How to start working with Amanita muscaria, a basic guide to beginning your path

Hello everyone it has been quite a while since I gave an update. I'll save that for another newsletter.

Today I would like to discuss Amanita muscaria microdosing and how to start working with this amazing mushroom.  If you'd like to check out our FAQ page you can find it here: FAQ

When to start?

Why would someone take this mushroom as a supplement? Well there may be a few reasons. Let's start with anxiety.

Most people are starting to working Amanita muscaria for relief from anxiety.

Amanita muscaria has compound in it called muscimol, muscimol is a GABA-A agonist.  This is the receptor in the brain that regulates fight or flight, hormones and other things.  Muscimol binds to this receptor site and literally suspends the fight or flight response while it is actively being binded.  This is a similar reaction to things like alcohol, benzodiazapine, lavender, kava kava, or chamomile.
Something that comes along with feeling less anxious is having more courage, feeling like you can speak freely, feeling uninhibited. I could go on and on about this but lets move on to some other reasons.

Secondly, people seek out Amanita for help with sleep.

Amanita muscaria in a fully decarbed preparation like our tinctures can help with sleep a lot. Many clients I work with report being able to sleep for 6-8 hours uninterupted when taking a microdose of Amanita muscaria. Again, the reason for this is muscimol being a GABA-A Agonist.  Gaba promotes deep restful sleep and increases REM.

Thirdly, people seek out Amanita for help with PTSD.

The Gaba receptors are truly amazing for us.  The fact that we can stimulate these receptors sites to physically shut down the fight or flight response in the body is huge.  It's obviously important to have that response in the body for survival. In this day and age we are less likely to be running from a tiger and more likely to be in a stressful work environment or have road rage.  Our body doesn't know the difference.

PTSD is a multi-layered condition that isn't solved easily. It's like a tight muscle the needs to relax first before being massaged.  What if that muscle can never relax? That's what it's like to always be on guard.

When we stimulate GABA with muscimol from Amanita muscaria we are able to suspend that fight or flight reaction and allow the body to heal trauma in a major way.  It works by allowing us to let our guard down, and then we don't have the physical tightening/clenching/heart rate elevating/cortisol dumping reaction that essentially says to the body "This is just like before, it isn't safe."

When we allow ourselves time to set aside with a microdose of Amanita muscaria tincture, or some dried mushroom in tea form, and we say "This is my time to rest and restore" we are already saying to our body that it is safe. Then the muscimol activates the GABA and we can really take a moment to reflect on some things in the past that have traumatized us before.  If we are in a safe place in life now, then we can begin to rewrite those neural pathways in the brain to not have the trauma response so activated each time a stimulus occurs.

We can step off the timeline of being damaged, and no longer be a traumatized person.


There are many other things I could say about Amanita muscarias benefits but I will leave it at that for now.  A few honorable mentions are: help with ADHD, addictions (substance and behavioral), benzo dependency, and anti-Parkinsons effects.

How to dose Amanita muscaria tincture?

I will base these suggestions with our fully decarbed Amanita muscaria 1:4 tincture.

What another practitioner or herbalist suggestions may differ greatly compared to my advice because they are working with different preparations, or simply have different suggestions.  As always trust your intuition on what mushrooms/herbs to work with, and which practitioner you resonate with.

One dropper full is equal to 1 ml, 1 ml is approximately 20-25 drops. So a .25 ml would be roughly 5 drops, 10 drops would be a half ml. etc.

Starting with 5-10 drops is a good baseline. For some this is not noticeable at all, for others this works wonders.

After a few weeks one may feel the desire to up their dose, that's perfectly fine. I have some clients that take 1 drop, and I have others that take 8 dropper fulls. There is no right answer, it's really about trusting your body and intuition.

You may notice some energetic shifting inside that can take time to process. This is preliminary work, it is important to pay attention to what's happening in your body and mind. Take notes, meditate, reflect, as much as you can. This is the time of introduction with Amanita and you will be given little hints as to what could potentially unravel into spontaneous healing.  It can be wasted if you aren't paying attention. Limit distractions, and other substances/stimuli.  Treat it like a dieta, focus on your work with this mushroom spirit.

I had profound things happening to me on 50mg, which is like 4 drops of the high strength tincture.

How often to take the tincture?

This again can vary greatly, but trusting your body and intuition is always key.
You may feel the call to take Amanita muscaria for days on end or weeks, or maybe you want it more intermitently.

I like to start the curious new person off with a couple options.

Option 1:
Every other day

Option 2: 
Once every third day (what I started with)

Option 3:
5 days on 2 days off

Option 4 (Not as popular):
3 weeks on, 1 week off

What time of day to take the tincture?

For day time flow and help with anxiety/ADHD/ addiction take it during the day time, or best is morning before food.

Sublingual= under the tongue, take the tincture and place the liquid under the tongue and hold it for a minute or so until you forget or can't stand the alcohol or flavor.

For help with sleep take it 2 hours before bed (IMPORTANT: 10 hrs after caffeine intake).

sublingual is always best, then swallowed on an empty stomach, don't stress if you can't make that happen always.

AS NEEDED

When you really need support take the Amanita muscaria as needed, through out the day, in the middle of an insomniac marathon, whenever. Just know a few things:  After about 5-10 grams this mushroom can get a little trippy.  It takes two full hours for muscimol to be completely active in your system.  Caffeine blocks the chloride channel on the GABA A receptor site that binds muscimol, effectively negating the effects of Amanita muscaria.

TRUST YOUR SELF

This is just a guide post, you are your own GPS on this journey. I am just here to share what I can from working with literally thousands of clients over the last decade.  Start low, and go slow. This is not a sprint this is an endurance jog.  Just the act of slowing down and being focused will reduce ADHD/depression/anxiety, and have a structure creates order which can boost the mood as well. 

Ask questions

Don't hesitate to reach out to me, I will respond when I can.  If I can't answer you someone else can.  We have tons of resources available, I am an admin in many online groups and friends of admins in others, there are many like you asking the same questions.

Here is a list of resources:

All the Amanita products I sell

Patreon (free content mixed with premium)

Buy The Fly Agaric Compendium by Kevin Feeney

Beginners Guide

Amanita muscaria reddit Group

Excellent resources on all Amanita species

Amanita Muscaria Science and Magic Facebook Group

My youtube channel

Discord server

My Amanita muscaria Collective signal chat

Thank you for reading, I truly love welcoming people into working with this amazing mushroom and I hope this basic guide has helped support your journey.

Thank you and BE BLESSED!
-Michael
Harmony Acres