Amanita Muscaria, Fly Agaric Mushroom, History, Legends, Rumors, Research, Health Benefits.
Amanita Muscaria.
This iconic mushroom simultaneously unites and divides the world. It's the famous Christmas present under the tree. It's reindeer flying. It's......not really known if Viking berserkers actually took it. It makes Mario bigger, and is conspicuously famous for inducing macropsia (perceiving objects as enlarged) if too much is consumed.
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Misconceptions about Amanita engulf any instance where it its brought up in public:
“it's a psychedelic” - In practice, it's really not. It is psychoactive, but not psychedelic in the way that all others are. If you're comparing it to psilocybin or lsd, you are already fundamentally misunderstanding this mushroom.
“it's deadly” - It's not. Count Achilles de Vecchj – his is the only death attributed to amanita alone, and it is alleged, that too many were put into a soup, but were likely another species of amanita (which are definitely deadly). We don't even really know which mushrooms were all in the fateful soup. Check out a write-up about him here: https://namyco.org/docs/CountAchilles.pdf
There are sooooooooo many deadly and literally poisonous things in our everyday lives. I have safely used this mushroom for about 10 years.
Having said that, you can find some info about Muscimol on its own, being described as “acutely toxic”. https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/Muscimol . More people are convinced that muscimol has genuine therapeutic value.
“don't even touch it!” - It's fine to touch, you could even kiss one!
“i always kick them down when I see them” - Please don't do this, let nature do it's doing (but obviously if your dog is going to eat one in your fenced in back yard, that'd be a different issue).
“it's safe as long as you scrape the white “warts” off the top” - false, the white “warts” have absolutely nothing to do with the toxicity or psychoactivity of the Amanita mushroom. They are the remnants of a beautiful piece of the mushroom anatomy called the universal veil that tears off of the growing fruiting body that emerges from the ground.
“dude, you have to scrape off the white warts and smoke those” - There is not really any reason to smoking any mushroom is necessary or even historically practice (with surely 1 or 2 presumed exceptions.
“dude, the white pimples on top are strychnine” - No, they are not. Anyone who says that generally doesn't know what strychnine is.
There's even a paper that reports soaking the mushroom in (what? Milk?) to catch flies, didn't even work.
“Vikings use to eat this before going into battle. It is the reason that some Vikings were called Berserkers.” - We definitely do not know that for sure.
“Dude, amanita muscaria was used by both shamans regular people. People would drink the urine of others who had eaten the mushroom as the muscimol is excreted intact.” - This is one actually true believe it or not.
There's a youtube video with 35k views saying that you have to “peel the skin” off the cap to prepare it properly. That is 100%, completely false.
Some people even describe amanita muscaria as tasting horrible. It is in fact delicious. The properly dried caps taste like magical gourmet potato chips with a unique nutty-mushroom-umami flavor that is virtually one-of-a-kind. You can even enjoy them culinarily, but it requires the correct preparation before you go to fry the mushroom. Again, compared to all other mushrooms, I really love this one as a food item probably more than any mushroom besides morels, or maybe they're close but different rivals.
How it is prepared:
I have never, and will never, consume a high dose of amanita muscaria mushroom. High doses are overwhelmingly described as uncomfortable and dysphoric. I usually have about a fifty-cent-coin sized chunk of the dried, intact fungus. This is the rough equivalent of a “micro-dose” for this mushroom. In powder form, I have half to a full tsp. With the tincture, I have half to a full dropper, held under my tongue for as long as possible.
It can be eaten culinarily (and it's DELICIOUS), or, it can consumed medicinally. Many people around the world consume them pickled, but I prefer sauteing them over pickling them so far.
If you have asthma, beware, it is known to act on muscarinic receptors which is said to potentially negatively effect asthma.
The main psychoactive compound found in Amanita is called muscimol.
Muscimol acts on the same areas of the brain (on gaba receptors) as xanax and alcohol.
There are many different species of Amanita, and many of them contain dangerous compounds called Amatoxins. This is not thought to be an issue with amanita muscaria.
Ibotenic acid – people say its' the “more toxic” one (this is the excitatory compound). It's 'considered the pro-drug form of muscimol, meaning that it gets broken down in the body into muscimol. However, you may not know, is that ibotenic acid is used in laboratory settings to induce lesions in the brain. This is why it's important to decarboxylate your amanita before consuming any. This is the compound that is thought to make people really sick. Having said that, this happens via injecting ibotenic acid directly into the brains of rodents, so this can hardly be compared to ingesting properly prepared amanita.
Muscimol acts on the gaba receptors like xanax or alcohol. It is considered a substrate-analog to gaba.
It is listed as being used for treating amnesia, anxiety disorders, ataxia, and ADD with hyperactivity: https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/Muscimol#section=Associated-Disorders-and-Diseases
Like all mushrooms, and wild plants, mushrooms are great at absorbing heavy metals.
Here are some that have been found in amanita: rubidium, cesium, lead (yes, lead), antimony, thallium, barium. These metals were all higher in younger specimens, while potassium was higher in mature specimens.
In addition to eating amanita, or taking it internally, many people make topical preparations for a variety of physical discomforts.
Science:
There's...only so much data available.
On sciencedirect.com , you will retrieve 14,000 results for searching for muscimol, and only 1,800 results for amanita muscaria.
Kevin Feeny, Phd, reports from an observational study about fly agaric mushroom. He reports that some patients no longer felt like they had to use a prescription benzodiazapine. Two patients described using amanita to mitigate withdrawal symptoms from alcohol. Many other patients reported that they felt less depressed, didn't need their ssri, helped them to stop using a sleep aid to fall asleep and they got better quality sleep.
I consider him to be an extremely level headed voice in the amanita muscaria. He is highly knowledgeable, and not selling people anecdotal myths. He's pursuing some interesting work on amanita, and is a proponent of fermenting amanita in order to decarb ibotenic and muscimol. He also believes that the preparation of soma (in the old hindu teachings) is very possibly amanita muscaria.
Research Links, in No Particular Order:
An α-D-galactan and a β-D-glucan from the mushroom Amanita muscaria: Structural characterization and antitumor activity against melanoma
Respectively. GAL-Am and GLC-Am presented a selective proliferation reduction against B16-F10 melanoma cell line, not affecting non tumoral BALB/3T3 fibroblast cell line. Furthermore, both fractions reduced clonogenic capacity of melanoma cell line over an extended period of time. These results were obtained without modulations in B16-F10 cell adhesion, reinforcing the biological activities towards cell proliferation impairment and eliciting these polysaccharides as promising compounds to further exploration of their antimelanoma properties.
Volume 274, 15 November 2021, 118647
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34702466/
Metals in Amanita
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1878614620300209
For a wild read, check out Hamilton Morris's article in Harpers about Amanita Muscaria:
https://harpers.org/archive/2013/08/gaboxadol/
Mannitol in Amanita muscaria – An osmotic blood–brain barrier disruptor enhancing its hallucinogenic action?
A fucomannogalactan (FMG-Am) from Amanita muscaria was structurally characterized.
FMG – α-d-Galp-(1 → 6)-linked, partially substituted at O-2 by α-d-Fucp and β-d-Manp.
A (1 → 3),(1 → 6) β-d-glucan (βGLC-Am) from A. muscaria was structurally characterized.
Both polymers inhibited significantly formalin-induced inflammatory pain.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23932733/
Fucomannogalactan and glucan from mushroom Amanita muscaria: Structure and inflammatory pain inhibition
Volume 98, Issue 1, 15 October 2013, Pages 761-769
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23987410/
Taking advantage of the experience in ethnomedicinal use of mushrooms: Anti-inflammatory and related pharmacological activities of fly agaric (Amanita muscaria) ethanolic extract deserve a modern evaluation
Volume 69, Issue 4, 2007, Pages 946-947
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17329033/
Structure and antitumor activity of a branched (1→3)-β-d-glucan from the alkaline extract of Amanita muscaria
M-ASN exhibited significant antitumor activity against Sarcoma 180 in mice, and a mixture of AM-ASN with mitomycin C was more effective against the tumor than mitomycin C only.
Volume 224, 7 February 1992, Pages 237-243
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/1591764/
Muscimol injection into the substantia nigra but not globus pallidus affects prepulse inhibition and startle reflex.
Neuropharmacology
Volume 162, 1 January 2020, 107796
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0028390819303545
Very low doses of muscimol and baclofen ameliorate cognitive deficits and regulate protein expression in the brain of a rat model of streptozocin-induced Alzheimer's disease
European Journal of Pharmacology
Volume 818, 5 January 2018, Pages 381-399
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0014299917307380
We’ll be adding more links as time goes on!
History:
Stay tuned for the history of amanita muscaria.
Brain Research
Volume 1582, 25 September 2014, Pages 227-236
Anticonvulsant and behavioral effects of muscimol in immature rats
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