Psychedelic mushrooms in a grow room at the Procare farm in Hazerswoude, Netherlands, in 2007. Peter Dejong/Associated Press
He wanted to treat his depression with hallucinogenic mushrooms, but the experiment enacted by a 30-year-old man nearly killed him. In fact, the American was hospitalized after injecting himself intravenously with an infusion of hallucinogenic mushrooms that began to proliferate in his body. An incredible story, bordering on science fiction, but the clinical case was published in the Journal of the Academy of Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry. The unwary patient was hospitalized for nearly a month (eight days in intensive care), at St.Joseph's Hospital and Medical Center in Arizona, but fortunately survived.
According to the report, the man, who was vomiting blood, was accompanied to the emergency room by his family in the throes of nausea, diarrhea, extreme confusion, and jaundice. It was the family members themselves who told the doctors that he had a history of bipolar disorder and opioid addiction and had recently stopped taking his prescribed medication. In an attempt to self-medicate his addiction, he had come across research on the therapeutic effects of microdosing LSD and psilocybin, a natural psychedelic substance produced by more than 200 mushrooms. In fact, it has been shown in numerous studies that the compound psilocybin can have therapeutic effects, including relieving depression, anxiety and existential worry in patients with terminal illnesses. However, this is in controlled studies in which the drug was taken orally.
Perhaps believing he would have a more immediate effect, the young American decided to boil the mushrooms, making from the mixture an infusion filtered through cotton that he then injected into his vein. Shortly thereafter he began to develop severe lethargy with all the other symptoms that forced his hospitalization. At the hospital his lungs and kidneys began to fail. Tests revealed that a bacterial and fungal infection was ongoing in his blood, meaning that cells from the fungi he had injected himself were replicating within his body. The patient was treated with an intense course of antibiotics and antifungal drugs and eventually recovered.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S266729602030015X
