I made some mushroom tincture about 3 years ago (simply soaked dried shrooms in Everclear for a week, then strained), and stored in the freezer in an amber bottle. Tried it again recently, and the effects were interesting, very mellow feeling, like laying on a hammock in the shade on a hot sunny day, you know when it's so hot that the sound of secadas slows way down and their pitch is very low. However, almost no visuals, some mid CEV's, but mostly just a very, very relaxed, mellow feeling. It felt almost identical (though stronger) to clomipramine, an antidepressant I took years ago for mild depression. Clomipramine is a tricyclic that inhibits serotonin reuptake more potently than most ssri's. At the time I made the tincture I had read it's possible to preserve shroom potency almost indefinitely by making a tincture and storing in the freezer, but more recently I hear that's not true. I wonder if the relaxing effects are due to baeocystin or some other degradation product of the shrooms in the tincture. I like it for it's very relaxing effects , but it's definitely different than it was 3 years ago when I first made the tincture. Any ideas?
I guarantee it was degraded. If you used Everclear out of the bottle, it had water in it. If you had used anhydrous ethanol, an amber vial and completely filled the bottle (so no oxygen can get in) it may have been OK.
It definitely has degraded, but not completely, which amazes me that it would have any activity after 3 years, but it was in the freezer the whole time. It seems to be about 2.5 times weaker than it was initially, but the effects last longer, about 9 hours instead of 6, which is weird. That's what makes me think the degradation products have some sort of activity. I wonder what psilocybin/psilocyn/baeocystin degrades to. It feels very, very serotonergic and still causes the typical "yawn" that one often gets with shrooms.
