Why I Started Working with Amanita Muscaria

You may know me as the Mushroom Wizard, or the guy who jumps in ponds, or eats strange raw mushrooms. But have you heard my story of how I began working with Amanita muscaria?

It all started with a need

I began working with Amanita muscaria in 2021 out of an intense need to quit my abusive relationship with cannabis.

I started micro-dosing a tea in frozen ice cubes and noticed immediately energy was beginning to shift within me.

First I noticed an intense third eye activation, I was able to see a lot clearer, within myself, and within the energy around me.

I noticed a calming and grounding effect, I felt more stable, and less jittery.

I realized that I had trauma I was not acknowledging. I didn't know I had anxiety until I didn't have it.

I quit cannabis promptly after three months of weaning, and the last day was on my birthday of 2021 in March.

A short bio

I own the company Harmony Acres. I make mushroom and herbal extractions for retail and wholesale clients world-wide. I create alcohol-free elixirs for events, I sell bulk herbs and mushrooms, and produce other unique creations on my websites www.harmonyacres.love and www.allthingsamanita.com.

I have been in business making extracts since 2016 and full time since 2021. I offer consultations, educational presentations, 1 on 1 coaching and I have helped tens of thousands of people with the work I do with Amanita muscaria and other plant allies.

The beginning of my journey

The protocol I used was 1 day on, two days off, so once every three days. It was an incredibly small dose, but I am very sensitive, it was 66mg of a dried mushroom weight equivalent of tea.

I noticed in the first 2 months on the days off that I would have irritability and head aches.

This is mostly why I took it slow, I would meditate each morning and journal as well.

This is important in the journey of working with plant medicines, to track progress and trends in your inner world.

I began to reflect on this irritability I had and I began to understand it was repressed rage.

This rage was stored inside of me from being a people-pleaser. I had so often in life done what I thought other people would like instead of what I wished for, and doing so built up resentment.

People pleasing isn't good for you, or for the people you think you are pleasing. It's a way of trying to control a situation. It is often times mistaken for kindness but can often be a form of manipulation. You see, I grew up with older siblings and had some minor bullying in my early years of school. I quickly learned to be the class clown, the funny guy. If I could get someone to laugh at me on MY terms, they were less likely to pick on me. I paid attention to what people liked, and I would make them laugh. This often would get me in trouble, but at least I had the respect of my peers, or so I thought.

Later in middle school I ran into a former classmate from elementary school. We caught up on old times, and he said "Michael.. do that funny thing you always did!" I was taken back, in a way it felt like "Hey monkey, here's a quarter, dance for me!" I was repulsed by the request, this was was my first time I noticed I did things for others that I didn't want to do. It would take me almost two more decades to finally put a stop to this behavior... That's when I found Amanita muscaria.

The Catalyst

I had a party at my house in 2020 for the Winter Solstice, December 21st. I was so high I couldn't have a good time. I was smoking a lot of weed and wasn't being a good host. There was a guy there with a strange agenda, he had some idea for an activity that he claimed would bring cohesion and enlightenment to the group. He had asked before and during the event if we could do his group activity, and I said I wasn't sure and we would have to feel it out.

Well the night went on and because I was too high to coordinate a group circle, we didn't get around to an intentional group setting until 2am.

This night I knew for sure, after 16 years with cannabis, that I absolutely needed to quit. I really hit my rock bottom. Being a good host is everything to me, and I saw how the night had become derailed. This coincidentally was the very same night that someone asked me "Have you ever micro-dosed Amanita muscaria?" I responded "Why would I micro-dose a poisonous mushroom?"

Little did I know this was the seed of something very big in my life.

So we had our circle at 2am, and we introduced ourselves one by one very slowly, and when it got to THE guy, he decided it was his turn to take over the party and attempt to get us to do a group activity.

No one wanted it. I softly suggested it was not the time for it, and was not firm in my words or boundaries. Someone else even said "You are being rude to the host of the house" To which he responded "I don't give a damn."

You can see we were on our way to enlightenment, indeed.

It fizzled the energy of the evening away, and made the group vibe discorded. Many people left afterwards and THE guy left soon too.

He got stuck in my neighbors driveway and I could hear some tires spinning. Instead of calling for help, he was calling a tow truck. I was befuddled that someone who claimed to have a lot of knowledge of community and cohesion decided to call a tow truck at 2am instead of asking an entire group of people for help. I said hang up the phone, I gathered some big strong guys, and I got in the drivers seat and instructed everyone when to push, and I drove his sedan out of my neighbors death trap driveway in a couple minutes. To his credit, I believe he may be on the Autism spectrum, because a lot of his behavior exhibits that kind of diagnosis. Or he was a narcissist, it's really hard to tell, because they both lack social skills. One more detail that I believe is important was that he claimed that attending this event was a better birthday gift for his son, than being present on his sons birthday (that day) because he could implement his plan of enlightenment for a group. To me, this makes no sense whatsoever, but could be a symptom of some mental diagnosis I am not qualified to make.

Regardless of his story, my story was that I was beginning a hard road of weaning myself off cannabis, which I successfully did by March of the next year.


Hosting an Amanita muscaria and Cacao Ceremony at the Kentucky Mushroom Festival.

The turning point

 From there major things started to shift in my life. Personally I was becoming more of my true self, without this terrible vice in my life.

A side note about cannabis: I don't believe it is a terrible thing for everyone. It just was not the right medicine for me. I abused it, and in turn it abused me back. I used to smoke "mids" or "brick weed" as a teenager that was pretty weak, but as a young adult all I had access to was really strong "chronic" weed that would give me symptoms of psychosis, paranoia, delusions, addictive tendencies, and depression. I love and respect the beautiful cannabis plant, and maybe some day I will partake, but I probably smoked as much weed in 16 years as a healthy person would smoke in their entire life, so I think I will give it some time at least.

I noticed so much benefit from the Amanita micro-dosing, that I began to share my little ice cube doses with friends, and many of them were hesitant. I was the guy walking around a party with a half melted bag of mushroom tea. As I began to learn more, I became more confident in educating people about it, and then they became more curious. They could also see the change happening in me, that I was more clear, more confident, and more calm.

Eventually I developed a tincture form that could be mailed out to people as a shelf stable alternative to the ice cubes.

I had already been a mushroom forager and a wild wizard of potions, and I added this to my Etsy store.

At the time I was a truck driver, a landscaper, a carpenter, and an organic permaculture farmer. I have been a jack of all trades through out my life. I quit college and began farming and teaching yoga in Arizona earlier in life and that was the beginning of my Heart Path which eventually led me to Wild Wizardry and Potion making.

So I put like 10 Amanita tinctures on Etsy and they sold out immediately. So I would order some more mushrooms and made 20 tinctures, sold out immediately. Then 40, sold out.. Then 50, sold out.... Okay I was beginning to think this was the start of something huge.

I broke Etsy's algorithm.

Every time I would put up my tinctures they'd sell out, I was getting about 15 orders every day. Any time you typed the word mushroom, Amanita, tincture or anything close to that my Amanita tincture was in the top left corner of the search results. I had a best seller badge and the whole nine yards. This lasted for almost two months, and then they caught me. They removed my listing and said it violated their terms of service. So I had to create another website, and I had PayPal as the payment processor. Well that lasted for a couple months and then I had to take that down.

I uploaded the listing again as a "picture of a mushroom on a bottle that just so happens to contain some liquid" and people would buy it and laugh and comment on how this picture helped them sleep, helped their anxiety and depression.

It was a way to buy time while I searched for a "high risk payment processor" that would accept my business.

Eventually I found one and although I have switched processors and website builders a couple times that has all pretty much been standard.

A culmination of events

In my personal life I was in the midst of a divorce and my business career was sky rocketing. I was in a tumultuous time indeed. I had to quit all my free lance work as a laborer and bet the whole farm on Amanita, and every time I bought mushrooms and made tinctures, I sold out.

I began to realize I wanted to teach about Amanita, and so I started to make a presentation that I would present at mushroom festivals. Life was zooming forward at a fast pace, I felt that I was working FOR Amanita muscaria.

I was hired to present a practitioners course for micro-dose coaches, along side people like Hamilton Morris. I was on podcasts left and right, and was being invited to speak at events, and sometimes paid! Wow.

All the while I was dealing with a painful separation and divorce, and also going through the Twelve Steps. I was doing the work, the icky dark work, and Amanita was helping me through it all.

She was like a mother dragging her child through the department store, and saying "you can do this baby, we're almost there"

She helped me get through so much inner and outer work, bring me so many blessings, and heal so many wounds and old time-lines of "not self"

After a few years of all this experience with Amanita in low doses and high doses she was nudging me to hold ceremony for others. I finally felt ready, after all the shadow work and experience, I was ready to lead others.

The first ceremony I hosted I met the love of my life, Maria. We didn't know it yet, but we were about to embark on a fast paced journey to jump onto a new time-line. We soon fell in love and decided we wanted to have children, and she became pregnant 5 months after we got together, and she moved into my old house with me a week later.

We wanted to buy a new home before our baby was born, and do a free home birth there. A free birth is an unassisted birth with no medical team or midwife or doula, it was just her and I.

We set out our intentions and prayed every single day for the perfect home. From May to November we searched and prayed and eventually through a miraculous series of events landed in our dream home. A log cabin with 16 acres in the forest with a beautiful creek running in the back yard, mushrooms growing everywhere and plenty of land for children to run freely.

There is much more I could say about my relationship with Amanita, but I will leave that for other videos and messages. She has helped me transform my life in every way possible. I went from newly divorced to in a new home with a new fiance with a baby (and another one soon to be born) in a matter of years.

Let my story inspire you. If you are feeling lost, do not stress, feeling lost can be a good place to be. It means you are on your way. You never know where you'll end up if you're comfortable being lost. Follow your heart always, let your gut guide you. Your intuition will tell you if something is right for you with that small still voice. You will have to take great leaps to get to great places, you will have to say good bye to the person you thought you were, but in the process you will find your true self, your true friends, and your true purpose in this life.

Amanita Masterclass

Now after four very in depth years focused on work with this amazing mushroom ally, I am so excited to present this Amanita Masterclass on Patreon. This will be the culmination of my wisdom, knowledge, and connection to other great minds that work with Amanita muscaria. Throughout my years I have connected with so many people with far greater wisdom than I, my goal with this Masterclass is to orchestrate all of us together in a very valuable package that is easily accessible in the form of mostly video content. Many of us live fast-paced lives, and although Amanita helps us slow down, sometimes having content that can be listened to while doing other work or driving is better than just having written content.

We had a variety of offerings here and this will only continue to grow. This is the Magnum Opus of my work with Amanita and each month I plan to release new content and offerings.

If you explore the Patreon you will see various sections, firstly we have the free content and general videos. This includes our vendors list of international vendors of Amanita muscaria products and services. We will have general updates, resources, links, videos and more here. This is for the public, and for people who are in the free membership.

The Spore Spreader level is a way to give back to our community and we greatly appreciate it.

You may be a part of one of our online communities including but not limited to: various Facebook groups, Reddit communities, Discord server, Signal groups or more.

The Fungal Forager tier of membership is for access to the whole Masterclass series. This includes interviews with practitioners, vendors, access to journey-reports, guided meditations, yoga nidra, micro-dosing journals, teaching modalities and the once-a-month zoom link for our group integration/Ask me Anything section. This zoom meeting may have practitioners from the masterclass pop on occasionally too which will be nice to get to ask them questions directly.

The Shamanita tier has access to the whole masterclass, as well as the private discord chat in our Amanita Science and Magic Discord, and the ability to vote and choose what new content we publish!

With one baby under one year old and another one coming soon, I will do my best to promise this, but I am committed to making one new piece of content in depth on a subject around Amanita muscaria each month, I just need your help as a Shamanita to help me decide. I want this course to cover as many aspects as possible, I want to have your help crafting it. So please consider the Shamanita tier.

With all that being said, enjoy this living library, this is truly a joy to create and curate. I have truly loved connecting with all the interviewees during this process. Many of these people are my friends and colleagues and I know you will enjoy their offerings as well.

Thank you and BE BLESSED!

-Michael

Harmony Acres