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Science

'Magic Mushrooms' Grow In Man's Blood After Injection With Shroom Tea (livescience.com) 116

John Trumpian shares a report from Live Science: A man brewed a tea from "magic mushrooms" and injected the concoction into his veins; several days later, he ended up at the emergency department with the fungus growing in his blood. The man spent 22 days in the hospital, with eight of those days in the intensive care unit (ICU), where he received treatment for multisystem organ failure. Now released, he is still being treated with a long-term regimen of antibiotic and antifungal drugs, according to a description of the case published in the Journal of the Academy of Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry.

The case didn't reveal whether injecting shroom tea can cause persistent psychoactive effects, as sometimes seen when people ingest the fungus orally, the doctors wrote in the report. [...] By injecting shrooms into his bloodstream, the 30-year-old patient had hoped to relieve symptoms of bipolar disorder and opioid dependence, according to the report. His family members noted that he had recently stopped adhering to his prescribed bipolar medications and was "cycling between depressive and manic states."

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'Magic Mushrooms' Grow In Man's Blood After Injection With Shroom Tea

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  • Sorry... gotta call BS.

      If he made tea, and from some miracle from wherever, there actually was a spore in the tea, I doubt it would be viable. If somehow he managed to propagate a mycelial colony in his circulatory system by accident, using tea from the fruit, someone needs to continue the genotype, because it's stronger than anything humans have ever observed or cultured in vitro.

    Otherwise this smells like major BS..

    • You point is valid, but I'm still going to take their word for it. :)

    • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday January 15, 2021 @02:41AM (#60946936)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • by Gilmoure ( 18428 )

        And did he use a microwave, electric kettle, or kettle-on-hob?

        There's a right way and wrong way to poison yourself.

      • by Gaygirlie ( 1657131 ) : You are making a lot of assumptions there, like e.g. we have no idea how competent the guy is at making tea out of shrooms or if they even actually made tea -- might as well just have warmed some water up a little, not enough to boil it, and called it tea! by Gilmoure ( 18428 ) : And did he use a microwave, electric kettle, or kettle-on-hob?

        I know that Americans have something called "iced tea" - a deeply bizarre concept in itself - so is it possible that some people call a pro

    • by sosume ( 680416 )

      Same - I was discussing this yesterday and we came to the conclusion that this must be taken with an enormous grain of salt. SO reportedly, this man took a bunch of magic mushrooms, made tea from them, filtered the tea and then injected the remaining liquid. I would have expected this person to die within a minute or two due to a hearth attack, blood poisoning or a clogged artery.

      • Same - I was discussing this yesterday and we came to the conclusion that this must be taken with an enormous grain of salt. SO reportedly, this man took a bunch of magic mushrooms, made tea from them, filtered the tea and then injected the remaining liquid. I would have expected this person to die within a minute or two due to a hearth attack, blood poisoning or a clogged artery.

        People aren't so delicate. Most blood vessels lead back to the lungs before going anywhere near the heart/brain. The lungs will catch solids and air bubbles and generally dispose of them. Anything that gets past the lungs won't kill you instantly.

        • Most blood vessels lead back to the lungs before going anywhere near the heart/brain.

          Blood enters the lungs from one place, the heart. Oxygenated blood leaves the lungs to one place, the heart. There are no blood vessels in the human body that lead back to the lungs before going through the heart. All blood entering or leaving the lungs travels through direct connections to the heart, the pulmonary arteries and vein

          Here is a nice graphic [britannica.com] showing the cardiovascular system.

      • I would have expected this person to die within a minute or two due to a hearth attack, blood poisoning or a clogged artery.

        High wrongness to characters ratio there.

        • die within a minute or two : where I've had to deal with acute situations, the working definition of death is "failure to revive after you've spent hours to days getting the casualty to an emergency room, followed by them jazzing the patient with everything they've got". It takes longer than that to even diagnose death. If we can't find a pul
    • by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Well, they do not put you in the ICU or find you have multi-organ failure just to get a BS article...

    • by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Friday January 15, 2021 @05:11AM (#60947184)

      Otherwise this smells like major BS..

      Perhaps. But out of an abundance of caution, I am going to refrain from injecting any mushroom tea into my bloodstream until the situation is clarified.

    • If he made tea, and from some miracle from wherever, there actually was a spore in the tea, I doubt it would be viable.

      I tried to answer this question and I got a lot of conflicting results back, many of them from the preying-on-people-with-shitty-mold-information camp, but some of them also more scientific. I didn't get back any research papers, though. So I'm unclear whether boiling is an effective way to kill mold spores, or if it is, how long it takes.

      • by topham ( 32406 ) on Friday January 15, 2021 @09:02AM (#60947618) Homepage

        You don't boil tea.

        You boil water, then steep tea in the water, inevitably the water is at less than the boiling point very quickly. It's perfectly reasonable to think mold spores could survive that, would not surprise me to find out they survive small brush fires for example. (Forest ecosystems often rely on small fires)

        Viability of mold spores exposed to tea situation? Definitely not 0.

        • AFAIK you don't do either thing for making mushroom tea, but you do cook it for a while which destroys some of the undesirable compounds. Not spores, though.

        • Or perhaps even lower. I make tea (the tea leaf kind) at much lower than 'just boiling a second ago' due to improved flavor.
          • Or perhaps even lower. I make tea (the tea leaf kind) at much lower than 'just boiling a second ago' due to improved flavor.

            Douglas Adams, in the persona of Dent Arthur Dent [h2g2.com], would invent a special hell for people like you. Probably He'd give you one proper cup of tea as you go through the gate labelled "Abandon hope etc", and the knowledge that you'd never have a good cup of tea for the rest of your infinitely prolonged eternity.

            If Douglas were feeling cruel in designing your custom afterlife, he might h

            • hahah well played. I developed the habit long after reading the book, and had completely forgotten this passage. I expect I will also be forced to drink black tea made with those horrid little bags.
              • What you put into the bags is more important then the bags themselves. Some people have a real problem with teabags, but as long as they're large enough and contain good tea (in whatever flavour you want - which doesn't necessarily restrict itself to variations on Camellia), they're not necessarily verboten.
        • You boil water, then steep tea in the water, inevitably the water is at less than the boiling point very quickly.

          Which is all completely irrelevant given many fungal spores can survive above boiling point of water. There's nothing magic about 100 degrees C, nothing magic about water, and nothing magic about whatever the equivalent freedom unit temperature is. Some living things survive in higher temperatures.

          A quick google will show several papers on fungal spores survive and being nurtured to grow after several runs through an autoclave.

    • by zmooc ( 33175 ) <zmooc@zmooc.DEGASnet minus painter> on Friday January 15, 2021 @07:55AM (#60947428) Homepage

      If he made tea from dried spores, he and his entire house might well have been covered in spores. Given he's an amateur, there are a million ways spores could have ended up in his blood without them actually going through hot tea.

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • by zmooc ( 33175 )

          That. And he drank some of the tea before sucking it into the syringe. And he didn't disinfect his skin. And he sneezed on the needle. And he didn't tell the doctors he also stuffed shrooms up his ass, of which the first one was on purpose and the other 3 kilos followed naturally after he found out the effect of stuffing shrooms against your prostate has. And he used the syringe 3 times.

          Nevertheless, I hope it did help him after all; shrooms can do great things for mental health.

          • of which the first one was on purpose and the other 3 kilos followed naturally after he found out the effect of stuffing shrooms against your prostate has.

            How closely linked are the circulations of the prostate and rectum?

            Or are you thinking about simple diffusion - which both the blood and lymphatic systems would be working to homeostasis away.

      • I mean sure there are, but why discount direct injection? It's not like fungus is magically killed by boiling water, ... and it's not like tea is even made with boiling water so the temperature is lower than that too.

      • You realize there isn't an unfiltered path between the stuff exposed to those spores and your bloodstream, right?

    • This really has little to do with the mushrooms, and everything to do with injecting random organic material into your bloodstream. I would not recommend IV injection of coffee or macha, either.
    • by noodler ( 724788 )

      If he made tea, and from some miracle from wherever, there actually was a spore in the tea,

      No one stated that the spores actually came from the tea.
      Much more likely is he didn't wash his hands after handling the shrooms and then handled the needle.

    • Tea isn't necessarily boiled.

    • there actually was a spore in the tea, I doubt it would be viable

      Is that ignorance speaking? Why would it not be viable? Some fungal spores can survive temperatures well above the boiling point of water for many hours and be viable. Hell some fungal spores survive a bloody autoclave.

  • Dumbass (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 15, 2021 @02:43AM (#60946938)

    By injecting shrooms into his bloodstream, the 30-year-old patient had hoped to relieve symptoms of bipolar disorder and opioid dependence, according to the report.

    If he had Covid-19, would he have injected a disinfectant? It would knock it out within a minute.

  • What a dumbass. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Randseed ( 132501 ) on Friday January 15, 2021 @03:28AM (#60946984)
    This guy deserves a Darwin Award for doing some of the stupidest things imaginable. Shrooms for opioid dependence and bipolar disorder? And then he injects it? Some people are just plain too stupid to live. That's like putting yourself on an ethanol drip to treat bacterial sepsis. Or injecting Lysol into your veins to try and treat COVID. *cough*

    Now, interestingly, you could treat delirium tremens (alcohol withdraw) with an ethanol drip but nobody does it because it's...well, stupid. Instead they use benzos to blunt the effects but that isn't very pleasant either; it really just keeps the patient from seizing. If you didn't have that, the patient could wean their drinking slowly and be basically asymptomatic but the problem with alcoholics is that they are very bad at controlling their intake.

    Fun fact: Deep in the bowels of the Veteran Administration's home-brewed EHR system there used to be the ability to order "Old Milwaukee" as a dietary item for this reason. We found it about 2006 in medical school when using the software and thought it was hysterical. I'm sure it's gone from the software now, but that used to be (really badly written) open source and you could probably dig it out of a really old version's source if you could find it.

    • Re:What a dumbass. (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 15, 2021 @04:22AM (#60947088)

      Posting as AC as I'm talking third person personal matters here:

      My wife has bipolar disorder. She's a clever person and has a technical job she proficiently develops and is praised by her excellence. Now, when a bipolar episode kicks in, she tends to get maniac (euphoric). In the worst cases, she gets detached from reality quite badly. So much she is not functional anymore: no sleep, no eating, no drinking. Before it gets to that she mixes things up and gets really confused: writing nonsense phrases, drawing abstract things or preparing weird meals to mention a few. The worst case was when she wasn't even breastfeeding our 3 month old baby (for a mother this is a hard thing to miss).

      From the article I didn't read, to honor slashdot tradition, this person may have been in that detached reality state. I can picture that person being confused and really thinking what he was doing was honestly going to cure him. But this doesn't mean this person is dumb. It means there's an illness, with no cure as of today, that could explain this behavior.

      • by zmooc ( 33175 )

        But this doesn't mean this person is dumb.

        It's not just not dumb (ok injecting stuff in your blood is quite dumb, but ok). Psilocybin has been reported to have long term positive effects on bipolar disorder and several other such conditions (including ASS, depression). So the idea of using shrooms (or other psychedelics) to self-medicate is not dumb at all; it is very common and in many cases it works great, often ridiculously life-changing great (but sometimes also life-changing bad).

        really thinking what he was doing was honestly going to cure him

        So that thought as such actually may not have been that delusion

        • Drugs won the war on drugs, this story is just another example of someone hurt because they can’t get a legal safe source at a reasonable price. Not to mention all the fentanyl deaths and the deaths and lung transplants from vaping vitamin E acetate.
          • lung transplants from vaping vitamin E acetate

            Huh? What "act like your age is your IQ, not your shoe size is your IQ" madness is this?

            Does the inhaled compound make them irrevocably sterile too? If so, it's a self-correcting problem. To get a Darwin Award, you need to remove your genes from the gene pool - which implies killing off any offspring you have and irrevocable sterility.

      • > She's a clever person and has a technical job she proficiently develops. ...
        > Now, when a bipolar episode kicks in, she tends to get maniac (euphoric). In the worst cases, she gets detached from reality quite badly. ... she mixes things up and gets really confused: writing nonsense phrases

        Are you married to AmiMojo by chance?

        But seriously I feel for you. I was in a similar position when my daughter was a baby. It's hard, somehow we make it through.

      • by dj245 ( 732906 )

        Posting as AC as I'm talking third person personal matters here:

        My wife has bipolar disorder. She's a clever person and has a technical job she proficiently develops and is praised by her excellence. Now, when a bipolar episode kicks in, she tends to get maniac (euphoric). In the worst cases, she gets detached from reality quite badly. So much she is not functional anymore: no sleep, no eating, no drinking. Before it gets to that she mixes things up and gets really confused: writing nonsense phrases, drawing abstract things or preparing weird meals to mention a few. The worst case was when she wasn't even breastfeeding our 3 month old baby (for a mother this is a hard thing to miss).

        From the article I didn't read, to honor slashdot tradition, this person may have been in that detached reality state. I can picture that person being confused and really thinking what he was doing was honestly going to cure him. But this doesn't mean this person is dumb. It means there's an illness, with no cure as of today, that could explain this behavior.

        Wow. I've been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, but after reading this I'm pretty sure I don't have bipolar disorder.

    • Would explain the fuckwittery combined with the mental health issues.

      Certainly deserves an Honourary Darwin.

    • This has nothing to do with being dumb. It is sadly caused by bipolar disorder, which is a severe mental disorder.

      I have met several people in my life so far with bipolar disorder and the things they do to themselves are unbelievable. From something as simple as public urination at a bus stop full of people, to jumping of bridges to swim to the ocean, to suicide with rope, rat poison and cut wrists all at once.

      To read about someone with bipolar disorder to inject mushroom tea into their veins is frankly not

    • Dumb thing to do? : yes!
      Is he actually dumb: maybe not. Bipolar disorder can make people engage in abnormal behavior during the flip-flops.

      This story did remind me of that dumass girl in Canada who a few years ago who decided that an eyeball-tattoo would be a great way to make her stand out and get attention. Well she did get attention a week later when she was crying all over the internet about the vision loss in that eye and and the blue dye oozing out of it.

    • by LocalH ( 28506 )

      >Shrooms for opioid dependence and bipolar disorder?

      That's not the dumb part. They're finding psychedelics in general (psilocybin seems to be the one more are focusing on) can have untold benefits in terms of overcoming anxiety, depression, and other mental health issues.

      >And then he injects it?

      This is the dumb part. You can't inject the mushrooms itself. Extracted psilocybin or psilocin, possibly. But you don't want those spores floating around in your blood, as this guy discovered.

    • by Gilmoure ( 18428 )

      I can't imagine what it must be like to where Old Milwaukee is a viable treatment. UGH!

    • many hospital EMRs allow for the ordering of beer or alcohol. Its used for patients with the DTs.

  • by hcs_$reboot ( 1536101 ) on Friday January 15, 2021 @03:30AM (#60946986)
    From the guy after he smoked the mushrooms?
  • by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Friday January 15, 2021 @03:31AM (#60946990)

    But .. but .. it's not a chemical or molecule, it's a natural substance like hemlock or riddelliine what could go wrong?

    • But .. but .. it's not a chemical or molecule, it's a natural substance like hemlock or riddelliine what could go wrong?

      That's like people who were having Botox parties where they illegally got Botox and injected it into each other to not have to pay a doctor. At one point it was a big thing with people causing face droop and the like, but more than a few people wound up injecting it intravenously. What could go wrong?

    • But .. but .. it's not a chemical or molecule, it's a natural substance like hemlock or riddelliine what could go wrong?

      I have developed a business model and entire product lines around this concept.


      Gympie Gympie personal spiced wipes, the natural *warmth guaranteed for a month or your money back!

      Hemlock shakes, Socrates’ favorite!

      Wild parsnip tanning lotion! When you need to look badly sunburnt but don’t have the time - act now and get a free bikini line stencil!





      *Does not preclude never ending, soul rending pain and begging for death

  • Isn't this from the finale of "Star Trek" STD ?
    Or was it The Mandalorian?

    • To operate the spore drive, one requires "space tardigrade" DNA or Doctor Dolittle genes (and this trope). [tvtropes.org]

      The writers clearly are more concerned with putting wokeness into the plot than establishing any sort of canon. Oh hell, after seeing them pull a LITERAL deus ex machina (yes, an actual machine prevents what would've been a character's very dramatic act of self-sacrifice), I'm convinced this entire show is intentionally written to troll Trek fans.

      • Please. Star Trek has always been "woke". It was intended to be such from the outset before that term was even invented. And Roddenberry even intended it to be even more "woke" than it was; but was forced to, for example, get rid of the Enterprise's original, female, first officer and demote her to nurse because of the misogyny of the NBC executives.

        You seem to forget that TOS featured the first interracial kiss... EVER. It generated the same frothing at the mouth that Discovery has by including a non-b

  • Sounds like more horseshit from Big Shroom.
    • Shrooms are often grown on sh*t, which by its very nature contains potentially harmful pathogens.

      Now, so are many other things humans regularly consume, which is why we've developed a tolerance for very small and unavoidable amounts of horse, cow, pig, dog, human, and other kinds of sh*t.

      HOWEVER: we don't normally inject those things. We eat them.

      Injecting them bypasses the numerous mechanisms in the digestive tract, most notably the highly acidic stomach secretions as well as the fiercely competitive micr

      • Shrooms are often grown on sh*t,

        That's culinary mushrooms. From where their wild ecology, I'd expect grass cuttings and/ or chopped leaves would make a much better substrate for growing that family of mushrooms. (How many families of fungus are there? 64-odd to the "sub-class" level, for what that is worth.)

        How that translates to the actions of commercial mushroom growers is a separate question. If they like shovelling shit, they might use that as a substrate.

  • high midichlorian count! Almost as high as master Yoda's...

  • The stupidity?
    The Darwin Award possibility?
    The drugs?
    Did he buy the mushrooms with bitcoins?
    Did he 3D-print the needle? ...

    • The first 3 plus Star Trek: Discovery joke potential.

    • Amazing new Medical discovery to treat bipolar disorder.

      Too bad it didn't work, and nearly killed the patient.
    • Unsurprisingly, hallucinogens, which have been "locked away" under Schedule 1 Narcotic designation by the DEA do have therapeutic uses

      Nerds should be interested, particularly if they suffer from PTSD (extasy), Heroin addiction (Ibogaine) etc...

      Messy yes, useless to nerds, not so much

  • ... you have to realize that the reasons were kind of well intentioned. The person was/is caught in the cycle of opioid addiction and psychological challenges. Which part is 'dumb' wanting to break a profiteers cycle he has no control over, or try something desperate in the hopes of freeing himself? It's interesting to think of the repercussions if he had been successful, isn't it? In any case, maybe some respect for him is warranted.

    He, perhaps misguidedly, at least tried to make himself better whereas

    • Absolutely idiotic.

      Because he wanted to be better this wasn't a very bad idea? There's no real basis to think it would work. If the tea was a viable alternative to the medication perhaps, maybe, just maybe, there might have been a viable mechanism for a more long term solution than drinking the tea daily.

      But this? This was just plain stupid.

      Because someone somewhere brewed a tea that had medicinal properties doesn't mean everything does.

      And just because a tea has medicinal properties doesn't mean injecting

      • Hopefully we will see some actual scientific investigation into medical use of psilocybin, ibogaine, extasy, DMT, etc... without DEA blocking as Schedule 1 Narcotics (no medical use), resulting in safe and effective treatments

        • Hopefully we will see some actual scientific investigation into medical use of psilocybin, ibogaine, extasy, DMT, etc... without DEA blocking as Schedule 1 Narcotics (no medical use), resulting in safe and effective treatments

          Amen to that.

  • by Vinegar Joe ( 998110 ) on Friday January 15, 2021 @07:25AM (#60947384)

    In other words, he was batshit crazy.

  • I expect myself to grow not the mushroom.

  • Had his organ failure been complete and if he had not reproduced, he would be a visble candidate. The article only said he was 30 and was discovered by his family. Is that 30 and living in moms basement? Or is that 30 and wife and kids found him? Why on earth did he think that would work? Did it not occur that stomach acid might be part of the process? For example if anyone tells you that they use the pure leaf/bud form of cannabis in a salad they are full of shit. Cannabis contains THCA technically, not TH

    • This should be obvious, but I'll go ahead and state it anyway. Bipolar people experiencing a manic episode don't think clearly. It doesn't necessarily mean they're idiots.
      • Ive known a few bipolar people. Impuslive as hell, sure. But ive never seen one rub poison ivy all over their body. Mushrooms, almost 85% of their species are deadly if not consumed in an exact way. Maybe he was trying to skip the vomit stage? Only did them once in highschool (kinda rare in my area in the 80s) and about 30min later you puke similar to payote (sp). That was a rally long time ago and I was really interested in Timothy Leareys research. Knowing that the plants are technically poisonous was so

        • Ive known a few bipolar people. Impuslive as hell, sure. But ive never seen one rub poison ivy all over their body.

          The bipolar person in question consumed a substance that has anecdotal evidence of alleviating the symptoms of bipolar depression, and is being studied by researchers to determine its efficacy. I don't believe your "poison ivy" story is even remotely comparable to what this guy did.

          Mushrooms, almost 85% of their species are deadly if not consumed in an exact way.

          According to Wikipedia, [wikipedia.org] there are some 14,000 species of mushrooms. Also according to Wikipedia, [wikipedia.org] there are ~113 species known to be poisonous.

          I won't call you an idiot for the ridiculous statement you just made. I will, howev

          • I won't call you an idiot for the ridiculous statement you just made. I will, however, suggest that you think twice before calling others idiots

            Wasted keystrokes. The guy is infallible, and knows it - infallibly.

    • Why on earth did he think that would work?

      There are the very beginnings of research into using psychedelics to treat/cure certain mental health issues, including bipolar disorder. There is some evidence dosing someone with 'magic mushrooms' may work. Waaaay too early in the research to figure out if it actually works.

      Second, if he's addicted to opiates he may already be injecting himself with those. Leading to the logical conclusion of "that's how other drugs get in me most effectively, so that's what I should do here".

      Third, he's got a mental i

  • DMT will eventually be used to treat bipolar. You heard it here first. Donate to MAPS - Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies - If you want to advance this science! Amazon Smile can be set to donate to them.
    • by dj245 ( 732906 )

      DMT will eventually be used to treat bipolar. You heard it here first. Donate to MAPS - Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies - If you want to advance this science! Amazon Smile can be set to donate to them.

      I know a person who became a big advocate of DMT. He has gone completely off the deep end- a nasty divorce from his wife of 15 years, erratic behavior, irreparably pissing off all of his friends, some of whom he had known for 10 years. He has become a christian fanatic and is currently in Israel for some reason.

      A little too much of anything can be bad for you, but DMT should not to be taken lightly or frequently.

  • If injecting shit like this into your bloodstream doesn't make you a Darwin Award candidate and demonstrate 'evolution in action', then I don't know what would.
    Stupid, stupid, stupid!
  • it's a barrier between the outside word and all that icky gooey stuff inside us that is vulnerable to infection, colonization, etc.

    Allowing foreign substances to get past the skin and into the stuff protected by the skin is at the root of infections, flesh-eating diseases, all sorts of bad stuff; it's one reason being an IV drug addict is such a health hazard. It's one of the things that makes puncture wounds and deep burns so dangerous. It's also why we like all our medical supplies sterile and one-time-us

  • In Soviet Russia, stupid prize wins person who plays stupid game!

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