Mushroom Anna's Adventures

Before I begin, I wish to bring the reader’s attention to the second half of this post’s title: although the facts of this story are true, I did put my own spin on it. 

 I know a very glamorous and classy broad who’s into mushrooms. She must remain anonymous for all the right reasons, but I assure you that whatever she’s up to, it’s usually good. She’s Italian-American, of course, and has a heart-shaped face, almond eyes, rapier wit, ready smile, and a well deserved swagger. She knows her boletes (and suillus and leccinum too) inside and out, and makes her own grappa. She field IDs coccora like it’s her job, and has an excellent selection of hats. She also is given to sharing home-distilled spirits around campfires, and she tells bawdy jokes, both of which make her even more popular. She’s also a heavy hitting professional in the medical community, hence her anonymity.

At this point I am going to adopt the pseudonym Delilah for our intrepid heroine. When I met her at mushroom camp, Delilah told me about an experience she had with the fly agaric, Amanita muscaria, the red one with white spots that everyone likes to discuss. 

Most people who eat the fly agaric are trying to get high, but there are exceptions. Some folks report that you can parboil Amanita muscaria in salted water in order to remove the psychoactive chemicals in them. Once you pour the water off, the fruiting bodies can then be cooked safely. Some folks say it’s best to double parboil the mushrooms; others swear by a single round with a hefty dose of salt to get rid of the psychoactive.

As a small side note, let’s quickly review the psychoactive properties of A. muscaria. Primarily, ibotenic acid is the trip juice that makes the fly agaric a legendary entheogen, with muscimol playing second fiddle. The neurochemical consequences of eating fly agarics (and a host of allied species, like the panther amanita) seem to vary in great measure: some people report a profound sense of wellbeing, strength and boundless energy, others shake their heads and recount prolonged episodes of confusion, racing thoughts, physical discomfort and mouth full of the tongue-itus. 

So let us return to Delilah. Like many Italian-Americans, Delilah loves amanitas. She lived in the Santa Cruz mountains as a girl, and grew up hunting the verdant woods of that southerly bit of the coastal range that hugs the Pacific. As a self-taught American mushroom hunter, I started out with a very deep respect for, and fear of, poisoning myself with my new hobby. Delilah, however, told me that until she was in high school, the very idea of mushroom poisoning was never addressed in her house. It was just assumed that people knew what the fuck they were doing, and that they would find the right amanitas, fry them in a light batter, and finish the day without organ failure. 

About a decade ago, Delilah was faced with a challenge. The fly agaric is one of the most plentiful amanitas in Northern California, and since it’s both easy to spot and almost impossible to misidentify, Delilah decided to try denaturing some of them, in hopes of enjoying a nice tasty mushroom snack without the attendant trip. She sliced her mushrooms and boiled them vigorously for about 5 minutes, strained off the red-stained water and rinsed the mushrooms in cool tap water, patted them down, battered them and fried them in butter and salt. 

They were delicious with a glass of chardonnay.

For 6 years, Delilah picked A. muscaria and ate it just like that. Not a single hallucination or strange body-effect, just nice fried mushroom and some weird red parboil water to pour onto the compost pile. 

She even made it into a tradition: once a year, Delilah threw a pre-holiday dinner party for her lady friends, where they would all get very merry, eat and drink too much, and tell stories into the wee hours before donning their woman-in-holiday-mode skins and part ways until the coming January. Before the party each year, Deliah cooked up a few slices of fly agaric, sipped a glass of good white, then set about making her house ready for guests. 

The 7th year into this wholesome routine, Delilah hit a snag. She munched her muscaria morsels without a second thought, set down her wine glass and went about some chores. Somewhere between putting out the cheese plate and restocking the TP in the downstairs bathroom, Something Happened. The first thing she noticed were her hands, which of a sudden seemed too powerful to be handling fragile Scotts Tissue rolls. She could crush them so easily, if she wanted to…it felt great, but also made her quite aware that she needed some fresh air. She stepped outside, and the late November night didn’t deliver the slightest chill to her. She stood on the porch, a slight quiver in her knees and eyeballs, trying to focus. After about 5 minutes of trying to forcibly re-enter the world of Average, Delilah realized that she’d grown to a rather unusual height. It wasn’t that she was really taller, but more longer, a stretched version of herself that could tower over those wee concerns and considerations that took up so much of her time. Wow, she thought, those mushrooms just punched my card. 

She managed to call her BFF and tangentially explain the situation.

“I simply can’t imagine throwing a party in this state,” she remembers saying. “I might accidentally step on the table. Or on someone’s Cheshire tail. Don’t want that for me, or for anybody.”

BFF was resourceful, and redirected the party to a local Olive Garden, where many bread sticks were sacrificed at the altar of the Altered Party, but no real harm was done, and Delilah was spared the impossible task of hosting people in her accidentally profound condition.

Apparently, that night was straight paradise. Not enough to eat the mushrooms for fun, but enough not to fear them.

A year later, Delilah found herself collecting some fly agarics. She had done some thinking and research since her last encounter with muscaria, and decided that the potency of her last batch was a statistical abnormality, an outlier, and that it should not dissuade her from using the tried and true boil-pour-fry method. Also, should it go wrong again, she wasn’t averse to the trip induced by muscaria.

So she boiled, fried and sampled sparingly. This time around, she did not just get tall and feel like she was blessed with Shaolin guts and wisdom. No, this time was disassociation and confusion, darkness, questions without answers, answers without questions, thought without language, sensation without meaning. It was bloody awful. BFF intervened again and saved the day, but extracted a promise: no more fly agarics before the annual Gal Gala, no matter how hard you boil them. Some things are more important than experimentation.

Delilah agreed, and hasn’t eaten the fly agaric since.