DOSE:

6.5 g

oral

Amanitas - A. muscaria

(tea)

BODY WEIGHT:

77 kg

Dose: 7.5g. First harvest of the year (location: Germany), spilled some tea due to it boiling up (maybe worth 1g eq., so effective dose perhaps: 6.5g), ate some (about 1/4) of the shroom dregs.

Background & Preparation: Autumn. I recently got to pick a nice amount of amanitas. I like to test different batches which I picked in/at different places and times , to see how they vary and in order to determine proper dosing. So, this was the first 'tasting' of the first (earliest) batch I picked this year. Following my own observations, I assume there may be truth to the hypothesis that early flushes are more potent than later ones, and I continue to test it. I dry them (60°C) in slices and mix up the whole batch to achieve a more homogeneous and predictable mass. I usually have an 'established picking pattern', picking fresher/'younger' small-to-medium sized shrooms, rarely (up to 20%) ones that have fully spread out caps (I very occasionally use those separately for smoking purpose, using only the cap's red skin), so across batches the material is relatively homogeneous as well, so I am quite confident with my dosing, but of course for wild shrooms and different batches there is always variance due to xyz). Anyway, I hadn't used amanitas for almost a year, and was keen to try the new harvest.

Setting: Alone, in my shared house, all my present flatmates are preparing for sleep, no company or disturbance, I'm cooking late, which I enjoy, preparing meals for several days, listening to podcasts and music.

Set: Spent the late afternoon and evening outdoors, slightly tired but calm and well. Looking forward to a nice experience. I ate a few bites after returning home, but my stomach is more empty than full.

Time 0: 23:00 o'clock

-0:45: Made a tea: One-week-old crisp-dried Amanita muscaria chunks, chopped finely, boiled in water for 45 min. Nothing else added.

0: Ingestion.

0:10: I eat a teaspoon of the squeezed dregs.

The tea was delicious, a typical mild savoury broth (no mossy, sour or foul aromas, which some batches have). The dregs' taste is mild, but the sour-bitter after-taste and feeling is very unpleasant (usually both brew and dregs are either nice or they aren't, never noticed such a difference).

0:15: Dizziness, drowsiness, stomach discomfort and slight visual changes (shaky focus, narrowing field of view, no noticeable pupil dilation) set in.

0:30 To relieve my stomach I drink a mug of fresh lemon balm and birch polypore tea. I feel very weary, have to sit down and struggle to do the cooking, the tea helped a bit.

1:00: The stomach irritations slowly subside and I become more alert and clear.

1:20 I experience a (for me) very typical low-to-mid-dose amanita high, no discomfort left:
1) I am alert and physically active,
2) I enjoy music a lot, and have a very strong urge to swing and dance to it. This is the most enjoyable part for me. The sensation of sound itself is hardly different from being sober though at this dose, as is my vision.
3) The peculiar mental state: I feel slightly dull, and zoned-out, but at the same time very focussed and quick. I act and do things in a very determined manner without much laziness, hesitation or generally thought, but slightly careless (cf. Alcohol similarities). I feel like routine actions and intentions are performed smoothly, almost robotically and my consciousness is a bit detached from it. This is always very noticeable and interesting to observe. To put it into a metaphor, I become a “mindful zombie”.

3:00 Done cooking, the meal is nice. Immediate effects have already disappeared, the peak experience was relatively short, only about 1 to 1 ½ hours.

4:00 Go to bed, easily fall asleep.

Effects on the dream state:
I have used Amanita specifically as a dream substance before, but as I usually take it in the evening, this is a natural side effect of those trips. This time, I only recall the latest dream scenes just before waking up. It was unusually long, coherent and quite naturalistic, not lucid though (as some people know and research seems to suggest, generally dreams tend to become more bizarre in later sleep phases). E.g. I recall an extent of clarity and coherence of feelings in the dream, which I rarely have when dreaming sober, even when lucid. This includes particularly touch (feeling of water, feeling of pressure by objects and textiles) and sound (I clearly heard and identified a familiar, but melody altered in a particular way for what would be ca. 20 s or more straight in the dream). It was a beautiful dream.

10:30 Awoke just before my timer. I feel well rested and fit despite the late and somewhat short sleep. No other after-effects.

Note about after-effects: If I get a headache during or after the trip (or other effects linked to the nervous system), based on personal observation I assume this may be a sign of ibotenic acid intoxication due to improper preparation (not dried and/or cooked long and well enough!).

Resume: Quite a typical and overall pleasant low-to-mid-dose trip for me. The nausea in the beginning was unusually strong, despite the tea's taste being quite nice, likely due to eating dregs (which I do most of the time - I sometimes even prepare whole bits for noodle soups), but went away completely after a while.

The immediate effects were noticeable, but not overly intense, for effectively (considering spilling and residue) 6.5g ingested as tea, this batch seems to be pretty potent but not extremely potent. A normal/expected potency and reaction overall. The same goes for the moderate (compared to other substances, but overall mild) effects on sleep and dreaming.

Exp Year: 2022	ExpID: 116749
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 29
Published: Oct 25, 2022	Views: 4,292
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Amanitas - A. muscaria (70) : Preparation / Recipes (30), General (1), Alone (16)