Why I Started Bed Stuy Fungi

A while back, I had one of those days that sticks with you.

I had stayed up all night — no sleep, completely drained.
By the next afternoon, I realized I still had something important to do that evening.
I wasn’t just tired — I was spent.
And I knew another coffee or energy shot wasn’t the answer.

A month earlier, almost by accident, I had stashed a mushroom extract in a drawer and forgotten about it.
It wasn’t the usual capsules or powders I had tried before — the ones that never seemed to make much difference unless I took huge doses.
This was a concentrated fruiting body extract — something closer to traditional mushroom medicine, though I didn’t fully appreciate that at the time.

I remembered it, pulled it out, and decided to give it a try.

At first, I didn’t notice much.
There was no jolt. No rush.
But gradually, I realized something was different.

The heavy fatigue, the fog — the feeling of dragging myself through the day — it was just gone.
Not pushed down, not covered up.
Restored.

It was so gentle I almost missed it.
No buzz, no crash.
Just a steady, natural return to feeling like myself again.

That experience stayed with me.

It made me realize two things:
First, that real mushroom extracts — made with care and the right part of the mushroom — could have a genuine, noticeable effect.
And second, that most of what was on the market wasn’t designed to deliver that.

Most of the supplements I had taken before were different — lower potency, often made with mycelium instead of the fruiting body, and produced in ways that made them affordable but not particularly strong.

The extract I stumbled on was effective, but it had its own problem: it wasn’t stable.
In warm weather, it melted into a sticky mess.
It wasn’t something you could rely on every day.

That’s when I decided to figure it out myself.

I didn’t approach it casually.
I became obsessed — studying every piece of information I could find about mushroom extraction, cultivation, and formulation.

I wanted to understand what truly mattered — what made the difference between something you could feel and something that just sounded good on a label.

Instead of powders or unstable forms, I focused on tinctures — more stable, more durable, and capable of holding serious potency if made the right way.

I didn’t start with a business plan.
I started with a simple goal:
Make something real. Something that works.

When I finally made tinctures I trusted, I shared them with friends.
And they noticed the difference too.

That’s how Bed Stuy Fungi began.
Not as a company, but as a response to something real — the simple, quiet power of mushrooms when they’re treated with the respect they deserve.