I promised to dive deeper into Amanita muscaria, "The Fly Agaric" - so here it is. I have said before, that in recent years, this mushroom,

Which in the past was mostly known to reindeer and Siberian shamans (and I'll go back to the Siberian shamans at the end of the post), has become some kind of popular. There is a whole scene around the mushroom and, as is today's wont - it has shown itself on the catwalk of the fashion show called "microdosing" (another topic for which I will have to hastily sign a BIG honestly-meant and rightly-deserved rain check). I am personally, extremely interested in mushrooms. Mushrooms in general - and not just magic mushrooms - I find the entire Kingdom of Fungi Fascinating! In British Columbia, there are approximately 200 days of rain a year, and there is a serious mushroom-picking scene. I like to go out picking mushrooms.

The thing is that I also like sleeping in, so many times when I arrive at one of the local mushroom club's recommended locations, I find that I am late to the scene and there is nothing left to gather - except for a LOT of Amanita muscaria. I don't like to come back from the woods empty-handed, so I come home with a good amount of plump Amanitas. As a reminder, in a fresh state, it is NOT recommended to eat A. muscaria because along with muscimol (and arguably bufotenine which was claimed to be present in more modest doses than muscimol. see - https://www.drzee.org/.../68625c...), it also contains ibotenic acid, which is NASTY. What I do is place the mushrooms in a dispenser that was originally designed to remove moisture from 3D printing filaments - this thoroughly dries the mushrooms. It is further recommended to boil them after drying and before consuming so as to further get rid of ibotenic acid).

While psilocybin acts on serotonin receptors (which are G protein coupled receptors), the muscimol settles on the 'opening' of ion channels allowing chloride anions to run freely, thus reducing firing potential, and thereby conferring a feeling of 'calm' (yet rendered in a very focused way).

I promised you a strange story about the Amanita Muscaria, so here it comes. This is the first time that the modern era acknowledged this mushroom. The year is 1709 and the Swedes and the Russian Empire are conducting the 'Great Northern War', in the decisive battle in which the Swedish army besieged the city of Poltava and missed the Russian army led by Peter the Great who suddenly appeared. The Swedes were defeated, thousands were killed, and many were taken prisoner. Amongst the Swedish POWs who fell into the hands of the Russian army was also a nobleman and junior officer in the Swedish army by the name of Philip Johan von Strahlenberg. Together with thousands of other Swedish soldiers, von Strahlenberg was sent as a prisoner of war into exile in Siberia. His captivity period lasted 12 years, during which (as an explorer at heart) he began to explore and map the area. He acted like a proto-anthropologist among the Siberian natives, documenting their way of life and learning their language. He even wrote a German-Siberian dictionary. When he finally returned to Sweden, he sat down and wrote his memoirs, which were published in Stockholm in 1730. His memoirs were also translated into English and Spanish and became International Best Sellers. But von Strahlenberg's illustrious biography aside - we're here for the mushrooms, so I'll quickly cuts to one small paragraph from his book which brings us back to our topic with a 'splash': "When they have a feast, they brew the mushroom in hot water, they drink the infusion that puts them in a state of drunkenness. The poor, who cannot afford to buy the mushroom, gather around the huts of the rich and wait for an opportunity. When one of the celebrants goes to pour his water, they will reach out a wooden bowl to him and ask him to urinate into the bowl. They drink this urine with enthusiasm and thus get into a trance themselves."

If this testimony sounds far-fetched to you, then you are not alone. You may be happy to learn that in 1774 a Russian scientific expedition that went out to explore the Kamchatka Peninsula returned with similar descriptions that completely confirmed von Strahlenberg's stories. One of the researchers in the expedition, Georg Wilhelm Steller

Went so far as to say, “The urine seems to be more powerful than the mushroom and its effect May last through the 4th or 5th man.” Throughout the 18th, 19th and into the 20th century, Siberian fly agaric and urine ingestion was reported by more than a score of writers, some of them reputable botanists and anthropologists.[quoted from Jonathan Ott - Pharmacotheon].