If you’ve been in your local smokeshop lately, you might have noticed a new item on the shelves: amanita muscaria mushroom gummies. If you read up on these little guys, you might find people reporting varying effects such as euphoria or a slight uplifting feeling.
One writer for leafly.com even said they can make you hallucinate and called amanita muscaria gummies the "delta-8 of mushrooms." That wasn’t our experience.
Amanita muscaria mushrooms are red with white spots. Unlike traditional magic mushrooms, amanitas don’t contain the hallucinogen psilocybin, which will send you to the moon and back if you take enough. Psilocybin was decriminalized in Oregon in 2020 and in Colorado this year, but it remains illegal in Texas. The psychoactive compound in amanita muscaria mushrooms is muscimol, which experts say is less hallucinogenic than psilocybin, according to leafly.com. Manufacturers have been able to take amanita muscaria extract and pack it into gummies with varying potencies.
People have been taking amanitas for centuries. To avoid the mushroom’s toxicity, indigenous people in Siberia and current-day Scandinavia would feed it to reindeer and drink their psychoactive urine to feel its effects. Don’t worry, you won’t have to drink any reindeer pee — that’s where the gummies come in. They're legal in every state except for Louisiana, but have started becoming more mainstream only in the last year or so.
Cynthia Cabrera, chief strategy officer of the hemp manufacturer Hometown Hero, which also makes amanita muscaria mushroom gummies, described them more as a mood enhancer. Asked if they would make people hallucinate, Cabrera said with a laugh, “Hopefully not.”
“It’s not the same as psilocybin,” she said. “It’s like with a lot of products. Every person is individual and different, so you do have to find your sweet spot.”
She said these are the kinds of products their customers are asking for.
“We’re a lifestyle brand company, and we hear from our consumers, our customers all the time that they’re looking for natural alternatives to just kind of help them feel better,” she said. “There’s not one product for everyone. We like to provide a variety of products so that people can find their own sweet spot.”
So, if you’re looking to actually trip, you may just want to take a pass on the amanita muscaria mushroom gummies.“It’s not the same as psilocybin." – Cynthia Cabrera, Hometown Hero
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Not sure what to expect on our first encounter with amanita muscaria mushroom gummies, we prepared for a trip. The night's schedule was open. Some high-inducing THCa hemp flower was on deck. Our stomachs were empty, ready to absorb every inch of those sweet amanita gummies.
We’d stopped by our local smokeshop, CBD American Shaman, to pick up some gummies made by a company called Kruz, as the shop didn’t carry any made by Hometown Hero. The Kruz gummies were mixed berry flavor, and each of the 10 in the pack was loaded with 500 milligrams of amanita muscaria extract. The packaging said one serving was one gummy. Again, not knowing what to expect, we took half of one and chewed thoroughly as the packaging instructed. To ease us into whatever we were headed for, we hit a bowl of some THCa hemp flower.
Suddenly, our heart started racing. Our mouth felt like we’d just got done sucking on a D battery and a couple of nickels. Was this it? Were we about to start tripping a mere 15 minutes after taking just 250 milligrams of amanita? No. It was just the hemp flower, mixed with the nerves we get every time we think we’re about to trip. As the night went on, we realized we weren’t headed to the moon. We couldn’t even leave the atmosphere. The half gummy felt like a dud. The night went up in THCa smoke, and we were left wondering if these gummies could quench a psychonaut’s thirst for even the mildest of trips.
Maybe more will do the trick, we thought. We waited a day to rid our mind of whatever amanita was still left in there and tried a higher dose. This time, two gummies – 1,000 milligrams total of amanita muscaria extract – in the middle of a Saturday.
We went on a walk, hoping to feel more at one with nature and to see some colors pop and some tracers trace. No battery and nickels feeling in the mouth this time. No racing heart. But definitely no trip. Our faith in these little gummies was waning, but we weren’t quite done experimenting.
For our last bout with the amanita, we took four gummies (2,000 milligrams). The night was open, but we were starting to doubt how necessary it was to clear our schedule for the amanita. We played Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III on Xbox to pass the time as we waited for the amanitas to take effect. About 30 minutes in, just like the previous two times, no feeling. About 45 minutes into the amanitas, we started to feel something: a slight uplifting feeling. But as soon as it started, it was over.
Was it the amanitas we were feeling? Probably not. Was it all in our head? Probably.
But even if that feeling was the amanita, it was nothing like we had hoped. Again, no popping colors and no tracers, no visuals at all. If, like us, you've heard or read that amanitas are the delta-8 of mushrooms, then maybe you'll have better luck. We must’ve tried the wrong stuff.
