Introduction
The fly agaric, Amanita muscaria, is an ectomycorrhizal mushroom of boreal and temperate Eurasia and North America, carried with pine plantations into the Southern Hemisphere; the name covers several cryptic lineages. Its actives are ibotenic acid and muscimol, which act on glutamate and GABA receptors and give an alternation of activation and depression. The earliest securely dated account of its use is Krasheninnikov’s from Kamchatka, observed in 1737–1741 and published in 1755; Wasson’s identification of it with the Vedic Soma remains unresolved. A recent market of caps, extracts and edibles has brought surveillance reports of poisoning and adulterated products.
All sections
| Botanical name | Amanita muscaria |
|---|---|
| Taxa | Amanitaceae · Agaricales · Fungi |
| Traditional names | Fly agaric · fly amanita · мухомор / mukhomor · Fliegenpilz · wapaq |
| Regions | Native across boreal and temperate Eurasia and parts of North America; montane extensions reach warmer latitudes. |
| Ethnographic entheogenic use | The securely dated record of fly-agaric intoxication begins with Krasheninnikov's account of Kamchatka, published in 1755, and continues in Bogoras's and Jochelson's Chukchi and Koryak ethnographies. Across a discontinuous northern Eurasian arc, from the Koryak and Chukchi to the Khanty and Mansi of the Ob, the mushroom belonged to diviners and shamans in some settings and to households, guests and work parties in others (Krasheninnikov, 1755; Jochelson, 1905–1908; Nyberg, 1992). |
01Ethnobotany of Amanita muscaria
Botanical Info
| Accepted name | Amanita muscaria (L.) Lam., 1783 — Index Fungorum 161267 |
|---|---|
| Basionym | Agaricus muscarius L., 1753. The epithet derives from Latin musca, “fly”. |
| Kingdom / phylum | Fungi · Basidiomycota |
| Family / order | Amanitaceae · Agaricales |
| Geographic range | Native across boreal and temperate Eurasia and parts of North America; montane extensions reach warmer latitudes. Introduced with nursery stock and plantation forestry to Australia, Aotearoa New Zealand, South Africa and South America, where some populations have entered native forests (Geml et al., 2008; Vargas et al., 2019; Nickles et al., 2026). |
| Local names | English: fly agaric, fly amanita · Russian: mukhomor krasnyi (мухомор красный) · German: Fliegenpilz · Dutch: vliegenzwam · Finnish: punakärpässieni · Japanese: benitengutake · Koryak: usually transcribed wapaq, with orthographies varying by source. |
| Ecological guild | Obligately ectomycorrhizal: the long-lived mycelium exchanges mineral nutrients and water with tree roots; the visible mushroom is its seasonal fruiting body. |
| Conservation | G5 · Secure NatureServe global rank. No global IUCN Red List assessment located. Secure in much of the native range; invasive in parts of the Southern Hemisphere. |
Territories
- 1Kamchatka · Krasheninnikov’s account, observed 1737–1741 and published 1755, the earliest securely dated record of fly-agaric intoxication (Krasheninnikov, 1755)
- 2Koryak and Chukchi lands · Koryak and Chukchi ethnographies of Bogoras and Jochelson (Jochelson, 1905–1908; Nyberg, 1992)
- 3Khanty and Mansi of the Ob · the Khanty and Mansi of the Ob, at the western end of the arc (Nyberg, 1992; Saar, 1991a)
Deep Time
- 1737–1741; published 1755Krasheninnikov’s account of Kamchatka: the earliest securely dated record of fly-agaric intoxication.
- 1968Wasson identifies the Vedic Soma with the fly agaric; later tested against more than 600 accounts.
- 2024Virginia analysis of “Amanita” gummies finds undisclosed psilocybin, psilocin and other drugs.
Prehistoric Eurasian continuity is unproven: no securely identified residue demonstrates consumption.
Morphology
The basidiocarp begins enclosed by a white universal veil, emerging as an “egg”. Expansion tears the veil into cream-white or yellowish warts across a hemispherical cap; maturity produces a convex and then broadly plane pileus, commonly 5–20 cm and occasionally approaching 30 cm. Scarlet is the iconic colour, but orange, yellow and very pale forms occur, and rain can remove the warts or wash the cap towards ochre. The margin becomes striate with age. Gills are white, crowded and free from the stipe; the spore print is white. The smooth, broadly ellipsoid spores are inamyloid (Michelot and Melendez-Howell, 2003).
The white stipe is typically 8–20 cm tall, bearing a broad, skirt-like annulus left by the partial veil. Its bulbous base has concentric shaggy rings or ruffs of universal-veil tissue, where some deadly amanitas have a loose sac. These features are developmental and change with age: a weathered specimen may have lost most cap warts and an immature “egg” may conceal the diagnostic cap, gills, ring and basal rings. Photographs alone are therefore an unreliable means of identification.
Symbiosis, season and dispersal
A. muscaria associates with many woody hosts, especially Betula, Pinus, Picea, Abies, Quercus, Fagus and Populus. Fruiting is usually late summer to autumn in continental Northern Hemisphere climates, but responds to local rain and temperature. The host-generalist appearance disguises a structured lineage complex: multilocus work shows strong continental partitions and several cryptic phylogenetic species within older, broad uses of the name A. muscaria sensu lato (Oda, Tanaka and Tsuda, 2004; Geml et al., 2006; Geml et al., 2008).
The mushroom’s globalisation followed trees and soil. European lineage II was transported with pines to the Southern Hemisphere; in Australia it formed ectomycorrhizae with native Nothofagus cunninghamii, in Colombia with Quercus humboldtii, and by 2025 molecular work confirmed it inside native Patagonian Nothofagus forests (Dunk, Lebel and Keane, 2012; Vargas et al., 2019; Giles et al., 2025). Genomes and specialised-metabolite profiles from South Africa remain strikingly close to European source populations, indicating dispersal without wholesale chemical domestication (Nickles et al., 2026).
Taxonomic cautions
- Documented
A species complex. “Fly agaric” is a robust field concept in Eurasia, but older North American records combine lineages now treated or proposed as separate taxa, including A. chrysoblema, A. persicina and unnamed clades. Chemistry may differ across these historical records.
- Hazard
Confusion within Amanita. Rain-washed caps, atypical colours and juvenile buttons can obscure the familiar red-and-white signal. Other amanitas include amatoxin-bearing species capable of lethal hepatic failure. A. muscaria itself lacks amatoxins; the danger lies in confusing it with species that have them.
- Variable
Vernacular continuity. Words meaning “fly mushroom” occur across European languages and relate to recorded fly-control practices, often involving milk. The linguistic and practical association is old; an ancient entheogenic cult would need other evidence.
02Chemistry
Entheogenic & associated compounds
Muscimol
Ibotenic acid
Muscarine
photoproduct
Muscazone
A coupled excitatory–inhibitory system
The mushroom’s pharmacology is GABAergic and glutamatergic. Muscimol is a conformationally constrained analogue of GABA that binds the neurotransmitter’s orthosteric site on ionotropic GABAA receptors, including extrasynaptic receptor populations implicated in tonic inhibition. Ibotenic acid instead resembles glutamate and activates NMDA and several metabotropic glutamate receptors. Their co-presence provides a pharmacological basis for the characteristic alternation between activation and central nervous-system depression (Johnston, 2014; Michelot and Melendez-Howell, 2003).
Ibotenic acid can decarboxylate to muscimol through heat, drying, storage, ultraviolet exposure and acidic conditions, but transformation is incomplete and context-dependent. Both are water-soluble; tissue, developmental stage, geography and handling alter concentrations. In one Japanese series the cap contained more ibotenic acid and muscimol than the base or stipe, while metabolomics likewise distinguished cap from stipe and soil contexts (Tsunoda et al., 1993a; Deja et al., 2014). Drying therefore changes the chemical ratio, and leaves a specimen unstandardised and its safety unestablished (Tsunoda et al., 1993b; FDA, 2024a).
What else is present?
Muscarine gave the mushroom—and later the muscarinic receptor family—its name after nineteenth-century isolation, but A. muscaria contains it only at trace levels compared with muscarinic Inocybe and Clitocybe poisonings. Pigments include muscaflavins and muscaurins. The fruiting body also concentrates vanadium in the unusual complex amavadin, alongside ergosterol, trehalose, amino acids, organic acids and other fungal metabolites. None has been shown to replace the ibotenic-acid/muscimol pair as the main explanation of the acute neuropsychiatric syndrome (Michelot and Melendez-Howell, 2003; Dushkov et al., 2023).
Pharmacological open questions
- Unresolved
Human pharmacokinetics. Clinical literature is dominated by poison-centre reports, case series and old self-experiments; controlled modern studies are few. Renal excretion of active material makes ethnographic urine reuse pharmacologically plausible, but exact human conversion, bioavailability and dose–response remain poorly quantified.
- Preclinical only
Therapeutic translation. Muscimol is invaluable in neuroscience as a reversible circuit-inactivation tool; animal studies also examine pain, seizure and sleep pathways. These are uses of a purified receptor agonist; whether mushroom extracts treat insomnia, anxiety, depression or pain is untested (Johnston, 2014; Ramawad et al., 2023).
- Matrix effect
Whole mushroom versus isolated muscimol. Commercial products often imply equivalence, yet ibotenic acid, muscazone, unidentified metabolites, contaminants and product adulterants change the exposure. An accurate muscimol assay measures one compound; the whole-mushroom tradition and its phenomenology lie beyond it.
03Tradition, ritual & cultural use
Oldest evidenced or proposed human use
Documented Stepan Krasheninnikov observed Kamchatka between 1737 and 1741; his posthumous Description of the Land of Kamchatka (1755) contains the earliest extensive, securely datable account of fly-agaric intoxication in the region. A shorter European account based on Philip Johan von Strahlenberg’s Siberian travels appeared in 1730/1736. The nineteenth- and early twentieth-century ethnographies of Bogoras and Jochelson then supplied detailed Chukchi and Koryak descriptions (Krasheninnikov, 1755; Bogoras, 1904–1909; Jochelson, 1905–1908).
Unproven No securely identified prehistoric residue currently demonstrates A. muscaria consumption. Mushroom-shaped petroglyphs, portable images and linguistic correspondences can motivate hypotheses, but identifying a fungal species or an intoxicating practice takes more than morphology. Claims of ten-thousand-year continuity are proposals.
Peoples and territories
The record forms a broad but discontinuous northern Eurasian arc. Northeastern accounts concern Koryak, Chukchi, Itelmen/Kamchadal, Even and Yukaghir settings; western Siberian accounts include Khanty and Mansi communities of the Ob basin. Reports also describe Russian settler adoption and exchange networks. Within “Siberian use” these differences matter: in some settings the mushroom belonged especially to diviners or shamans; elsewhere householders, guests or work parties also used it for celebration, endurance, singing or intoxication (Saar, 1991a; Nyberg, 1992).
Siberia and North-East Asia
A survey of the literature and of ethnographers' field information found that the peoples with a tradition of eating the fly agaric knew its different psychotropic qualities and used it for several purposes, chiefly as a stimulant acting on several mental functions at once (Saar, 1991a).
Khanty of the Ob
In the forest zone of western Siberia the Khanty eat only about ten kinds of fungi. A. muscaria appears in their folk medicine beside the tinder fungus Fomes fomentarius, chaga (Inonotus obliquus), Phellinus nigricans and the puffball (Saar, 1991b).
A tool, not a deity
Comparing northern Eurasia with Mesoamerica, Nyberg found that the fly agaric did not seem to have been an object of religious veneration, whereas Psilocybe mushrooms were, and traced the difference both to the mushrooms' effects and to the cultures that used them (Nyberg, 1992).
Preparation as social technology
Historical reports mention fresh or dried fruiting bodies, infusions or mixtures with liquids, but there was no pan-Siberian recipe. More distinctive is secondary ingestion through urine, documented in parts of northeastern Siberia. Because a proportion of active isoxazoles is excreted, this practice could extend a scarce commodity and alter the metabolite profile. Yet it was also a relationship among bodies, ranks and resources: later retellings that describe a purely efficient “human filter” erase the economic and social organisation recorded by observers (Saar, 1991a; Michelot and Melendez-Howell, 2003).
Role in shamanism and healing
Fly agaric could facilitate diagnosis, foreknowledge, communication with non-human agents, retrieval of lost persons or objects, and a healer’s journey. In other episodes it amplified drumming, dance, epic recitation or collective festivity. The pharmacological event was framed by specialist knowledge, sung narrative and public interpretation: bodily tremor might evidence an arriving spirit; involuntary movement might be understood as the mushroom’s command. It was one technique among fasting, drumming, sleeplessness, costume and inherited vocation (Nyberg, 1992).
Colonial conditions and evidentiary limits
Most canonical descriptions were written by outsiders during Russian imperial consolidation and missionary pressure. They preserve observations that might otherwise be lost, but translate local categories into “intoxication”, “superstition” and “shamanism”. Practices could also be concealed, abandoned, revived or altered after the spread of vodka and Christianisation. A responsible history keeps the observer, date, people and location attached to each claim.
04Cosmology & key terms
- Wapaq
- A Koryak term commonly transcribed for fly agaric and/or its spirit-persons. Jochelson’s texts treat the mushrooms as agents with speech and intention; spelling varies across transliteration systems.
- Big Raven
- Koryak culture hero, creator and trickster, rendered by Jochelson through names such as Big-Raven or Quikil/Quikinnaqu. In a recorded cycle, a supreme being creates wapaq so Raven can recover the force needed to move Whale.
- Vahiyinin
- Jochelson’s transcription, often glossed “Existence”, for the being whose spittle becomes fly agarics in the Raven narrative. It is a source-specific name.
- Mukhomor
- Russian “fly-killer/fly agaric”, linking the mushroom to vernacular insect control. The word later enters settler, ethnographic and commercial vocabularies.
- Mushroom persons
- Visionary agents described as numerous, embodied and directive. Their shapes and movements can mirror the basidiocarp: low neck, cylindrical body, swift or repetitive locomotion.
- Urine circulation
- A pharmacologically intelligible practice that was also a material economy. Retellings about reindeer, elite consumers and poorer secondary drinkers are documented unevenly across peoples and periods.
Personhood, command and mimicry
Koryak and Chukchi sources repeatedly describe the mushroom as a population of beings. Intoxicated people may enact their morphology—crouching, drawing in the neck, bursting upward—or obey an instruction attributed to them. This is more specific than saying “the mushroom was sacred”: the form of the fruiting body, the multiplicity of mushrooms and the automatisms of intoxication become a local theory of agency (Bogoras, 1904–1909; Jochelson, 1905–1908).
spirits of fly-agaric, who are supposed to have no necks or legs, but stout cylindrical bodies which move about swiftly Bogoras (1904–1909, p. 206), describing Chukchi mimicry. Capitalisation modernised; quoted wording retained.
Major historical identifications
Soma
The Vedic Soma has been identified with Ephedra, Sarcostemma, Periploca, Cannabis and even Rheum, without any proposal gaining general assent (Brough, 1971). Wasson's 1968 identification with the fly agaric was tested against more than 600 anecdotal accounts: toxic effects were considerably reduced by preparations resembling the pressing and filtering of Soma in the Rig Veda — a result its authors judge unlikely to end the debate (Feeney and Austin, 2010).
The berserkers
The most widely believed explanation of the Norse berserkers' battle trance is the fly agaric. Fatur argues that henbane, Hyoscyamus niger, with its tropane alkaloids, fits the reports better, while conceding that the archaeological and historical evidence can neither prove nor disprove either theory (Fatur, 2019).
05Visionary phenomenology
Fly-agaric experience is best described as an unstable oneirogenic and deliriant-like intoxication with dissociative, sedative and stimulant phases, unlike psilocybin. Ethnographic accounts and clinical cases overlap in altered scale, motor compulsion, personified figures, dream immersion and amnesia, but they answer different questions. A hospital record observes toxidrome; a Koryak narrative recognises visitors, commands and powers. Each record holds part of the truth.
Phenomenological profile
The profile lists effects the sources report, for each preparation separately, grouped by domain. Each row gives the grade, how often the sources say the effect occurs (only where they say so; most do not) and the kinds of source behind it. A chip naming a compound, such as “Trial · psilocybin”, means the evidence comes from studies of that compound rather than of the preparation itself; “partial” means the route, purity or dose differs from the traditional preparation, so the row cannot be graded above supported. The line under each preparation says which domains have evidence entered here. A domain with nothing entered has not yet been assessed in this profile; that is not a finding that the literature is silent, and the article may discuss it. Open a row for the note and the sources.
Caps eatendried, fresh or prepared
Evidence entered for 3 of 8 domains. Not yet entered: visual, self and unity, affect, relation to other beings, states of consciousness. Discussed in the article above but not yet entered: states of consciousness.
Ibotenic acid and muscimol are the active components, perhaps with other substances (Michelot and Melendez-Howell, 2003), and the effects reported depend on how the mushroom was prepared (Feeney and Austin, 2010). No controlled human study of muscimol was read for this record.
Other senses
Intensified hearingHeightened acuity, salience or alteration of sound.SupportedPharmacology
Four of five young people who ate dried fly agaric at a party had visual and auditory hallucinations (Satora et al., 2005).
Body
Nausea and purgingNausea, vomiting or diarrhoea during the acute state.SupportedSurvey
Nausea, vomiting and abdominal pain were among the adverse effects most reported by men in 684 social-media accounts of use (Ordak et al., 2023).
Cognition
Loss of ordinary awarenessOrdinary sense, orientation or self-control is lost or overwhelmed.SupportedPharmacology
In the same party, one of the five lost consciousness (Satora et al., 2005); toxicology describes the poisoning syndrome by its central nervous system dysfunction (Michelot and Melendez-Howell, 2003).
Temporal profile
| Phase | Typical interval | Reported character | Caveat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Onset | ~30–120 min | Nausea, warmth, dizziness, salivation, twitching, restlessness or drowsiness | Commercial products may contain other drugs; raw fruiting bodies vary widely. |
| Escalation / peak | ~1–3 h | Ataxia, excitation, euphoria or fear, confusion, altered scale, repetitive movement, auditory/visual phenomena | Excitation and depression may alternate. |
| Main intoxication | ~4–8 h | Dreamlike scenes, spirit-person encounters, disorientation, sleep, stupor or episodic arousal | Clinical reviews report a broader 5–24 h range (Satora et al., 2005; Ordak, 2026). |
| After-phase | Up to 24 h; rarely longer | Sleep, fatigue, headache, patchy memory; occasionally prolonged confusion or psychosis | Multi-day cases are atypical and require clinical evaluation. |
Recurrent experiential structures
The pantherina syndrome
Toxicology groups fly-agaric poisoning with that of A. pantherina as the "pantherina" syndrome, characterised by central nervous system dysfunction; ibotenic acid and muscimol are the active components, perhaps with other substances (Michelot and Melendez-Howell, 2003).
Preparation shapes the effect
Across more than 600 accounts, the effects reported depended on how the mushroom had been prepared (Feeney and Austin, 2010).
Contemporary self-reports
Of 684 people describing their use in social-media groups, women most often reported taking it against pain and skin problems and men against stress, depressive symptoms and insomnia; the adverse effects most reported were headache among women and nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain and drowsiness among men (Ordak et al., 2023).
Intensity and variability
Intensity tracks the number or size of caps only loosely. Concentration differs by lineage, specimen, tissue, developmental stage and treatment; ibotenic acid and muscimol also pull neural activity in different directions. Set and setting shape whether ambiguous presence becomes a spirit encounter, fairy-tale imagery, panic or clinical delirium, while the toxicological risk remains. In a five-person case series, four reported visual and auditory hallucinations while one lost consciousness after the same social episode (Satora et al., 2005).
Salient anecdote
Bogoras’s Chukchi example is phenomenologically dense because perception becomes performance: one person pushed his head against the floor as if a mushroom were breaking through earth; another tucked in his neck, denied having a head and moved rapidly with swinging arms. The episode describes identification with a mushroom body (Bogoras, 1904–1909, p. 206).
06Contemporary status
Conservation and biological movement
| Global condition | NatureServe G5 (Secure); widespread and often abundant in native temperate and boreal forests. No global IUCN assessment located. |
|---|---|
| Primary dependency | Living ectomycorrhizal host trees. Local fruiting reflects host continuity, soil and weather more than collection of individual mushrooms. |
| Introduced range | Multiple Southern Hemisphere introductions, largely associated with European pine forestry. Host shifts into native Nothofagus and Quercus systems make the fungus a conservation concern as an invader. |
| Research priority | Map lineage identity and below-ground spread as well as conspicuous fruiting bodies; test competitive effects on native ectomycorrhizal networks (Vargas et al., 2019; Giles et al., 2025). |
Contemporary economies and “legal psychedelic” branding
A transnational market now sells dried caps, powders, tinctures, standardised extracts, chocolates, gummies and vapes. Products are promoted for sleep, anxiety, pain, mood or “microdosing”, often by analogy with psilocybin even though receptor pharmacology and acute risk differ. A 2023 online survey documents self-therapeutic motives but is self-selected, retrospective and chemically unverified, and so silent on efficacy or incidence (Ordak et al., 2023). Wild collection also breaks the normal visual link between specimen, habitat and identity.
The product category may be only nominally Amanita. In a 2024 Virginia investigation, five gummy brands were analysed and three contained undisclosed psilocybin or psilocin; one “Amanita” product also contained DMT, caffeine and mitragynine. The test library could not determine muscimol or ibotenic acid, so the finding demonstrates label opacity; whether fly-agaric constituents were present is unknown (Michienzi et al., 2024).
Regulatory status
| Jurisdiction | Position | Practical reading |
|---|---|---|
| International | A. muscaria, muscimol and ibotenic acid are absent from the schedules of the 1971 Psychotropic Convention. | Food, poison, medicine and national psychoactive-substance law still apply. |
| United States — federal | Unscheduled under the Controlled Substances Act. FDA concluded in December 2024 that the mushroom, extracts, muscimol, ibotenic acid and muscarine are unauthorised as conventional-food ingredients and fail the GRAS standard. | “Unscheduled” is a different status from lawfully marketable as food or proven safe (FDA, 2024a; FDA, 2024b). |
| Louisiana | R.S. 40:989.1 covers material or preparations intended for human consumption containing listed hallucinogenic plants, including A. muscaria; aesthetic, landscaping and decorative cultivation is excepted. | Intent and product form matter; this is stricter than federal scheduling. |
| United Kingdom | Absent from the Misuse of Drugs schedules, but the Psychoactive Substances Act 2016 can apply to production, supply, import or export of psychoactive products. | The Act’s central offences concern commercial conduct; ordinary possession outside custody is a lesser exposure. |
| Australia | Muscimol appears in Schedule 9 of the Poisons Standard. | State and territory implementation varies, but Schedule 9 is a prohibited-substance category outside approved medical/scientific contexts. |
Legal status changes and depends on product, intention and jurisdiction. This table is a research orientation, not legal advice.
Public-health signal
FDA’s 2024 review found no accepted conditions of safe use in conventional food. In April 2026, CDC reported 180 moderate or major illnesses associated with Diamond Shruumz and other mushroom chocolates during 2024: 73 hospitalisations, 38 intensive-care admissions, 29 intubations and two deaths. Testing found variable combinations of muscimol, psilocin, kavalactones, acetylpsilocin, pregabalin and other substances, so the outbreak had several possible causes beyond A. muscaria (Rumph et al., 2026). That distinction is scientifically essential, and the product-safety failure stands.
Patents and enclosure
- US8784835B2. — “Method for producing muscimol and/or reducing ibotenic acid from Amanita tissue” claims processing and supplement applications.
- WO2022187974A1. — “Processes for extracting muscimol from Amanita muscaria” claims liquid and powder extraction processes intended to increase muscimol and decrease ibotenic acid.
- WO2023015395A1. — Claims A. muscaria extracts, compounds and proposed beneficial or therapeutic uses.
- WO2024173903A1. — Claims kilogram-scale mushroom extracts, biomass selection and finished products.
These documents demonstrate commercial positioning around purification, standardisation and health claims. A patent’s grant, application or publication is a legal event; clinical efficacy, regulatory approval, freedom from prior art and product safety are separate questions.
Latest research
- 2026 ecology
Nickles et al. (2026) sequenced 24 genomes across hemispheres, traced South African populations to a European lineage and found the ibotenic-acid biosynthetic gene cluster and most specialised-metabolite families conserved after introduction. The result joins invasion biology to chemical ecology.
- 2026 toxicology
A narrative review collates the expanding intentional-use literature and severe case reports, while CDC’s outbreak analysis supplies a large product-associated surveillance series. Both emphasise that authentic mushroom intoxication and adulterated-edible exposure must be separated analytically (Ordak, 2026; Rumph et al., 2026).
- Preclinical only
Extract work in a human microglial cell line found potentiation of a dsRNA-activated inflammatory response, possibly involving trehalose, the opposite of an anti-inflammatory signal. A preclinical meta-analysis of muscimol for nerve-injury pain likewise concerns experimental delivery and animal models, far from retail mushroom products (Wagner et al., 2023; Ramawad et al., 2023).
- Clinical gap
No robust randomised clinical trial demonstrates A. muscaria or commercial muscimol products as treatments for insomnia, anxiety, depression, pain or substance use. Analytical authentication, pharmacokinetics and controlled safety studies remain prior questions.
Open questions on this entry
Safety and law
07Cross-correlations
| Kingdom / ecology | Fungi · ectomycorrhizal ⇌ unlike cultivated saprotrophic Psilocybe, fly agaric depends on living host trees |
|---|---|
| Compounds | Muscimol · ibotenic acid ⇌ GABA/glutamate system, distinct from the 5-HT₂A pathway of psilocybin, DMT or mescaline |
| Regions | Boreal and temperate Northern Hemisphere · introduced Southern Hemisphere forestry landscapes |
| Cultural complexes | Koryak–Chukchi and wider Siberian use ↳ a proposed, unestablished relation to the Soma–Haoma complex |
| Claviceps purpurea | Species monograph: ergot, the rival candidate for the Eleusinian kykeon; ergoline chemistry unrelated to the isoxazoles. COMPARATIVE ENTHEOGEN |
08Bibliography
How to read the labels on each source
- Source type
- What kind of work it is: journal article, book, legislation, patent application, database record and so on. A word after the dot (ethnography, protologue, primary source) keeps the genre the entry was first filed under. “Unclassified” means the citation does not say enough to tell.
- Peer review
- Recorded for each work separately, and only where it has been confirmed for that work. It is never inferred from a DOI, a publisher or a journal, since journals also publish editorials, letters and commentaries. Where it has not been confirmed, the entry records it as not established. It does not apply to legislation, court decisions, treaties, patents, datasets, database and collection records, historical texts, films, talks, press releases or web pages.
- Check
- What was checked when the entry was added. DOI checked: the DOI’s registry record (Crossref) matched the citation’s title, first author and year. Verified: the record itself was opened and matched the citation: a library catalogue record for a book, or the page itself for a database entry, law, patent or archive document. “Verified (abstract)” and “(summary)” mean only the abstract or a summary was read. Located: a record was found but not fully matched. Bibliographic record and Stable record (in essays): a catalogue or stable web record exists; what was checked against it is not recorded. Unverified: no check is recorded. No locator found: a search found no record. Secondary: read through another source.
- What the labels do not say
- None of them means the source supports a particular sentence. Where a sentence is graded, its evidence note names its sources and whether each supports it, disputes it or gives context. Dates and reviewers of checks are not recorded for each entry; the version note at the foot of a graded page dates its last review.