6 ms·

Study indicates mushrooms may be the safest recreational drug

55 points by eth0up 9y ago

herbst 9y ago
Interesting. From the psychological side I found mushrooms to be way less predictive than LSD. Assuming basic rules are applied to both including safe dosing.
- xiaoma 9y ago
  Predictive of what? Edit: I've read studies that found psychological benefits from a single use of LSD, six months later. Anyone able to comment on whether or not this is true for mushrooms?
  - ryanlol 9y ago
    Perhaps they meant predictable? If so, I'd be inclined to agree.
  - herbst 9y ago
    probably ment predictable. You are less able to control emotions IMO which CAN hurt your psychological health (doesnt have to tho)
    - ada1981 9y ago
      >> You are less able to control emotions << The entire point is to surrender and let go of control. So if you are a person who lives in a paradigm where emotions are things that need to be controlled, psychedelic are going to be a stern teacher for your ego. I'd recommend folks starting with something like Holotropic Breathwork and learning to surrender to your felt experience without trying to manage or control it.
  - bydo 9y ago
    Sure: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/12/the-life-changing-magic-of-mushrooms/509246/ https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/12/the-life-...
- wyldfire 9y ago
  > ... just 0.2% of them said they needed emergency medical treatment The metric here is "decided to go to the hospital". So the "basic rules" are not really controlled for. If folks who take shrooms know their potential, they might plan their trip better. I suppose the critical inputs might be something like "sum of [actual toxic effects of drug times ease of overdose, effects of drug w/symptoms that match actual illness]". If the actual toxicity dominates the reported hospital visits, shrooms should win, right? > “Death from toxicity is almost unheard of with poisoning with more dangerous fungi being a much greater risk in terms of serious harms.”
gadders 9y ago
>>Study indicates mushrooms may be the safest recreational drug PEDs not included in the study.
- TearsInTheRain 9y ago
  Performance enhancing drugs? I wouldn't really classify those as recreational...
  - FullMtlAlcoholc 9y ago
    Amphetamines are classified as PED's and they most certainly are used for recreation.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
elif 9y ago
I don't think the study says a single thing about safety. This was a study on the perception of safety of drugs by unqualified users. The people who went to the ER because of cannabis would have gone for shrooms too, they just perceive it as more dangerous and don't take it.
- rch 9y ago
  Shrooms can cause nausea in proportion to the dose, so there's a natural limit to exposure. You're on your own with THC edibles. Of course one could get into trouble by guzzling high-potency tea, but the same could be said for caffeinated tea or alcohol.
  - aaron_m04 9y ago
    The nausea doesn't hit you until after you're committed, so it's not self limiting in that way.
etjossem 9y ago
Anecdotal: people who do hallucinogenic mushrooms are way more likely to know what they're getting into. The decision to ingest mushrooms isn't a matter of psychological need (as it sometimes is with alcohol or amphetamines), and it's very rarely made out of impulse in a social setting (e.g. ecstasy). It is typically a deliberate choice with the expectation of having a psychedelic experience - complete with the understanding that it might be a bad trip. You do as much prep work as you can beforehand to make sure it's comfortable. Taking care and preparing for the high isn't really baked into the culture of other drugs in the same way.
- seizethecheese 9y ago
  > The decision to ingest mushrooms isn't a matter of psychological need (as it sometimes is with alcohol or amphetamines), and it's very rarely made out of impulse in a social setting (e.g. ecstasy). I've definitely felt pressured into taking mushrooms. It's a very social thing to do. You need a "sitter" who stays sober which means it makes the most sense to do in groups. I also have known many disturbed people who ingest mushrooms frequently to escape their lives.
  - xkcd-sucks 9y ago
    >You need a "sitter" who stays sober Some people find the presence of a dedicated mental-health-evaluator quite distressing and distracting re: deep introspection
  - etjossem 9y ago
    > I've definitely felt pressured into taking mushrooms. It's a very social thing to do. You need a "sitter" who stays sober Your mileage may vary! But this is exactly my point: when a group of you get together to take mushrooms, you recognize the need to have someone sober around to take care of everyone else and make sure they're safe. For comparison, let's look at alcohol - you're very lucky if you can find someone willing to be the designated driver, let alone a group where emphasis is placed on keeping each other safe. There's even a level of taboo around slowing down those who are drinking too much. It doesn't surprise me how many people are hospitalized for alcohol overdose or related accidents. The culture is very different.
delegate 9y ago
True story. Friend of mine takes mushrooms for the first time, has a massive 'bad' trip, sees himself dying and realizes that life is short and fragile and if he survives the trip, he will make something out of it. Of course he survived the trip. Next day (eg. soon) arrives at the conclusion that he's wasting his life working for an investment bank, quits his high-paying programmer job, invests most of his savings into bitcoin and starts working on a bitcoin-related application (I won't name it, because this is a private story), decides it's his mission in life. This was 4 years ago. At today's exchange rate, his BTC are worth a couple of million and the app is currently in beta. Now of course this is a good story, because a guy took mushrooms and is now a millionaire, but I suspect that the story could just as likely gone south (together with BTC's price) so then his actions could have been interpreted as quite reckless - giving up a good job and investing in 'speculative tech'. Psychedelics are quite safe physically and even psychologically - however, the consequences of the decisions taken after a psychedelic 'enlightenment' experience should also be taken into account. In other words, know that your life might change dramatically after a powerful trip - and that includes relationships, career, education choices and so on. With that said, I still think the revelations themselves are worth it and the more people have them, the better the world will be as a whole.
- rubyfan 9y ago
  tl;dr eat magic mushrooms, become a millionaire
  - Mtinie 9y ago
    Survivorship bias! :P Typical story: "Took magic mushroom, realized futility of my life's direction. Took life savings, bought 1600 bitcoins at $250/BTC. Invested all BTC in more magic mushrooms. Next step...contemplating writing an 'Ask HN' for advice, but unsure where I left my house."
    - yipbub 9y ago
      It's definitely not "eat mushrooms; become millionaire". It's unlikely that there's a highly predictable way a mental change will effect your life, but the "typical story" is also a misrepresentation. It's possible that it has positive mental consequences with some regularity. My impression is that this might be true. Some reasons for this may be it's culture of use, perception of the drug, and most importantly its biological effects. Most psychedelics alter the serotonin receptor system(Psychedelic Drug, Wikipedia), and are culturally, and more recently medically, associated with "higher consciousness" (Guardian). At the risk of highly simplifying complex mental/neurological interactions, I think one of the things mushrooms provide is perspective as a result of examining everything from an altered mental state. Having experimented with small to moderately high doses, my hypotheses as to what my personal version of the altered mental's state's characteristics are are: *some effect on attention and mental effort that unify attention to an abstract focus and allow extended mental effort. *maybe it makes every thought feel very profound. *maybe it allows us to emotionally react to simulated outcomes which can make long term thinking more statistically accurate. *introduces some new mental illusions. *various effects on the whole perception black box. The same one that stitches, both eyeball inputs together, ignores your nose, and removes blurry eye images,etc. *makes mental associations more observable The biggest impact that it had for me personally was greater self awareness. Not in the sense that I immediately knew more about myself afterwards, but I could perceive more of my inner interactions if I wished. Hopefully people do studies. I'd volunteer for low-to-none toxicity drugs like mushrooms. Citations: (Kahneman): "Thinking, Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman, https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11468377-thinking-fast-and-slow https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11468377-thinking-fast-a... (Psychedelic Drug, Wikipedia): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychedelic_drug https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychedelic_drug (Guardian): https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/apr/19/brain-scans-reveal-mind-opening-response-to-psychedelic-drug-trip-lsd-ketamine-psilocybin https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/apr/19/brain-scans-...
swayvil 9y ago
Mushrooms is one of the best things I ever did in my life. I'm more into meditation these days tho.
vivekd 9y ago
Mushrooms don't sound safe at all, as far as I know mushrooms have to be grown exactly right or they may develop deadly fungi. I don't know how willing I'd be to trust an unregulated drug operation to grow my mushrooms properly. I understand that the risk of deadly contamination also exists with non-hallucinogenic store-bought mushrooms, however, there is a world of difference between trusting a regulated business with your potentially deadly food and trusting a criminal drug gang. I wonder how much the purported "safety" of mushrooms are just because they are rarely used. This survey finds that meth and synthetic cannabis are the most dangerous drugs,and maybe that's more a result of the fact that they are just so widespread than actual danger. Also, looking at medical treatment alone might be misleading without looking at severity of the condition. Contaminated mushrooms can easily result in death. Also, I wonder if they even included contaminated mushrooms in the study of emergency room visits. The article uses the vague sentence: >“Death from toxicity is almost unheard of with poisoning with more dangerous fungi being a much greater risk in terms of serious harms.” This makes me wonder if the study choose not to consider emergency room visits as a result of contaminated mushrooms. Sure uncontaminated mushrooms are relatively safe, but given how easily they can become contaminated and deadly, I would question their reputation as a "safe drug."
- cbanek 9y ago
  I've never personally heard any stories of "contaminated mushrooms". But there are other similar risks - like mistaking poisonous mushrooms for magic mushrooms. In general, magic mushrooms are either cultivated indoors by someone in a terrarium and keeping the environment just right. To even grow the mushrooms (which are fairly weak compared to most other fungi and bacteria) you actually need to start by sterilizing the substrate, usually by boiling, then you inoculate with a sterile needle the spores. Overall, this is pretty safe because pretty much any kind of contamination, the fungi won't fruit (you eat the fruiting bodies), so there's just not really any mushrooms to give you. The other way is of course to go mushroom hunting. This is a lot more dangerous, because there are mushrooms that are poisonous that will straight up kill you. It can be hard to tell the difference sometimes, especially if you don't know what you're looking for. One last thing is your body already kind of knows they are a toxin. Many people feel ill or sick to their stomach after ingesting them, and some will throw up. In terms of drug safety, eating things is probably one of the safest, because your body is always ready to expel bad food. The least safe of course is probably straight injection, and smoking isn't too great for you either. I won't say they're safe, but what really is in this world?
pvaldes 9y ago
Except by the small fact that your heart can decide to stop if you use too much of it and introduce you in the wonders of Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (true story also).
macscam 9y ago
Being obvious here, but what about pot? Have personally done mushrooms 5 or so times. and while it can be pretty casual with a small dose, it easily gets into the realm of somewhat-spiritual meta-thinking (after a few of these experiences I didnt much desire them anymore) . Similar to LSD in this regard, and probably not the best thing to mix with alcohol.
tim333 9y ago
Got to be careful to get the right sort of mushrooms though https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psilocybin_mushroom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psilocybin_mushroom and not some other stuff.

55 points by eth0up 9y ago

Interesting. From the psychological side I found mushrooms to be way less predictive than LSD. Assuming basic rules are applied to both including safe dosing.

xiaoma 9y ago
Predictive of what? Edit: I've read studies that found psychological benefits from a single use of LSD, six months later. Anyone able to comment on whether or not this is true for mushrooms?
- ryanlol 9y ago
  Perhaps they meant predictable? If so, I'd be inclined to agree.
- herbst 9y ago
  probably ment predictable. You are less able to control emotions IMO which CAN hurt your psychological health (doesnt have to tho)
  - ada1981 9y ago
    >> You are less able to control emotions << The entire point is to surrender and let go of control. So if you are a person who lives in a paradigm where emotions are things that need to be controlled, psychedelic are going to be a stern teacher for your ego. I'd recommend folks starting with something like Holotropic Breathwork and learning to surrender to your felt experience without trying to manage or control it.
- bydo 9y ago
  Sure: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/12/the-life-changing-magic-of-mushrooms/509246/ https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/12/the-life-...
wyldfire 9y ago
> ... just 0.2% of them said they needed emergency medical treatment The metric here is "decided to go to the hospital". So the "basic rules" are not really controlled for. If folks who take shrooms know their potential, they might plan their trip better. I suppose the critical inputs might be something like "sum of [actual toxic effects of drug times ease of overdose, effects of drug w/symptoms that match actual illness]". If the actual toxicity dominates the reported hospital visits, shrooms should win, right? > “Death from toxicity is almost unheard of with poisoning with more dangerous fungi being a much greater risk in terms of serious harms.”

gadders 9y ago

>>Study indicates mushrooms may be the safest recreational drug PEDs not included in the study.

TearsInTheRain 9y ago
Performance enhancing drugs? I wouldn't really classify those as recreational...
- FullMtlAlcoholc 9y ago
  Amphetamines are classified as PED's and they most certainly are used for recreation.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

elif 9y ago

I don't think the study says a single thing about safety. This was a study on the perception of safety of drugs by unqualified users. The people who went to the ER because of cannabis would have gone for shrooms too, they just perceive it as more dangerous and don't take it.

rch 9y ago
Shrooms can cause nausea in proportion to the dose, so there's a natural limit to exposure. You're on your own with THC edibles. Of course one could get into trouble by guzzling high-potency tea, but the same could be said for caffeinated tea or alcohol.
- aaron_m04 9y ago
  The nausea doesn't hit you until after you're committed, so it's not self limiting in that way.

etjossem 9y ago

Anecdotal: people who do hallucinogenic mushrooms are way more likely to know what they're getting into. The decision to ingest mushrooms isn't a matter of psychological need (as it sometimes is with alcohol or amphetamines), and it's very rarely made out of impulse in a social setting (e.g. ecstasy). It is typically a deliberate choice with the expectation of having a psychedelic experience - complete with the understanding that it might be a bad trip. You do as much prep work as you can beforehand to make sure it's comfortable. Taking care and preparing for the high isn't really baked into the culture of other drugs in the same way.

seizethecheese 9y ago
> The decision to ingest mushrooms isn't a matter of psychological need (as it sometimes is with alcohol or amphetamines), and it's very rarely made out of impulse in a social setting (e.g. ecstasy). I've definitely felt pressured into taking mushrooms. It's a very social thing to do. You need a "sitter" who stays sober which means it makes the most sense to do in groups. I also have known many disturbed people who ingest mushrooms frequently to escape their lives.
- xkcd-sucks 9y ago
  >You need a "sitter" who stays sober Some people find the presence of a dedicated mental-health-evaluator quite distressing and distracting re: deep introspection
- etjossem 9y ago
  > I've definitely felt pressured into taking mushrooms. It's a very social thing to do. You need a "sitter" who stays sober Your mileage may vary! But this is exactly my point: when a group of you get together to take mushrooms, you recognize the need to have someone sober around to take care of everyone else and make sure they're safe. For comparison, let's look at alcohol - you're very lucky if you can find someone willing to be the designated driver, let alone a group where emphasis is placed on keeping each other safe. There's even a level of taboo around slowing down those who are drinking too much. It doesn't surprise me how many people are hospitalized for alcohol overdose or related accidents. The culture is very different.

delegate 9y ago

True story. Friend of mine takes mushrooms for the first time, has a massive 'bad' trip, sees himself dying and realizes that life is short and fragile and if he survives the trip, he will make something out of it. Of course he survived the trip. Next day (eg. soon) arrives at the conclusion that he's wasting his life working for an investment bank, quits his high-paying programmer job, invests most of his savings into bitcoin and starts working on a bitcoin-related application (I won't name it, because this is a private story), decides it's his mission in life. This was 4 years ago. At today's exchange rate, his BTC are worth a couple of million and the app is currently in beta. Now of course this is a good story, because a guy took mushrooms and is now a millionaire, but I suspect that the story could just as likely gone south (together with BTC's price) so then his actions could have been interpreted as quite reckless - giving up a good job and investing in 'speculative tech'. Psychedelics are quite safe physically and even psychologically - however, the consequences of the decisions taken after a psychedelic 'enlightenment' experience should also be taken into account. In other words, know that your life might change dramatically after a powerful trip - and that includes relationships, career, education choices and so on. With that said, I still think the revelations themselves are worth it and the more people have them, the better the world will be as a whole.

rubyfan 9y ago
tl;dr eat magic mushrooms, become a millionaire
- Mtinie 9y ago
  Survivorship bias! :P Typical story: "Took magic mushroom, realized futility of my life's direction. Took life savings, bought 1600 bitcoins at $250/BTC. Invested all BTC in more magic mushrooms. Next step...contemplating writing an 'Ask HN' for advice, but unsure where I left my house."
  - yipbub 9y ago
    It's definitely not "eat mushrooms; become millionaire". It's unlikely that there's a highly predictable way a mental change will effect your life, but the "typical story" is also a misrepresentation. It's possible that it has positive mental consequences with some regularity. My impression is that this might be true. Some reasons for this may be it's culture of use, perception of the drug, and most importantly its biological effects. Most psychedelics alter the serotonin receptor system(Psychedelic Drug, Wikipedia), and are culturally, and more recently medically, associated with "higher consciousness" (Guardian). At the risk of highly simplifying complex mental/neurological interactions, I think one of the things mushrooms provide is perspective as a result of examining everything from an altered mental state. Having experimented with small to moderately high doses, my hypotheses as to what my personal version of the altered mental's state's characteristics are are: *some effect on attention and mental effort that unify attention to an abstract focus and allow extended mental effort. *maybe it makes every thought feel very profound. *maybe it allows us to emotionally react to simulated outcomes which can make long term thinking more statistically accurate. *introduces some new mental illusions. *various effects on the whole perception black box. The same one that stitches, both eyeball inputs together, ignores your nose, and removes blurry eye images,etc. *makes mental associations more observable The biggest impact that it had for me personally was greater self awareness. Not in the sense that I immediately knew more about myself afterwards, but I could perceive more of my inner interactions if I wished. Hopefully people do studies. I'd volunteer for low-to-none toxicity drugs like mushrooms. Citations: (Kahneman): "Thinking, Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman, https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11468377-thinking-fast-and-slow https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11468377-thinking-fast-a... (Psychedelic Drug, Wikipedia): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychedelic_drug https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychedelic_drug (Guardian): https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/apr/19/brain-scans-reveal-mind-opening-response-to-psychedelic-drug-trip-lsd-ketamine-psilocybin https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/apr/19/brain-scans-...

swayvil 9y ago

Mushrooms is one of the best things I ever did in my life. I'm more into meditation these days tho.

vivekd 9y ago

Mushrooms don't sound safe at all, as far as I know mushrooms have to be grown exactly right or they may develop deadly fungi. I don't know how willing I'd be to trust an unregulated drug operation to grow my mushrooms properly. I understand that the risk of deadly contamination also exists with non-hallucinogenic store-bought mushrooms, however, there is a world of difference between trusting a regulated business with your potentially deadly food and trusting a criminal drug gang. I wonder how much the purported "safety" of mushrooms are just because they are rarely used. This survey finds that meth and synthetic cannabis are the most dangerous drugs,and maybe that's more a result of the fact that they are just so widespread than actual danger. Also, looking at medical treatment alone might be misleading without looking at severity of the condition. Contaminated mushrooms can easily result in death. Also, I wonder if they even included contaminated mushrooms in the study of emergency room visits. The article uses the vague sentence: >“Death from toxicity is almost unheard of with poisoning with more dangerous fungi being a much greater risk in terms of serious harms.” This makes me wonder if the study choose not to consider emergency room visits as a result of contaminated mushrooms. Sure uncontaminated mushrooms are relatively safe, but given how easily they can become contaminated and deadly, I would question their reputation as a "safe drug."

cbanek 9y ago
I've never personally heard any stories of "contaminated mushrooms". But there are other similar risks - like mistaking poisonous mushrooms for magic mushrooms. In general, magic mushrooms are either cultivated indoors by someone in a terrarium and keeping the environment just right. To even grow the mushrooms (which are fairly weak compared to most other fungi and bacteria) you actually need to start by sterilizing the substrate, usually by boiling, then you inoculate with a sterile needle the spores. Overall, this is pretty safe because pretty much any kind of contamination, the fungi won't fruit (you eat the fruiting bodies), so there's just not really any mushrooms to give you. The other way is of course to go mushroom hunting. This is a lot more dangerous, because there are mushrooms that are poisonous that will straight up kill you. It can be hard to tell the difference sometimes, especially if you don't know what you're looking for. One last thing is your body already kind of knows they are a toxin. Many people feel ill or sick to their stomach after ingesting them, and some will throw up. In terms of drug safety, eating things is probably one of the safest, because your body is always ready to expel bad food. The least safe of course is probably straight injection, and smoking isn't too great for you either. I won't say they're safe, but what really is in this world?

pvaldes 9y ago

Except by the small fact that your heart can decide to stop if you use too much of it and introduce you in the wonders of Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (true story also).

macscam 9y ago

Being obvious here, but what about pot? Have personally done mushrooms 5 or so times. and while it can be pretty casual with a small dose, it easily gets into the realm of somewhat-spiritual meta-thinking (after a few of these experiences I didnt much desire them anymore) . Similar to LSD in this regard, and probably not the best thing to mix with alcohol.

tim333 9y ago

Got to be careful to get the right sort of mushrooms though https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psilocybin_mushroom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psilocybin_mushroom and not some other stuff.