Jochen Gartz - Magic Mushrooms Around the ... - preterhuman.net

CHAPTER 8
SOME COMMENTS ON EFFECTS OF MUSHROOMS FROM
THE CATEGORY PHANTASTICA
Extensive animal research efforts during
the 1950s furnished evidence that both psilocybin
and psilocin are alkaloids of negligible acute
toxicity. Specifically, the dosage of
psilocybin that caused death in 50% of the
experimental mice (LD 50) was determined to be
280 mg/kg body weight. By comparison, noticeable
effects in humans generally occur at dosages as low
as 0.02 mg/kg.
Animal tests showed that, on average,
psilocybin was a substance only half as toxic as
mescaline, and at the same time, turned out to be
50 times more potent as a psychoactive substance.
For example, up to 2 g of mescaline were being
administered with no dangerous side effects, while
the usual dose of psilocybin ranged from 3 to 30
mg as part of psychological testing and
psychotherapy sessions.
As is the case with other psychotropic
substances, human beings most likely have a more
sensitive reaction in response to psilocybin than
mice do. Still, the range of safety in controlled
experiments comes to several hundred times the
amount of the active dosage. The same goes for the
consumption of mushroom material, since
psilocybin concentrations in mushrooms can vary
up to a factor of 10. Consequently, J. Ott
speculated that adults would need to eat their own
body weight in fresh mushrooms, in order to finally
reach the dosage limit of lethal toxicity. Despite the
hundreds of thousands of voluntary selfexperiments
taking place every year in the U.S.
alone, no fatalities caused by magic mushrooms
have ever occurred there. Small children, however,
have abnormal reactions to psilocybin, such as loss
of consciousness, cramps and danger of death.
It was in the fall of 1960, that a child from
Milwaukee, Oregon, picked several mushrooms
from grassy soil below a cluster of conifers.
Having eaten the mushrooms, the child
experienced cramps and a high fever. Similar to a
condition described as "status epilepticus ", the
symptoms were treated by medications, with
limited success. The child died within three days.
The mushroom sample involved in this
incident was identified as Psilocybe baeocystis. P.
Stamets, however, contested this finding, claiming
the species had been misidentified. He referred to
a publication about the incident that included a
picture of the mushrooms, which, according to
Stamets, shows a sample of Psilocybe cyanescens.
This species is wellknown as exceptionally
potent, due to high levels of psilocybin and
psilocin. Still, we cannot determine whether toxic
concentrations of alkaloids were the cause of
death, or whether ingestion of the alkaloids
triggered a latent case of epilepsy in the form of
an acute episode that could not be treated or
controlled. If a similar incident happened
nowadays, fatal outcomes could be easily
prevented, since the last three decades of progress
in pharmaceutical research included the discovery
of new drugs capable of aborting convulsive
episodes.
Due to publicity generated by the
unfortunate accident in 1960, two alkaloids
(baeocystin and norbaeocystin) first isolated from
Psilocybe baeocystis, at times acquired
reputations of being extremely poisonous as well
as strongly psychoactive. Both claims, however,
are wrong and unsubstantiated. Specifically, both
baeocystin and norbaeocystin are present in other
mushroom species, such as Psilocybe
semilanceata, and at generally higher levels
compared to the alkaloid content of Psilocybe
baeocystis.
Biochemical research efforts accelerated
and large numbers of studies were conducted,
primarily with LSD. These investigators sought to
discover the receptor binding sites for
hallucinogenic compounds in the brain and to
understand the mechanisms underlying the
genesis of psychedelic visions. Today, we still
lack a sound theoretical framework able to
explain the relationship between chemical
compounds and the manifestation of their