Yves here. Psychedelics have a very long history in religious ceremonies and more recently in self-discovery. But these mushroom sales have many of the worst aspects of dietary supplement and illegal drug use. You aren’t sure of the potency of what you are getting. Generally, the risk is that you are getting less than what you paid for, but you could wind up with an unexpectedly high dose. And there are risks of contamination and the presences of unwanted and perhaps even dangerous substances.
By Sam Ogozalek. Originally published at Tampa Bay Times
When a hemp dispensary in this Florida city started to stock edibles with certain mushroom extracts last year, state regulators quickly ordered it to stop selling the items.
The shop had been advertising fruit-flavored gummies and other products containing tiny doses of mood-altering chemicals from the mushroom Amanita muscaria. The red-capped, white-spotted fungus — rooted in popular culture through the Super Mario Nintendo game franchise, “The Smurfs,” and “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” — is legal for consumers to possess and eat in every state except Louisiana, according to a review of state laws.
Products with the mushroom’s extracts have cropped up at stores and online retailers from Florida to Minnesota and Nebraska to Pennsylvania. Businesses advertise a milder high compared with psilocybin, the Schedule 1 psychedelic that remains illegal at the national level, to people hoping to ease anxiety, depression, or joint pain.
But federal officials and fungi experts have urged caution, and Florida regulators have clamped down on sales in at least five counties. Some uses of the mushroom and its chemicals have led to serious side effects, including delirium with sleepiness and coma, according to Courtney Rhodes, an FDA spokesperson.
No human clinical trials have evaluated the products’ safety and effectiveness, said Heather Hallen-Adams, a faculty member at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, who researches fungi in food.
Chillum, a hemp dispensary in the Ybor City neighborhood, stopped selling the edibles in December after regulators from the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services ordered it to do so, calling A. muscaria a dangerous ingredient. The shop returned $30,000 worth of merchandise to Psilo Mart, a Las Vegas-area supplier that says it imports the mushroom from Lithuania. The agriculture department, which regulates shops that sell products like hemp vapes, then lifted its restrictions on the dispensary.
Drew Gennuso, president of Psilo Mart, said he hasn’t heard of any “major issues” with the edibles. Chillum’s owner, Carlos Hermida, said he believes the products are safe.
“It’s so mild,” he said of the fungus’s effects. “It’s not anything where you’re going to smell the color purple.”
Hermida recently began selling the products again for between $20 and $55 — but, attempting to avoid another state order, he said Chillum added labels warning they are solely for “educational” or “spiritual” purposes and not human consumption.
Federal officials haven’t approved the fungus and its chemicals to be sold as food additives or to treat medical conditions.
The Tampa case highlights the gaps in oversight of this nascent national market despite concerns from federal officials.
“The companies are moving faster than the research,” said John Michelotti, who heads the medicinal mushrooms committee of the North American Mycological Association and founded Catskill Fungi, an upstate New York business that sells mushroom extracts.
“It’s the wild West.”
The crackdown at Chillum began in October. The Florida agriculture department collected samples of products for lab testing. Returning in December, the agency said a Psilo Mart hemp joint with A. muscaria powder had elevated levels of toxic heavy metals, department records show.
Hermida threw out his inventory of the mushroom joints, he said, and regulators ordered him to stop selling the other fungus products. They cited a state law that says food is “adulterated” if it “bears or contains any poisonous or deleterious substance which may render it injurious to health.”
The gummies with the extracts elicit a feeling of “being high and drunk,” Hermida said, while the capsules cause a “tingly body sensation” and throw off depth perception.
The mushroom is poisonous, though likely not fatal, and can be detoxified in boiling water. Consuming the raw fungus isn’t the same as using low doses of its chemicals, Hermida maintained.
The Florida Poison Information Center in Tampa gets one report a week, on average, of a hallucinogenic mushroom poisoning, but many callers don’t explain what kind they ate, and doctors don’t have a quick way to verify, said Alexandra Funk, its managing director. She said A. muscaria products should be kept away from children.
In the Tampa Bay area, medical examiners haven’t recorded any recent deaths from the mushroom. Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital in St. Petersburg and local AdventHealth emergency rooms haven’t seen poisonings, according to spokespeople. But there appears to be a lack of routine testing for the fungus.
The edibles sold at Chillum appealed to Antwan Towner, a 40-year-old Ybor City magician who said he struggles with anxiety. He eats half a gummy when having a bad day, he said, and it produces euphoria that lasts about four hours, then peace of mind for a week. He said he hasn’t experienced a negative reaction or hallucinations.
“It was never about getting high,” he said. “It was just about trying something that may be effective.”
There’s a “lot of anecdotal evidence” that low doses of the mushroom may be useful therapeutically, said Hallen-Adams, who chairs the toxicology committee of the North American Mycological Association.
But more data is needed to prove if it helps those with various medical conditions or if it’s simply a placebo, she said.
Last year, a Canadian company said an independent group of scientists found that its A. muscaria extract was “generally recognized as safe.”
The Toronto company, Psyched Wellness, conducted preclinical studies on its “Calm” extract, a sleep aid, said CEO Jeffrey Stevens.
Other businesses, Stevens said, haven’t invested in such research. “We have so many cowboys right now who are just saying, ‘Oh, this is a legal psychedelic mushroom, let’s just put product into the market.’”
Since early February, Florida regulators have cited five businesses in Daytona Beach, Largo, Plant City, Tallahassee, and Tamarac for selling merchandise containing A. muscaria, according to state agriculture department records. Because federal officials haven’t approved the mushroom to be used in food, the Florida agency orders businesses to stop selling these products when its inspectors find them, Aaron Keller, a spokesperson for the state agriculture department, wrote in an email.
In this emerging market with many unknowns, Hallen-Adams urged consumers to “be careful if this is something you’re going to experiment with.”
Under Chillum’s new labeling, consuming the edibles it sells is an “abuse of product,” Hermida said.
“If you want to study it, or if you want to pray to it, that’s fine with me.”
42 comments
Comments are closed.
Note that this article is not about the Psilocybe genus but about Amanita muscaria. The active ingredients in Amanita are different from those in Psilocybe.
Amanita:
Amanita muscaria contains several biologically active agents, at least one of which, muscimol, is known to be psychoactive. Ibotenic acid, a neurotoxin, serves as a prodrug to muscimol, with a small amount likely converting to muscimol after ingestion. An active dose in adults is approximately 6 mg muscimol or 30 to 60 mg ibotenic acid;[55][56] this is typically about the amount found in one cap of Amanita muscaria.[57] The amount and ratio of chemical compounds per mushroom varies widely from region to region and season to season, which can further confuse the issue. Spring and summer mushrooms have been reported to contain up to 10 times more ibotenic acid and muscimol than autumn fruitings.
Psilocybe:
The psilocybin molecule is indirectly responsible for the hallucinogenic properties of the Psilocybe. This compound, as well as all other indole alkaloids, are derived from the amino acid tryptophan, being the only amino acid with the indole-amine ring. Tryptophan is converted to tryptamine by decarboxylation.[17] Two methylation steps occur producing DMT, another psychedelic compound.[17] Hydroxylation of this compound produces the more potent hallucinogen psilocin, followed by phosphorylation yielding psilocybin.[17] After ingestion of the psilocybin compound alkaline phosphatases present in the body’s digestive system, kidneys, and possibly in the blood readily cleave the phosphoryl ester bond from psilocybin, yielding the hydroxyl compound, psilocin.[18] Psilocin is the chemical primarily responsible for the hallucinogenic effects of the Psilocybe.
Psilocybin, the active ingredient, is classed as a Schedule III drug. There is no federal regulation of the Amanita mushroom or its ingredients.
I’d experimented, in 1977. My girlfriend came home to find me, trying to find some way to climb over a pencil. I’d fried two caps (AFTER, comparison with 600x spore photos, acquired from Carnegie Library; lethal Amanita phalloides were all about! And I’d recently discovered the toxin was in various Parasols & Galerina, friends thought were psilocybe!) I’d had some convulsions & tried to calm down, pouring a warm bath. Unfortunately, the chrome faucet became a passageway into an alternate universe & I’d left a Dick Cavett interview on in the adjoining room & I’ve never been able to listen to him, ever since? Don’t mess with amanita unless you’re willing to be worried about your liver dissolving, if you’ve made a mistake; while living through a Lewis Carroll hallucination. I’d filled 2 13 gallon garbage bags, right by the Allegheny County Police stables & got on a streetcar, where I ran into an old friend & his new girlfriend. Nobpdy asked about why I was carrying 20lbs of fly ageric mushrooms.
I would have thought Amanita Muscaria was very distinctive and easy to recognize. It looks nothing like a death cap (although as you say, the consequences for getting it wrong are particularly dire).
Two caps sounds like kind of a lot though, let alone the 20lbs (what was the plan there?) How did they taste? Amanita Phalloides is reportedly quite delicious, and doesn’t cause symptoms for 24 hours or so. You also get a fake recovery, right as your liver damage is tipping over into irreversible territory. As Terry Pratchett says, all mushrooms are edible, but some are only edible once.
Amanita Muscaria are common as muck in any case – I’m sure most people would have no difficulty filling two garbage bags. I guess the issue is making them easy to access as over the counter edibles.
Amanita gemmata, flavoconia & a couple others were only cited as “poisonous,” without much more to go on, by way of what toxins they’d pick up from different growth media. These weren’t candy-apple red, so I’d the Carnegie main branch & Pitt’s library. Research, you could stake your life upon was a bit harder to come by? They were every bit as tasty as the one’s Claudius loved. And I’m sure we pealed & parboiled well over 5lbs of the others (& actually DID use the extra skin to bait flies). It’s an Italian neighborhood & the elderly ladies were AMAZED we were INTENTIONALLY trying to be poisoned.
Psilocybin spores can be legally purchased (for research purposes (ahem), and very easily grown (Illegally) if you know the right TEK. I tried it during the pandemic and had a bumper crop on my hands. I soon found out that using is different experience later in life than compared to younger days. Not for me, I’ll stick to reading the Stoics for self-help at this stage of my life.
Although I do have good memories from when I was a young’n.
Helpful info HMP but I’d recommend Erowid as a more reliable source: scientific details for a range of substances, helpful FAQs, as well as individual trip reports from the field. The amanita “vault” has lots of good info. Remember, set & setting is the key when using sacred medicines. Know your source (Lithuania?!) and know thyself.
Perhaps amanita has enough unpleasant effects that it never did, and never will, become popular enough to attract much attention or usage, hence making it not-a-challenge to the Narco-Financial Complex and not a competitor for its customer base, hence not worth the authorities’ time.
The Netflix series on psychedelics called “How to Change Your Mind” by Michael Pollan is worth watching in my opinion. Especially the episode on psilocybin.
I am one of those unwashed hippies who think the therapeutic benefits of psychedelics have been held back from the population because they threaten the profits of Big Pharma.
Agreed. Another reason they were held back, I believe, is that the powers that be did not and do not want the general population “waking up” in the profound ways that psychedelics can wake one up.
I read the book of the same name by Michael Pollen. Very informative. I agree completely that the govt. is protecting Big Pharma. They’re quick to raid stores selling alternative stuff but not on the ball when Pharmaceuticals cause severe side effects or even death.
Protecting Big Government and B A U – The American Way(tm) as well.
THE definitive books on the subject of hallucinogenics are Pihkal and Tihkal by Anne and Alexander Shulgin. Both are very easily available. They contain detailed syntheses that any competent organic chemist can follow, plus detailed subjective descriptions of the psychedelic effects (if any).
They can’t bust you if they don’t know what they found.
Amanita at those very low doses probably isn’t going to make you hallucinate, but at high doses it will pack a whollop. If you want to avoid the gastrointestinal downsides of amanita consumption the traditional method is to feed them to reindeer and then drink the reindeer urine. This may not be applicable in all situations and your mileage may vary. Reconsumption via human urine is also a time-honored tradition.
These kinds of issues are becoming more and more common. It appears that DEA is no looking at criminalizing Delta 8 THC, a cannabinoid that doesn’t really exist (at least not in measurable quantities) in the cannabis plant. But it can be synthesized from cannabis biomass via conversion. Even better, “hemp” works just fine as the feedstock and hemp is fully legal.
Ah, er… eat the reindeer liver. With fava beans, & a nice Chianti? But, the whole pass-the-pot thing, we’d no reason to try. These were HUGE & the weather dry, so I’d tried what I thought a minimal dose. Go, figure! Valentina Pavlovna Wasson’s FAULT (Tina was wife of JP Morgan’s PR head, or some damn thing? She died very young). I’m thinking, I still went to work that evening. Cycled, though!
https://chacruna.net/dr-valentina-wasson-and-getting-our-stories-right/
I would like to nominate this thread funniest of the year (so far) for its commentary.
Husband would pay cash money and give his left testicle to consume amanita, then watch me drink his urine. I would give twice as much of his money and his right testicle to watch him drink mine. We’re not talking about a sip here, right? A full eight ounce glass?! (Vision blurry… laughing so hard)
Too long a story & litigious (I’m no longer living with this tragically hip, sardonic & witty woman). She knew my plans. Grimaced, as I “verified” a sample (micrography books had pretty sexy PEN & INK renderings & NO differentiations as to what constituted “poisonous,” back then: an interesting psychedelic afternoon, or dissolving your frigging LIVER?) She’d gotten a BS Bipolar1 diagnosis, due to race? But she certainly wasn’t interested in my experiment with a toadstool we’d been taught would kill you DEAD? So I’d recruited a warrant officer USN submariner (mentioned here previously) as having used LSD-25 while operating trajectory computers on a sub off China, before the upcoming Zumwalt Navy debacle? We’d tried pretty much everything Hunter, Schultes & the Shulgins wrote about; milking DMT from sensitive plants, lycergic acid from Convolvulaceae & opioids from European poison lettuce in my mom’s front yard beneath the grafted hops vines & Papaver somniferum.
Rogan and Andrew Weil talking LSD. utube. ~2+ minutes.
Dr Andrew Weil on LSD | Joe Rogan Experience
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9YgWwX4U6Q
Apt description (even if it sounds like something out of Big Bang Theory!) Be ABSOLUTELY SURE of the identity of ANY mushroom, and do NOT mess with ANY Amanita (there’s a pretty spectacular edible, as well) without an expert. Or read Graves’ “Claudius the God and His Wife, Messalina?”
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fyti9Nj5tKI
Or read Alice in Wonderland. One bite makes you larger and one bite make you small. Never thought of Lewis Carroll, (the pen name of Lewis Dodgson), a mathematics don at Oxford, as an imbiber, but who knows? / ;)
I thought that was Grace Slick…Sorry, I’ll slink off to the corner now.
Good thread, though. When I was a student at the current Two-Time National Champion, a long time ago, several acquaintances were accosted by the University Police while looking for those special mushrooms in the pasture of the Ag School farm in the middle of the night. They also thought you could tip over a cow in the same pasture. I always figured they simply used too much Maui Wowie.
Do yourself a favor and stay away from any of these prepared products. I’d also be wary of imported “wild” mushrooms. See the story about possible poisoning from imported morels. At least stick to whole mushrooms. Fresh or dried, you can key them out and confirm ID to a point.
As others have pointed out, some of these mushrooms are really easy to grow yourself so you know what you have.
I was always told that site conditions can have a strong influence on the levels of the various compounds mushrooms produce. Combined with poorly understood species complexes and hybridization, you really need to do your research before eating. Amanitas were often specifically mentioned in this regard.
There are old mushroom hunters and bold mushroom hunters, but no old and bold mushroom hunters.
https://www.bozemandailychronicle.com/news/business/daves-sushi-food-poisoning-outbreak-sickens-30-morel-mushrooms-possible-culprit/article_f1c6e440-e9d0-11ed-b524-7fecf5a5d9eb.html
In area where I live, it is hard to spot edible mushroom in the forest, but they may be surprisingly abundant on the lawns of apartment complexes. I visited a couple from Poland to pick my child (who played with their children) and I got a delicious portion of mushroom fried in butter of the kind that is very appreciated in Poland. Driving home I almost got convulsion from stomach ache which went away after I drank very quickly ca full gallon of water which spilled back full content of the stomach. Different continent, different climate — identically looking mushroom contain different chemicals (or concentrations).
When I swapped this story with a Czech woman sometime later, she told me of similar experience in Georgia: with her sister she picked what should be the safest kind of mushroom, the kin of the normal store mushroom. And they got hallucinations. Perhaps amanitas from Lithuania are too potent, or have yet another ingredient.
See R. Gordon Wasson “Soma, The Magic Mushroom of Immortality.” Amanita Muscaria is popularly known (and literally translated) as “Fly Agaric,” because flies are stupified by contact with it. It was also called Fly-Lord or Baal Zevuv. The Jewish revolutionary Y’shua Bar Abbas (“Jesus”) used it to perform healings and consequently was accused by the Priests of driving out demons by means of the greatest demon, Baal-Zevuv (“Beelzebub”).
I don’t quite remember where I learned this, sorry, but it is likely not correct that amanita muscaria is the hallucinogen mana in the bible. It is likely good ol’ psilocybin containing shrooms that is mana. Much more likely to be found in those regions and also likely trafficked from India where there is no question of its presence and use. An english chap, Tibetan buddhist, wrote a book on the subject of hallucinogens being consumed in buddhist (Tibetan) rituals and the elaborate concealment of this fact. Listened to the man on podcast sometime ago, but I don’t recall the name. I believe that may be the source refuting Fly Agaric as mana.
I can’t believe people are taking Amanita and it’s for sale in weed shops over there. It’s an invitation to disaster. Look at some of the “train wreck” stories on Erowid for the lowdown. Jeez Louise America is getting weirder every day.
Btw, I tried some Delta 8 when I was over there in January. For sale legally where the real thing remains illegal. Like someone made the jittery bad part of a weed high into a thing that you can take on its own. 1 1/2 gummies lasted an uncomfortable 12 hours. Ymmv.
I was with Owsley at Woodstock. He’d made and brought 13,000 hits of Psilocybin and about the same of LSD tabs. Your story is not about these drugs so much as about the rouge mercantile class selling whatever it is they want to profit from.
Me. Early dawn in a cow pasture picking mushrooms, eating the first one.. Nature-to-man. Fifty years later I’m showing no symptoms. Get it from a gentle genius like Owsely or straight from Mom-and-Pop Nature. Or not. But certainly not from people with $ signs for eyes and little for ethics.
We got ourselves a bold and old hunter. Answer to a top comment about bold hunters and old hunters. Not everyone is confident and risk taker like. Love your bravery for these power ‘herb,
Amanita gummies do kinda sound like something, we’d have been laughed at or accused of exaggerating the stereotypical avarice of our yuppie acquaintances for even imaging? Synthetic Delta 9 THC from GE yeasts & bacilli would’ve seemed tin hat scifi knee-jerk “anti-capitalist” conspiracy theory. What, after all, would be the point? Dope’s a WEED, you can hybridize clones & get a whole panoply of somatic & highs, from buds you could optimize with LED lights, indoors or plant outdoors, legally! Mushrooms, I foraged for flavor & health. I’m hoping to pick Psilocybe baeocystis legally, soon & do DMT & MDMA with friends & as an adjunct to therapy. But WHO would get ANY advice about DOPE from some asshole in the Atlantic, libertarian PR shill or THIS criminal government’s licensed dispensary for boomer yuppies? Do NOT trust metasearch or social networking platforms about ANY commodity you can grow or pick, yourself!
Man this title had me thinking it was about Psylocibin, which it totally is not.
Just buy local, mushrooms are not expensive, and you know what you are getting. Hell, most people will have taken them personally so you can ask about potency and expected length.
Remember: Set and Setting. Enjoy!
+1000 to the two above comments.
I suppose everyone knows about the connection of Santa Claus with the Amanita Muscaria mushroom.
https://www.magicmushrooms101.com/santa-claus-mushroom/
and the Catholic Church’ Cardinals/
several such rabbitholes around all that to get lost in.
I personally would not eat an Amanita Muscaria, If I’m going to eat a mushroom would rather take psyilocybin. But I find it interesting that there are so many legal drugs with dangerous side effects while TBTP are concerned with mushrooms.
TPTB were very afraid that widespread use of plant-based and fungus-based psychedelics might lead millions of people toward a Better Green HippieCulture and they wanted to prevent that from happening. Not that it necessarily would have happened, but they were afraid it might.
And millions of people walking through the Hippie Perception Doors would be forever unavailable as customers for TPTB’s own opiates and cocaine and more recently meth. The “hippies” were very against using the Government’s own Deep State Narcotics.
” Remember kids, CIA drugs are a government tool. If you use CIA drugs , that makes you a government tool. Don’t be a government tool. Just say no to CIA drugs.”
I’ve tried amanita mascaria once – it was delicious- the flesh was like crabmeat or even scallops and the red jelly surface was almost like candy or sweet aspic. Can’t say if I damaged my liver but the psychoactive effects were mild, sort of a minor dissociation from the body – “whose hands are those way down there on the steering wheel”……
As to psilocybin, it’s a whole nother experience, very deep, moss glowed glimmering green and I was singing to trees and generally enjoying the mushroom enjoying being human. Seriously, I believe in partaking you are welcoming the ancient mushroom spirit into your body and mind and it is an intense wisdom experience.
As others have noted, psilocybes grow wild on wood chips all over, better to consume these than some stropharia grown in someone’s basement, but be careful! I pick azurescens wild in the fall and they are nice and mellow and even a small dose has a salutary effect. You can also obtain spawn easily on the internet or from a disciple of paul stamets and then grow them out on alder chips. For special occasions, not regular use except in micro doses – and do have a trusted guide and be in a good place emotionally as bad trips are possible.
For my part I just wonder about a society that is very concerned about therapeutic mushroom use in a clinical setting versus the complete unconcern about the mental health crisis and deaths of despair in this country. I don’t think the PTB are in any way worried about my “safety” when they let a fentanyl epidemic run rampant for years and years and years until doing something about it — and only then because the epidemic was costing cities and states a bundle. I intend to undergo psilocybin/ketamine therapy in the next year or so because nothing else is really working.
Here is something I suspect would be best left unwatched if you had a head full of mushroom.
From the nextfuckinglevel subreddit, ” Cutting onions like a pro”.
https://www.reddit.com/r/nextfuckinglevel/comments/13x2amk/cutting_onions_like_a_pro/
Thanks for the slightly obscure piece Yves
Wow. From outside the US we foreigners really look on you with bewilderment, the way cannabis has become a legal multi billion dollar industry. Seemingly so socially acceptable. And amanita is not scheduled?! I am just so surprised. Why not?
Master backwoods herbalist Matthew Wood (US) says milk thistle is the herb to treat toxicity of the liver from mushroom ingestion. It literally regenerates liver tissue. He had a case of a patient in the throes of mushroom poisoning (death cap or amanita I can’t recall, but the anecdote is online) and milk thistle seeds were all that was available. He got as many down the patients throat as he could and in a short period symptoms were abating and they made a full recovery.
NB Perganum Harmala aka Syrian Rue, is the plant most suspected to be ‘soma’
I was always too afraid to try mushrooms or any other psychedelic. Maybe mushrooms some day.
Someone I once knew told me that someone he knew at the time claimed to smoke small amounts of Jimson Weed ( datura) leaves to beneficial effect with no insanity risk. Has anyone else ever heard of this? I have never tried it, so I couldn’t possibly know.
The one self-improvement drug-source I used for a while was cannabis. I never had a bad experience. I had some mediocre experiences and some really good experiences. A good experience with a residual brain-expanded memory is the following . . . . I had eaten some cannabis brownie from I don’t remember where and later that night I was walking around on our University’s central campus and I stopped to look up at the mercury-vapor-streetlight-lit branches of the big elm trees in earliest spring bud-open, blowing around slowly in light breeze. And suddenly they “looked like” various fixed-position undersea creatures . . bryozoans and such . . . filter-feeding food out of the ” sea currents”. I could ” see” the invisible food-filter feathery extensions reaching out beyond the visible twigs and branches. The atmosphere seemed like a gas ocean, and the trees were rooted to the sky floor, filtering food out of the gas-ocean atmosphere above us both. I still remember the feeling and can still “perceive” the gas ocean, the skyfloor, etc.
I’m highly amused that our government claims that Amanita, which has been consumed by Siberian tribespeople for centuries or maybe thousands of years, is “untested.” I’ve heard/seen very mixed reports about it, from the shamanic tales of its original users to a lot of “not much there” reports from American psychedelic users. A friend of mine took some once, and I was not impressed with its effects on him. It was kind of like cocaine, it seemed: he thought he was really cool, but to me he was just a bit more annoying than he’d ever been before. (He was one of those friends who are sometimes annoying.) It has been described as a “deleriant” rather than a psychedelic.
To me, the notion of putting it in “gummies” is bizarre. There has been no organized research on non-shamanic use of muscaria, and I would think a company that was selling it would owe it to its customers to know what it’s selling well enough to offer some guidelines–but then, it’s not patentable, so there’s no money for research, except maybe for the prohibitionists to prove that it’s dangerous and ban it.
Sometimes I wish we could arrange it so that all these substances were legal to grow, possess, and share, but not to sell. But we live in a commercial culture, so commerce is what we get. I’ll pass on a. muscaria gummies and joints, thanks.
Re some of the reports above: I think “the placebo effect” should not be discounted.
“…federal officials have not approved the use of the mushroom as food.” I didn’t know you needed government approval to use something as food. When did that happen?