Man self-medicates with magic mushrooms, gets them growing in his blood instead

Article about it, here is the case report on it if you have the ability to access scholarly articles.

A man with bi-polar disorder read that psilocybin can be an effective treatment for various mental conditions and decided to try it out. Instead of eating/drinking it, he injected the tea instead. As one could guess, it didn't work out as he hoped. (bolding mine)

Laboratory studies revealed thrombocytopenia, hyponatremia, hyperkalemia, hypochloremia,hypocalcemia, acute renal insufficiency, and acute liver injury. Cardiac workup revealedelevated cardiac enzymes and his electrocardiogram was remarkable for sinus tachycardia andearly repolarization. Mr. X was then transferred to the ICU for evidence of multi-organ failureand he was started on intravenous fluids, multiple vasopressors, broad spectrum antibiotics, andanti-fungal medications. His hospital course was further complicated by septic shock and acuterespiratory failure requiring intubation on hospital day two and disseminated intravascularcoagulation requiring plasmapheresis. Cultures confirmed bacteremia (ultimately cultured asBrevibacillus) and fungemia (ultimately cultured as Psilocybe cubensis – i.e. the species ofmushroom he had injected was now growing in his blood). He was treated for a total of 22 daysin the hospital with eight of them in the ICU. At the time of writing, he is currently still beingtreated with a long-term regimen of daptomycin, meropenem, and voriconazole.

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As they mention in the conclusion, there is potentional for therapeutic uses of drugs one normally do for fun (I mean, just look at ketamine), but they need to be further studied (also maybe don't inject yourself with random things).

talktidy said:

Eee-yargh!


Makes you think of those photos of ants(?) where a fungus has infected and overtaken their systems and turned them into zombies, the final act of which is the fungus growing out of creature.

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Cordyceps! There's a ton of species of cordyceps that work on a ton of different species of bugs, like how there's different types of worms for different mammals. There's been a few big pieces of zombie media where cordyceps (or something akin to it) are the things making the zombies. The closest we have w/humans is T. gondii​ but it doesn't affect your behavior THAT much (probably).

Roxxsmom said:

Idiotic

Drugs have to be carefully prepared to be injectable. A decoction (I am sure I spelled this word right--even looked it up and put on my glasses so I could painfully examine it one letter at a time, but it is still redlined by spellcheck >.< ) or infusion of mushroom is not purified and formulated for injection. Even without an issue of fungi actually growing in the body, it's probably loaded with bacteria and harsh chemicals that damage tissues.

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The Google Dictionary extension for Chrome recognizes it (it's great, double click on a word and it defines it/has a pronunciation thing) so you definitely spelled it right lol. But yes, I imagine that the guy had no idea what he was doing and was injecting a ton of bad stuff into himself. But I doubt that this is something that is done enough that there's info on how to do it safely (compared to all sorts of other drugs, where there's info on harm reduction to use them safely). Most people just eat/drink shrooms. Giving yourself injections is not fun.