Some of you may have seen that I've been writing a series of posts about making herbal remedies at home. I want to share what I know of this topic so that, as the world gets crazier, folks will have other avenues of medical care, namely those of themselves and their community. If you look back over this blog, you can see heaps of info on the topic, plus loads and loads of posts on herbs and using Australian bushfoods from a white perspective. If you haven't been around on in the @hivegarden and @naturalmedicine communities for long, you may be interested in looking back. There's w-a-a-a-a-y too much there for me to repost and the Hive system doesn't let you vote on old posts so, if you're happy with what you find, I believe that there is now a tip option...
Amanita muscaria or Fly Agaric is a true wonder fungus that has been given a bad reputation over the years. It has a long history with humans and has contributed heavily to our culture, if not our biological development. Be prepared though, if you decide to explore the medicinal effects of this, most sacred of mushrooms. People will jump all over you …’its poisonous’, ‘lots of people die from eating it’ etc etc.
Those things are kind of true. It does contain some toxins that I’ll talk about later. People have died from taking large amounts but that’s the case with anything – overdo it and pay the price. Some people do have a sensitivity to fungi in general too. Most of the issues have come from people seeking the entheogenic properties. The amount I talk about here is tiny and not taken over a long period but it’s up to you. This are some of my experience and they’re positive.
The information on this page has been confirmed by personal use by yours truly. I have prepared Amanita muscaria in various ways for medicinal reasons. I’m not interested in tripping and from what I’ve heard, the experience is something you need to be a Shaman to appreciate. It does however have two stand out qualities when prepared and used appropriately, one of which I’ll cover in this post. Actually, no, I’ll cover them both. Please bear with me a moment while I scoot up and change the title of this post…
The ‘time’ mushroom. Taking it dried.
It’s not a big secret that yours truly has debilitating anxiety attacks and swings into deep depression. I’ve made no secret of it but did you know that Fly Agaric can help me with those? Anxiety attacks frequently come from dwelling too much on the negative possibilities of the future. Depression can be the flip side of this, often being characterised by dwelling too much on the past. Of course, these observations are not true in everyone’s case and both states of mind can be lethal.
Some traditions hold that Amanita muscaria is a fungus related to time. I did some reading up on this and found that its key characteristic when looking at it from the point of anxiety or depression is that it brings one into the present moment. It can literally ground one in time. WOW!
My personal experience with this aspect of the mushroom’s power has been very positive. Eating a small piece of dried cap daily form time to time, especially in times of stress, allows me to be more present. I am not worrying about negative possibilities, I’m not carrying on discussions (whether real or not) in my head and generally not thinking about anything except the experience of the moment. I feel more solid and more grounded and generally more alive but not in the stimulated manner that that phrase usually implies.
A more interesting thing is that I can’t take too much. Once I’ve ingested a piece about the size of my thumbnail, I lose interest in taking any more that day and if I try, I feel nauseous. Usually, I take it once a day for three days. After the three days, I lose interest in taking it and just thinking about it makes me feel sick. The feeling of need for it isn’t regular. I crave it sometimes when I’m not aware of being in an anxious state and sometimes, when I know I’m heading into a phase of either anxiety or depression, I consciously start taking it. The result is always the same.
Decarbo-what?
The material I ingest is from the dried cap of the current or previous season’s fruiting bodies. I don’t decarboxylate it as some folks recommend, that seems to be more for the hallucinogenic characteristics of the chemicals in there. Decarboxylating is essentially heating the material for a time to convert a particular compound into another form. It is a very common practice with Cannabis users. Both of the major compounds Ibotenic acid and Muscimol are toxins in their own way and as I understand it, decarboxylating removes one carboxyl group from the Ibotenic Acid and converts it to the safer and more useful Muscimol.
Dried Amanita muscaria has a pleasant taste. It is very meaty, kind of like a big bite of your favourite cooked flesh. Too much can bring on nausea and changed mental states and huge amounts can induce coma. I’m not big on any of those, so I stick to very small bites.
Tinctured
Tinctured Amanita muscaria is a very different beast to the dried stuff. Not recommended for ingestion, it is a well know remedy for sciatic pain. It won’t fix the cause of the sciatica itself but a couple of drops placed either directly onto the skin where the Sciatic nerve starts (from the L4 – S3 vertebrae) or on a small cloth pad then applied in the same place, takes away the pain in a few minutes in most cases. Luckily, I’m not a sciatica sufferer but some of those near and dear to me are afflicted with it and they give the remedy nothing but praise. It may take one or two tries to get it right on your personal Sciatic sweet spot but once you’ve found it, it’ll bring quick relief every time.
How to tincture Amanita muscaria
The compounds that we seek to extract by tincturing the fungus are both water soluble but the tough cell walls of a fungus need a bit of effort to break them down. Simply macerating the mushroom material in alcohol will draw out some of the goodies but you can do so much better. Check out our ‘Mushroom Medicine‘ page for more details on processing Fungi.
The simplest way – a Folk tincture
The simplest way is to directly tincture fresh mushroom pieces in a Folk tincture. For this, just cover the pieces in double the volume of alcohol as mushroom material and leave to macerate (soak) for two weeks to a month, shaking daily. Use a strong alcohol concentration (60% plus) because there is a lot of water in the mushroom – around 80%. so the alcohol will become very diluted. The tincture will go a pleasant red/orange, pretty similar to the colour of the cap of the living fungus. After that, strain, filter and bottle for use later. You can get by using Vodka at 37.5% ABV but higher will give you a better result. See below for tips on using dried Amanita muscaria.
Double extraction
A way to get more out of your red capped beauties, is to use a double extraction. Unlike an herbal double extraction where you macerate in alcohol first, a mushroom double extraction is reversed and you perform the water stage first to break down cell walls. I like to use fresh Amanita muscaria because there is a step that can be taken that makes the whole process easier. Simply chop the caps of the mushroom as finely as you feel like, then put them into a labelled bag and freeze it.
Label it ‘don’t eat’ because someone in our house mistook the red/orange and white meat for crab meat once. Maybe a similar mix up could occur in your home. Labelling is good.
The freezing causes the water in the cells expand and break open the cell walls. As the constituents we are after are water soluble, it helps draw them out also. Thaw the flesh of the fungus and cover with water twice the volume of water. Bring it to the boil and let it boil for a while, then simmer it until the water level reduces by 75%. We do it for longer and with more water than a standard herbal decoction because of the super-tough nature of the material. Fresh mushrooms seems soft but the cell walls are built to withstand water pressure that is much higher than the air pressure in your car tyres.
Allow the liquid to cool, strain and filter it. Put it into a container in the fridge to store while you macerate the marc in alcohol for two weeks or so.
Take the marc and cover it in the same the volume of alcohol as fungus. Use a high concentration of alcohol because there is a lot of water still in the marc. High alcohol concentrations also break down the cell walls better. About 70% is good.
Leave it somewhere out of direct sunlight for two weeks to a month, shaking daily.
Press this, strain and filter then combine the liquid with the water based extract that you stored in the fridge. Remember that you need to keep the final alcohol concentration above 20% if you want to store it. There’s a whole page on alcohol and how to work out dilutions and concentrations here.
Using the dried mushroom
You can just as easily use dried mushroom in the techniques listed above but at the right time of year, fresh is better! If it’s not the right season or you are unlucky enough to live in a place where Fly Agaric doesn’t grow, you can use dried material. If you do this for a folk tincture, you can use a lower alcohol concentration – around 40%, so Vodka at 37.5% is fine. All of the extra water in the alcohol will work to rehydrate the mushroom. You will, however, need more alcohol. Just as with normal herbal extractions, you use twice the volume of alcohol with fresh material and 3 – 5 times as much with dried.
To double extract, I suggest soaking the dried fungus overnight in an equal amount of water before hitting the stove.
Spend the two week macerating process looking up and feeling where your Sciatic nerve originates and runs. It’s quite fascinating!
