Professional Documents
Culture Documents
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I've decided to go shroom picking this year and recently posted a request
for information to a.d, this has met with a lot of response (from the UK),
it seems people are a bit vague on what it looks like, and where to find
them.
I've been looking through books and condensed all the relevant info
into this file (also a couple of gifs).
in a.d, it sounds a little too heavy, pos. dangerous), the literature seems
to have the concensus that it is harmless (except for the hallucinogenic
properties :) ).
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Poisonous Fungi
Some species affect the central nervous system causing hallucinations and
sometimes leading to coma. In the case of muscimol poisoning, also caused
by the Fly Agaric (Amanita muscaria) and by others such as The Panther
(A. pantherina), the symptoms consist mainly of drowsiness but can be more
serious. Some of the Psiocybe species, on the other hand, cause visual
hallucinations within 20 minutes of ingestion. Such mushrooms are sometimes
deliberately ingested for recreational purposesalthough the legality of such
actions varies between countries.
Hallucinogenic mushrooms.
The principal toxins in Amanita muscaria have now been identified as ibotenic
acid, and the closely related compound, muscimol. The Panther Cap (A.
pantherina) causes similar symptoms, also attributed to these poisons but
while this latter species is rightly regarded as dangerous, the status of
Fly Agaric as a deadly mushroom has been questioned. It has traditionally
been used as a ritual halluginogen in certain cultures and attitudes to this
mushroom would appear to be more to do with cultural background than with any
scientific assessment of it's toxicity.
The course of poisoning caused by all the three species is substantially the
same: nausea is experienced between half an hour and three hours after
consumption, accompanied by vomiting, headache, quickened heartbeat, and a
persistent dilation of pupils occasionally leading to vision disturbances.
Often the condition of the affected person resembles alchoholic intoxication:
the patient becomes talkative, shouts obscenities, sometimes laughs or weeps,
strikes himself and keeps on running to and fro. The states of excitement
may be dangerous for the sick person and must therefore be mitigated.
Subsequently the patient faints, recovers from time to time, hallucinates,
screams, defends himself against invisable danger, etc, but finally falls
into a profound sleep from which he usually awakens into a normal state,
without remembering his previous behaviour. This poisoning comes to it's
fortunate end on the second or third day. First aid consists in the
stimulation of vomiting and in taking the patient to hospital; he must be
given neither milk nor alchohol. The treatment starts with a stomach rinse,
the excitement is controlled by remidies of the cholpromazine type,
physostigmne (never atropine!) is administered as an antidote against
mycoatropine.
religious rituals and were kept secret until the twentieth century. Their
research is due to the efforts of the American ethnographers Mr and Mrs
Wasson who succeeded in aquiring hallucunogenous fungi, which they studied
and identified with the help of mycologists. Chemical analysis of these
fungi were carried out, and it was even possible to cultivate some of them.
The effecttive substance was finally produced artificially, whereby its
experimental testing on volunteers and its application for therapeutic
purposes was made possible.
The genus Psilocybe, as well as the related genera Panaeolus and Stropharia,
have become better known - and especially more popular - following the
discovery of hallucinogenic substances obtained from numerous Mexican species
of Psilocybe. Further analyses have also shown that some European species of
the genus Psilocybe also contain substances with hallucinogenic effects,
even though in substantially smaller quantities so that the symptoms
following their ingestion are much milder.
Its cap is 1-2 cm high, always higher than it is wide, markedly and
persistently lanceolate-pointed or narrowly conical, often with an abruptly
projecting point, thin-fleshed, hygrophanous, shiny or sticky, dark olive
grey-brown or yellow-brown when moist, in dry conditions leathery yellow,
smooth, glabrous, with greenish spots. The stipe is very long, only 2-3mm
thick, firm and tough, tortuous, pallid or brownish, with a silky sheen,
often blue-green at the base, attached to the substrate by a bluish green
mycelium. The gills are broadly adnate, olive grey or brownish with a lilac
tinge, then red-brown to black-brown, with white ciliate edges. The gill
edges harbour numerous cheilocystidia. The flesh has no specifiec odour nor
taste. The spore print is dark brown.
P. semilanceata grows in grass tufts on pasturelands and forest tracks from
August to October. It is not particularly abundant and appears more commonly
in upland regions. It is inedible because of the halluginogenic substances
it contains.
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