07/22/2024 

At Wild Forest Herbs, we have been thinking about a blog like this for some time--but have been reluctant to publish something that criticizes other sellers of amanita products because we are passionate about our industry. However, in the past few weeks, Diamond Shruumz mushroom gummies and chocolates have been recalled nationwide after 69 reported poisonings, with over half of these poisonings resulting in hospitalizations, including people who needed intubation and one death suspected to be related to the gummies. There is an explosion of mushroom gummies and chocolates—but are they safe? What should consumers should look out for?

Companies that don’t disclose their ingredients. When we look at popular brands, we often see labels that don’t list ingredients at all or that are cagey about ingredients, for example, claiming a “proprietary mushroom blend.” As a case in point, we went on the Diamond Shruumz site and found the products didn’t have an ingredient list. If a company won’t tell you what’s in their product, you probably shouldn’t eat it.

High-risk ingredients. We have spoken with companies who add Amanita pantherina to their products—a mushroom we do not offer because it is far more toxic than Amanita muscaria for reasons that are yet to be understood. According to the labs we have spoken with “whatever causes people to be so sick when consuming Amanita pantherina is likely some compound that we have not yet identified.” Products that advertise as “Amanita gummies” need to distinguish what types of Amanita are in their products.

Misleading claims about decarboxylation/ibotenic acid. Many sellers make claims about their products that simply cannot be true. It’s not clear whether they do not understand the complexities of Amanita muscaria or are being misleading. For example, the process of drying Amanita muscaria does help decarboxylate the mushrooms (i.e., drying them at the right temperature converts a significant amount of the more toxic ibotenic acid into muscimol). However, there is no method of drying alone that fully decarbs amanitas. Just today we looked at the site of a company that claimed their drying methods decarbed their Amanita muscaria caps, yet the link to their certificate of analysis showed very significant ibotenic acid levels—levels that were 10X higher than the levels found in lab tests of Wild Forest Herbs Amanita dried Amanita muscaria samples.

Undisclosed ingredients. Prophet Premium Blends, the company selling Diamond Shruumz products, blamed the poisonings on “higher than usual levels of muscimol.” This immediately struck us as odd. Of course, many products, from alcohol to Ibuprofen to salt, can create poisoning when consumed at high enough levels. But muscimol is the compound in Amanita muscaria that was approved by the FDA thanks to the efforts of Psyched Wellness (a company that has invested millions of dollars in chemists and clinical trials to cleanly extract the muscimol). Also, the FDA did analyses of Diamond Shruumz products and their June 28th report shows no muscimol but instead shows synthetic psilocybin and synthetic LSD, (undisclosed ingredients included psilacetin, desmethoxyyangonin, dihydrokavain and kavain). In short, it appears Diamond Shruumz products were laced with synthetic drugs. Diamond Shruumz provided the FDA with a list of some mushrooms allegedly used in their products, but that list didn’t include Amanita muscaria. So it’s unclear if their product even included Amanita muscaria at all.

It's not just Diamond Shruumz. The mushroom industry is still largely unregulated. Diamond Shruumz is not a small, obscure brand. It’s a brand that was sold in almost every state in thousands of retail shops across the country. The issues with their products prompted a group of researchers from the University of Virginia to test different mushroom gummies sold in smoke shops. They tested six mushroom gummy products sold by five different companies. Of these, only one company did not have undisclosed added ingredients such as psilocybin, psilocin, hordenine, ephedrine and/or 2-phenethylamine in their product. According to the report, “Persons who believe they are purchasing gummies containing A. muscaria or other mushroom-containing gummies sold as psychedelics or nootropics should be aware that these products might contain undisclosed and potentially harmful substances.”

Find a product you can understand. At Wild Forest Herbs, we have seen the growing interest in gummies and chocolates and considered creating our own. For the moment, we have decided to prioritize high quality, organic, natural mushroom caps with no added ingredients. We don’t (yet) sell other products because we haven’t felt comfortable that we can accurately assess and control what is going into those products. By selling 100% dried Amanita muscaria caps we have control over our product and consumers know exactly what they are buying. While the levels of muscimol and ibotenic acid can vary from cap to cap, we recommend blending the caps together into a powder to achieve an averaging effect.

Find a seller you can trust. In summary, be careful out there. If a company doesn’t list their ingredients—or says something vague like “a proprietary blend”—don’t buy their products. If a company says their dried Amanita caps are decarbed that’s a red flag (drying alone doesn’t fully decrab Amanitas). We strongly recommend avoiding products with Amanita pantherina—if the company doesn’t tell you what type of amanita is in their product, that’s a red flag. The current unregulated marketplace for Amanita products makes it imperative that consumers find a seller they can trust.