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Toadstool - drug of luck
contents
- A red and white hat
- Fools and devils
- Confusion with other mushrooms
- Toxic effect of fly agaric
- Can toadstool be deadly?
- Garden Gnomes and Goblet - The fly agaric in mythology
- Divine urine
- Henbane and dwarf wine
- Santa Claus - A toadstool?
A red and white hat
"The effect varies greatly from person to person, beginning 15-60 minutes after admission, with tremors, twitching and slight clashes in the limbs. The feet become numb. An euphoria characterized by happiness, easy-goingness and the desire to dance increases to colored, visual hallucinations. Macropsia is common. This is followed by a deep sleep caused by the exhaustion. "(Wanke / Taeschner in" intoxicants "on the fly agaric)
The toadstool may be more than 20 cm high and grows among others in pure coniferous forests, on heaps and meadows. (Image: leszekkobusinski / fotolia.com) The fly agaric (also called "red fly agaric") grows in open forests, especially under birch and pine, in various forms from Western Europe to Siberia and in North America from the Pacific to the Atlantic Ocean. It grows in pure deciduous forests as well as in pure coniferous forests, on heaps, in city parks, gardens and the heath, on cemeteries, meadows, bogs and at the edge of the forest.
The fly agar lives in symbiosis with birch, pine or spruce, but also with beech, oak and fir. He is up to 23 cm high, the hemispherical arched hat reaches up to 20 cm. In Europe and the northwest of America, it shines bright red with white warts, in the east and in the midwest of the US, the warts are yellowish and the hat orange - a variant in Idaho is white.
Frank Hoffmann writes on the website www.frankies.jimdo.com: "The fly fungal dyes are a complex mixture of betalamine acid imines with various amines or amino acids. The toadstool contains - in varying concentrations - yellow (Muscaflavin), orange (Musca-Aurine), reddish brown (Muscarubin) and purple (Muscapurpurin) dyes, which provide the different color of the fly agaric. "
The warts are remnants of the shell, the velum, which protects the spores of the young fungus.
Fools and devils
Other German names are fly sponge or rabenbrot, fool sponge or lucky mushroom, which emphasize the intoxicating effect of the mushroom. The same applies to names in other cultures such as Tschasch baskon, eye-openers in Afghanistan, Toadstool or fly-agaric in England or aeh kib luúm with the Lakandones, terecua-cauica, intoxicating mushroom, with the Tarasken or yuyo de rayo, in Spanish, what Thunderbolt mushroom is called.
Demonic powers were placed under the fly agaric, clearly in names like xibalbaj okox (quiche), the underworld mushroom, itzel okox (quiche), devilish mushroom, keckchi rocox aj tza or (cakchuiquel), devil's mushroom.
Confusion with other mushrooms
The royal fly mushroom differs by its brown color from the red nominate form. The young fly agaric in its shell is easily confused with the edible mushroom mushroom.
The Velumschüppchen (the white dots), the rain can wash off. Then the red toadstool looks similar to the orange yellow scabbard and the edible Kaiserling.
The panther mushroom looks very similar to the young toadstool and can therefore be easily confused. (Image: awfoto / fotolia.com) The young fly agar also looks very similar to the panther mushroom, a relative of the family of amanita. Like the fly agaric, the panther mushroom contains ibotenic acid, which turns into muscimol when dried. The relative's hat is not red, but brownish-bluish-gray.
Toxic effect of fly agaric
The toadstool is considered a toadstool and not a drug. It is therefore not forbidden to gather him.
One fungus contains about 0.17 to 1% ibotenic acid and muscimol. The highest concentrations have the yellow meat under the hat. Above all, the fresh fungus contains ibotenic acid, which, however, decreases on drying by decarboxylation, and thus the strongly hallucinogenic muscimol develops.
Caution in the treatment: Muskarin used to be responsible for the poisoning by toadstools. Now if a doctor gives hyoscyamine as an antidote, those affected can die from it, while untreated poisoning does not kill anyone. Physostigmine is safe as an antidote.
The effect of the fungus begins about one hour after ingestion. Typical are hallucinations, visual, acoustic, sensory and haptic. The affected hear sounds more clearly, and their sense of touch increases.
As a drug the toadstool played a central role, especially in the religious-shamanic context. People of Siberia still use it today as an intoxicant: they collect the mushrooms in summer, eat them raw or put them in water and drink the broth.
Consuming one to four normal sized mushrooms leads to fatigue, dizziness, euphoria and a feeling of weightlessness. Visual hallucinations are characterized by colourfulness.
Even the consumption of a small amount of toadstool can cause symptoms such as Cause fatigue and dizziness. (Image: pathdoc / fotolia.com) Can toadstool be deadly?
Eight or more fungi trigger the symptoms of poisoning, characterized mainly by muscle twitching, disorientation and confusion. More than ten mushrooms can be deadly. To date, however, no case is known in which fly agaric alone would have caused the death of a healthy adult.
The stimulus threshold decreases after consuming the fungus. The euphoria can turn into anxiety and even a panic attack, especially when people inadvertently ingest the fungus. Some also report apathy and lethargy.
After 10 to 15 hours the intoxication is over, usually after a deep sleep with very lively dreams. At the intoxication, the victims remember only fragmentary.
Longer lasting consumption can cause liver and kidney damage. Cannabis and fly agaric complement and reinforce each other in their intoxicating effects, but not in their toxicity.
Garden Gnomes and Goblet - The fly agaric in mythology
Siberian shamans believe that the fly agar originates from the saliva of the highest god. The ancient Teutons believed that where the horse of their god Wotan the drifter dripped, the mushrooms would emerge. Hence the name Rabenbrot, because Hugin and Munin, the thought and the memory, were the two ravens that accompanied Wotan and Odin.
Some scholars of religion regard the fly agaric for the legendary Soma in the Vedic texts of ancient Indian culture. Soma was considered necessary for all important rituals, as people like gods were intoxicated with him. Supposedly, the Aryan tribes brought the toadstool 3,500 years ago into the valley of the Indus.
Divine urine
Samoyads, Ostjacken, Tungusen, Kamchadalen and other tribes of Siberia knew no alcohol before arrival of the Russians. They put the mushroom in blackberry, blackcurrant or willow cherry juice. Or they chewed him for a long time. The mushroom was considered so precious that the natives of Siberia even drank the urine of consumers, as the active ingredients remain unchanged in the urine and also drank the urine of reindeer, which also intoxicated with the fungus. In the Siberian cosmos, the "saliva of the gods" allows consumers to enter the world of spirits.
Members of various tribes of Siberia even drank the urine of reindeer who had previously become intoxicated with the mushrooms. (Image: Incredible Arctic / fotolia.com) In 1730, a Swedish officer, F.J. von Strahlenberg, a book about Siberia and wrote about the fly agaric as a drug. The German researcher Georg Wilhelm Steller confirmed this a few decades later on his expedition through Siberia.
In modern times, however, the "god mushroom" became a "secular" drug in Siberia as well. While the Europeans in the metropolises were intoxicated with opium, the people of Koryak celebrated glittering festivals with the "lucky ones".
The English traveler Oliver Goldsmith attended such a feast and wrote: "When the ladies and gentlemen are gathered, the mushroom-sud goes round. They begin to laugh, nonsense, become increasingly tipsy and thus excellent associates. "A single mushroom could cost as much as a reindeer. The poorer ones supposedly waited until the "tall gentlemen" relieved their bladder and then licked the urine.
Even today, it is consumed by Chukchi, Koryak and Kamchadalen, the Finno-Ugric peoples and the Voguls. In Russia, people sometimes put one to two of the mushrooms into vodka, reinforcing the effect of the alcohol.
Henbane and dwarf wine
In the Hindu Kush, the locals cook toadstools with mountain spring herb and the goat cheese lake. Occasionally, they also add the highly hallucinogenic calyx of the henbane.
The Chuj Indians in Mexico collect toadstools under pines, dry their hats and smoke them mixed with tobacco.
In 1855, Ernst Freiherr von Bibra described the ritual consumption of fly agaric in his book "The narcotic stimulants and man", in 1860 M.C.Cooke discussed the use of the mushroom by Siberian shamans in his work "The Seven Sisters of Sleep".
In the German legend the dwarves drank the rainwater, which collected in the hat of the mushroom as "dwarf wine".
A biologist at Harvard University believes that Santa Claus was inspired by the fly agaric. (Image: olly / fotolia.com) Santa Claus - A toadstool?
Said Donald Pfister, a biologist at Harvard University, says that Santa Claus, in his red-and-white robe, was inspired by toadstools, including toadstools that shamans or priests of pagan cultures would have worn for the winter solstice festival.
Ethnologist Christian Raetsch claims that red in shamanic cultures stands for the female (menstrual blood) and white for the male (sperm). "The toadstool appears only once a year, as does Santa Claus. The toadstool is created mythologically in the time of the winter solstice, Santa Claus comes to mid-winter. The references to the ecstatic god of heaven Wotan share both - and both again every year. "
He goes even further: "Both the fly agaric and Santa Claus have a direct connection to the Otherworld. Toadstools live in toadstools and Santa Claus accompanies the red-hatted Christmas elf. "
The entire Christmas is for Raetsch a shamanic ritual of ecstasy. He writes: "At the beginning of their rituals, as if to say hello, the shamans smoke mushrooms. And also Santa Claus is received in an atmosphere of fragrant incense. The toadstool gives the shaman the ability to fly. Santa Claus flies his sleigh pulled by ghost reindeer. The toadstool shamans also ride magic wreaths through the air. "(Dr. Utz Anhalt)
Literature:
René Flammer / Egon Horak: Toadstools - mushroom poisons. Mushroom poisoning. A reference book for doctors, pharmacists, biologists, mycologists, mushroom experts and mushroom pickers. Schwabe, Basel, 2003.
Roth, Frank, Kormann: toadstools, fungal toxins - molds, mycotoxins. Nikol, Hamburg, 1990.Wolfgang Bauer, Edzard folding, Alexandra Rosenbohm (ed.), The fly agaric, Basel: AT-Verlag, 2000
Bernhard van Treeck, Drug and Addiction Lexicon, Berlin: Lexikon-Imprint-Verlag, 2004,
Wolfgang Schmidbauer, Jürgen Scheidt, Handbook of Noise Drugs: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag 1999
Christian Raetzsch: Abyssal Christmas - the true story of a totally unholy celebration. Riemann Verlag 2014
M. Bon: Parey's book of mushrooms 1988.
R. Flammer: Differential diagnosis of fungal poisoning. Gustav Fischer Verlag Stuttgart-New York