Commonly used names include shrooms, mushies. Several types of magic mushroom grow wild in the UK. The most common is the Liberty Cap mushroom (Psilocybe Semilanceata).
Whether prepared or fresh, magic mushrooms are a Class A drug.
How they are taken:
Users eat the mushrooms raw, brew them into a tea or cook them in food.
They are also often dried or ground.
recognising – or misrecognising – magic mushrooms can be among the risks of using them (see below).
Effects:
Magic mushrooms are hallucinogenic. The hallucinogenic effect, or ‘trip’, tends to last about four hours. This is similar to an LSD trip in its effects and its unpredictability, but it tends to be milder. However, there are still a number of risks involved.
Risks:
Magic mushrooms can quite easily be confused with other species of mushroom. Some of these can cause potentially fatal poisoning.
If users become ill they should go to hospital immediately with a sample of the mushrooms they have taken and explain what has happened.
Magic mushrooms themselves can cause stomach pains, sickness and diarrhoea.
As with LSD, the trip cannot be stopped once it has started. Also as with LSD, bad trips are a possibility, as is the complication of any latent or existing mental problems.
Taking magic mushrooms can impair judgement and cause accidents. You should never drive while under the influence of magic mushrooms. Magic mushrooms can also cause panic attacks.
