Edible mushrooms are growing in popularity in the U.S., claiming to offer a range of mind-altering experiences, from the mild—a boost in focus from a “microdose”—to psychedelic trips. But the effects don’t necessarily stem from psilocybin, the Schedule I chemical found in so-called magic mushrooms.
It is often a mushroom called Amanita muscaria — at least according to the product label. (That’s if the label lists a specific mushroom or compound. Sometimes it may just say it contains a “proprietary” or “magical” blend.)
The mushroom, which resembles the classic power-up boost from the Super Mario games, is red with white spots. It contains a number of chemicals, the most notable being muscimol, a hallucinogenic compound that can alter mood, perception and behavior.
In reality, what happens in many of these products remains an open question.
“They are not regulated and no one knows what they are putting in them,” said Dr. Avery Michienzi, assistant professor of emergency medicine at the University of Virginia School of Medicine. People may be taking a different dose than what is on the label or think they are taking one thing and actually take something completely different, she said.
In fact, with the rise in popularity, there have also been an increasing number of alarming reports of people becoming ill from edible mushroom products.
At the end of June, the company Prophet Premium Blends has recalled its Diamond Shruumz edible mushroom products after several users fell ill. From Tuesday, the Food and Drug Administration identified 67 illnesses in 28 states linked to food, including 38 hospitalizations and two possible deaths. O The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued an alert to health care providers last month to keep an eye on patients who consumed the product.
People who have become ill after eating Diamond Shruumz foods have reported a variety of serious symptoms, including seizures, loss of consciousness, confusion, and abnormal heartbeats.
According to the company, the products contained “above normal” amounts of muscimol, which it attributed to the illnesses.
The FDA investigation is still ongoing; Additional testing by the agency found other substances, including psilacetin, a compound related to psilocybin that can have mind-altering effects.
Christopher Pauli, CEO of Tryptomics, a laboratory specializing in the analysis of plants and fungi, said psilacetin is commonly found in edible mushroom products. Both psilacetin and psilocybin are converted in the body to psilocin, the chemical responsible for the psychoactive effects, he said.
An explosion of products
Over the past year, there has been an explosion in the number of mushroom products, especially in vape shops, said Eric Leas, assistant professor at the Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health at the University of California, San Diego.
“We really started to see a lot of them showing up in stores last fall,” said Leas, who runs a state program that monitors products sold in vape shops.
At ShroomLand LA, a mushroom dispensary in the Venice neighborhood of Los Angeles, business is booming.
Rod Mendez, the store manager, said the store has been flooded with customers since it opened last year.
“We see a lot of people with muscle pain, people with sleep problems or even eating disorders,” said Mendez, estimating that he is selling about 400 edible mushrooms a week. “Edible mushrooms are the new vapes,” he added.
Mendez said the recent FDA warning about Diamond Shruumz did not cause any problems for the store. “In the six months I’ve been working at the store, I’ve never seen anyone have a problem with the products in terms of the effects or the quality or anything that was bad,” he said. All of the store’s products, he said, are laboratory tested and certified, with test results available to customers who request them.
Last month, Leas et al. published a letter in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine calling for greater regulation of Amanita muscaria products, citing a 114% increase in product-related Google searches.
Underscoring how edible mushrooms have recently emerged on the market, poison control centers have added codes to better track cases linked to the products in late 2023, said Kaitlyn Brown, clinical managing director of Poison Centers of America, the group which works with the FDA and CDC. in the Diamond Shruumz investigation.
“We’re seeing them emerge where we’ve never seen them before,” said Dr. Christopher Holstege, director of the Blue Ridge Poison Center in Charlottesville, Virginia. “Poison control centers are always the tip of the iceberg.”
The Blue Ridge Poison Center has managed five cases of people becoming ill after eating edible mushrooms, all labeled as containing Amanita muscaria, since September. The cases were detailed in a report published Thursday in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.
Four of the cases occurred in adults who were treated in the emergency room after developing symptoms including confusion, increased heart rate and chest pain.
Last month, the authors wrote, the poison control center also received a report of a 3-year-old child who was hospitalized after eating two Amanita muscaria Gums. The child, whose symptoms included drowsiness and vomiting, did not require treatment and was discharged after a day.
The authors were unable to find the specific brands that people reported consuming, but they purchased and tested six similar products purchased at gas stations and tobacco stores. Four of the six products contained psilocybin or psilocin; none contained compounds found in Amanita muscaria mushrooms. They were also found to contain compounds such as caffeine, ephedrine, and kratom.
“I think it’s dangerous ground when you start picking things up when you don’t actually know what they are,” said Michienzi, who was the report’s lead author.
Holstege said the true extent of the health risks of such products can be difficult to quantify, since compounds like muscimol require specialized laboratory tests that are not routinely available to doctors.
“I think it’s a big problem right now that we can’t test, so it’s hard to know exactly how much there is,” he said. “You’re basically going to be left with someone who had complications like seizures and got better, and we scratch our heads and don’t know exactly what caused it.”
Are edible mushrooms safe?
Amanita muscaria Edible foods present risks. One of the biggest, Holstege said, is the risk of seizures.
Mason Marks, a senior fellow at the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law, Biotechnology, and Bioethics Policy at Harvard Law School, said that while he doesn’t recommend consuming such products, he doesn’t think banning them completely would solve the problem. problem, too.
“It’s like a whack-a-mole, where if you ban psilacetin, something else can emerge,” he said. “Prohibition is not the solution, but educating people about it can be very helpful.”
He drew an analogy with delta-8 THC products, unregulated cannabinoid products that have gained popularity as an alternative solution for obtaining marijuana in states where it is illegal.
Marks said he would like to see minimum regulatory standards set to ensure that what’s in the product is actually what consumers are getting. He also suggested, as an extra safety measure, that consumers analyze laboratory analyzes detailing what is in the products. While they are typically provided by companies, he acknowledged that they are sometimes not always reliable.
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