Magic mushrooms begin growing in man's blood after injecting 'shroom tea'

• Date: 17 January 2021
• Author: IDAN ZONSHINE
• Published date: 17 January 2021

According to the man's family, prior to the hospitalization, he had stopped taking medication for bipolar disorder type 1, after which his moods began to swing wildly between manic and depressive states.

After doing a little (not very thorough) research online about the practice of microdosing psilocybin mushrooms as a potential therapeutic for both depression and opioid dependence, the man decided to experiment himself.

However, while there have been several studies which link psilocybin mushrooms and LSD to relieving symptoms of depression, anxiety and addiction, all studies have so far been done in controlled settings with the drugs taken orally, not intravenously.

While mushroom tea is traditionally considered a safe way to ingest the drug, the man in this case took the unusual step of drawing the tea through cotton to prepare it for intravenous injection. Due to the poor filtering-power of cotton, the man likely injected directly into his blood much larger than normal amounts of psilocybin, while also injecting himself with a good amount of likely bacteria-ridden water.

The man was discovered by his family days after the injection in serious condition. He had jaundice, nausea, diarrhea, extreme confusion (unclear whether that was due to the mushrooms or not) and was vomiting blood.

He was brought to the ICU as his lungs and kidneys had already begun to fail, his liver had suffered an acute injury, and his pulse was high due to septic shock (infection-related dilation of blood vessels which causes reduced oxygen flow to...