Decarboxylation is one of those words that sounds technical until you realize it simply explains why the same mushroom can feel completely different depending on how it’s prepared.
In the world of muscaria, regalis, and pantherina, this process is what shifts an experience from stimulating, sweaty, and deeply somatic to calming, grounding, and sleep-supportive.
These three species do behave differently in some ways—but when it comes to decarboxylation, there’s good news:
they all decarb the same way.
That means once you understand this process, you only need to learn it once.
How decarboxylation works
Decarboxylation happens when three conditions work together, in this order:
1. Citric acid — preparation
Citric acid creates the right environment by gently lowering the pH. This makes the compound more receptive to change.
On its own, citric acid does not cause decarboxylation.
Nothing is removed yet.
It simply prepares the compound so the next steps can work efficiently.
This is why lemon juice isn’t ideal. While lemon contains citric acid, it also contains sugars, fibers, oils, and highly variable acidity. That inconsistency makes the process unreliable. Pure citric acid, on the other hand, is stable and predictable.
There’s also a practical reason: citric acid works in tiny amounts. Lemon juice does not—you’d need so much of it that it overwhelms the preparation and becomes unpalatable.
2. Heat — activation
Heat supplies the energy needed for the change to begin.
This is where the structure can actually shift.
Without heat, the process stalls.
With heat, decarboxylation becomes possible.
3. Time — completion
Time allows the change to finish and stabilize.
Rushing this step leaves the process incomplete.
Given enough time, the conversion settles fully.
Why this matters
Using acid alone prepares but does not convert.
Using heat alone can be uneven or inefficient.
Using heat without time results in partial conversion.
When citric acid, heat, and time work together, the process becomes intentional instead of accidental.
That’s decarboxylation—nothing mystical, nothing forced—just the right conditions aligned so the change can actually occur.
About dehydration and “partial decarb”
One important thing to understand is that all of our specimens already begin at roughly 35% decarboxylated. This happens during dehydration.
Heat alone does cause decarboxylation—just like with cannabis. So if you’re thinking, “Wait, I thought drying the mushroom already decarbed it?” — you’re not wrong.
What heat does is start the process.
But heat by itself only takes it so far.
To move beyond that baseline and continue converting toward a fuller muscimol expression, additional conditions are needed. That’s where environment and method come in. Dehydration initiates decarboxylation; intentional preparation is what carries it the rest of the way.
If you want to walk through the process yourself, you can check out our DIY Decarb guide. And if the science still feels fuzzy—or you’d rather skip the steps entirely—you can always let us handle the conversion for you and grab a Slurry instead.