DMT breakthrough to the other side. Depression gone.

[Kaleida]

This sounds very interesting. I'd like to learn more but I have a couple concerns. Are muscimol and ibotenic acid truly neurotoxic? What does the trip feel like in relation to traditional psychedelics like psilocybin and DMT?

Ibotenic acid is neurotoxic, but muscimol is not, and more likely actually counters the type of neurotoxicity of the former if it does anything at all. Ibotenic acid is however also mostly used as a neurotoxin through direct injection into a brain segment that they intend to induce the toxic effect in, whereas I've yet to hear of any cognitive issues confidently associated with ingesting the mushrooms orally. It's very possible that the ibotenic acid is still having a pharmacological effect once you ingest it orally, but that alone isn't a guarantee of neurotoxicity; the only reason it is neurotoxic is because it binds to glutamate receptors as an agonist, but that also means that there's a certain range of activity where all it does is mimic healthy levels of glutamate at those receptors, and we always have glutamatergic neurotransmission going on. Considering that oral ibotenic acid will even be heavily converted to muscimol via first-pass metabolism, I would suggest it's possible that it's even self-limiting in this way compared to directly injected ibotenic acid because if anywhere there's ibotenic acid there's even more muscimol, the activity seems unlikely to ever get high enough to become considerably toxic, but that's just me trying to make a rational guess. Incidentally, many users of Amanita mushrooms use a preparation method that supposedly converts all the remaining ibotenic acid to muscimol to overcome that, which you should be able to find easily enough with a web search, though I haven't done that personally. In the end, I think one pretty much has to accept that we don't have all the answers about the ibotenic acid-related risks right now, so you have to make the call of whether it seems worth it to you or not based mainly on the condition of others who have used the mushrooms before, and I won't make that call for you, but to me it was enough to make them seem okay for me, I don't see any big problems among them so far.

The effects of muscimol are familiar enough that they're still often called things like psychedelic or dissociative, but they work through a unique mechanism of action and are ultimately still quite distinct from other things. The intoxicating part of the experience, especially at lower dosages, feels a lot like alcohol to me, which is one of the things I find particularly different from serotonergic psychedelics, though at higher dosages the euphoria and disorientation associated with it starts to resemble psychedelics and dissociatives for me more so than that of just alcohol would. It's very possible and common for me to get things like "the spins" as they're called on alcohol, except that they don't make me sick (more like a pharmaceutical GABAergic like carisoprodol), and instead end up getting worked into the sensory distortion aspects of the state's trippiness, which can include some things that are notably similar to serotonergic psychedelics but slightly different, like colorful geometric patterns that are smokier or more web-like for me but nonetheless still function similarly as open eye visuals. The more complex hallucinogenic aspects of the trip are what really stand out to me, and as with anything they can't be entirely compared with hallucinations produced by other mechanisms of action, but I have found them to have some notable similarities to anticholinergic deliriants, which is another thing many have noted about them before. The more significant difference between them for me is, the hallucinations that occur on deliriants are paired with a headspace that feels surprisingly unaltered despite being completely delirious and just projects everything out like a confusing dream, while on muscimol they're paired with the other more psychedelic-like, dissociative-like, and alcohol-like aspects of the experience, which all adds up to some pretty crazy synergy. When pushed far enough you will be completely immersed in hallucination, and as discussed above, there's a decent chance that a lot of it will be in line with things like stereotypical religious themes, though it's not a necessity that it is or that you recognize it that way. Certain mystical aspects that can commonly occur especially at this level can be compared to things like psilocybin and DMT which again is part of why people still tend to call muscimol things like psychedelic and dissociative, and people often find them to be very healing-feeling similar to those sorts of things, but also similar to those sorts of things, it depends a lot on the context and the user, and they can also be traumatic, or just plain confusing and disorienting. The reactions people have can vary a lot and many find them hard to enjoy when they're not used to some of their more unique qualities, and if it wasn't clear enough from birdup's comment about bleeding all over the place, it's wise to have a sitter at this higher level, because you may feel like you're completely out-of-body, but your body itself may not technically agree.

I think that's probably about the gist of it, but if anyone sees something I forgot, please let me know. I don't consider myself an amanita expert even though I am a user and enthusiast and hope to get to that expert level one day. I'll end this by sharing what is so far my favorite Amanita muscaria trip report on Erowid, which is:

Civilization Development Hyperspace Tour