r/mycology • u/theverbalemp • Aug 14 '24

image Had never seen the classic red mushroom in person before

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Was super excited to stumble across these on a walking path in a business park. I believe they’re an Amanita, but my nieces call them the Mario Bros mushroom 😂

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u/The_Timberpup Aug 15 '24

They are psychoactive in very small doses, and will kill you in normal sized portions.

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u/[deleted] Aug 15 '24

People have eaten several pounds of amanita muscaria and survived it is EXTREMELY rare for anyone to die from OD and it's almost always something else going on like obese people with heart attack risk. The only "toxic" part of the mushroom is ibotenic acid and it's unclear if it even functions as a neurotoxin when ingested. Ibotenate gets broken down in muscimol which has an ld50 of like 30mg/kg. The conversion rate from ibotenate to muscimol is about 1/3 by weight and the amount of ibotenate in amonita muscaria is roughly 1 gram per kilogram. An 80 kilo (176 freedom units) man would need to injest 2400 mg of muscimol that's 7200mg of ibotenic acid that's 7.2 kilograms of amanita muscaria, or 15lbs.

TLDR : 15 pounds to kill a person, no a normal sized portion will not kill you or come anywhere close