laboratories, in Japan, England and Switzerland. Finally, the correct compounds were identified as ibotenic acid and muscimol.
Muscimol is the psychoactive constituent. A tiny part of the ibotenic acid is changed to muscimol within the human system, following ingestion of the mushroom, and this produces the effects for which fly-agaric is known.
Research shows that ibotenic acid will create an hallucinogenic effect in humans, at doses as small as 50mg. The onset of these effects may be rapid or quite slow, ranging from 30 minutes to 2-3 hours, depending on body type, susceptibility, habituation, and the circumstances of ingestion.
In any case, three hours is usually enough for the full effects to be felt, which will then last for 4-8 hours, depending on dose, and will normally include muscle spasms (as if one is actually taking a ‘journey’ of sorts), visual distortions (‘visions’), altered auditory perception (‘hearing voices’), and loss of equilibrium (changed perspective on ‘normal reality’).
A considerable amount of ibotenic acid is excreted quickly after fly-agaric is consumed, and remains unaltered in the urine. This adds credibility to the Siberian experience (along with the residual Father Christmas myth) since, after eating the mushroom, the shaman would excrete ibotenic acid in his urine and reindeers could ingest this and reprocess its ibotenic acid content as muscimol, producing a similar hallucinogenic effect. The animal would then excrete ibotenic acid in its own urine, and the process would continue.
In this way, a 50-100mg dose of ibotenic acid could produce 10-15mg doses of muscimol for up to 10 users, so that one intake of