Psilocybin (Magic Mushrooms)

What Are Psilocybin (Magic Mushrooms)?

Mushrooms are a mind-altering drug or a hallucinogen that distorts reality and causes hallucinations. It is a dried mushroom that can be eaten or brewed in a tea. The main ingredients in mushrooms are psilocybin and psilocin. Psilocybin is structurally similar to serotonin, which is the hormone in your brain that causes you to experience happiness. This drug disrupts the normal functions of the real serotonin hormone that your brain produces. It causes a person to think something is real, though it may not be. Taking any hallucinogen causes unpredictable experiences and can turn ugly quickly. There is no way of "getting out of it" until the drug exits your system hours later. Mushrooms are also known as caps, magic mushrooms, or shrooms,

Your Brain on Shrooms

How Does it Affect the Body?

  • feelings of relaxation (similar to effects of low doses of marijuana)

  • nervousness

  • panic reactions

  • introspective/spiritual experiences

  • potentially fatal poisoning (mistaking poisonous mushroom for a non poisonous one)

  • nausea/vomiting

  • upset stomach

  • paranoia

  • hallucinations

Did You Know?

  • The effects of psychedelic drugs vary tremendously and are difficult to categorize since they provide access to vastly different states of consciousness.

  • Effects can be different during each use depending on its potency, the amount ingested, and the user's expectations, mood, surroundings, and frame of mind.

  • Once ingested, mushrooms generally cause feelings of nausea before any other affect.

  • The high from using magic mushrooms may cause altered feelings and distorted perceptions of touch, sight, sound and taste. Other effects can include nervousness and paranoia.

  • The high from using magic mushrooms may cause altered feelings and distorted perceptions of touch, sight, sound and taste. Other effects can include nervousness and paranoia.

  • On some trips, users experience sensations that include terrifying thoughts, and anxiety, fears of insanity, death, or losing control.

  • Some mushrooms users experience "flashbacks", or hallucinogen persisting perception disorder (HPPD), which is a reoccurrence of hallucinations long after ingesting the drug. The causes of these effects, which in some users occur after using it only once, are not known

Additional Information on Mushrooms