A man was hospitalized after injecting himself with a “tea” he had made from magic mushrooms and the fungus started to grow in his veins.
In a case report published in the Journal of the Academy of Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry, doctors describe a 30-year-old man, referred to as “Mr. X” for the sake of anonymity, who sought to self-medicate for opioid addiction and depression. Doctors learned when he was taken to the emergency room by his family, who were concerned about his state of confusion.
The family reported that he had recently stopped taking the medication prescribed for type I bipolar disorder, after which he began to oscillate between depressive and manic states. It was during this period that he began to research the therapeutic effects of LSD and psilocybin microdosing, a natural psychedelic produced by more than 200 species of mushrooms.
It has been shown in several trials that the compound psilocybin can have therapeutic effects, including relief from major depression, as well as anxiety and existential concern in terminally ill patients. However, all of this occurs in controlled studies in which the drug was administered orally. Mr. X obtained magic mushrooms and prepared what he called “mushroom tea” by pouring boiling water over the fungus, which contains water-soluble psilocybin.
Drinking mushroom tea is a method used by some recreational users of the drug. However, Mr. X took the unusual step of preparing it for injection, passing it through cotton, before injecting the mixture into his veins.
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After the injection, he started to develop several problems. When his family discovered him a few days later, he had jaundice, nausea, diarrhea, extreme confusion and vomited blood. His organs began to fail, including his kidneys and lungs, and he suffered from acute liver damage. His heart rate was high and he was experiencing septic shock. In essence, things were not going well at all, and he was placed in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU).
The clots that formed in his blood required investigation and treatment. In the perhaps more viscerally dark part of the case study, the team describes how they harvested cultures from his blood and found that “the kind of mushroom he injected was now growing in his blood”.
Whether the fungus growing in your blood may have contributed to your confusion is unclear, given the other problems that occurred in your body at the time.
“It is not clear whether intravascular infection is active with a psychoactive fungus, such as Psilocybe cubensis can cause persistent psychoactive effects, as seen with ingestion of the same species, which could further contribute to changes in perception and cognition, “wrote the team in the report, adding that the case highlights the need to educate the public about the dangers of drug use in ways that are not prescribed.