ive never had any luck with amanita muscaria as far as psychoactive effects go,exept maybe enhanced colours and a real dreamy state of calmness.

i tried half of one i had dried on top of a boiler about 12 years ago because at the time i was under the impresion that gram for gram they where a lot stronger than psilocybin,needles to say i never felt anything at all from it.

i found more a season or 2 later and again started my dose very low again due to the horror stories i had heard from folk,and again i felt nothing.i remember at the time i had loads of them that i had dried out in jars and one night a friend and i sat and ate one every half hour or so.that was the first time i ever felt the effects of it,i think i ate anything from about 7 to 10 good sized caps and had an exelent,warm,calm feeling.

i had also heard the story at the time that in order for the psychoactive effects to take place the drug had to be passed thrue the body and the the urine reconsumed, :lol:  well at the time,me being the young fearless psychonaut who allways wanted to try everthing,i consumed enough caps to give me the warm glowing feeling that i get from them and then waited until i needed to go for a piss(which went straight in to a pint glass):lol: ,i waited with the glass for a while before my fellow psychonaut was ready for his piss as this one had to be done together or i could have left myself open to ridicule at the time:wink: .

anyway after the horror of tasting our own piss nothing realy hapened,just the same calm state continued.we did have a right good laugh at ourselfs thow.

thats about as far as i went trying to find effects simular to what ive heard they can do,ive continued to sample the good looking caps that ive found most mushroom seasons since then,but i dont ever expect to go anywhere i havnt already been with them,and that could well be the reason i dont.

ive tried ones from differant areas,ones that have been picked at differant times of the season,ive always had them from birch woods until last season i found my first from pine,ive had large,medium,and caps that havent opened yet.i read somwhere that the best time to pick them is when the cap is full opened and tilting to one side(wether this is true or not i dont know),aparently thats when they drop ther spores and are ready to pick,as i say i dont know but last season i tried only to pick ones that where tilted just incase it made any differance.

it could also be how i dry them thats the problem,i read most folk do it in the oven,ive allways dried mine either on top of a boiler for a couple of days but mostly hung up on string in the boiler cupboard for about four or five days,this method has always got them crispy dry,and the only ones i have ever lost thrue maggots are the ones that where in a bad condition in the first place.althow air drying is probably the best for most things,it may not be any good for amanita.

ive also made tea from the dried caps,but maybe because they have already been dried the drug has degraded or something before the heat could do whatever  it does to it when its in the oven.

ive tried up to half a medium cap fresh and i felt the same calm feeling i always get,just with a lot smaller of a dose as usual(btw ive always read they are very dangerous when consumed fresh and can kill,i dont know if this is true or not ut i started with about a square cm and worked up just incase).

anyway thats my story on amanitas,im sure i will continue to pick and eat them as they are lovely mushrooms and give me a nice feeling,wether i will ever trip from them or not i dont know,one things for sure they are very strange,or maybe just complicated mushrooms,maybe i just havent figured them out yet,maybe my technechs for preparing or drying them are wrong or maybe the mushroom gods just dont like me,who knows.

rant over.