I hear a LOT of people say when you take mushrooms you poison yourself and that's why you trip. IMO that is completely untrue, but what do you experts think?

noun
1.
a substance that, when introduced into or absorbed by a living organism, causes death or injury, esp. one that kills by rapid action even in a small quantity.
synonyms: toxin, toxicant, venom; More
CHEMISTRY
a substance that reduces the activity of a catalyst.

A poison is something that actively destroys living cells in your body, usually because the poison has more affinity to the receptor so the natural molecule can't be transported regularly. It is true that psilocin is taken up by seretonin receptors but it isn't proven to block normal seretonin transfer. In the case of CO poisoning CO bonds to hemoglobin before O2 can and the cells need O2, so they die.

I think people believe it is a poison because of the way it affects the homeostasis of your body. Mushroom fibers are hard to digest and give people cramping and Stomach aches. This may be associated with food poisoning but it isn't valid to say you trip because your poisoned. These are two different mechanisms at work, you trip because of a molecule, which can be isolated, therefor psilocybin itself isn't poison, and with this it's just a regular mushroom if you've got the right kind.


In conclusion, I think poison has different meanings to different people, in my mind some indigestion is not an indication of poisonous molecules trying to kill you, but tough plant fibers trying to be broken down. Before I researched mushrooms I thought the same thing, you eat a mushroom that makes you so ill that you begin to hallucinate, like a horrible flu or some kind of illness that causes delirium. But because there is a certain molecule that causes the effects by mimicking a natural molecule I can see this is just a plant which happens to produce said chemical. Nothing poison about it, just a little tricky molecule sneakin in, some studies show the opposite of brain poison, neurogenesis.

Hallucinations that occur without a substance interacting, could be states that resemble the functions of fever. E.g. excessive heat, brain reacts differently, perception and affective states are altered.

Having said that, we cannot infer that any molecule that triggers a chain of events that lead to hallucinations is "poison" or "toxic". The definitions pertain to molecules that can cause toxicity (damage) to the cells themselves, directly (cortisol) by damaging the cell walls, or indirectly (CO) by depriving the cells of oxygen.

So even if heart complications occur during a mescaline trip, one should not infer that mescaline is toxic because of its effects on the heart. Mescaline will indeed bind to 5-HT receptors of the heart, and stimulate it, which is already a function of those receptors.

In other words, "the poison is in the dosage", and "in the organism". It's all conceptual/arbitrary and pertaining only to a specie's survival.

Every substance is toxic at a high enough dose. The LD50 (the dose which kills half of test subjects) of a substance is a good measure of how toxic it is. Using this measure, psilocybin is about as toxic as caffeine. So, if the psychedelic effects of psilocybin were due its toxicity then caffeine would also have psychedelic effects (which it doesn't).

I am often politely correcting my friends on this point: there seems to be this common misapprehension that mushrooms derive their activity from a poison we metabolize, and that by extension slightly higher doses would be lethal !

EROWID LD50 LIST


LD50 PSILOCYBIN: 285 mg/Kg

As you can see (and feel free to cross-reference with lists on less biased sites), psilocybin has a higher LD50 (meaning it takes more to to reach lethal levels - - LD50 is the Lethal Dose it takes to kill 50% of a population of rodents) than:

Alcohol (10.6 g/kg)
caffeine (127 mg/Kg)
nicotine (230 mg/Kg)

and slightly lower than:

acetominophen (338 mg/Kg)


So there is NO basis whatsoever in the assertion that psilocybin mushrooms are in any way poisonous, or are active due to poisons contained in them. Unless Tylenol clears up your headaches, lowers your fever and reduces inflammation because it contains a dangerous poison!

MYTH BUSTED.

JBArk

Thanks for the info barky

How many mg does one typically need to reach the psychedelic affects of psilocybin?

Just a mg or two more than its LD50.



But seriously, according to the John Hopkins study in this ARTICLE, a 70kg person was administered a very high dose of 30mg.

The LD50 potentially lethal dose for this individual, at 70kg, would be 19, 950 mg!!

That's 19.95 grams of PURE psilocybin!!

The rest is off-the-cuff, so feel free to do your own calculations, but let's say that 30mg for a 70kg individual is the equivalent of 5g of dried average P. cubensis. (very high dose of pure psilocybin = very high dose dried mushrooms; I know, not very scientific!)


You would need to consume 3,325g, or 3.3kg of P. cubensis in one shot - according to an LD50 and assuming it translates directly from rodents to humans (a BIG leap) - to have a 50% chance of dying.

Again, not poison by any useable or practical definition.

Cheers,

JBArk

You may be interested to know that the Greek word Pharmakon, from which we derive the root of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical, means both "Poison" and "Medicine" depending entirely on context.

thanks jbark! those numbers really put things into perspective

thanks for those numbers jbark! that really puts it into perspective

On poisons, it's entirely in the dosage. The most acutely poisonous substance we know of I think is Botulinum toxin, which is used in botox and produced by the bacteria Clostridium botulinum. It is a protein that is lethal at a dosage of "1.3–2.1 ng/kg intravenously or intramuscularly and 10–13 ng/kg when inhaled". Even this most deadly of poisons has medical applications, in the treatment of chronic migraines and movement based neurological disorders.

Psilocybin however must be among the least toxic of any substances we know of.

Psilocybin is not toxic. There is other stuff in the mushrooms like fibers that can give me digestive issues and stuff that can feel toxic, however I don't even they are really toxic.

I make concentrated tincture with cubensis now so that I can simply dose some drops of it sublingual and I still get all the psilocybin effects minus any body load. It is more like DMT and does not feel toxic at all.

I've heard this claim often as well.
Good to know about the LD50.

That's. why we're here.

JBArk

Key words. Thanks JBark

Sounds good!

LD50 = 280mg/kg, so roughly 19 GRAMS on a 70kg person.

An effective dose is in the range of 6 MILLIGRAMS, not 1 or 2 mg more than its LD50 (16 GRAMS)!!!

Are you unconsciously encouraging someone to blast through the universal membranes?!?!




Jamie, have you described already how to make that tincture somewhere in the nexus? I would surely love a link!

You didn't read the rest of the post. I Identified it as a joke with the next line, then did the same calculation you did to arrive at 19g for a 70kg person! After that a few more calculations - reread it!

No no I read it, but apparently I thought I did !!

Thanks for the clarification, that was a scary misread!

Sorry brokenChild but I think this crowd would rather not discuss your absolutist beliefs and claim that 7g of mushrooms almost killed you

“All things are poisons, for there is nothing without poisonous qualities. It is only the dose which makes a thing poison.”


― Paracelsus