Amanita muscaria

Amanita muscaria (also known as fly agaric or fly amanita) is a psychoactive mushroom that grows widely in the northern hemisphere. The fly agaric is a large white-gilled, white-spotted, usually red mushroom that is one of the most recognizable and widely encountered in popular culture 🍄. The mushroom is suspected to be the Soma-plant in Vedic religion as it is noted for its hallucinogenic properties, which derive from its primary psychoactive constituents ibotenic acid and muscimol. Muscimol is a potent, selective agonist for the GABAA receptor that produces sedative, depressant and deliriant effects.

Although classified as poisonous, reports of human deaths resulting from its ingestion are extremely rare. After parboiling—which weakens its toxicity and breaks down the mushroom's psychoactive substances—it is eaten in parts of Europe, Asia, and North America.

Toxicity

Since muscimol and ibotenic acid are GABAA agonists, it may be harmful to combine it with other GABAergic depressants such as benzodiazepines or barbiturates. Ibotenic acid is also known to be a neurotoxin, acting via the NMDA receptor and metabotropic glutamate receptor. It is wise to dry amanita muscarias in the oven or purchase pre-dried amanitas to ensure the ibotenic acid concentration is as low as possible.

One of the major dangers of amanita muscaria is misidentifying it as a different species of mushroom. Several other mushrooms in the genus amanita are toxic. One such mushroom, the amanita phalloides, better known as the death cap, contains α-amanitin and β-Amanitin, both of which are extremely potent RNA polymerase II and RNA polymerase III inhibitors which damage virtually every tissue in the body. As the name suggests, the amanita muscaria contains the chemical muscarine, a muscarinic acetylcholine agonist which is known to cause seizures; however, the mushroom contains very low amounts that are highly unlikely to pose any significant harm.

Amanita muscaria mushrooms are not known to be addictive or dependence-forming, and reports even show that desire to redose goes down with usage, though there is no research on this topic.