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Hi all, it's been a long time since I last posted, mostly because there was nothing interesting to report. Well, now there is.
Tl;dr: I've been micro-dosing Amanita Muscaria (fly agaric) mushroom for about two months and it helps me with energy and drowsiness (and possibly mood/anxiety, albeit that could be indirect result of previous two)
A bit about my story: under-diagnosed, with me and some doctors suspecting CFS, but never confirmed; I was also suspected for depression and autism, but again didn't pursue proper diagnosis (at one point some antidepressant was a bit helpful, though not as drastic as the topic); in any case I've been mild most of the time; and whatever issues I had they mostly progressed slowly without noticeable onset points (well, I could probably retroactively find one or two, but they weren't as decisive as often described, and this post is already long enough); used to have very annoying (albeit not very interesting to most doctors) digestive symptoms which have largely gone away after anti-parasitic treatment (~2 years ago?). This likely improved systemic symptoms as well, but didn't eliminate them. Sleep still remained not refreshing enough, which was my main easy to describe complaint (and I felt like everything else stemmed from it, which might just be convenient mistake). So with many other life issues I've been going through I largely stopped seeking new treatments for myself, rotating through various sleep aids and falling asleep technics.
However, sometime late winter/early spring this year I've had some infection (likely COVID but could've been that new strain of flu people were talking about) which lead to the worst first person CFS-like experience in my life. For over a month — sometimes it would fade away to the point I thought I recovered, sometimes it would return — I've regularly had fever, almost constant brain fog, fatigue, spent most days in bed unable to do anything productive most of the time (still could prepare basic food, but it wasn't a piece of cake) — in other words nothing serious compared to many people here; knowing quite some info on CFS I was already preparing to spend the rest of my life like that — luckily I wasn't taken by complete suprise and luckily I didn't lose my sense of humour. But for whatever reason — more luck? — it passed anyway, without any specific intervention (except that I mostly wasn't pushing myself). But I've wasted a lot of time (and money), got somewhat scared that indeed I'm not magically protected from getting much worse, so started to look for treatments again (or less poetically I simply wanted to get myself in shape to earn enough money).
I'll skip a few details for brevity, but somehow I stumbled upon Amanita Muscaria (aka fly agaric), which was advertised as basically a magic pill: allegedly helps with sleep, fatigue, mood, depression, anxiety along many other things — and decided to try it; primarily hoping to get pleasant refreshing sleep — which ironically is something I didn't quite achieve, — I bought 100g and started micro-dosing (note that it turns out either I was scammed and there wasn't 100g there, or the mushroom wasn't potent enough, or I have high tolerance to it; but the doses I've been taking seem significantly higher than those usually advertised and didn't lead to any sort of "trip" that is said to occur at larger doses; even when I tried to find the threshold dose I had to keep eating the mushroom during the day only to get very mild dissociative effect (*) (but still I wouldn't recommend doing that to anybody with significant CFS symptoms). In any case, I've been taking like a few grams every day and after some time (a week, maybe?) started noticing its effects. I didn't get noticeable subjective improvement in sleep quality (some nights even getting some of the brightest nightmares), but somehow started feeling less under-slept during the day and recovered much quicker from that terrible state after waking up (these days, I can get to daytime baseline in like a couple minutes compared to what was like a couple hours). The weather kept getting better, too (and warm days tend to go much easier on me), so naturally I didn't take it for granted that it's mushroom's work. Still, I continued to take it to see whether it's placebo or real; started to work on things I've been putting away for months; noticed that alcohol is becoming to affect me much less (which was sad cause it was one of easy to get substances to "take off the edge"), and nicotine almost completely losing its effects (which was mostly good cause I started to smoke too much in the period before and lacking any rewards it was trivial to stop — note however that I was never properly hard smoker, so YMMV), confirming bioactivity of the mushroom; and soon I got final confirmation: when my batch ended, the positive changes were soon to fade away. Naturally I grabbed more (from a different source, so any theories of first batch containing other substances that actually helped went away too) and soon the effects returned.
At the point of writing I don't feel like 100% normal healthy human being, but much closer to that than I felt in years. I realize however that I might have just been very lucky and it's quite possible my health issues is something else undiagnosed and not proper CFS. Still, I think it might be worth trying to more people here, provided you take necessary precautions and don't have too high expectations. Hence I decided to share my experience.
(*): loosely speaking I felt as though I'm observing my flow of thoughts and subconsciousness from a distance, virtually not "feeling" any emotions I was "experiencing", as well as — perhaps more interestingly to people here and the only reason I've even bothered describing this — having much easier access to memory, being able to recall random childhood episodes with significant clarity and even a complete verse I wrote about five years ago that I previously was trying to recall quite unsuccessfully couple times. Still, I mention this not to recommend experimenting with large doses to anyone here — in fact I should mention that however mild this experience was I got somewhat close to experiencing unmotivated raw paranoia, — but rather to suggest that even micro-dosing might positively affect memory even if it's less noticeable effect.
(**): conflict of interest statement: at the time of writing I haven't harvested or sold single fly agaric mushroom, nor am I payed to advertise them
PS: sorry if my writing is a bit stream of consciousness like, feel free to ask to clarify or any other questions.
PPS: unlike some other mushrooms, fly agaric is legal in most (albeit not all) countries
Tl;dr: I've been micro-dosing Amanita Muscaria (fly agaric) mushroom for about two months and it helps me with energy and drowsiness (and possibly mood/anxiety, albeit that could be indirect result of previous two)
A bit about my story: under-diagnosed, with me and some doctors suspecting CFS, but never confirmed; I was also suspected for depression and autism, but again didn't pursue proper diagnosis (at one point some antidepressant was a bit helpful, though not as drastic as the topic); in any case I've been mild most of the time; and whatever issues I had they mostly progressed slowly without noticeable onset points (well, I could probably retroactively find one or two, but they weren't as decisive as often described, and this post is already long enough); used to have very annoying (albeit not very interesting to most doctors) digestive symptoms which have largely gone away after anti-parasitic treatment (~2 years ago?). This likely improved systemic symptoms as well, but didn't eliminate them. Sleep still remained not refreshing enough, which was my main easy to describe complaint (and I felt like everything else stemmed from it, which might just be convenient mistake). So with many other life issues I've been going through I largely stopped seeking new treatments for myself, rotating through various sleep aids and falling asleep technics.
However, sometime late winter/early spring this year I've had some infection (likely COVID but could've been that new strain of flu people were talking about) which lead to the worst first person CFS-like experience in my life. For over a month — sometimes it would fade away to the point I thought I recovered, sometimes it would return — I've regularly had fever, almost constant brain fog, fatigue, spent most days in bed unable to do anything productive most of the time (still could prepare basic food, but it wasn't a piece of cake) — in other words nothing serious compared to many people here; knowing quite some info on CFS I was already preparing to spend the rest of my life like that — luckily I wasn't taken by complete suprise and luckily I didn't lose my sense of humour. But for whatever reason — more luck? — it passed anyway, without any specific intervention (except that I mostly wasn't pushing myself). But I've wasted a lot of time (and money), got somewhat scared that indeed I'm not magically protected from getting much worse, so started to look for treatments again (or less poetically I simply wanted to get myself in shape to earn enough money).
I'll skip a few details for brevity, but somehow I stumbled upon Amanita Muscaria (aka fly agaric), which was advertised as basically a magic pill: allegedly helps with sleep, fatigue, mood, depression, anxiety along many other things — and decided to try it; primarily hoping to get pleasant refreshing sleep — which ironically is something I didn't quite achieve, — I bought 100g and started micro-dosing (note that it turns out either I was scammed and there wasn't 100g there, or the mushroom wasn't potent enough, or I have high tolerance to it; but the doses I've been taking seem significantly higher than those usually advertised and didn't lead to any sort of "trip" that is said to occur at larger doses; even when I tried to find the threshold dose I had to keep eating the mushroom during the day only to get very mild dissociative effect (*) (but still I wouldn't recommend doing that to anybody with significant CFS symptoms). In any case, I've been taking like a few grams every day and after some time (a week, maybe?) started noticing its effects. I didn't get noticeable subjective improvement in sleep quality (some nights even getting some of the brightest nightmares), but somehow started feeling less under-slept during the day and recovered much quicker from that terrible state after waking up (these days, I can get to daytime baseline in like a couple minutes compared to what was like a couple hours). The weather kept getting better, too (and warm days tend to go much easier on me), so naturally I didn't take it for granted that it's mushroom's work. Still, I continued to take it to see whether it's placebo or real; started to work on things I've been putting away for months; noticed that alcohol is becoming to affect me much less (which was sad cause it was one of easy to get substances to "take off the edge"), and nicotine almost completely losing its effects (which was mostly good cause I started to smoke too much in the period before and lacking any rewards it was trivial to stop — note however that I was never properly hard smoker, so YMMV), confirming bioactivity of the mushroom; and soon I got final confirmation: when my batch ended, the positive changes were soon to fade away. Naturally I grabbed more (from a different source, so any theories of first batch containing other substances that actually helped went away too) and soon the effects returned.
At the point of writing I don't feel like 100% normal healthy human being, but much closer to that than I felt in years. I realize however that I might have just been very lucky and it's quite possible my health issues is something else undiagnosed and not proper CFS. Still, I think it might be worth trying to more people here, provided you take necessary precautions and don't have too high expectations. Hence I decided to share my experience.
(*): loosely speaking I felt as though I'm observing my flow of thoughts and subconsciousness from a distance, virtually not "feeling" any emotions I was "experiencing", as well as — perhaps more interestingly to people here and the only reason I've even bothered describing this — having much easier access to memory, being able to recall random childhood episodes with significant clarity and even a complete verse I wrote about five years ago that I previously was trying to recall quite unsuccessfully couple times. Still, I mention this not to recommend experimenting with large doses to anyone here — in fact I should mention that however mild this experience was I got somewhat close to experiencing unmotivated raw paranoia, — but rather to suggest that even micro-dosing might positively affect memory even if it's less noticeable effect.
(**): conflict of interest statement: at the time of writing I haven't harvested or sold single fly agaric mushroom, nor am I payed to advertise them
PS: sorry if my writing is a bit stream of consciousness like, feel free to ask to clarify or any other questions.
PPS: unlike some other mushrooms, fly agaric is legal in most (albeit not all) countries
