There are groups doing, eh… active research on the a. muscaria now. They tend to point out that simply drying the mushroom will convert the bulk of the ibotenic acid and make it more tolerable for consumption. (Finding a mostly dried mushroom in the wild is probably a more realistic scenerio than a reindeer brewing itself a cup of tea. I also wonder if reindeer can handle much higher dosages without getting killed… Dunno.)

But yeah, I tend to agree that any stories like these can be a little over dramatic. Most reports only really say that a muscaria trip is more like alcohol than anything else. While I am curious about this mushroom myself, I am going to wait for newer studies on it. It has been used as a medicine for years in some parts of the world, but still…

Still, it is a fun theory that most of the traditional stories we hear are the result of psychedelics. If this were a science community, I would have been a less sarcastic with my original context.