A 30-year-old man had a life-threatening experience with drugs when he was hospitalized after injecting psychedelic mushrooms into his veins, Gizmodo reported.
The individual reportedly made a tea by boiling the mushrooms, filtering the mixture through a cotton swab, and then injecting it intravenously. The man soon experienced symptoms including diarrhea, nausea, lethargy, and jaundice, and he was vomiting blood. After being admitted to the hospital, it was revealed that his organs were beginning to fail.
“Tests revealed that he had both a bacterial and fungal infection in his blood, meaning that the mushrooms he injected were now literally feeding off him and growing,” the report read. “Among other treatments, he was given an intense course of antibiotics and antifungal drugs.”
A report on the case was released online in the Journal of the Academy of Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry on Monday. The paper, which has been peer-reviewed and accepted for publication, revealed that the individual recovered and is currently receiving a long-term course of antimicrobials.
Curtis McKnight, a co-author on the report and psychiatrist at St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center in Arizona, claimed that there are at least two other known cases of someone injecting psychedelic mushrooms. Per Vice , a paper from 1985 outlines the case of another 30-year-old male who intravenously injected a psilocybin mushroom extract.
Gizmodo noted that McKnight and his co-authors stressed that psychedelic mushrooms are hopeful treatments for substance use disorders and depression.
“For those people, it’s important to emphasize the potential risks of these drugs and the safest ways to use them.”
The person in the recent case suffered from bipolar disorder and injected the mushrooms amid a series of manic and depressive episodes, Yahoo News reported. He allegedly discovered the drug’s potential for mental health issues and decided to try it on his own.
Johns Hopkins and New York University previously found that psilocybin helped cancer patients who were experiencing depression and anxiety stemming from their diagnoses. Notably, the majority of patients examined in the small studies saw an improvement in their symptoms both immediately after treatment and in the long-term.
“The drug is not to be injected, however, which this man learned from a three-week stint in the hospital,” Yahoo News noted.
As The Inquisitr reported, some parents are using magic mushrooms and LSD to help them foster better relationships with their children. One mother claimed that microdoses of LSD helped her overcome her postpartum depression, which she said was exacerbated by her childhood trauma.
