Jake Plummer is a dirty hippie (J/K he's trying to save the world one mushroom at a time)

[C-Man 27053]

This was a story I didn't expect to read this afternoon: https://theathletic.com/3509045/2022/08/17/jake-plummer-nfl-denver-broncos-arizona-cardinals/?source=fbhq&fbclid=IwAR37YMoNc9EFRhd3ha2FZGQJCdRuvoKDgWNYeluj5zK3EfXs4OizwBfpbsA

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Jake Plummer wants to live forever

Christopher Kamrani

Aug 17, 2022

FORT LUPTON, Colo. — This black Toyota Corolla rental bounces up and down the dusty pasture road for a while until, finally, Jake Plummer comes into view. He’s standing outside the building that houses what he believes to be the fix to what ails most all human beings. It’s exactly 10 a.m. on a Tuesday on the farm.

The former NFL quarterback’s sparkly purple toenails, barely chipped, glisten in the sun. He has a Rastafarian-colored bracelet with “One Love” woven into it wrapped around his left wrist. Then I’m suddenly in his comforting embrace.

This is how Plummer receives the world. Arms outstretched, wide open.

Forty minutes north of downtown Denver, where cows roam in nearby fields and dogs sprint around chasing tails, Plummer expounds on the magic of mushrooms. Not magic mushrooms, although conversations during our six-hour adventure eventually touch that realm of the fungi kingdom, too. It’s been 15 years now since Plummer decided he no longer wanted nor needed football and instead set out to find answers to various queries of life and existence. Plummer was 32.

We’re standing outside the building still, and the sun is beating down. Plummer points out the fence he put up just the day prior so his colleagues inside the building could bring their dogs to work. One of the puppies, Hutch, has figured out an escape route, tunneling under the fence and running free. Plummer, in his brown flip-flops and rolled-up brown pants with holes across the knees, takes off after him.

Jake the Snake is now in a game of cat-and-mouse with Hutch the pup and eventually calms him down, pets his head and picks him up. Hutch licks the left side of Plummer’s speckled white and brown beard all the way back to the other side of the fence, where Plummer gently sets him down. Hutch wants to keep playing. But we have to go inside. I came here to learn why Plummer believes mushrooms will save the world – and why he wants to live forever.

“The world would be covered in sh– if it weren’t for mushrooms,” Plummer says. “They’re cleaning up the mess we’ve created.”

He pushes the white steel door open, and we’re off.

(Christopher Kamrani / The Athletic)

The main chamber of the MyCOlove Farm is humming. Literally. A machine that helps extract mushroom compounds using ultrasonic noise is in one corner. Some employees are seated around a small square desk responding to emails and planning schedules. It’s slightly pungent, like a musty home that fosters all sorts of the world’s most popular mushrooms. It’s a little dank, pretty earthy, and it’s rightly humid, because it has to be. Plummer asks colleagues Shane Schoolman, Michael Heim and Leo Pollio if it’s OK to take me on a lengthy tour.

They give the greenlight. Del Jolly, who alongside Plummer and former UFC light heavyweight champion Rashad Evans co-created Umbo, a partner company of MyCOlove that sells mushroom bars and other mushroom-based supplements, hands me an Umbo bar. I put it in my right pocket.

For the next hour, Plummer and Jolly whisk me from one steamy room to the next, explaining the process of creating and selling locally grown medicinal, functional and culinary mushrooms. One room holds giant brewing barrels, another necessitates the employees to be decked out in “Breaking Bad”-style laboratory gear.

“It’s chemistry. It’s technology. It’s f—— amazing,” Plummer says.

Some mushrooms, Plummer says, are the perfect antidote to physical and mental issues society is dealing with each day, better than prescription meds, he vows. Fungi friends like Reishi, Turkey Tail, Lion’s Mane and Cordyceps, Plummer says, can help alleviate various maladies such as flare-ups of anxiety, seasonal allergies and digestion issues. Since retiring, Plummer has long been a voice for plant-based alternative medicines. Six years ago he became a high-profile advocate for CBD-related treatment that helped alleviate the pain and depression he battled after he retired. He worked with Charlotte’s Web, a Colorado cannabis-based company, which is where he first met Jolly.

That was all a precursor to the fungi universe, what he now believes is going to be the new, burgeoning medicine movement.

“He’s, like, really passionate about changing the world through the mushroom and the magic of the mushroom itself,” said Nate Jackson, a former teammate of Plummer’s with the Broncos. “People, when they hear mushrooms, they think he’s just doing drugs.”

Plummer said the residual pain from his previous life as a quarterback is more manageable thanks to mushrooms. Joints are less achy. His mind is clearer. He sleeps better. A solid five hours every night, which is enough for him. Plummer retired as a Denver Bronco but rose to acclaim as a fearless, outspoken quarterback during his college days at Arizona State in the mid-1990s. That mettle allowed Plummer to carry the nickname, “Jake the Snake,” in honor of Jake ”The Snake” Roberts, a professional wrestler from the 1980s who achieved his own cult-level following.

As Plummer and Jolly point out the process of mycelium — the root-like structure of all growing fungus — they wonder aloud why as a society we have become so reliant on traditional medicine.

Plummer taps bags early in the stage of growing mushrooms and says there could be any number of treatments to major illnesses hidden deep inside. Mushrooms are not hippie mumbo jumbo, although that’s a preconceived notion Plummer and Jolly have to routinely dispel. They have adaptogenic properties, meaning that they can aid in the body acclimating to stress.

The National Library of Medicine, the world’s largest biomedical library, has research submitted by physicians and scientists all around the globe attesting to the potential impact functional mushrooms can have on various treatments. In 2019, The Guardian explored the topic and cited that mushrooms also contain unusually high amounts of the antioxidants ergothioneine and glutathione, according to a 2017 Penn State study. Antioxidants are known for protecting cells from damage associated with diseases such as cancer, heart disease and Alzheimer’s.

“We’re just letting these things show us what is next in line,” Jolly says.

Once we enter the Reishi room, the home to fungus that is called “the mushroom of immortality,” Plummer starts talking to the fungi that have burst through the biodegradable bags. He believes they can hear him. The relationship between the earth and humans is fractured, Plummer says. He talks to the Reishi like he did Hutch outside. “Hi, baby. Good morning!” Finding a way to normalize an alternative approach to treating issues is as important to him as seeing these businesses thrive.

“I’m going to live a long time. I know it. They’ve told me that. I’m ready for that. I’m not saying this to just sell a f—— product. I’m saying this because I believe it wholeheartedly. Like, why wouldn’t you want to live?” Plummer says. “Some people will say, ‘Man, I don’t want to live that long. I’ll be all beat up.’ I’m not going to be all beat up. When I’m 100, I’m going to be walking around and jumping on trampolines and living my life. Why ever stop?”

While in the last room, Plummer’s body starts to stiffen. He leans heavily onto the metal rack and stretches out his lower back. He drops his butt down toward the floor and bounces back and forth to take pressure off his joints. He presses his palms together. The massive hits on a quarterback never really go away. Plummer starts swatting at some flies that have weaseled their way in through the back door. He’s been researching ways to order Mediterranean geckos online, to allow them to roam freely in this room to eat the flies.

It’s 10:59 a.m. The tour is done. There’s an investor call at 11, so while they huddle outside around a laptop for a Zoom meeting, I sit at the table, unwrap my Umbo bar and bite down. Behind me are the seven chakra prayer flags hung across a shelf.

The mushroom machine hums and hums.

The meeting drags on, and eventually Plummer comes back inside and wants to eat strawberries. It’s almost noon and he’s feeling antsy. There’s work to be done, beyond this interview. We put on plastic gloves and head to the Reishi room to peel off mushrooms ready to be picked from the outside of the bags. The bigger and more vibrant the mushroom the better, so for the next 30 minutes we’re in that room, bringing the mushrooms one step closer to the final process.

Once again, Plummer talks to the mushrooms as if they’re family. He looks deep into the color patterns, from the brown to the beige to the yellow and is as in awe today as he was the first time he appreciated the queen of the fungal kingdom. Just before the COVID-19 pandemic, Jolly gave Plummer some mushroom tinctures from Australia to help his sleep patterns. When the world hit pause, Jolly and Plummer took their kids on mushroom foraging expeditions around the forests of Longmont, Colo., where Jolly lives, examining the base of the cottonwood trees for any potential growths.

“It made me feel like a kid again,” Plummer says.

Once finished, we take our bounty back to the main room, where Plummer flicks on the power to the meat slicer. I get a pair of scissors. We are paring down the big pieces so they can be laid out on a rack and then stuck in the dehydrator.

There we are: myself and Jake Plummer at a small table near the chakra flags harvesting fungi that started in one of those massive brewing barrels weeks prior. Our shirts start to reveal sweat stains, and beads tumble down from our foreheads to our nose, a badge of honor around here.

As I am now on my third refill of my water bottle, I have yet to see Plummer take a single sip of water. He is, after all, built for more arduous circumstances than myself. It’s near 1:30 p.m. now, and we’re hungry. Plummer asks Schoolman, Heim and Pollio what else needs to be done before we split. The more attention Umbo and MyCOlove receive, the more the supply chain is tested. Orders are firing off at a record rate and email inboxes are flooding faster than ever.

As Schoolman is typing away, Plummer rests his hands on his shoulders and massages them. Plummer lives 45 minutes away in Boulder these days, so he checks if he needs to drive in on Wednesday to do his share of the labor. He works out the knots in Schoolman’s shoulders and then eventually slaps his hands together and says we’re off again. One by one, Plummer finds every coworker in the building to thank and hug. And they’re no ordinary hugs. They are tight and meaningful and with purpose.

Plummer is thinking of Mexican food. He is searching his phone for a place to eat. So we eventually head out caravan-style, back over the bumpy pasture road, toward a restaurant in a town nearby, where Plummer is instantly recognized.

Jason, our server at La Estrellita in Brighton, holds out his fist when he sees Plummer weave his way into the booth in our dark corner of the restaurant. They talk as if they’ve known each other for years. When we order a round of waters and ask for chips and salsa, Jason heads to the next table right as the basket of chips and tiny bowl of salsa hit the table. We all reach. Jolly and I ask Plummer how often he’s been here.

“Me? Never. This is my first time,” Plummer says.

Fame is fickle and it is, according to Plummer, exponentially odd at times. Seeing it up close, even with a football retiree like Plummer, it’s clear how much he always has to be on. He arrived in Denver in the years after John Elway led the Broncos to glory twice. A 2006 New York Times story titled “Elway was a God. Plummer? He’s trying” touched on Plummer learning to star in a superstar’s shadow, but also his public bouts with the NFL for refusing to take a decal off his helmet to honor his late friend, Pat Tillman, or the time he flipped off a fan and was fined $5,000. The long hair and the thick beard became a talking point as juxtaposed to Elway looking the exact same forever.

I ask him to define his concept of fame and his relationship to it now 15 years removed from being No. 16.

“I am so much more appreciative of it now,” Plummer says. “Before it wasn’t a burden, but sometimes it was just like … man. When I was in it, I had to be a certain way. You’re in it. If I had the experiences I’ve had the last three years while I was playing, I feel like I could’ve handled a lot of situations better. I just wasn’t there.”

When he left football, Plummer famously left the spotlight and went home to the Sawtooth Mountains in Idaho for a while. He kept plugging away at what it meant to be a different version of himself. It took time. He became a CBD advocate. He became a handball organizer and champion extraordinaire. He transformed, because change is healthy, Plummer says. No sense in staying yourself, this one way, forever.

The help of hallucinogens over the years has also played a significant part in learning to deal with the trauma and mistakes of the past and formulate plans to be more effective. I asked what Plummer learned during those experiences. It’s the only time Plummer, during our six hours together, doesn’t seem like a complete transparent being. Some spiritual anecdotes are better left within.

“It’s hard to go into that too deep other than just I’ve learned that we’re here as one,” he says between bites of chips and dips of salsa. “We’re all on earth. We’re all humans. We are all real similar even though we all look real different. It’s connected me deeper to everything around. To the beauty of life. To the beauty of hanging out with a dog. The beauty of that love. Beauty of hearing the leaves in the trees. It helps your senses get back in touch with what matters most. I can’t even hardly watch TV too much anymore. It’s too noisy. It’s too much. I’d rather go sit outside and watch the sun or watch the clouds pass by. It’s more pure. It makes me feel less attacked. Less stressed. I know what I want to do here on earth.”

Aaron Rodgers, another quarterback known for his idiosyncrasies, recently discussed on the “Aubrey Marcus Podcast” a hallucinogenic experience he had in 2020 while on vacation in Peru. The Packers quarterback contacted Plummer this month.

“Two kindred spirits connecting,” Plummer says. “He’s gotta go out and perform during the season, but the connection has been made.”

Jackson, who like Plummer has been an outspoken proponent of alternative medicines in his post-playing days, sees that this version of Plummer is taking flight, the same as the starting quarterback who finished with 29,253 passing yards and exactly 161 touchdown passes and 161 interceptions during his NFL career.

“Very unswayed and unimpressed by status and money,” Jackson says. “He does make some people uncomfortable with the things he says, and I don’t think he cares anymore.”

Former Broncos tackle George Foster explained his former quarterback succinctly: “I’m pretty sure nobody’s ever like, ‘What’s going on with Jake?’ People who know him know … that’s just Jake.”

I ordered steak and Plummer ordered ground beef, but as soon as the plates are presented he shakes his head. He is excited to eat, but he has handball games in less than 90 minutes and he is going to feel slow. His guts will digest slowly. Plummer doesn’t feel slow on the court after he makes Lion’s Mane mushroom tacos at home. Mother Nature, he said, wants human beings to eat less meat, pointing to the harsh effect livestock have on spiking methane emissions, which is playing a role in expediting climate change.

To evolve, Plummer says, is fundamental because it forces individuals to let go of ego. A sliver of his own reflection will always be the man who commanded a huddle. There is more to him. And there always has been, he says.

“I’m 47, and my plan is to live a long time. I think I can get to the 100-teens. I used to put an end to it, but why are you putting a number on it?” he adds. “Maybe a third of my life is over. Do I want to be remembered as just a football player for the rest of my life? Hell no, man.”

He doesn’t, but he knows the world at large will remember him for his days in a helmet. And the reality is: Football players deal with an abundance of lingering physical issues in their post-playing days. How, then, will he pitch this concept of mushrooms as an alternative? Plummer first and foremost wants his peers to try and commandeer the power of the negativity themselves.

“I know a lot of guys who just attach to the storyline that, ‘I’m doomed with CTE,’ so, how can we stop you from thinking like that? Because if we can really stop you from thinking like that, you don’t have to have it if you don’t want it,” he says. “We can reverse that thinking. Without mushrooms, without anything, with the power of our minds, we can heal ourselves. We can.

“How many times did I walk into the huddle and I can’t feel my right arm? I had 25 seconds to call a play, broke the huddle and 24 seconds later my arm is moving. How is that? I’ve got major power in my brain. All of us do.”

Plummer rolls off the list of functional mushrooms he believes can help and says in the next decade or so, maybe with the help of the mycelium-related research or psilocybin, there could be a plant-based way to battle the symptoms of CTE, a disease that has been found in the brains of more than 320 former NFL players. It can be diagnosed only posthumously.

“I’m not saying CTE doesn’t exist. I’m not saying CTE is nonexistent. But it’s like, why are you going to give some 42-year-old kid a diagnosis of, ‘Oh, yeah, you have all the precursors of CTE.’ What kind of diagnosis is that?” Plummer says. “What’s he going to do with that? Is he going to take the medicine they have and do all this brain laser sh– or is he going to change his life and decide, ‘F— that, I’m not going to have CTE. I’m going to take medicine that works.’”

Plummer says he feels better now at 47 than he did at 40. His back gives him fits still at times. Yoga’s been a game-changer, and he’s recently started classes to become an instructor.

“I still have hard days. I have sh—y days. I have days where I have really bad headaches. That’s just part of it. I got beat up. My body, at times, will tell me and remind me. If I don’t allow it to be debilitating, then I can go about my day and just do what I need,” he says. “That may sound woo-woo a little bit, but there’s a lot more people that believe in that than going to their doctor and believing what he’s doing because he ain’t doing sh–. He sees you for 30 minutes, gives you a pill and says, ‘Good luck, Mister.’ And then you’re back again in a year or less.”

It’s almost 3:30 p.m. now, and Plummer has a bit of a drive ahead of him before he’s back in Boulder for the scheduled handball showdowns with friends at 4:30.

Before we stand up and walk toward the front door, Plummer says the ultimate power is knowing who you are and what you want out of your own reality. It used to be throwing a football. Then it was smacking a handball against a concrete wall. It was standing up for CBD treatment in Colorado. Now Jake Plummer wants to offer an alternative way of living by showcasing how the mushroom can be a preventive measure of one’s health and wellness.

And?

“And it’s OK to be your true, authentic self without fear of judgment from other people,” he says. “Like, I went through a time where I was socially anxious. I would go places and I could not be myself with people watching me. I am over that. I have broken through those moments with deep learnings. Am I afraid of death? No. I’ve been afraid of living. And living is … if you want to get up and dance, then get up and dance.”

We don’t dance, but we get up and head out. I thank Plummer and Jolly for carving out time. They each pull me in for a hug, first Jolly and then Plummer. Plummer is excited for some handball. He interlocks his fingers over his head and reaches for the sky. Then there’s the goodbyes. I walk across the street toward the Corolla and turn back just in time to see shaggy-haired, purple-toe-nailed Jake Plummer — assured by his own conviction mushrooms can save the world — standing outside the Mexican restaurant again.

I see Plummer and Jolly in a big bear hug.

 

[Blotto 23434]

You cant tell me this guy doesn't know more than all those fancy doctor types

 

He was a little inconsistent, but as a Broncos fan, I always liked the guy. Shanahan benching him for that bleeding vag Cuntler was the start of a bleak run in Denver and thats when I knew Shanahan needed to gtfo. Jake might have been on the tail end of his career, but compared to the Cuntler, Orton, Tebow years that followed, he wasn't all that bad.