in cash. What made bigger headlines at the time, though, was Pollock's greenhouse containing 1753 jars of mushrooms and many pounds of sclerotia.

Pollock's father was never able to secure his son's estate from authorities. Pollock had no will — the Texas government absorbed his estate, and his world-class mushroom collection was torched.

Pollocks Legacy

"He lived and died for his mushrooms," Pollock's girlfriend told High Times. Pollock's friends buried him with truffles in his breast pocket and shrooms in each hand. Even the funeral attendees were reported to have taken some of Pollock's magical truffles — which Forbes said was the most potent trip of his life.

While Pollock’s dreams ended abruptly in a tragic and murderous sequence of events — his legacy lives on.

For such a short life, Pollock’s achievements were impressive. He discovered several new mushroom species, developed the now infamous Penis Envy mushroom strain, published numerous papers, and revolutionized magic mushroom cultivation forever.

Pollock's greatest contribution didn't manifest until 2007 when the Netherlands attempted a sweeping ban on magic mushrooms. His beloved philosopher's stones found their true purpose after a new law was introduced that banned the fruiting bodies of magic mushrooms. Pollocks P. tampanensis produced psychedelic sclerotia — which are NOT fruiting bodies. This made them exempt from the specific language included in the new Dutch law.

Magic truffles are still legal because of this loophole 17 years later.

The years Pollock devoted to growing philosopher's stones eventually earned him the recognition he desperately sought while he was alive. Like too many of the world's greatest minds, it all happened a generation too late.

Help Us Grow 🌱

Tripsitter was built by a community of psychedelic advocates — but it’s people like you that allow us to thrive.

If you found this newsletter insightful, share the love ❤️ using the link below.