I've heard several peoples' accounts of paralysis as a result of eating azurescens mushrooms. I always kinda shrugged it off as no big deal, they were just tripping harder than they were used to or whatever.

Well, I'm here to tell you, it is NO JOKE. I went picking at the coast and ate a lot (about 15 or 20 decent size) throughout the night after taking a strong dose of mescaline during the day. Had a challenging, but good trip. Went to sleep late. Woke up in the morning and my vision was blurry, but I didn't think much of it. Picked up my little mushroom picking shoulder bag and walked to the bathroom to go poop and figured I might pick more mushrooms when I got out of the bathroom.

So I'm coming out of the bathroom and start to walk away from it, and just collapsed. Didn't think too much of it, and tried to get up and didn't have the ability to get on my feet. It was like gravity was turned up to 3 times it's normal strength. My mind was perfectly clear though, not all shroomed out feeling. After giving up on standing up, I decided to roll myself across the wet blacktop in hopes of getting to cover so a ranger wouldn't roll up on me. I managed to at least get to the side of the road. Still couldn't get up. There was a power box close enough to me that as a saw either a ranger or park staff vehicle coming around the campground, that I was able to pull myself up to my feet. Mind you I'm soaking wet from writhing around on the road, so I managed to get to my feet and booked it for the bathroom (only about 15 feet away). Made it to the stall and just sat there on the toilet for a few. Then went back to my yurt.

Back at the yurt, I ate some food and had some green tea. My hands and mouth were still partly paralyzed so hooking up my stove and eating and drinking were both chores, but I managed. Overall, it lasted about an hour or so, even minor effects a bit longer.

It was one of the most helpless feelings in my life. I'm SO glad I was able to get myself up before the park staff found me! I had a bunch of mushrooms in my yurt as well as tons of weed. I wonder if fasting and the mescaline played a part, but then I've heard of others having this some problem not combining with other things. Crazy shit!

You are definatly not the first person at all that I have heard of experiencing this with azures..and after reading your report here I feel like I might just forget abotu even bothering with these mushrooms ever. Ive heard of woodlovers in general doing it..but I have eaten many psilocybe cyans and never had that problem.

I did have it happen once with a high dose of cubes..I was peaking very hard and all of a sudden the muscles on the right side of my face, in my jaw and my neck were paralyzed and it was extremely hard for me to swallow..and when I did swallow I got the worst pain..I could barley move my jaw at all..it was just completley locked. I started to panic thinking I might swallow my tounge or something..it only lasted like 1.5 minutes or so and then just released..really freaked me out and I did not take a large dose of mushrooms again for a while after that due to fear of it happening again. Ive had it in my legs also with cubes but it was mild, short lived and did not bother me so much..just felt like my nerves sort of retuning..my face is not a place I am confortable with this happening though to say the least. Never happened again anyway..

Any ideas on what chemicals in the mushroom would be responsable? is it increased levels of baeocystin and norbaeocystin in this species? according to this list on erowid the azures have somewhat high levels of baeocystin.My panaeolus cayanescens experiences have had almost no body/sedative effects compared to cubies and I remember reading somewhere that panaeolus contains virtualy no baeocystin and cubies have low levels although not nearly as high as azures but it's a explination for the body effects they posess compared to pans....I also wonder if fresh mushrooms contain lower levels of the above mentioned chemical since fresh cubensis seem to be less sedating for me....

"http://www.erowid.org/plants/mushrooms/mushrooms_info4.shtml"

SPECIES % PSILOCYBIN % PSILOCIN % BAEOCYSTIN REFERENCE
P. azurenscens 1.78 .38 .35 Stamets and Gartz 1995
P. bohemica 1.34 .11 .02 Gartz and Muller 1989; Gartz (1994)
P. semilanceata .98 .02 .36 Gartz 1994
P. baeocystis .85 .59 .10 Repke et al. 1977; Beug and Bigwood 1982(b)
P. cyanescens .85 .36 .03 Stijve and Kuyper 1985; Repke et al. 1977
P. tampanensis .68 .32 n/a Gartz 1994
P. cubensis .63 .60 .025 Gartz 1994; Stijve and de Meijer 1993
P. weilii .61 .27 .05
P. hoogshagenii .60 .10 n/a Heim and Hofmann 1958
P. stuntzii .36 .12 .02 Beug and Bigwood 1982(b); Repke et al. 1977
P. cyanofibrillosa .21 .04 n/a Stamets et al. 1980
P. liniformans .16 n/d .005 Stijve and Kuyper




It has an interesting structure with the phosphate group and all , very simmilar to adenosine with some parts removed , maybe some byproduct of atp production , I'm just curious why some psilocybes have way lower concentrations of this compared to others.the caynescens has much lower concentrations in the above comparison which leads me to the idea that it isn't substrate or habitat related (both cayanescens and azures are woodlovers thriving in cold conditions)...I'd love some input from our chemistry experts on this one....

sorry for hijacking the thread , it realy got me brainstorming.....never thought about the baeocystin thing in depth before.I searched for some research papers on the effects on baeocytin , theres very little info on its effects on humans....Apperently a negatively charged phosphate group can inhibit enzymes(don't quote me)...might this be the possible cause of the paralysis effect.....

It is thought by some that a bacteria that grows off the decaying wild Az./Cyan. mushrooms secretes a toxin that may cause this reaction. It is generally advised not to eat/harvest the ones that are have started to decay.


this is mere hearsay speculation mind you

interesting. maybe....

I have picked and consumed allot of azures in my day. I know dozens of others who, once upon a time, picked and consumed. I have had many discussions with those others about this matter.

I have posted about this topic in the past here on the nexus as well as many times on the shroomery.


a couple of thoughts come to mind,

The paralysis seeems to build over time. Like a reverse tolerance of sorts.

The paralysis begins after about the 4th or 5th time,+ or -, consuming these mushrooms.

The paralysis comes on at first as a fatigue of sorts in the hands and forearms. After the first experience with the paralysis each experience there after the paralysis gets progressively worse.

IME it doesnt matter if you eat one gram or ten, the paralysis is the same.

after getting the symptoms in your forearms it moves to larger nuscles like the thighs and neck and eventually to the diaphragm.

I have had times where the psychedelic experience was over but the paralysis continued for hours afterwards.

My last Ps azurescens experience was the most memorable, I was lying on the floor in my house for eight hours. I couldnt walk and I couldnt control my saliva, lol, I was drooling on myself. I had trouble breathing also.

I threw in the towel after that one.

Never again....Never Ever!

This story is very typical for shroomers in the Astoria OR, Ft Canby WA areas.

I have two thoughts on why this could be occuring.

first, maybe its something in the substrate. Those Psilocybes have a very different habitat than most. They are on the coast often growing from the sand in the dune grass not to terribly far from the high water line.

second, this is a guess, based on information I received from state park police there has been a very serious eradication effort over the years by State Park officials. There are dozens of arrests at a couple of locations in the lower Columbia River every year for picking. There are signs around two of the parks that say NO MUSHROOM PICKING.

Has something been sprayed there to erradicate these fungus that may be getting people sick?

I have never heard the bacteria theory. I have gotten the paralysis from perfectly fresh specimens.

one more note here, I transferred some mycellium from the location the OP is referring to, to a location 200 miles north east and successfully grew a nice patch the next year. I did eat some of those Azures and had no issues at all. The substrate was hard wood, but it was different than what they normally eat on the coast.

My guess is its not a bacteria, but its the substrate, just a guess.

IH

^that gives a whole new meaning to the term "bad trip"

These were nice "freshies". I always eat the freshies fresh and dry any that are questionable in freshness (and don't harvest many that others apparently do).

My experience was well after the psychedelic effects had worn off. It was the next morning. The first sign was blurry kinda double vision when I woke up and got out of bed. Next sign was lack of coordination with walking.

Crazy stuff anyways. I've heard from some fairly reputable trippers that boiling them for a certain length of time negates this effect. I'm gonna have to try that for my next trip.

Crazy story Icehouse about being parlyzed for 8 hours! Damn. I'm definitely gonna make sure I'm in the security of my home from now on eating woodlovers.

Thanks for sharing your ideas icehouse , very interesting...

That 8 hour long paralysation sounds intense with azures being so rediculously potent already I can just imagine how hectic it must be to be paralysed ontop op that!

Yeah Im trying but I cant for the life of me remember the source of that particular speculation.

I have heard of this happening but, man that sounds awful!!!


kinda makes me think of the "sheep staggers"... I wonder if its possible there concentrating Gramine or something like that from some high gramine strain of the dune grasses.

After Reading this Report i am going to stick with Psilocybe cubensis,Psilocybe cyanescens,Psilocybe mexicana never had any isses with theam good to know about azurescens paralysis thanks for shareing i wanted to try theam but not now...

"kinda makes me think of the "sheep staggers"... I wonder if its possible there concentrating Gramine or something like that from some high gramine strain of the dune grasses."

Sheep staggers is not caused by gramine.

Oops way off on that one, thanks for the correction.

Yep , 20 years ago I stopped mushies (Liberty cap) because of the very same thing... Never heard of anyone till now who has had a similar experience.. Thanks for the post...(s)
G

I wonder if it is not the substrate there in Hammond, but the loction. The Columbia is a fairly clean river by modern standards, but then again, it's gotta be polluted somewhat. Plus, the mouth is the dirtiest place in a river. Then, there's the ocean right there, which also isn't great. It seems quite possible that the ground in such an area may have certain toxins built up which are concentrated in the mushies. Then again, I've eaten plenty of libs from that area, and had no paralysis.

I have picked mushrooms there, which I later ate dry, and were quite salty. This tells me that they picked up stuff from the ocean somewhere.

All of the azzies I've eaten where grown inland Washington on alder, and I've never had any paralysis from them. They do offer some unique phenomena, though.

Do you suppose the paralysis could be bad enough to inhibit diaphragm function? It sounds like the most plausible OD situation from mushrooms I've heard of.

I do indeed, especially if someone already has underlying respiratory issues like COPD.

IH

I believe this is entirely plausable Mr. Peabody. Although I don't have a specific reference to supply, I do know that fungi of all types are natural environmental toxin processors. Paul Stamets often speaks of this phenomenon. We all know that mushrooms are nature's sponges afterall.
Due to the sporadic and inconsistent occurances of these paralysis symptoms it wouldn't surprise me at all if it were related to an external toxin of some sort. Then again it could also just be a rare neurochemical side effect for some people, but I'm less inclined to think this is the case. Just throwing in my two cents. I personally have never experienced this side effect in my days of consuming libs, cyans, azurs, or cubes.