All About Amanitas

We love Amanitas. Let's just get that out of the way. They are beautiful, first off. Secondly, they're shrouded in mythology, legends, lies and magic. Everywhere on the internet, is loudly and boldly proclaimed that this is a highly toxic and poisonous mushroom. Yes by some accounts there have been no deaths due to Amanita poisonings in the last 100 years and by other accounts there has been one death, but that's debatable. No other mushroom species can make these claims to fame. 

Let's look at the the Santa Clause story. Ever notice how Santa is red, well thats no coincidence. Siberian shamans are called santa and they used to drink reindeer urine, and the reindeer fed on Amanitas. What happens is fresh Amanitas contain muscarine, muscimol and ibotenic acid, and the heat of the body rapidly turns ibotenic acid into muscimol. Muscimol is responsible for all the psychoactive effects and ibotenic acid is responsible for the gastrointestinal unpleasantries. Muscimol is a potent and effective GABA agonist. Other GABA agonists include benzodiazepines and alcohol. While there's a large percentage of ibotenic acid in fresh amanitas, the act of the reindeer eating the fresh mushrooms would convert the ibotenic acid to muscimol which would be excreted by the reindeer in its urine. Upon drinking the reindeer urine the shamans would get visions from the psychotropic effects of the muscimol. One of the more notable psychotropic effects that its produces is making close range items appear huge and far away seem really tiny so when reindeer would approach a shaman, or santa, under the effects of muscimol, the rapid illusion of them changing in size from tiny to large would make them seem like they were flying. Hence the flying reindeer part of the santa mythology. The mythology is pretty sweet, huh? We think so.  

Quite possibly my favorite claim is that Viking berserkers would consume Amanita Pantherina before going into battle to induce their legendary rage. Even though that one is hotly contested in various academic circles, I like it nonetheless. 

In his book, Soma: Divine Mushroom of Immortality, Gordon Wasson claims muscaria was the sacred plant used in religious rituals ancient India. Wasson also claims that the Koryaks, a nomadic Lapland people who herd reindeer, had shamans that would eat the amanitas and people would drink their urine to get the psychotropic effects of the converted muscimol, which matches somewhat with the Santa mythology and also jives with what we know about the pharmacology of the mushroom.  

Its worthy to note that amanitas can be detoxified by boiling twice and straining the water off before cooking the mushroom. The claims are that this is a particular delicacy in certain regions of Asia.  

Sadly, the FDA and DEA specifically prohibit us from suggesting that any human should simply take about a  half of an ounce of cured and dried Amanita Muscaria, or one gram of cured and Amanita Pantherina. However in various circles we have overheard fantastical tales of individuals that have done similar things and went on mind-bending and life changing journeys. We've even heard a tale or two of certain creative types microdosing the amanita. We are specifically prohibited from suggesting that a person embark on such a journey. But from what can be surmised, it certainly does seem like an incredibly interesting journey to take. 

It's been said that the effects of muscimol intoxication vary from person to person and can be anywhere from a drunk like experience to that of a  sort of hallucination. We say sort of because true hallucinations are created by the brain from stuff that's random while muscimol seems to draw on mnemonic devices that the brain uses when creating dreams, in other words its infusing reality into what's happening in your dream like state, which probably is the reasons why shamans like it: you got personably related visions that foretold of the future or helped explain the past rather than just hallucinations. I read it somewhere and i don't have that footnote anymore but I have the quote "The disorganized inputs are structured by deriving information from mnemonic engrams to which the access is facilitated either by disinhibition by the 'normal' pathways, or by the opening of some alternative ones. " 🤔  We'll just stick  with it's a different sort of experience altogether and nothing like typical experiences of the classic "magic" mushrooms. 

Enough of that, let's get taxonomical for a minute. Amanita is one of the more charismatic genera of gilled mushrooms . Amanitas have a distinctive set of features: white spores, a universal veil and a partial veil. Amanita muscaria is an iconic mushroom featuring a red cap with white spots. Amanita species produce mushrooms with free gills. That is, the gills do not touch the stipe. One feature that all Amanita species share is that they produce a white spore print. Another common feature of Amanita species is that they are mycorrhizal. Mycorrhizal fungi associate with plant roots, where they exchange nutrients from the soil for sugars the plant produced through photosynthesis. As a result, amanitas are almost always found under trees. Most Amanita species stick to certain types of trees, but they also tend to be flexible in their choice of hosts. Amanitas belong to the core group of agarics (Agaricales). They share the family Amanitaceae with the genus Limacella. Amanita is a highly diverse genus, probably containing over a thousand species. Consequently, mycologists divided the genus into two subgenera, each with multiple sections: Amanita subgenus Amanita (spores inamyloid) and Amanita subgenus Lepidella (spores amyloid). The type species of Amanita section Amanita is Amanita muscaria. Amanita muscaria subspecies flavivolvata is the common, bright red fly agaric of North and Central America.