Any Experiences with Amanitas?

I'd like to get a basic idea of what kind of experiences everyone has had with amanitas. How they were taken? How they were prepared? How many grams? What was the experience like?

Beaudha, tell us your experiences.

Kaqulja ikox, how'd it go with that amanita extract? have you tried it, yet?

I myself, have had many wonderous experiences with Amanitas. Eating them oatmeal, drinking the wine, eating the Manna bread. Most recently however, I've had bronchitis this week. So yesterday, I went ahead and poured off some of wine and drank it. I forgot to mention that Amanitas are also incredibly powerful anti-biotics, anti-viral, and anti-parasitic mushrooms. Being that no plants have an immune system, all green-leafed plants have a symbitotic relationship with fungi, which provide these anti-biotic agents to the plants, in exchange for carbohydrates and fnourishment to grow.

Anyway, I was extemly sick Tuesday, so I drank an ounce of Goldenseal extract throughout the day while drinking some herbal teas that help with allergies and sinus problems. Yesterday, when I wooke up I was feeling somewhat better, but worse at the same time. I had caught the illness in time and didn't let it get worse. To finish off the job, I drank some yesterday, and began feeling better within an hour. When I woke up this morning I felt 90% better, can feel that the infection (bacterial or viral)has been neutralized (not killed, you have to think in terms of chemistry). Today I'm just coughing my lungs up, exuding the infection from my body. I'm trying not to sound gross, but that means all the discolored mucus is being rejected by my body and I'm coughing and sneezing it up.

So, this brings up another interesting fact about the Herb of Immortality. Ressurecting in three days, and having the ability to cure the sick. It's no wonder why the ancients revered this mushroom as a God.

-T Doe

a god indid and i have this extract lying in my drow for a month now without tuching it - a very dempting and yet so irritating. a friend tried it in a dark forest and say that there was exteram molti dimentional efects to it... nothing more.

As for my other experiences with amanita - it happend 1 time out of 3 times only. and the best thing i got from ther is the miror like felling that set upon me ingested it, when the mushroom take you under.. you become it and that meens that you are one with nature as another object on the filed. also higter and lower sides point of view so i was able lo look at our sitting place from above and below if i was getting to sucked in to it it was taking me low but sharping on this was the fly of my life and i was at the side of the forest as well.

better now then never!! are you feeling better now?? : ))

Bom!

hmm... my experiences?

so far all my experiences have been pretty tame... however wide ranging. of course, I've had the good fortune to receive quality guidance on how one should go about using AM. also, so far I've gotten nothing but the best AM, already dried, from some very high quality vendors. so at least, although I've never had the opportunity to hunt AM in the wild, I have been blessed with the knowledge that what I do get is from a trusted source.

Having tried almost every other trip out there I was of course curious about the AM which, for whatever reason, seemed to be some kind of unconscious or unrecognized icon within our culture. but, like most other trips... it seemed to land on my doorstep quite unexpectedly - almost as though it had been seeking communion with me as much as I with it!

So... upon the advice of a trusted elder I began taking the AM in gradually stepped dosages. this helped to acclimate my body to the experience that was taking place and to help me judge what, if any, the ill effects might be - for this reason alone I ~HIGHLY~ recommend those considering AM use to give some thought to the most responsible and mindful approach! I was also advised to eliminate all carbonated beverages from my diet prior to and while on AM.

I started with a 4-6 gram dose of powdered AM in a glass of water. the effects were mild and mostly uneventful. there was a bit drowsiness that took hold shortly after drinking... this made way into a short hypnotgogic meditation/daydream where... when I did open my eyes the patters of things seemed much more pronounced and the colors enhanced.

on my next dose of 6-8 grams I powdered and added to oatmeal. this time the effects were not quite as strong for me. I also felt a strange effect of my core temperature rising to such and extent that I began to sweet and salivate. because this took much of my attention away from any inebriating effects I felt this experience was less enjoyable.

from this point forward the more I took the more I experienced this somewhat unpleasant effect... there was one exception when I took I think about a 12-14 gram dose and felt light, lucid and mildly euphoric with very little of the ill effects. but other than that I was, more often than not, having unexpectedly low rated trips.

I was feeling a bit daunted having such underrated experiences with such an iconic figure... and just as I was thinking "what gives" I was given a small dose of wine to drink. again the first dose was small... little more than a few fluid ounces. the effects were minimal although I was able to tune into the experience enough to recognize it as more than placebo. but the effect disappeared almost immediately after urinating.

a few days later I got to try a little more and was impressed to find all the same euphoric effects I had touched on before... yet, no tension, salivation or sweating!

I continued with the occasional wine experience until one auspicious night I had the good fortune to attend a party where both the wine and bread where in great abundance. finally I could see the full extent of what the AM spirit was capable of... and it did not let me down!

first let me remark that the bread was one of the most fantastic things... so sweet and supple. not the slightest bit of unpleasantness!

that night I drank and ate to my hearts content and became very intoxicated - although, maybe intoxicated is not the right word. it was like no other intoxication I've felt before. my cheeks felt rosy and full from having smiled so much that night. I felt a bit unbalanced but not dizzy or "drunk". in fact, on old friend of mine, who I hadn't seen in years, had attended the party and tried wine for the very first time (even before ever having tried AM at all) and he described the feeling as being drunk without the negatives. it was almost the same high euphoria without the loss of reasoning, perception and basic motor skills.

the most memorable experience I have from that night was sitting around the fire with 15 or so people, most of which I had not formally met, and feeling completely at one the fire, the people and everything else in my environment as well. when I closed my eyes it was like I could still see everyone and everything going on around me just as vivid as with my eyes open (maybe even more so?) but it was like looking into a water color painting. it was as if I was in the middle a multidimensional animated water color world. and when people would walk by or something of interest would happen I would peek my eyes open just to make sure what I was seeing the water color world matched with what was really happening around me... and it never failed that when I would open my eyes everyone was exactly positioned as I expected them to be... right where my close eyed perception watched them go! this was truly unbelievable and so I found myself playing with this extrasensory perception almost all night.

but the best part is still... no hang over! better yet... there was something I could only call an "afterglow" effect that hung around with me all the next day... every time I drank a glass of water it was as if I had drank another glass of wine! of course, every time I used the restroom the feeling faded again until by the end of the day there was no more.

now today, after learning to brew my own wine, I have recognized that even a small quantity of wine can be stretched for days... it's no wonder this was so exciting to our ancestors who originally discovered such an amazing "herb". and best of all... from all that I've heard, read and experienced thus far... it has many more positive effects on the mind and body than it does negative ...and considering the many other drugs available today (pharmaceutical, recreational or otherwise) thats really saying something!

Amanita experience - Saturday 18th November 2006

Alone a home, at about 7.00 pm, I took 6 grams [about four good sized caps] of thoroughly dried vapak, (Amanita muscaria), gathered two weeks earlier in a birch wood in Essex (UK).

I dedicated myself to the spirit of Raven and the mushroom itself, and then took the vapak in two 3 gram doses over about an hour and a half. Each time I made up two good-sized cups of mushroom tea and drank them over about half an hour, also chewing down the reconstituted mushrooms.

After the first dose I turned the lights down, relaxed and waited for the spirit of the mushroom to make itself known to me. Slightly anxious as one often is after taking a psychoactive, I soon felt the presence of the benign spirit of the mushroom and started to relax. As usual the initial effects were sedative and soon I lay down and closed my eyes, relaxation increasing each time I exhaled deeply through my chest and abdomen. I entered a dreamy state and felt a general relaxing effect and release/awareness of previously unconscious somatic/psychic tensions. There were no strong visual effects but a general sense of depth and visual movement with eyes closed – a sense of being in ‘another space’.

I put on some favourite music of mine for accompanying altered states, Walking Through by Kaya Project (highly recommended). Almost immediately I had to start beating time, but the noise of my hands clapping was initially annoying, until I found a technique that produced an acceptable sound. I wished I had some wooden claves (cylindrical woodblocks) for beating time with me and pretty soon I realised I had to dance. Walking Through was ideal and I quickly discovered Raven dance, Bear dance and Drunken Man dance, watching my own shadows cast on the wall by the firelight as if it were another person. The dance was something ancestral, not just ‘me’, and I realised how much catharsis we are missing when we don’t engage in such practices in modern industrialised cultures. I wished I was in a group, in some natural setting, able to drum, chant and dance all night long.

I’d started at about 7.00 pm. And soon after 8.00 pm I realised I was ready for the second dose. I prepared it and finished drinking it by about 9.00 pm. I again felt a bit sleepy after the second dose and I rested again. I rested and danced several times throughout the evening. Although I had fasted on other occasions, this time, because I had been out all day without eating, I had eaten about an hour before taking the mushrooms. Nonetheless I felt hungry several times throughout the evening. I finished off the salmon fishcakes and spinach I prepared earlier and later, hungry again I ate nuts, honey, yoghurt, pears and finally some chocolates my wife had bought me! This felt a bit indulgent, but I realised that I was more relaxed than I had been for sometime, lying down in the softly lit embryonic darkness. I was floating in that comforting state of enclosed, protective state of ‘otherness’ that trips can bring.

Once I was well into the experience, each time I got up to go to the kitchen or take a piss I realised that I was pretty stoned. It’s hard to define the effect in terms of vapak say psilocybe mushrooms, weed or whatever. Though it shares certain characteristics with other psychoactive plants, vapak brings a recognisable ‘drunkenness’ of its own kind. I’ve not experienced anything like psilocybe or LSD type visual hallucinations on vapak, but there are distinctive visual changes and in the firelight the shadows take on a muted life of their own. Under the influence of vapak , drumming, singing or dancing and the vapak experience itself are strongly mutually enhancing facilitating an otherworldly journey.

So far I have found vapak a gentle meditative trip rather than strictly ‘psychedelic’ kind of experience. However, a stronger dose and more drumming, chanting etc might push through to another level. As any experienced psychonaut knows, where psychoactive substances are concerned, ‘more’ in terms of dosage does not necessarily mean ‘more of the same’. A stronger dose can mean a complete change of gear, pushing through to another room, to another quite different and less manageable dimension of the experience. That naïve and greedy desire for ‘more of the same’ can push you through into a space for which you are quite unprepared. Ouch!

By around 11.00 pm I was ready for bed, went upstairs and lay down. I don’t remember falling asleep. I didn’t properly wake until about 10:00 in the morning. I was pretty groggy. Hung-over, I think, from so much sleep as much as the mushroom. I came down stairs made tea, put on some music, called my wife on her cell phone, and then set to writing this down.

All the best from

dzango

PS: Just as I finish writing, my brother telephoned me and we chatted about my experience. I feel somewhat exhilarated talking about it and realised that perhaps I was still slightly under the influence. The sun was shining, autumn leaves were falling. It was time to make some coffee, shower and collect my wife from the airport.

PPS: For the next couple of days I felt a slight but definite feeling of enhanced well-being and improvement of mood. This is an experience that I’ve definitely had following the use of Salvia Divinorum.

PPS: Dzango is researching ethnic and neo-pagan use of vapak and interested in collecting descriptions of Amanita m. trips. As well as posting you can email me through Tribe if you wish. I may try to set up a website for this purpose.