Which mushrooms cause hallucinations

In very rare cases, if someone takes a huge amount of mushrooms, the side effects can be severe enough to cause death.

Some mushroom users have flashbacks where they relive some part of a drug trip when they're no longer high. Flashbacks can come on without warning. They might happen a few days after taking mushrooms or months later. It's hard to know how strong mushrooms are. Buying mushrooms is also risky because some mushrooms are drugs, but others are extremely poisonous: A number of mushroom species can make people violently ill or even kill them.

Hallucinogenic mushrooms can give people stomach cramps or make them throw up. They also give some users diarrhea. Because mushrooms alter a person's sense of reality and affect judgment, trying to drive while under the influence of mushrooms is likely to cause accidents.

In medical settings, doctors have tested psilocybin for treating cluster headaches , depression , end stage cancer anxiety, and other forms of anxiety. The effects of psilocybin are generally similar to those of LSD.

They include altered perception of time and space and intense changes in mood and feeling. If the user has a mental health condition or feels anxious about using the hallucinogen, they face a higher risk of having a bad experience.

Psychological distress is the adverse event most often reported after recreational use of psilocybin. This distress can take the form of extreme anxiety or short-term psychosis. Researchers have investigated whether psychological specialists can use psilocybin and similar hallucinogens as a treatment for depression. One study examined the ability of psilocybin to reduce depression symptoms without dulling emotions. Results indicated that psilocybin may be successful in treating depression with psychological support.

The other study assessed the relationship between psilocybin-induced hallucinations and positive therapeutic outcomes. Some people who take psilocybin may experience persistent, distressing alterations to the way they see the world. These often take the form of a visual flashback, which is a traumatic recall of an intensely upsetting experience.

People can continue to experience flashbacks anywhere from weeks to years after using the hallucinogen. Physicians now diagnose this condition as hallucinogen-persisting perception disorder.

Some individuals who use psilocybin may also experience fear, agitation, confusion, delirium , psychosis, and syndromes that resemble schizophrenia , requiring a trip to the emergency room. In most cases, a doctor will treat these effects with medication, such as benzodiazepines.

Symptoms often resolve in 6—8 hours as the effects of the psilocybin wear off. Mobile Newsletter chat subscribe. Physical Science. Chemical Compounds.

A group of magic mushrooms are shown in a growbox. Cite This! Print Citation. Although it's not clear exactly how this binding affects the brain, studies have found that the drug has other brain-communication-related effects in addition to increased synchronicity. In one study, brain imaging of volunteers who took psilocybin revealed decreased activity in information-transfer areas such as the thalamus, a structure deep in the middle of the brain. Slowing down the activity in areas such as the thalamus may allow information to travel more freely throughout the brain, because that region is a gatekeeper that usually limits connections, according to the researchers from Imperial College London.

Central Americans were using psilocybin mushrooms before Europeans landed on the New World's shores; the fantastical fungi grow well in subtropical and tropical environments. But how far back were humans tripping on magic mushrooms? It's not an easy question to answer, but a paper in the short-lived journal, "Integration: Journal of Mind-Moving Plants and Culture," argued that rock art in the Sahara dating back 9, years depicts hallucinogenic mushrooms.

The art in question shows masked figures holding mushroomlike objects. Other drawings show mushrooms positioned behind anthropomorphic figures — possibly a nod to the fact that mushrooms grow in dung. The mushroom figures have also been interpreted as flowers, arrows or other plant matter, however, so it remains an open question whether the people who lived in the ancient Sahara used 'shrooms.

On the subject of myth, settle in for a less-than-innocent tale of Christmas cheer. According to Sierra College anthropologist John Rush, magic mushrooms explain why kids wait for a flying elf to bring them presents on Dec.

Rush said that Siberian shamans used to bring gifts of hallucinogenic mushrooms to households each winter. Reindeer were the "spirit animals" of these shaman, and ingesting mushrooms might just convince a hallucinating tribe member that those animals could fly. Plus, Santa's red-and-white suit looks suspiciously like the colors of the mushroom species Amanita muscaria , which grows — wait for it — under evergreen trees. However, this species is toxic to people.

Feeling like you've just taken a bad trip? Not to worry. Not all anthropologists are sold on the hallucinogen-Christmas connection.