How To Use Shrooms To Avoid Adverse Hallucinogenic Effects

Shrooms, otherwise known as magic mushrooms, are a type of mushrooms that grows in the wild. Magic mushrooms are popular for recreational purposes or spiritual purposes. This is because they contain a compound known as psilocybin.

Psilocybin is a hallucinogenic compound and a naturally occurring psychoactive. Its effects result in a trip that can last in your body depending on several factors. These include the strength of the psychedelic, the dose and your specific body.

While magic mushrooms are used for their intense psychedelic effects, it may be easy to confuse them for poisonous mushrooms. This article will shed light on shrooms, how to differentiate them from poisonous varieties and their effects. In addition, we will explain to you how to use shrooms carefully to avoid having a bad trip.

What Are Shrooms(Magic Mushrooms)?

Magic mushrooms are naturally occurring in the wild. However, they may also be cultivated. In addition, psilocybin mushrooms have hallucinogenic effects which trigger your mood, thoughts and perception.

When consumed, psilocybin, the main ingredient in shrooms, is converted into psilocin which contains psychoactive properties. For this reason, magic mushrooms have been used for centuries for religious rites. Additionally, shrooms have various street names, including magics, Mushies, Amani, liberties, philosopher’s stones, liberty caps, agaric, blue meanies and golden tops.

How Do You Recognize Shrooms?

It is easy to confuse poisonous mushrooms for magic mushrooms. Unfortunately, this has left users severely ill or even dead in the past. For this reason, it’s important to know exactly how a magic mushroom looks and tastes like.

Magic mushrooms are very similar to dry and ordinary mushrooms. They are long with slender whitish-gray stems and dark-brown caps. In addition, the caps can either be white or light brown in the center.

Common types of magic mushrooms are Fly Agaric(Amanita muscaria) and Liberty Caps(Psilocybe semilanceata). Fly Agaric has is red with white spotted toadstools, while Liberty Caps are small tanned-color mushrooms.

It is also important to know that different magic mushrooms contain different potency levels. For example, Fly Agaric mushrooms are more potent than Liberty caps.

Magic mushrooms can also be found in the form of capsules. Liquid psilocybin mushrooms are also available in vials. In addition, you can find synthetically produced psilocybin and psilocin in the lab. However, be careful as hallucinogenic mushrooms found on the streets could be other types of mushrooms but laced with LCD(lysergic acid diethylamide).

How To Use Mushrooms

1. Eat It

Magic mushrooms can be eaten fresh or dried and stored for later. However, note that not all mushrooms are ingested orally. Some species, such as agaric mushrooms, can make you ill when eaten raw. In addition, some people add dried mushrooms to their food to mask the earthy flavor.

2. Drink It

Another mushroom preparation method is drinking it in your tea. This makes it easier on your taste buds and your stomach. To make shroom tea:

Use a coffee grinder or weed grinder to grind your preferred dose of shrooms into a powder form
Next, pour some hot water over your powdered magic mushrooms
Leave the tea to steep for about 10-15 minutes
Enjoy your trip

You can also add honey, chopped-up ginger or an actual tea bag to flavor your tea. In addition, if you are not much of a tea drinker, you can add powdered shrooms to your favorite smoothies, apple juice or yogurt.

3. Take It As Liquid Psilocybin

You can also consume magic mushrooms in the form of liquid psilocybin. The clear brown psilocybin liquid is available in a small vial and taken in drops.

4. Smoked

Magic mushrooms can also be smoked together with cannabis or tobacco. However, you want to be careful when mixing drugs as the effects could be unpredictable.

How Long Does It Take For Magic Mushrooms To Kick In?

Once ingested, magic mushrooms take some time before they can fully kick in. For some people, this could be between 20-40 minutes. However, other people may start noticing hallucinogenic effects after an hour.

Psychedelic effects of taking mushrooms often come gradually. This may start as small changes in your feelings and senses. Then, the effects will progress to stronger auditory, visual, and sensory hallucinations after a while.

Since they are classified as psychedelics and hallucinogenic, magic mushrooms cause you to feel, hear, and see sensations that feel real, although they are not. However, these effects vary from person to person and can be caused by many factors, including your environment. Other factors include age, dosage, weight, emotional state, personality and mental health history.

How Long Does the Magic Mushrooms High Last?

Once ingested, dried mushrooms can stay in your body for a while, rating from hours to days. However, the high lasts between 3-6 hours. In addition, the hallucinogenic effects will vary from person to person depending on a couple of factors. These include:

Age
Weight
Metabolism
Body composition
Dose
The potency of the shroom
Pre-existing mental health conditions
Type of mushroom
Amount consumed
Tolerance levels
Method of consumption
Other drugs consumed simultaneously

It’s also important to mention that people react differently to these factors. For example, some people may experience an extended high, while others will have lingering effects after the high has passed.

Effects Of Taking Mushrooms

Since a magic mushroom is a naturally occurring psychedelic drug, its strength will depend on where it is grown, the season and freshness. This, coupled with your state of being and environment, can trigger a mild trip or hallucinations and psychosis.

As hallucinogens in psychedelic drugs like mushrooms interfere with your brain actions, they alter parts of your body in charge of:

mood
hunger
sleep
sensory perception
muscle control
body temperature
sexual behavior

As a result, you’ll experience both the physical and mental effects of drug abuse.

Physical effects include:

Yawning
Nausea
Vomiting
Headaches
Drowsiness
Lack of coordination
Dilated pupils
Muscle weakness
Increased heart rate
High blood pressure
High body temperature
Confusion
Stomach ache

Taking magic mushrooms may also result in mental effects like:

Panic reaction
Paranoia
Nervousness
Visual and auditory hallucinations
Psychosis
Euphoria
Spiritual experiences
Distorted sense of time, reality and place

While taking magic mushrooms may not result in life-threatening effects, taking large doses or a strong batch may lead to a bad trip or an overdose. Signs of a bad trip include anxiety, paranoia, fear or panic and intense, unpleasant hallucinations.

On the other hand, signs of an overdose include agitation, psychosis, seizures and even a coma. Mushroom poisoning is another factor to look out for. This could be characterized by signs like stomach cramps, vomiting and diarrhea a few hours after consuming the mushrooms. Eating a poisonous mushroom is mainly the reason for this.

How Long Do Magic Mushrooms Stay In Your Body?

The duration in which the magic mushroom stays in your body will often depend on how much you have taken, your body size and other drugs you have consumed. In addition, when you take hallucinogenic mushrooms, your kidneys will process the compounds, including psilocybin.

Once this happens, your kidneys excrete at least 66% of the compounds within the first three hours. This is also why the short-term effects of magic mushrooms wear off after about 6-10 hours, unlike other hallucinogenic drugs.

While psilocybin is not detectable in your urine after 24 hours, like any other drug, the magic mushroom can be found on your hair follicles for up to 90 days. In addition, advanced testing methods, such as metabolite, can be used to test for psilocybin. If this is the case, metabolite psilocin can be found present in your body for up to three days. However, age, weight, metabolic rate, medications used and urine pH may affect the detection periods.

Can You Take Mushrooms With Other Drugs?

Mixing magic mushrooms with other drugs and medications could result in dangerous and unpredictable effects. For this reason, it’s advised to avoid mixing shrooms with other drugs, be it prescribed or over the counter.

You should avoid mixing magic mushrooms with:

Cannabis
Cocaine
Amphetamines(speed)
Tramadol

For example, mixing shrooms with amphetamines and ecstasy results in high chances of experiencing a bad trip and even panic attacks. In addition, taking mushrooms while you are on psychiatric medications could lead to a relapse or worsening of your current mental health conditions.

Can You Get Addicted to Magic Mushrooms?

Psilocybin is not addictive compared to other hallucinogens. In turn, there is no worry for compulsive use. However, this means that, like LCD(lysergic acid diethylamide), you can acquire high tolerance quickly. In turn, this means that you will not experience “tripping” effects after days of repeated magic mushroom use unless you up the dosage to get the same effects.

Additionally, since shrooms tolerance means you will need to consume a large amount to experience any effects, overdosing is an underlying risk. If this’s the case, it’s recommended to stop using magic shrooms for a while to lower your tolerance level.

What About the Withdrawal Symptoms?

Since magic mushroom is a hallucinogenic drug, withdrawing from repeated use may have some effects. Although you rarely get physical symptoms, psychological effects are experienced when you withdraw usage. These include:

Anxiety
Depression
Exhaustion

Are Magic Mushrooms Approved for Medical Uses?

In the US, magic mushrooms are classified as Schedule I substances under the Controlled Substance Act by the federal DEA. This means that shrooms have a high abuse potential and are not approved for medical use. In addition, even with medical supervision, there is a lack of an accepted safe way of using the drug.

However, there has been research supporting that psilocybin could have medical benefits in recent years, especially for terminally ill patients. For instance, Johns Hopkins University researchers in 2018recommended that psilocybin e reclassified from Schedule I to Schedule IV to use for medical purposes.

Their research found that psilocybin was an effective treatment for nicotine and alcohol addiction, depression, and other disorders related to substance abuse. In addition, in a study on people with a life-threatening cancer diagnosis, the researchers found that psilocybin helped relieve emotional distress.

Another study found that people who self-medicated on small mushroom dosage were relieved from cluster headaches without suffering the psychoactive effects. Additionally, the John Hopkins Psychedelic and Consciousness Research discovered that there might be a connection between psychedelics and conditions like Post-traumatic stress disorder(PTSD), Anorexia nervosa, Alzheimer’s disease, Opioid addiction and Post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome.

Over the years, cities around the US, like Denver, have begun to decriminalize magic mushrooms. Although this does not make the drugs legal, people found with possession of shrooms are not likely to be criminally penalized. In addition, in 2020, the state of Oregon legalized psilocybin-assisted therapy to help with certain mental conditions.

Conclusion

Magic mushrooms are psychedelics and hallucinogens that, when consumed, give psychoactive effects. When used in small doses, you can get mild effects that wear off in a few hours. However, a large intake of magic mushrooms could result in bad trips and even overdosing.

While you cannot get addicted to magic mushrooms, developing a high tolerance for the drug is possible. When this happens, you’ll not get any effects from the mushroom unless you increase the dose. However, again, this could lead to an overdose.

If it is your first time taking mushrooms, it is important to keep in mind that you can confuse a poisonous mushroom for a hallucinogenic one. In addition, you may find in some cases that synthetic psilocybin is laced with LCD, so be careful when getting mushrooms off the streets.

Finally, while there is still not enough research to support the use of psilocybin for medical purposes, there is evidence that small doses of mushrooms can help relieve depressive symptoms. That said, keep in mind that magic mushrooms are considered illegal drugs in some regions and too much of it could result in adverse physical and mental effects.