Drug info - Fly agric preperation

[MarkJ]

Doe's anyone know the best method too dry fly agarics? because recently swim has been able too get hold of them and wants to be safe when eating them, so anyone got the safest way too dry?

So thanks too all the replys i get

[PingoTango]

From Erowid:

How do I prepare them? You should dry them first so all the ibotenic acid (bad stuff) will turn to muscimol which is what you want. Drying has to be done in a temperature of about 170-200F to make the reaction to happen. If you dry them in an oven leave the door little open to let the steam come out. When the mushrooms are heated they will "sweat" their juice out and you don't want that to happen so pour the semi-dried juice back over the mushrooms and do this as often as needed. When the drying is done you may do what ever you want with this stuff: you may make a meal, boil some tea, eat them like that, extarct the alkaloids or smoke them (that didn't work for me though) , but don't take more than 5g at the first time! The dosage varies lot from a person to a person and the potency of the mushrooms varies too. If you have lot to spare throw away the gills and stems and keep just the skin and the yellowish flesh under the skin, because they are the best parts. All the 3 doses I have taken have been only this good part ... like I said there is no lack of them over here.

One more IMPORTANT THING: The mushrooms may cause nausea which is EASILY handeled with cannabis. I know that MJ is a good anti-nausea medicine, but it's AWESOME with A. muscaria! ALL THE NAUSEA will be gone with just a toke of MJ! This makes also the trip stronger which might not otherwice get strong enough. Here is one of my experiences in a written format. You might have seen it on the net because it has been there for years. Please notice that there is some differences in the preparation and etc. between what I told and what is in the story. This is just because I know more now than back then, so rather trust what I told you above.

[Synesthesiac]

Originally Posted by PingoTango

From Erowid:

They say dont do more than five grams in that quote from erowid, which i would have thought was quite a lot anyway. Wiki says:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amanita_muscaria#Toxicity

About 1 g (0.04 oz) of A. muscaria or 50-100 mg ibotenic acid is considered a toxic dose.

What do they mean by toxic? That this a Dangerous amount? or just enough to feel some psychoactive effects?

[PingoTango]

100mg of ibotenic acid would probably make you quite ill, but not kill you...

...But, by preparing the mushrooms in the way suggested above, the ibotenic acid present will be converted into muscimol, which is far less toxic (and far more hallucinogenic), which is why it's so important to prepare these mushrooms correctly (or buy pre-prepared specimens if SWIY isn't sure).

[Panthers007]

That's why the mushrooms are always dried and toasted - or heated thoroughly - before using. Bongo cuts the caps into 8th's like a pizza - and the stem into 8th's as well. Then allowed to air-dry for a day. Finally heated in a 140F oven for 20 minutes until they are crispy. Then he makes mushroom-soup out of them in water with a little olive-oil to help carry the muscimole into the blood-stream smoothly - lessening any nausea.

[Synesthesiac]

Originally Posted by Panthers007

That's why the mushrooms are always dried and toasted - or heated thoroughly - before using. Bongo cuts the caps into 8th's like a pizza - and the stem into 8th's as well. Then allowed to air-dry for a day. Finally heated in a 140F oven for 20 minutes until they are crispy. Then he makes mushroom-soup out of them in water with a little olive-oil to help carry the muscimole into the blood-stream smoothly - lessening any nausea.

Thanx for the info. My pet monkey is just gonna cook some up (he's a very talented cook.... for a monkey) but he has a couple of questions. People have said that its a good idea to save the juice that comes out of them when putting them in the oven, so he was thinking about instead of using a baking tray just putting five grams or so in a mug, that way any liquid that comes out should stay in contact with the mushrooms until its all dried up.

And he was also wondering if once they've been cooked and prepared if its ok to leave them for a week or so, and he's got some makak monkey friends coming over next week, so he might just cook the whole 28g in one go and save some for then.

[AtomicMushRoom]

hello, didnt swiy ever considered eating fresh mushroom as the pure spirit of the mushroom thing? Well my hedgehog has big respect for the fresh lady, but was just curious about techniques what soma shaman Hawk says he do, to prepare such a fresh one to be easily consumed ...? if he is to be believed. Hedgehog got even more curious into it, after we have seen him in that short bizzare video eating "Amanita Phalloides" - but its hard to id that mushroom from the vid. Whats your opinion?

dont want to be sceptical - but its hard these days.

AtomicMushRoom added 1 Minutes and 46 Seconds later...

[Panthers007]

If the "Pure Spirit" thing, to the hedgehog, includes convulsions and vomiting, by all means - allow your Hedgehog to merrily poison himself. Most people prefer the time-tested safer way to meet the spirit.

[Synesthesiac]

Originally Posted by Synesthesiac

Thanx for the info. My pet monkey is just gonna cook some up (he's a very talented cook.... for a monkey) but he has a couple of questions. People have said that its a good idea to save the juice that comes out of them when putting them in the oven, so he was thinking about instead of using a baking tray just putting five grams or so in a mug, that way any liquid that comes out should stay in contact with the mushrooms until its all dried up.

And he was also wondering if once they've been cooked and prepared if its ok to leave them for a week or so, and he's got some makak monkey friends coming over next week, so he might just cook the whole 28g in one go and save some for then.

Any takers?

[AtomicMushRoom]

Originally Posted by Panthers007

If the "Pure Spirit" thing, to the hedgehog, includes convulsions and vomiting, by all means - allow your Hedgehog to merrily poison himself. Most people prefer the time-tested safer way to meet the spirit.

well i wouldnt allow hedgehog to eat such a thing, until he knows perfectly what is he doing. I just kepp in possiblity, that there may be other time tested-ways, which are not known so well. I dont want to speculate, by any means, just asked.

[Routemaster Flash]

A question about preparation, with more of a technical chemistry aspect to it - which do people's lab animals think is more important in turning the ibotenic acid into muscimol: the heating, or the drying? Because many online teks and descriptions of traditional use are kind of ambiguous on this point. If it's the drying that's most important, one could just leave them in the sun for a couple of days (assuming one has any sunshine...there's a reason people don't come to Britain in October to work on their tans) and not risk destroying the muscimol by over-heating. On the other hand, if all it takes is heat, one wouldn't have to bother drying them at all, just fry them or something - by all accounts they're quite tasty when prepared in this way (its close relative, the non-psychoactive A. rubescens, certainly is).

Just wondering if anyone's monkey had any more info on this topic.

[Synesthesiac]

Originally Posted by Routemaster Flash

A question about preparation, with more of a technical chemistry aspect to it - which do people's lab animals think is more important in turning the ibotenic acid into muscimol: the heating, or the drying? Because many online teks and descriptions of traditional use are kind of ambiguous on this point. If it's the drying that's most important, one could just leave them in the sun for a couple of days (assuming one has any sunshine...there's a reason people don't come to Britain in October to work on their tans) and not risk destroying the muscimol by over-heating. On the other hand, if all it takes is heat, one wouldn't have to bother drying them at all, just fry them or something - by all accounts they're quite tasty when prepared in this way (its close relative, the non-psychoactive A. rubescens, certainly is).

My guess is that if you lost a lot of potency from cooking them that someone would have noticed it by now and it would be well known. Swim does find that you'll never quite get them as dry and crispy as you do when leaving them at 140-160 in the oven for 20-30 minutes or so (as recommended above), so I expect that leaving them out to dry without cooking would always leave some ibotenic acid. Though if properly dried I doubt its much. You can quite easily tell the dryness just by feeling how crispy it is, so swiy could experiment. I would always take the cooking option though, just incase.

And I can answer my above question now; it appears that my monkeys mushrooms were already dry enough to not produce any liquid when placed in the oven, it only decreased from 5.0g to 4.3g too, so not much of anything was lost really. I presume that the liquid only comes out of them after they are freshly picked, these were ordered online so were already very dry and shrivelled.

[Routemaster Flash]

Well SWIM's mushrooms were in the oven last night on a nice low heat (about 70-80 degrees C) when his housemate came home, turned the temp up to about 200C so she could cook her dinner and only noticed SWIM's mushies in there (and took them out, of course) when she went to put her dinner in the oven. So they probably weren't exposed to high temps for all that long, but SWIM is now a little worried about the possibility that the muscimol has been degraded by the heat. Having said that, SWIM's read several accounts of fly agaric use where someone's heated them over an open fire and they've been active, and of course some folks get effects from smoking them, so SWIM is hoping muscimol is fairly heat-hardy.

Panthers, you know your fungi - do you have any technical data on the stability of muscimol with regards to heating? Or does your lab rat have anecdotal evidence on this topic?

Cheers in advance, guys!

Edit: SWIM thinks his housemate had the oven heating up to 190C and muscimol melts (and decomposes) at 175C according to the Merck index, so SWIM may have got away with it considering they were only in there very briefly. We shall see!