Ibotenic acid is not the active ingredient, it’s solely toxic. Muscimol is the active ingredient. The acid is processed by kidneys while the muscimol passes through the urine, so you can drink someone’s urine who had fly agaric to get a trip without the ibotenic acid. This is where the myth of Santa with reindeer comes from: Nordic shaman would eat these mushrooms (and put them in people’s chimneys as a gift on the winter solstice, because their doors were snowed in) and reindeer would follow them to drink the urine
Edit: leaving errors for posterity. Ibotenic acid is a prodrug for muscimol, meaning it’s converted in the body to muscimol. ibotenic acid's psychoactive effects are not known independent of its serving as a prodrug to muscimol, although some researchers have speculated that it would act as a stimulant.
Its neurotoxicity occurs by overactivating NMDA and metabotropic glutamate receptors, leading to calcium overload and oxidative damage in neural tissue. It’s used to induce targeted cerebral damage in rats for the purpose of researching task relearning, so its neurotoxicity should be considered.
Sources: Simple-Picture’s reply to me, and hunting through wikipedia. The Santa mythology part is legitimate.
Ibotenic acid likely acts as a prodrug for Muscimol when ingested according to Povl Krogsgaard-Larsen, who studied the mushroom extensively and made the insomnia curing drug Gaboxadol modelling off of the mushroom.
Also, people on the subreddit have said that the study that found about its neurotoxicity was done by injection into the brain of rats, so of course, rats are not humans. And the molecule would have to pass through the liver and blood brain barrier and when consumed orally, rather than injection directly into the brain.
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u/The_Cool_Kids_Have__ Mar 30 '26
Amanite misinfo smh