(Btw, Amanitas look very inviting IMHO)
Let me second that,commenting on the taste also -the actual taste that is- which can be "chicken soupish",yummy in a "monosodium glutamate" kind of way. No wonder on the latter...Maybe exciting same receptors/same family receptors on the tongue? Wouldnt surprise me.
As far as the mushroom constituent go,and the deriving experience, i keep hearing that there are BIG regional variations, hence more or less the "avoid muscaria/ muscaria is shit" many people state in many forums and goes virally around. While American/North American speciments are generally described as more "body oriented" to the brink of "torment" (excessive salivation,lots of nausea,who turned the lights out knockout type of effect) i keep hearing of more euphoric,pleasantly dissasosiative experiences from European counterparts.
Local wisdom here (Meditteranean country) describes them as euphoric, of course with "body component" but less of a "hell" than most online reports present them to be.
Interestingly enough Ott reports
presence of carbolines in some muscarias, although the info is VERY old and i kind of...question their validity.
Personally i have no experience i can contribute.
Is the concensus that their effects are PURELY gabaergic?
Edit:
Quoting the Ott comment :
A potentially psychoactive beta-carboline compound, methyltetrahydrocarboline carboxylic acid (MCTHC; I-methyl-3-carboxyl-tetrahydro-B-carboline has been isolated in low levels from European A. muscaria (Matsumoto et al. 1963). This compound is of unknown pharmacology, however, and Chilton and I were unable to detect this substance in North American A. muscaria (Chilton & Ott 1976)
I am unable to find the Matsumoto refference. The only mention of carbolines in pubmed literature if one searches with "muscaria carboline" ,is refferences of analysis of japanese "research chemical" market products touted to be "amanita muscaria extracts". Given what they find in them, i suspect they were not what their sellers claimed them to be (some rather
impropable findings in them for amanita muscaria to produce!)
Also, any opinions on the presence of two other compounds of Amanita (stizolobic-stizolobinic acid)? I dont know if they exist in muscaria but they do in pantherina :
Two other compounds of obscure pharmacology, stizolobic acid and stizolobinic acid (also found in edible seeds of Stizolobium [Mucuna] species), have been isolated in good yield from Amanita pantherina (Chilton et al. 1974; Chilton & Ott 1976; Saito & Komamine 1978; Ott, unpublished laboratory data). These compounds have been proposed to be feeding deterrents in insects Janzen 1973), and were found to have such activity against Spodoptera but not a Cdllosobruchus species (Fellows 1984).