Posted by Flash (62.6.210.29) on April 20, 2000 at 19:27:15:
In Reply to: flash, more help please with Liberty Caps.... posted by Peter on April 20, 2000 at 18:24:14:
I assume you are in the UK. If you aren't then most of this doesn't apply.
The Liberty Cap appears from late September until anything up to late November. I find mid-late October the best time. The books say they come as early as August, but I haven't seen any then.
Make sure you get the correct mushroom. In the UK anything that looks similar is probably harmless or mildly psycho active. There is one species that looks very similar Panaloeus or something, they way to tell them apart is size and colour. The Liberty Cap is no more than 2cm accross and usually much smaller. Pick them when the weather is dry - Liberty Cap is white. It doesn't glow under UV because it contains no Psilocilin, only Psilocybin.
A good book is "Mushrooms and other fungi of Great Britian & Europe" by Roger Phillips. It ios billed as "The most comprehensively illustrated book on the subject this century". It probably is. There is a very good picture of Liberty Cap in this book. If it doesn't look EXACTLY like this then you have the wrong mushroom.
Liberty Cap is a class C drug when processed. So don't process them. Processing them includes cookign or drying out. The best thing to do is preserve them in honey. This will allow then to keep for at least two years. They float up to the top of the jars so turn them over every couple of months, but make sure the honey doesn't leak out the lid. I use normal clear honey. Set honey works too. Store them in a cool dark place.
To prepare them, extract around 10-12 (it's ahrder than it sounds!) one or two more wont kill you. A decent street dose is 50. The maximum effective dose is around 150 - any more than that will have no extra effect. For CH all you need is 10-12.
The best time to take them is between episodes, strange as it may sound. They keep me episode free for ovber 12 months at a time. You can also take them during an episode to abort it, but that can take slightly more mushrooms, or more than one dose. It's good fun kicking the bastards arse though. These days I wait for an episode to start and get up to Kip5-6, then induce a headache with alchohol. Thos of you who are sick like me will have noticed that below Kips 5 alchhol causes heavy shadowing but the headaches aren't actually sore as though it is deadening the pain. Above Kip 5 it gets very very nasty. If the mushrooms are ingested within 15 mins of the alchohol, on an empty stomach then you get the pleasure of an abort. Not to be missed. Evryone should have one once. Heh heh.
OK so back to preparing them. Boil, or more correctly SIMMER in water for 10 mins. The honey coating them should help on the taste front. Once the water is brown you know that you've got 'em. After 10 mins of simmering strain out the mushrooms. Don't use too much water or you'll have trouble drinking it all. Start with a mug full and you'll be left with a cup full.
Drink the solution slowly over a 30 min period. The mushrooms should hit after 15 allowing you to gauge the dose to some extent. On 10-12 the worst you'll get is a feeling of apprehension and then relaxation and finally maybe a few giggles. The room might look a little nicer. That's about it. To kill the apprehension drink some alchohol - not too much though. It doesn't really matter because the mushrooms will cancel out the alchohol, I just would want you to waste good whiskey!
That's about it.
Hope this helps.
O - wait! The book is published by MacMillan under Pan Books. It's ISBN number is 0-330-26441-9. It won't tell you anything about CH, or how to prepare Liberty Cap, but it is good for identification.
See ya
Flash