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A Man Eat A... Must Scare Ya

Amanitas - A. muscaria

by dead man walking

Citation:   dead man walking. "A Man Eat A... Must Scare Ya: An Experience with Amanitas - A. muscaria (ID 20070)". Erowid.org. Dec 22, 2004. erowid.org/exp/20070

It’s been about 10 years since my last psychedelic experience. My interests lately have been in ancient cultures and religions, and in reading the Rig Veda, an ancient religious text originally written in Sanskrit, I came across the plant/drug called Soma. There are loads of sites out there with many different plants suggested as being Soma. Amanita Muscaria seems to be the most popular candidate, although I think this is all based on the opinion of one Mr. Wasson and his research. I decided to find out for myself.

As I said I have had some experience with mind altering substances. I’ve eaten the classic psychedelic mushrooms and had good experiences. The Amanita Muscaria is definitely not at all like anything else I have tried.

I got two 28 gram bags of dried Amanita Muscaria from an internet site. In one bag about half of the caps looked yellow so I decided not to eat them, because I understand that the yellow ones may be of a different and more poisonous variety.

In the interest of caution my first taste was a tiny amount, less than a gram, added to some chamomile tea. Tasted fine, no nausea, effects were so mild that I’m not sure if it was just the pot which I smoked afterwards.

Next day I doubled the dosage, again in tea. Each batch of tea I made by boiling for 15 minutes. Effect seemed a little stronger. This time I added some skullcap, and ephedra. Most reports say the Amanita Muscaria causes excessive sweating, salivating and urinating. Also apparently the drug is lost in the urine (and I am NOT going to drink my piss). I understand that ephedra may lessen these effects. With all this stuff in me, and after smoking some pot, it was again hard to tell if there was any effect from the shrooms. There was a slight euphoria beyond these other substances, however, and the next day I slept much later than usual.

A couple days went by and I decided to take a much larger dose, since the smaller ones had no apparent effect, so last night I put a few grams in the water with a teabag of chamomile for flavor. I drank the tea with sugar and milk (with the milk &sugar it actually tasted pretty good). Each hour for 4 hours I had some more, and finally after 4 hours with nothing but a slightly heightened cannabis high I decided to eat the boiled shrooms. Until now I had only drank the tea.

Another hour and still nothing, aside from some extra spit in my mouth, so I said what the hec, and threw all of what was left, aside from the yellow caps which I did not trust, into the water and boiled it. This was about 30 grams I think. The tea was very strong and one bag of chamomile did not mask the flavor at all. It tasted pretty bad and I added a lot of sugar but no milk this time. I drank one cup, about half of the liquid, but by this time the rest of what I had already taken was starting to kick in.

In another hour or so I was sweating like crazy and salivating to the point where if I didn’t pay attention I would begin to drool. Vision was blurry, but no pleasant hallucinations, just annoying. My mind was racing, jumping in short bursts with no cohesion at all. I found myself mulling over the fact that I had just eaten a bunch of mushrooms that I bought from some internet site that I knew nothing about, and how smelly and nasty they were. I became nauseous. Maybe I was feeling sick and that’s why I was thinking disgusting thoughts, maybe the other way around, who knows. I tried to make myself puke, thinking that I would feel better. I put my finger down my throat but when I retched nothing came up so I decided that it was already in my intestines and puking wouldn’t help.

I tried watching some tv but every channel seemed to be sending me messages that I was dead or dying. I decided that I had been poisoned and that my life was flashing before my eyes. I felt some fear, but luckily because of my past experiences I knew not to let my fear overcome me. I tried very hard to understand the mental images. It came to me that there are many things in my life that I need to fix. I felt that if I did not make a decision to change the direction of my life that I would die. On the other hand if I chose wisely I would have a very happy life and bring much joy to others as well. The two paths were clear before me. I was afraid to go to sleep, because I thought then I would die. I forced myself to relax and ignore the fear.

My fear never became horror because I accepted the truth that was forced on me and immediately chose to make the changes in my life that were indicated. After this decision a great calm and peace came over me, and I felt a sort of joy and gratitude for the “lesson”. The best way to describe my feeling is to say that I was filled with praise to my creator. Physically I still felt horrible though.

I woke this afternoon after sleeping about 11 hours. Today I am groggy and still have the feeling of being a “dead man walking”. Mushroom poisoning, as I have read, can take several days before death ensues. First there’s fever, chills, hallucinations, followed by sleep and a period of 1 or 2 days where the person appears to have recovered. Then coma and death. Aside from mulling over the possibility that I may die in another day or 2, I have had a very calm, peaceful, euphoric feeling all afternoon.

In sum I would say that my experience with a high dosage of Amanita Muscaria was a bit like sitting in front of a mental firing squad. I can understand why some people would have extremely negative reactions, and why others would have extremely positive or spiritual reactions. It certainly helped me that I knew ahead of time that I had some mental baggage to deal with.