Advice for an Imaginary Test Subject

Of course, for legal and safety reasons I can't recommend anyone try taking fly agaric tincture, especially without medical supervision. But if someone were to decide to try taking small amounts of fly agaric tincture to see if it might help alleviate symptoms of Lyme disease such as dementia and chronic fatigue, my advice would run something like this...

THE TINCTURE

• The tincture is really strong. It will affect you in ways that other tinctures don't.
• Taking a higher dose of the tincture won't do you more good, or make you feel better than small doses. Small doses work best.
• If you have physical pain somewhere, you can rub a few drops into the skin where the pain is (back etc). I'm not sure whether you should include these drops in your daily total. It's possible that active chemicals are absorbed through the skin.
• You may notice something white floating in the tincture. I think it's the mushroom spore, which is so tiny it gets through the coffee filter. It won't do you any harm. It can't grow inside you.

TAKING THE TINCTURE

• Take 1-3 drops 3 times a day (early morning, late morning, late afternoon). Probably best to start with 1 drop first day, 2 drops second day etc. Be really careful about going higher than 3 drops at a time. Even 3 may be too many for some people.
• Take the drops under your tongue or in a cup of tea or however you like.
• You can manage your energy levels by overlapping the times when you take the drops.
• Take a day off the drops a week. This way you can still monitor your symptoms. The tincture may alleviate your symptoms, but the infection is still there in the background. Even if you're feeling much better, you still need to address the underlying infection.

RESULTS OF TAKING THE TINCTURE

• The effects of the drops last 4-6 hours, although some benefits do seem to go over to the next day.
• You may suddenly find you have huge amounts of mental and physical energy for the first time in years. Be careful to pace yourself and remember to stop and stretch regularly.
• If you take much more than 3 drops at a time, you may "trip" a bit. These effects are likely to be sleepiness, mild euphoria, blurred vision and micropsia/macropsia (things suddenly seeming much bigger or smaller than they actually are). You may not notice that this is happening to you, as your insight may also be affected. Ask someone to keep an eye on you, or put up signs to remind yourself that this may happen. You are best just keeping to very small doses. Larger ones won't give a greater benefit.

SAFETY

• The dose may be quite particular to each individual. Whilst you're working out the right dose for you, don't drive or operate machinery.
• Treat your bottle of fly agaric tincture as poison. Label it accordingly and keep out of reach of children. And curious teenagers!
• As with any psycho-active substance, there's a very small chance of psychosis from taking the fly agaric tincture. If this happens, stop taking the tincture and everything should go back to normal. If it doesn't, tell a medical professional that you have been taking fly agaric tincture to stimulate your muscarinic receptors because of your Lyme disease. They will give you something to counteract this.
• Take milk thistle in some form. This is the antidote to fly agaric tincture and will help protect your liver. The tincture will still work just as well.