Paul Stamets Describes Bad Trip on Incredibly Dangerous Mushroom

Now, it's, when people pick mushrooms, when they go out and pick mushrooms, the real issue seems to be that there's some mushrooms that are edible that look very close to mushrooms, very similar to mushrooms that are very poisonous. True to the uninitiated and the people who have not learned. But once you learn the chanterelle, you will not mistake it. Nothing looks like a lion's mane mushroom. Once you learn lion's mane mushroom, it's hard to mistake it. So there are some lookalikes and with the Amanita falloidis, the destroying angel, and with the patty straw mushroom, which is commonly cultivated and collected in Asia, many of the mushroom deaths in North America have come from, not displaced peoples, but people who've come from Asia. And because they're secretive and the language barrier and the culture of being wild collectors, they then mistake the destroying angel for a patty straw mushroom. That's a real common mistake. There are other people who said they, well, it just looked edible. That's a really dangerous thing to say. You have to know species individually. There's edible species of Amanita and there's poisonous ones. There's deadly poisonous ones. Amanita seems to have a lot of controversy as far as its efficacy, as far as like its psychedelic efficacy. What's that? That I don't know anybody that's ever really tripped off of it. Mascaria or Amanita? Yeah. Oh man, do I have a story? Please. Oh my God. Because everybody that I know, like, and that was something that McKenna talked about as well. Terrence talked about while he was alive. They said that it seems that it's genetically variable, seasonally variable, perhaps even environmentally variable. All those things are partially true. I've eaten Amanine Mascaria four or five times. Amanine Mascaria is the red mushroom with the white dots. It's the veritell mushroom. It's perfectly legal. It's a Santa Claus mushroom. It contains a Musimol, Muscarin, and Ibotinic Acid. Very small amounts of Muscarin. But the Muscarinic symptoms cause salivation and sweating. And I tripped with my friend on Amanine Mascaria and I looked at him and he was foaming at the mouth. And he had all these bubbles coming out of his mouth. I go, man, dude, you look like you have rabies. He goes, you should see what you look like. But then Amanine Mascaria, I've eaten that a few times and people do boil it in water, throw away the water twice and they can make it into an edible mushroom. But it's not that great of an edible. But there's another mushroom called Amanine Pantherina. Pantherina is a kick-ass mushroom. It has five times or more the amounts of Amucimol and Ibotinic Acid, almost no Muscarin. So the salivation effect of Amanine Mascaria. So I have had a very good friend. We are not friends anymore, unfortunately. I was in charge of the herbarium at the Evergreen State College and I freeze-dried Amanine Pantherina. They're called Panther caps. They're brown in color and they have dots. Very good. The Panther cap, perfectly legal mushroom and extraordinarily powerful. So I was living up in Darrington, Washington. I had this cabin. I was a logger hippie for a few years. And so my friend Dave came up and I had these freeze-dried mushrooms from the herbarium. And I said, let's go ahead and eat these. And I had read in the literature and almost no one had eaten them. So I made an omelet and we cooked it up and he was much lighter than me. So I thought, well, I should have two-thirds of the omelet, right? Because he's lighter than me. So we ate the mushrooms around 10 o'clock. And we're living in this cabin, but across the creek was the Squire Creek Campground. And it was the, we call them the Winnebago people, right? Back then in the 70s, I hitchhiked across country 13 times. Winnebago never picked me up. So they were always the enemy. And so we were long-haired hippies, you know, we ate these mushrooms and we thought for entertainment, let's go look at the Winnebago people. So we, it was so close. I don't know why we drove our car, but we drove the car out of my cabin. We went down like a half a mile and we turned left into the Squire Creek Campground. And instead we parked the car and we wanted to go up to a beautiful view spot. And so we walked through the Winnebago people and their families and everything else. And we get up onto a ridge and we thought, this is a great view spot. But we're waiting like an hour, no effect. You know, and I was talking to Dave and said, wow, maybe these aren't that potent. And then right after we said that, I looked at Dave and I said, Dave, did you see that? And he goes, yeah. And we waited a few more seconds and then, whoosh, this big distortion field. And we had a beautiful view of the volcanoes and the valleys, a big viewscape that we could see the airway had become sort of this liquid. And then it started coming on stronger and stronger and stronger. And we go, oh my God, this is getting intense. We better get the heck out of here and go home where it's safe because this is coming on so strong. So we come down off this little plateau and we had to come down through the Winnebago people. And then, oh my God, and here we're walking. Now, think about the Ammonitas and Muscaragon Pantherina. You have dull yellows and browns, but you feel like this giant and you're moving in slow motion every step you're taking, you know. You feel like this giant by moving really slow. And then I came to Winnebago's of no end. They were hundreds of feet long. I'm trying to walk past this Winnebago and like, when is this Winnebago? When I end, I keep on walking further and further. And then, oh my God, and so then we're really, just really, really high. It was ridiculous. And I had a really flex camera. And we came up to the car. And so for some frigging reason, I locked the car. And so I had my key. I looked at my key and I look at the lock. I went, bam, missed. Oh, shit. Okay. Pulled the key back. Missed. But Dave goes, are you okay? I go, I'm fine. He goes, do you want me to drive? And I go, no way, dude. If I'm this high, there's no way I want you to drive, right? And so I did it over and over again. Then magically, just for repetition, it just made it into the lock. So I unlocked the door and I get into the car and I drop my camera. And then I'm in the car and I'm trying to get my key. And thank God I didn't get my key and I was not safe to drive. And then Dave is going like, oh my God, Paul, we're so frigging high right now. And I go, and it's like, well, let's go home. I said, did I drop my camera? And I went over and I looked like around, there's my camera. I picked it up and going, well, Dave, I dropped my camera. Dropped my camera again. I go, well, Dave, did I drop my camera? Picked up my camera. I go, whoa, I dropped my camera. I did this over and over and over again. Repetitive motion syndrome kicked in. It's a very common symptom of the Amity Pantherina. I dropped my camera dozens and dozens of times. How did it look at the end? Well, it was shattered. But Dave goes, Paul, you should look up. And a whole bunch of people from the Winnebago family community had lined up holding their children in close proximity, watching this repetitive motion syndrome where I'm just constantly picking my camera. So they're watching you for entertainment where you went to watch them for entertainment. And now they're freaking out because I have this repetitive motion syndrome and I take one step, I drop my camera. I go, well, Dave, I dropped my camera. And I pick up my camera again. I go, did I just drop my camera? Whoa, I dropped my camera again. Now, this speaks to the Berserkers. And the Berserkers, the word Berserk came from the Berserkers in Scandinavia where the legend has it that there were these Scandinavians, the Vikings were surrounded and outnumbered. And they were going to be killed the next day. And they ate a whole bunch of the amnida muscaria and a big soup. And legend has it, and it's not been confirmed, but this is the legend that's very commonly reiterated, is that they drank a whole bunch of amnida muscaria soup and then they went and the next day, even though they're massively outnumbered, they took off all their clothes and they attacked the enemy naked with swords. And that's where the word Berserk came from, the Berserkers. So I'm having this Berserker experience of repetitive motion syndrome, and I'm dropping my camera over and over and over again. And I looked up and these parents were holding their children. They were totally freaking out. I said, we got to get out of here. So we left the doors open in the car, and I'm taking one or two steps, dropping my camera, picking it up, dropping my camera. We finally made it back. He disappeared. I didn't know. So Dave, you're on your own, dude. I have enough to worry about. I made it back to my cabin. And I get to my cabin and there's a combination lock. Oh, no, I don't need a combination lock right now. I can barely, you know, I'm spinning lock back and forth, spinning back and forth. And then eventually the lock just spontaneously opened and then I fell on the ground and I started convulsing. And the cool thing about convulsing is it felt good. Every time I convulsed, I actually went, oh, that feels so good. So I convulsed some more. And I was just convulsing constantly. Like epileptic convulsions? Epileptic convulsions. Very, very intense. But they felt good. This is the weird thing about it. I needed to convulse because every time I convulse, I kind of got a reset of my neurology, you know, and I have a baseline and then it would spin out of control. And then I had this cascade of Icedinian thoughts. I'm going, oh, my God, I can save the world. I know how to do this. And then I would have a prepositional or an inverbial phrase. And just before I came to the object of my thought that was an Icedinian insight, I would have a tangent. And then I would come to the course at the end of that sentence and then I have another tangent. And I saw death as a perpetual series of alternatives that never gave me the satisfaction of a conclusive thought. And so I was – I just lasted for about 12 hours. You know, I fainted. I went into a coma-like state. So you recommended it. No, I do not recommend it. And the biggest concern besides the repetitive motion syndrome is hypothermia. Because if you're out in the woods or something and you're exposed, you're not getting up. So it's called soma for a reason. It's the soma mushroom. It's somniferous. It causes sleep. Is that what soma is? Because isn't there some debate as to what soma actually is? That's what R. Gordon-Watson proposed soma in the Vedic literature. There's a big debate about that. But the other story I like to tell is my friend Dr. Andrew Weil was at the Cougar Hot Springs in Oregon. And Andy's a medical doctor from Harvard. And he was walking the trail and people came running down to him. Oh, my God, this guy's trying to kill himself. I've got to come up. And Andy went up. And this guy had eaten a whole bunch of Andy Muscarion, big biker dude. And he was covered with blood. And he was up on a bridge. And he was swinging his legs back and forth. And he was above the rocks. And he threw himself off the bridge. Now, it was only about six or eight feet. But it's enough. On the boulders down below. Smashed himself on the rocks. And then he climbed back up on the bridge. And he swung his feet and threw himself off the bridge. So this causes repetitive motion syndrome. Both of my camera, etc. It's a mushroom that's perfectly legal. It's probably one of the most dangerous mushrooms that anyone could eat. I definitely advise not doing this because I always thought if I was ever called as an expert witness, having these experiences, and someone who was watching Tales from the Crypt on TV, and then they saw a knife, it causes temporary insanity. Really? These still inside mushrooms are wonderful, they're peaceful, they're loving. It's an empatlico, right? But the aminita mushrooms cause this strange, strange sort of behavior that is really potentially dangerous.