The Hallucinogens Muscarine and Ibotenic Acid in the Middle Hind

Several articles in AFGHANISTAN JOURNAL 1 have previously dealt with the mycology of Afghanistan. These articles were at the cutting-edge of a broad, yet poorly understood area Ð one that has fallen into obscurity, but may hold a great deal of valuable information for mycologists, above all for ethnomycologists. While Geerken's first article represents one of the first listings of fungi endemic to the region, the second article, an exchange between Bleibinhaus and Geerken, covered questions about specific details of Geerken's article. These marginal contributions to the vast field of mycology ignored a significant aspect of the mycology of Afghanistan: that of the traditional use of hallucinogenic fungi, of which we obtained knowledge some years ago (1963) in the Shutul Valley. In the course of a number of several-day excursions (1963, 1964, 1965, 1969, and 1974) in the Shutul Valley (where, at the upper reaches, Shutuli survives as the lingua franca), we were able to question several older male inhabitants of this secluded mountain valley in detail about this hallucinogenic mushroom complex.

Amanita muscaria without question plays a cultic role in the folk medicine of the Shutul Valley. Inquiring about its occurrence and use, we have received information that the so-called "Raven's Bread", i.e., Amanita muscaria, is gathered in the late spring of wet years from moist eroded rock crevices and undergoes spontaneous drying in the blazing sun. In this way, the mushroom is almost permanently preserved, provided that strict drying of this hygroscopic material is ensured. Reduced to granulated form (we are even told of mushroom-grinding mills that were used for this in the past), A. muscaria is used by the inhabitants of the Shutul Valley as a stimulant. They boil the Amanita granules with fresh mountain snapweed (Impatiens noli-tangere subsp. montana) and soured goat-cheese brine, in this way producing the well-known specialty, Extract of Shutul (bokar). By mixing the mushroom with other substances, twice the amount of fluid is obtained from half the amount of mushrooms. In the hamlet of Qaf-e-Changar, at the upper reaches of the Shutul, the calyx-tips of seed-bearing flowers of the malign henbane (Hyoscyamus niger) are added to the Extract; it is used for purposes of therapeutic massage, coming into effect by means of transcutaneous stimulation.

The compounds of Amanita muscaria have only become well understood in the last few years. Previously, it was assumed that the main active substance in this mushroom was the alkaloid muscarine, hence the name of the compound. However, A. muscaria only contains about 2 PPM muscarine; the lethal dose of this compound is 0.2 gm. for a healthy adult, in other words, it would take 110,000 kg. of fresh A. muscaria to deliver a dangerous dose to humans! Thus, there must therefore be other toxic substances found in this mushroom.

It was not until 1964/65 that these compounds, called muscimol, muscazone, muscasophine, and ibotenic acid, were finally analyzed. As it turned out, ibotenic acid is mainly responsible for the intoxicating properties of A. muscaria.. Muscimol, which is derived from ibotenic acid through dehydration and decarboxylation, is indeed psychoactive, though it is missing from the flesh of both the cap and stem. Whether muscazone, whose presence in young caps is, for the most part, negligible, forms from ibotenic acid has not yet been demonstrated with any certainty. Even less active is a compound that until now was all but unknown, muscasophine.

Muscarine and ibotenic acid are concentrated chiefly in the whitish universal veil remnants on top of the cap. The effects of these substances were known long ago to the Norwegian Berserks and were manifested in their infamous mania. Since ibotenic acid and muscimol pass through the body unchanged, in old times the urine of one who was intoxicated was reused.

In the Shutul Valley, the preparation and use of Amanita muscaria now exist only in a rudimentary form that eludes precise scientific observation. During the aforementioned excursions, we were able to tape-record the reports of seven inhabitants of this valley. The following are some short excerpts:

Farid Ahmad (around 60): "[around 15 minutes] after I drink the extract, a feeling of weariness and a need for sleep overcomes me. I hear voices, although I am alone in my room....I laugh about the voices and about myself...."

Mustafa (around 60): "First, I am very sleepy, then I feel good. I forget sentences....Once I thought that I was a tree...."

Ahmad Kargar (about 65): "I have drank it for many years, yet only once have I had a really bad time. I was anxious and afraid; I ran around in the woods and didn't know who or where I was...."

Malang Aziz (between 60 and 70): "We don't have much, but we have Raven's Bread. We grind it down to a gray powder and make a concoction of it....In Winter, when we can't leave the house, we drink it."

Several Shutulis asserted that Amanita-extract would be administered orally as a medicine for treatment of psychotic conditions, as well as externally as a therapy for localized frostbite. Against which psychotic states the extract was administered was not revealed, though it is to be assumed on the basis of the psychoactive qualities of ibotenic acid that it could be used to treat depression and similar apatheoses.

Unfortunately, without any cases of Amanita muscaria intoxication to observe, the descriptions of the intoxication symptoms of the Amanita-eaters of Shutul could not be compared with reports from Mexico, Siberia, and Greece, nor with several well-known contemporary experiments. In all of these reports, an inexorable urge to activity is emphasized time and again, together with feelings of dizziness, impairment of vision and speech, delusions, fits of ecstatic frenzy, prophetic vision, sexual energy, and remarkable strength. The pupils of those who are intoxicated are very strongly dilated, a property that is reflected in one of the many local names for A. muscaria: chashm baskon, that is, literally, "eye-opener", which could be thought of in another sense as supernatural vision.

The mushroom occupies an important position in the folk customs of the Shutul Valley. When they are collected, the first three mushrooms found were (are?) thrown backwards over the head or shoulder; this way, one has good luck in finding more. This odd custom is associated with ancient magical rituals. To this day in Lower Franconia there is a similar berry-gathering ritual. One lays the first found berries on a hollow tree-trunk or stump; the accompanying incantation goes: "I have found the berries/I have thrown the first behind me/I have swung through the forest/I have found great berries."

Amanita muscaria is not the only fungus that occurs in the Shutul Valley, though it may be the only hallucinogenic one. The following species were identified: Pleurotus ostreatus, P. ostreatus erengyi, Fomes fomentarius, Coprinus comatus, Choiromyces venosus, Morchella crassipes (= Morchella esculenta), and a wide variety of Fungi Imperfecti.

Afterward

According to G. Bresadola, in Russia, Amanita muscaria in is cut up and consumed in salt water and vinegar, in order to put oneself into a kind of drunken state. .In Siberia, where the mushroom quite seldom occurs, it was traded at high prices due to these effects. The ban by Russian authorities on trading in A. muscaria was directed above all at this Siberian habit; the effect of this law, however, was to increase the consumption of vodka.

R. Gordon Wasson, the American discoverer of many old mushroom myths, is of the opinion that the German name for A. muscaria, "Fliegenpilz" (fly-mushroom), comes from the fact that after consuming it, "the mind buzzes like flies"; the name is therefore in reference to the intoxicated state induced by the mushroom. Wasson also traced European ideas of heaven and hell back to similar mushroom mysteries, an idea which Robert Graves "wholeheartedly agree[s] with." Graves likewise traces all of the supernatural forces and events of ancient Greek mythology back to the consumption of A. muscaria and Panaeolus papilionaceus (with which he identified Ambrosia, "the food of the gods", Nectar, etc.). To what extent our views of central-Eurasian historical phenomena will be affected by these theories must be left to continuing scholarly research. This contribution can serve as no more than a hint. A comparison of these observations with observations from other cultures should present us with an all-embracing phenomenon. It should be of great interest to mycologists that rudiments of such a mushroom cult have survived until our day in one remote mountain valley in the Hindu Kush. (And in how many others as well?)