December 10th, 2025, 12:00 – 1:30pm PT
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Join us for a timely and necessary conversation about Amanita muscaria’s emergence as a global phenomenon, from traditional Siberian and Sámi ceremonial practices to rapidly expanding retreat centers, commercial markets, and unregulated products. This Community Forum explores the opportunities and urgent risks that accompany this medicinal mushroom’s growing popularity: What happens when untrained facilitators, inconsistent dosing, and commercial pressures outpace scientific and ethical understanding? How do we establish responsible standards for practice, product integrity, and professional competence? And critically, as Amanita muscaria retreats proliferate across North America, Europe, and Asia, what can we learn from the trajectories, both harms and innovations, of ayahuasca and psilocybin tourism?
We’ll examine the paradox of Amanita muscaria’s contemporary moment: a mushroom with deep roots in Indigenous traditions that remains strikingly understudied, overlooked by its own toxicological stigma, and caught in regulatory limbo, neither officially recognized as food nor as medicine. Key questions we’ll explore include: What are the psychological and ethical implications of commercialization, particularly around contested products like “Amanita gummies”? And how can we conduct responsible scientific research while ensuring that Indigenous and traditional knowledge holders are co-creators in relationships grounded in reciprocity and accountability?
Speakers include Kevin Feeney, PhD, JD, researcher in law and cultural anthropology and member of Chacruna’s Council for the Protection of Sacred Plants; Nora Mamblona Fischer, trauma-informed psychologist and neuroscientist conducting PhD research on low-dose Amanita muscaria and initiator of the Amanita Online Congress 2025; and Tristan Kallweit, researcher in social and cultural anthropology with expertise in Amanita muscaria history since 2018. Together, we’ll navigate how to honor this mushroom’s significance while building ethical, scientifically grounded, and equitable frameworks for its responsible use and study.
Kevin Feeney, PhD, JD, is an author and researcher trained in the fields of law and cultural anthropology. His primary work, “Fly Agaric: A Compendium of History, Pharmacology, Mythology, and Exploration,” was published as an edited volume in 2020. His research and writings have been published in the International Journal of Medicinal Mushrooms, International Journal of Drug Policy, Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, Human Organization, and Curare, among other books and journals. He is a current member of Chacruna’s Council for the Protection of Sacred Plants, and a member of the Board of Advisors for Psyched Wellness, a Canadian health supplements company specializing in medicinal mushrooms.
Nora Mamblona Fischer is a trauma-informed psychologist and neuroscientist (MSc, King’s College London) with 20 years of experience in private practice. She is a Shipibo plant medicine apprentice and lead facilitator of psilocybin retreats. As an emerging PhD candidate at CIIS, her research explores low-dose Amanita muscaria. Nora is initiator of the Amanita Online Congress 2025. She teaches on psychedelic therapy, reciprocity, and science.
Tristan Kallweit, was born in 1996 in northeastern Germany and is graduated in Geography (B.Sc.), Landscape Ecology and Nature Conservation (M.Sc.), and Social and Cultural Anthropology (M.A.) at the Universities of Greifswald and Hamburg. He has been doing research on Amanita muscaria since 2018 and has just started a Ph.D. project at Kassel University on the history of hunting in the twentieth century in Germany. Other research interests include the historical uses and protection narratives of peatlands in the twentieth century Germany. Tristan has his own company where he resettles endangered animals (reptiles, amphibians) from construction sites to places where they can live safely.
