It’s probably the most recognisable toadstool in the world: the red and white-spotted Amanita muscaria (also known as fly agaric), a psychoactive fungus that is near-ubiquitous in popular culture. It’s the mushroom emoji on your iPhone, props up gnomes on every boomer’s lawn, and features in The Smurfs, Alice in Wonderland, and Super Mario to name but a few.
For centuries, the Amanita muscaria has been consumed during ritual practices in Russia and parts of Scandinavia. In Eastern Siberia, only the shaman would be allowed to eat the mushroom, although his followers were permitted to drink his urine. Eaten raw and without care, it can be poisonous and even deadly. But when carefully prepared and dosed properly, its effects range from the soothing to the euphoric.
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The use of magic mushrooms has skyrocketed in the past decade, despite them being mostly illegal in the U.S., bar a handful of cities. However, Amanita has flown under the radar of federal law. It’s legal in every state other than Louisiana and products derived from Amanita are taking America by storm: Tinctures, joints, gummies, and capsules are purveyed widely. Google searches for the fungus rose 114 percent from 2022 to 2023.
Why the mushroom is banned in Louisiana—the Deep South state best known for fervent conservatism and New Orleans’ annual mardi gras—is a curious mystery, and the reasons behind its prohibition are somewhat opaque. Articles online state only that it is illegal, without providing any further explanation.
“Why the fuck did Louisiana decide to make Amanita muscaria illegal?” says James McConchie, a mushroom educator who runs Haight Street Shroom Shop in San Francisco. “I’ve been trying to figure it out, and no one knows… My theory is that through voodoo religion, there is some association with that mushroom as a poison.”
Louisiana voodoo is an African diasporic religion that fuses elements of traditional West African religions with Christianity and Haitian voodoo. But while numerous medicinal herbs are used in ritual practices, there’s no evidence of Amanita muscaria being among them. And the mushroom isn’t prevalent in the wild in Louisiana, although some of its relatives are. “Please, if you can’t figure out why, then I’m going to do my own deep dive,” McConchie added, warning that he expected the FDA and the DEA to soon look at regulating it.
McConchie’s FDA warning now seems somewhat prophetic. A few weeks after we spoke, around 70 people fell ill and 36 people were hospitalised after consuming Diamond Shruumz products like “Mega/Extreme-Dose” gummies, that were reportedly made with toxic levels of muscimol (the psychoactive compound commonly derived from Amanita). The deaths of two people are being investigated as potentially related to consumption of the products.
I reached out to various psychedelic mushroom experts and lawyers asking if they knew about the provenance of Louisiana’s Amanita prohibition, but my enquiries went largely unanswered. One flippant response, however, seemed like it could be closer to the mark than the voodoo hypothesis. “Doesn’t ring any bells I’m afraid, maybe there was some kind of negative incident down yonder when some bubba ate that fungus,” the anonymous mycologist speculated.
A cursory online search turned up a Wikipedia page on a 2005 Louisiana law that showed the state effectively put a blanket ban on the unregulated ethnobotanical market when it outlawed “the cultivation, possession or sale of 40 named plants defined as hallucinogenic.” The banned plants included Amanita, Datura, Banisteriopsis, Salvia divinorum, and Mimosa hostilis. I took a closer look at the law and discovered they remained permitted “strictly for aesthetic, landscaping, and decorative purposes”, seemingly due to the legal trade of some of the plants in garden centres. But I was none the wiser as to why Louisiana lawmakers had chosen to prohibit the red-and-white fungus.
“When the US passed the Controlled Substances Act in 1970, Amanita muscaria was not really on the radar as a drug or plant of abuse,” says Kevin Feeney, Ph.D., a lecturer at Central Washington University and author of Fly Agaric: A Compendium of History, Pharmacology, Mythology, & Exploration. “There were pockets of people using it in the 1970s, and it has been available for mail-order since at least the mid-1980s, but the mushroom was seen and used mostly as a novelty. Effects are sometimes inconsistent, occasionally overpowering, and don’t have the same appeal as psilocybes.”
The main issue with Amanita, says Feeney, is that big doses frequently lead to unsatisfactory outcomes, especially for the uninitiated. “This leads to the mushroom having a poor reputation.” The lack of a nationwide ban, he says, “may be because it is seen as a waste of time or resources; or the feeling that prohibiting it might ‘increase’ interest in these substances.”
So what makes Louisiana different? I searched and searched until I stumbled across a video on Facebook posted by Louisiana Veterans for Medical Cannabis. In a two-minute clip of 2005 legislative proceedings that took place in the state, a legislator (who was not identified during the recording) said that: “The problem with these plants is that in addition to being hallucinogenic they can also be highly fatal.”
The lawmaker then recalls two alleged 2005 incidents in Louisiana where groups of youths drank concoctions of angel’s trumpets, a powerful psychedelic plant shaped like a lampshade that grows naturally. “Police said one of them tried to jump from a roof and the other tried to chew off his arm,” the legislator said in the video. The story may well have been embellished but it does show how several alleged incidents involving other natural “legal highs” could’ve served as a lightning rod for the ban in Louisiana, another case of drug war history repeating itself.
Some of the concern does appear justified. Around the same time, the DEA arrested 10 website operators in states including Louisiana for selling lab-pure psychedelics. The operator of AmericanChemicalSupply.com faced a potential life term in jail, after a 22-year-old Louisianan accidentally overdosed and died after taking powdered 2-CT-21 in March 2004 that he had purchased from the site.
It seems that Amanita was caught in the crossfire of a war between the authorities and online psychedelic purveyors who had drawn attention due to a handful of mysterious deaths. “This was likely some conservative legislator’s pet project,” says Feeney. “It would be surprising if a mycologist was ever consulted on these matters.”
So, for on the information available right now, it appears the practice of voodoo has nothing to do with the Amanita ban. Instead, it’s likely that Louisiana legislators showed unique foresight in banning a then-rare and unpopular mushroom that would become nationally rampant two decades later. Still, with the popularity of amanita soaring and dangerous, unregulated products still circulating, the iconic mushroom faces an uncertain legal future. What’s for sure is that, with its resplendent red and white polka dots, it will remain the poster boy of shrooms for years to come.
