Fly agaric

[Mangetout]

I steer completely clear of all Amanitas, even the ones that are listed as safe to eat and are easy to positively identify such as A. fulva - The Tawny Grisette.

I found a load of these in a beech wood in the new forest last autumn, but preferred to return home with an empty basket - probably silly, but I just can’t bring myself to trust them.

[Mangetout]

I should add that I have tasted some of the Amanitas, including some of the deadly ones - because taste is one of the criteria for identification - a very small piece is chewed, tasted and spat out without swallowing, followed by several cycles of rinse and spit with water.

Of course I don’t recommend this to anyone, but it’s not an especially unusual thing to do when identifying fungi.

[CarnalK]

@Mangetout

The book repeatedly stresses the unpredictability of the effect - some people eat them and nothing happens, others experience the psychoactive effects they seek, some die.

I’m really curious about why your book says that some die but that is somewhat at odds with what I found at the NAMA site. I posted in the ATMB thread:
From the NAMA site(warning PDF file):

It is clear that, barring exceptional complications from other medical conditions, these toxins do not lead to death in humans from ingestion of either Amanita muscaria or Amanita pantherina.

Also another article there:

In the very few deaths from Amanita muscaria over the past 100+ years that we have been able to uncover, death has been from indirect causes like hypothermia or aspiration of vomit while in a coma-like sleep and not from direct toxicity. With such a large ingestion it is possible that there was enough muscarine to be a contributing cause (muscarine was first discovered in Amanita muscaria, but it is a trace constituent). Both Marilyn Shaw and I have read extensively on Amanita muscaria, including the rare book Mushrooms, Russia and History by R. Gordon Wasson and Valentina Pavlona Wasson, and we agree with their observation that manita muscaria “inebriates, it does not kill.”

As for our OP I’ll note that in that last article they go on to say :

However, unlike the high from psilocybin and psilocin in some mushrooms, the high from Amanita muscaria is one that few people would want to experience twice. Amanita muscaria is a dangerous and lousy recreational drug. Of the many users of mushrooms whom I have interviewed, only two thought that the experience was one they would ever repeat. There is a very narrow dose-response curve with Amanita muscaria (and Amanita pantherina), and it is quite easy to completely lose muscular coordination and possibly freeze to death if you are out in the cold, or vomit and aspirate your vomit with possibly lethal results. A deep coma-like sleep soon follows any meaningful ingestion.

So doing this without a watcher is probably a bad idea.

[Mangetout]

Hmmm… interesting… Roger Phillips’ website contains more or less the same information as the book - the page for A muscaria is here - but it doesn’t seem to place quite the same emphasis on fatality (it still lists the fungus as deadly poisonous and mentions ‘at least one’ death associated with it, but no details on the manner of death).

[CarnalK]

@Mangetout

Hmmm… interesting… Roger Phillips’ website contains more or less the same information as the book - the page for A muscaria is here - but it doesn’t seem to place quite the same emphasis on fatality (it still lists the fungus as deadly poisonous and mentions ‘at least one’ death associated with it, but no details on the manner of death).

That second article I linked discusses the death of a 26 yr old attributed to the mushroom but they seem to think it’s because the coroner couldn’t find anything else.

[Malthus]

Amanita muscaria isn’t routinely fatal, but every single person I’ve ever heard of who has tried it - either by accident or out of curiousity - has described the experience using words like “horrible”. I presume that muscaria gets its deadly rep from the fact that (a) folks who eat it definitely feel “poisioned”; (b) some users do die, albeit rarely; and © there are some truly deadly amanita species (as in “eat even a little bit and you are taking a risk”).

There are some amanita species which are most definitely fatal. The description of death by amanita phalloides and amanita bisporigera (the sort I understand found around here most commonly) is particularly unpleasant - it basically rots certain internal organs and there is no antidote. These species typically off wild mushroom pickers who are so unwise as to eat mushrooms they do not recognize.

I would not try muscaria for its psychoactive effects. Those that do invariably deeply regret it. I have heard it isn’t quite as bad as taking “loco weed” (datura stramonium), but it is close.