If a “magic mushroom” edible ever took you on a psychedelic trip, you might be in for a surprise. There’s a high chance that what you ate didn’t have any psilocybin—the chemical compound that gives the fungi their “magic.”
In a paper published September 11 in JAMA Network Open, researchers reported that an analysis of 12 magic mushroom gummies and chocolates sold in Portland found no trace of psilocybin. Instead, the edibles contained undisclosed ingredients, including caffeine, cannabis extract, and synthetic psychedelics that haven’t undergone regulatory testing.
“We found no evidence of mushroom compounds of any kind coming from any species,” Richard van Breemen, study co-author and a pharmaceutical sciences expert at Oregon State University, told Scientific American.
This unchecked mislabeling may be a product of the excitement around psilocybin’s potential use in treating a range of mental health conditions, van Breemen added in a university statement. But the research hasn’t advanced enough for experts to confirm that’s truly the case.
“Any new drug entity requires years of development to evaluate human safety and efficacy,” he explained. “Premature exposure to these compounds poses significant public health risks due to unknown pharmacology and toxicity.”
Mushrooms in the United States
Psilocybin in magic mushroom species causes visual hallucinations when consumed in sufficient doses. It’s classified as a Schedule I drug, meaning that it “has a high potential for abuse, no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States, and a lack of accepted safety for use under medical supervision,” according to the Drug Enforcement Administration.
Several states have decriminalized psilocybin, with efforts to legalize the drug advancing across the country. A smaller number, Colorado, New Mexico, and Oregon—where the researchers purchased the edibles for research—allow assisted adult use of the drug under strict conditions. However, legal channels are quite expensive, with a recent study reporting the price range from $750 to $1,200.
“A lot of people are very curious about these substances,” Mason Marks, a legal expert on psychedelics at Florida State University who was not involved in the study, told Scientific American. “And if you’re in a state, like Oregon, that does not decriminalize them, people might go to these shops and buy these products that are either blatantly illegal or kind of in this gray area.”
High for the wrong reasons
Such cheap, accessible edibles were what van Breemen and his colleagues purchased and analyzed for the new study. First, the team sent the samples to a state-licensed facility that certifies drug quality for legal psilocybin centers in Oregon. Surprisingly, the tests revealed that the edibles contained no psilocybin.
Back at the lab, the researchers tried to pinpoint what, then, was in these so-called magic mushroom edibles. By employing some analytical chemistry, they found that the edibles contained many unexpected ingredients, including compounds like tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the main psychoactive ingredient in cannabis.
The team did identify psilocin, a naturally occurring compound in psychedelic mushrooms, in two gummies. But if the psilocin had truly come from mushrooms, the researchers would have found other related compounds—which they didn’t. That strongly suggests the psilocin was lab-made, they said.
That wasn’t all. Some of the brands also had an unlisted addition of “syndelics,” or synthetic psychedelics that mimic natural, psychoactive compounds. Their effects on human health haven’t been properly studied, van Breemen added—which makes their hidden presence in these easily accessible edibles ever more alarming.
“Advances in analytical chemistry are needed to detect new syndelics and other adulterants in consumer products,” van Breemen said. The next steps, he added, will be for science “to expose misbranding, to support law enforcement and regulatory agencies, and to assist poison control centers and hospitals as they encounter overdoses caused by unknown compounds.”
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