I was meaning the difference in IA between GABA and muscimol, relatively speaking, wondering if the muscular twitching and clonus etc. are related to NMDAr-mediated agonism caused by residual ibotenic acid, (assuming one isn't dumb enough to try eating fly agaric fresh without knowing how to cook it properly for use as a table mushroom rather than a spice (I.e boil twice, throwing away the water each time, before cooking in whatever way one wants to serve them, to leach out the active or toxic principles, allowing it to be served as food, kind of like what is needed to allow Amanita rubescens (Blusher) to be eaten, uncooked, or improperly cooked, it is toxic, containing a haemolytic toxin, but it can be leached out by boiling twice with changes of water. Same is done by some folk for false morels (Gyromitra spp) although those just shouldn't be eaten at all, giving off monomethyl hydrazine either in vivo or off-gassing it during boiling, sometimes killing the cook whilst those eating it have suffered no ill effects. The Amanita species, those two are good enough, but false morels just shouldn't be consumed at all, I wouldn't, and I'm pretty adventurous when it comes to wild fungi)
But is ibotenic acid stable enough to survive the slow drying at low, low oven temperatures in trace quantities? I know its not stable to heat or drying, but HOW unstable is it? It does cross the BBB does it not? via an active transport mechanism IIRC. Undesirable at best. So it'd be good to know how well it survives the curing process.
(I do mine by taking the caps only, scooping away the gills, which give off a ton of water during the drying, which can make the caps soggy and nasty, and besides, IMO its a good thing to return the gills to potential sites of growth for new mushroom spots, They are rubbish to me, so might as well help return them to nature and help spawn other patches to harvest in the future. And then drying them on the minimum sustainable gas flame in the oven, overnight until they are dry enough to snap if one tries to bend the caps, and ideally, retaining a bright golden orange colour to the cap surface, overnight at least, propping the door of the oven open with a knife handle or whatever else come to hand so as to allow the water to escape.
I would call it my favourite of all fungi, for its many, many uses, as medicine, as recreational intoxicant, as endurance-booster, tonic, and once cured and dried, it goes in every red meat dish I ever cook, I would never even think of making chile con carne without fly agaric for example, and every time I make steak, I use a spice blend based on fly agaric, szechuan pepper, pink peppercorns and peppery boletus (Chalciporus piperatus, a parasite of fly agaric when the Amanita chooses silver birch as host, never seen the peppery boletes under pine, which A.muscaria sometimes grows with as mycorrhizal partner), along with a host of other spices.
So I end up using quite a lot of fly agaric for one reason or another, it'd be nice to know that as little ibotenic acid as possible would survive the curing process. (annually would be whatever can fit in a couple of those large bin liners intended for outside trash, as I've some really prolific spots that produce so many its difficult to cure them all given I've only one oven plus one small autoclave, and I'll pick a year's supply when they are fruiting, and go through the lot, or almost all of them until the next harvest comes along. AFAIK round here at least, I'm the only one who will touch them, I've had people stop me, and try to warn me that I'd be poisoning myself, as all the guidebooks call them poisonous, but thats only fresh, uncooked, they have a lot of value IMO when correctly processed.
What I'm wondering is if the initial neuromuscular phase of fly agaric intoxication is due to glutamatergic agonistic activity or due to muscimol having a lower intrinsic activity but higher affinity than GABA, leading to contined GABAa agonist activity at the orthosteric site but at a lower overall level than in the absence of muscimol, in-vivo, causing myoclonus but not full blown seizure or anxiogenic effects.
As for the mention of muscimol as neurotoxic, can anyone support that muscimol itself, rather than ibotenic acid, is neurotoxic? and if so, in what way?
