Health - Magic Mushrooms Effects on The Heart?

[moonie711]

Hi all,

swim recently decided to take some shrooms with a friend (Liberty Caps) and although he's done other kinds years back this was the first real time they affected him noticebly,

Anyway he had a good time and they spend most of the night laughing and being freaked out at the TV so from the stories he's do hear they had a good trip...

So its only now 3 days later he's starting to see some bad sides to liberty caps or 'psilocybe semilanceata', he seem to think about his heart rate, its almost as if heart beat sometimes speeds up or slows down cant decide which one but at random times even when he sat down,..... It is worrying him a bit probably becuase they make you paranoid but I would like some answers I guess for swim...

So i guess my question is, does psilocybe semilanceata affect your heart rate even days after? and also how long is this likely to happen?

Thanks all.. great forum by the way Ill certinally be posting more

Reputation Comments on this post:

No Self Incrimination.

[Coconut]

Heart rate should return to normal after the comedown. Increased heart rate several days after is probably psychological, perhaps as a result of mildly increased awareness or paranoia.

My tree suffers from this although they are more accurately described as palpitations and has had them well before taking psychedelics.

[SlyTingz2009]

Hello swim had an experience last week with Fly Agaric Mushrooms and his heart was fine so swim is now deciding to the real thing and take psilocybe mushrooms, Swim does not take any other drugs or drink anymore,swim is on anti-depressants for his anxiety but is now controlled.

Swim takes Sertraline(Zoloft) 100mg a day and has been on them for nearly 2 years.Swim has been in and out of hospital in 2007 due to his heavy mdma and cannabis use and was having heart scares. Swim gets the odd Heart palpitations now and then but has been told his heart is pefect. Swim would like to try a dose of psilocybe mushrooms but is worried the effect they might have on his heart like a stimulant effect as swim does not like his heart rate being high as the palpitations can be scary.So will mushrooms have a effect on the heart like raising it?

And what would one recommend for swim to take

Thank You

[DaveDaPsychonaut]

Magic mushrooms can and probably will increase your heart rate.

[SlyTingz2009]

Originally Posted by DaveDaPsychonaut

Magic mushrooms can and probably will increase your heart rate.

Ok thanks swim might just stick to fly agaric as he has no problems with his heart rate

[Nature Boy]

Magic mushrooms heighten general human experience so there's a high possibility that your heart rate will increase. That being said, it probably won't be elevated to the point where it might be considered dangerous. Compared to MDMA at least, I don't imagine that mushrooms would put you in a high risk situation (unless we're talking crazy doses). Could you explain these "heart scares" in more detail? You've been given a clean bill of health yet you insist you have heart problems of some kind. Could this just be a psychological problem? Increasing your heart rate isn't always a bad sign. It's one of the key tenets of healthy excercise.

[SlyTingz2009]

Originally Posted by Nature Boy

Magic mushrooms heighten general human experience so there's a high possibility that your heart rate will increase. That being said, it probably won't be elevated to the point where it might be considered dangerous. Compared to MDMA at least, I don't imagine that mushrooms would put you in a high risk situation (unless we're talking crazy doses). Could you explain these "heart scares" in more detail? You've been given a clean bill of health yet you insist you have heart problems of some kind. Could this just be a psychological problem? Increasing your heart rate isn't always a bad sign. It's one of the key tenets of healthy excercise.

Swim had imflammation of the heart tissue(pericarditis) from 5 years of cannabis use and 2 years of mdma use and was getting severe anxiety attacks which was very scary and was in and out of hospital. Swim was treated for pericarditis and has a clean bill of health and is still on anti-depressants(zoloft) which has helped alot and stopped using drugs full stop in 2007 after his last scare.

Swim works out at the gym and notices his heart rate is high from working out and is ok with that as its normal but swim gets panicky and worried sometimes when he gets palpitations when he is not doing anything like sitting in a chair.

Swim is just worried if he takes mushrooms and is just relaxing and starts to notice his heart rate speed up and get palpitations he might go into panick mode and it will bring back memorys and he might get an anxiety attack and it will scare him. Swim has propranolol which is a beta blocker that stops the psychical symptoms of anxiety e.g Rapid heart rate,Shaking and adrenaline. Maybe if swim took propranalol if his anxiety started to come on it will help get rid of the anxiety and he will have a good trip.

Swim is sensitive to stimulants from his past drug abuse now and does not drink coffee or red bull or anything that has a stimulant effect.

Should swim take the risk or should he just stick with fly agaric as he has had no problems with fly agaric apart from a bit of come up anxiety but he controlled it. Is there a strain of shrooms swim could take that is easy of the heart.

Thank You

[nnizzle]

SWIM thinks you would be safer with psilocybe mushrooms in the long run as fly agaric mushrooms are actually toxic to the human body at recreational doses? SWIM doesn't know if this is news to you. Although I believe muscimol's method of action results in sedation of the CNS but SWIM could be wrong.

[Nature Boy]

Originally Posted by SlyTingz2009

Swim had imflammation of the heart tissue(pericarditis) from 5 years of cannabis use and 2 years of mdma use and was getting severe anxiety attacks which was very scary and was in and out of hospital. Swim was treated for pericarditis and has a clean bill of health and is still on anti-depressants(zoloft) which has helped alot and stopped using drugs full stop in 2007 after his last scare.

Swim works out at the gym and notices his heart rate is high from working out and is ok with that as its normal but swim gets panicky and worried sometimes when he gets palpitations when he is not doing anything like sitting in a chair.

Swim is just worried if he takes mushrooms and is just relaxing and starts to notice his heart rate speed up and get palpitations he might go into panick mode and it will bring back memorys and he might get an anxiety attack and it will scare him. Swim has propranolol which is a beta blocker that stops the psychical symptoms of anxiety e.g Rapid heart rate,Shaking and adrenaline. Maybe if swim took propranalol if his anxiety started to come on it will help get rid of the anxiety and he will have a good trip.

Swim is sensitive to stimulants from his past drug abuse now and does not drink coffee or red bull or anything that has a stimulant effect.

Should swim take the risk or should he just stick with fly agaric as he has had no problems with fly agaric apart from a bit of come up anxiety but he controlled it. Is there a strain of shrooms swim could take that is easy of the heart.

Thank You

Well, it's good thing you mention this before you actually took the mushrooms. You probably should have said this from the start because going by your first post, I would recommend taking the shrooms, not worrying and having a good time. But now that I know more, I would NOT recommend taking anywhere near a full dose of psilocybin-containing magic mushrooms. You have an anxiety-related heart condition and magic mushrooms can cause anxiety, even if only temporary. You're also on a lot of unpredictable medications, zoloft especially. If you got clean, took a small dose and had some benzodiazepines on standby, maybe you could go for it. Antidepressants and psychedelics don't mix though. Many would consider that to be a suicide cocktail because of how antidepressants can manifest in bipolar symptoms.

I don't know enough about Fly Agaric to say anything about your prior use of it. I wouldn't recommend risking that again either. Perhaps another member of the forum could shed some light on it but generally-speaking, you can't take chances with heart conditions.

[Phungushead]

Quoting the relevant part of this document:

The pharmacology of psilocybin
Torsten Passie, Juergen Seifert, Udo Schneider, Hinderk M. Emrich
Department of Clinical Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Medical School Hannover, Hannover, Germany

Somatic effects
Cerletti15 reported an LD50 for mice with intra-venous application of
280mg/kg which may imply an LD50 of some grams of psilocybin in
humans.

In some in vitro experiments, except for an inhibitory effect on the
neurotransmitter ser-otonin, psilocybin showed no specific effects on
isolated organs (intestines, heart) of guinea pigs and rats.15

Characteristic autonomic effects of the neurovegetative system that
were notable for the whole animal (mice, rats, rabbits, cats and dogs)
with doses of 10mg/kg s.c. included: mydriasis, piloerection,
irregularities in heart and breathing rate and discrete hyperglycaemic
and hypertonic effects.15

Cerletti interpreted these effects as an excitatory syndrome caused by
central stimulation of the sympathetic system. In contrast to an
autonomic excitatory syndrome, motor behaviour was muted.16–18

Experiments with Rhesus monkeys (2–4 mg/kg i. p.) confirmed the
above changes of physiological parameters and a central excitatory
syndrome. After 20–40 minutes the EEG showed a disappearance of
alpha activity and an increase of beta activity in the neo-cortex.19

In two early non-blind studies in healthy volunteers (n = 12,
0.12–0.15mg/kg p.o.),20 (n = 22, 10mg p.o.)21 the EEG showed
variations of visual evoked potentials and decrease in alpha and theta
frequencies. There were no changes in the electroretinogram.21

The somatic effects in humans were investigated first by Quetin22 in a
non-blind study in healthy volunteers (n = 29, 8–12mg p.o., i.m.).
The physiological changes which were noted regularly are listed in Table
1. These effects were confirmed qualitatively by another early non- blind
study (n = 16, 0.11mg/kg p.o.).33

Discrete changes of RR and pulse were also confirmed in a recent
double-blind placebo-controlled study (n = 8, 0.2mg/kg p.o.), as shown
in Table 2.9

The effects described were barely noticeable and should be interpreted
as secondary pharmacological effects, induced mainly by the sympatho-
mimetic excitation syndrome

Table 1.

Somatic symptoms	Percentage of subjects
Midriasis	93%
Heart frequency
Accelerated	56%
Slowed	13%
Variable	31%
No change	0%
Arterial blood pressure
Hypotension	34%
Hypertension	28%
Instability	22%
No change	16%
Nausea	44%
Reflexes tendineae
Increased	80%
Decreased	6%
No change	13%
Dysmetry	16%
Tremor	25%

9. Gouzoulis-Mayfrank E,Thelen B, Habermeyer E et
al. Psychopathological, neuroendocrine and auto-
nomic effects of 3,4-methylenedioxyethylampheta-
mine (MDE), psilocybin and d-methamphetamine
in healthy volunteers. Psychopharmacology 1999;
142:41–50.
15. Cerletti A. Etude pharmacologique de la psilocy-
bine. In: Heim R, Wasson RG, editors. Les
champignons hallucinogenes du mexique. Paris:
Museum de historie naturelle; 1958, pp. 268–71.
16. Cerletti, A. Pharmacology of psilocybine. In: Brad-
ley P, Deniker P, Radouco-Thomas C, editors.
Neuro-psychopharmacology. Amsterdam: Elsevier;
1959, pp. 291–4.
17. Hofmann A, Heim R, Brack A et al. Psilocybin und
Psilocin, zwei psychotrope Wirkstoffe aus mex-
ikanischen Zauberpilzen.
Helv Chim Acta
1959;XLII:1557–72.
18. Monnier M. Action de la psilocybine au cerveau du
lapin. Experientia 1959;15:321–3.
19. Horibe M. The effects of psilocybin on EEG and
behavior in monkeys.
Act Nerv Sup
1974;16:40–2.
20. Da Fonseca JS, Cardoso C, Salgueiro E, Fialho
ML. Neurophysiological and psychological study
of psilocybin-induced modification of visual infor-
mation processing in man. In: Bente D, Bradley
PB, editors. Neuro-psychopharmacology, vol. 4.
Amsterdam, London, New York: Elsevier; 1965,
pp. 315–19.
21. Rynearson RR, Wilson MR, Bickford RG. Psilocy-
bin-induced changes in psychologic function, elec-
troencephalogram, and light-evoked potentials in
human subjects. Mayo Clin Proc 1968;43:
191–204.
22. Quetin AM. La Psilocybine en psychiatrie clinique
et experimentale. Paris: Medical Dissertation Uni-
versity of Paris, 1960
33. Isbell H. Comparison of the reactions induced by
psilocybin and LSD-25 in man. Psychopharmaco-
logia 1959;1:29–38

[spunkymunky]

My dog passed out when taking mushrooms - was not an especially strong trip (3 little hawaian mushrooms) but for some reason he forgot to breath and fainted (was fine afterwards but very scary for those around) - this is something that can happen on mushrooms and must put a big strain on the heart! Probably safest to stick with very small doses!

[RedBaron]

It would be best for Swiy to take a small, controlled dose and be in a comfortable environment when tripping. With shrooms sometimes, you can never know what will set you off and give you a bad trip so just try to be in a situation you know will be chill. Just the other day Baron was watching this music video with too many flashing lights and visuals that ended up giving him a mild hallucination after the video and song was over. Not expecting this at all he started to get sketchy and noticed his heart rate increased a lot. Other than that one time, Baron has never noticed an irregular heart beat on zoomers and thinks that as long as Swiy doesn't set him self up to trip too hard all should be fine.

[SlyTingz2009]

Swim would like to say thanks for the fantastic replies
Swim will take a low dose in his bedroom with lots of things to do like play ps3 online etc so his mind will be occupied. What type of mushrooms could swim take that are not strong? And if the worse was to happen to swim (Anxiety) could he take propranlol (Beta Blocker) to get rid of the psychical symtoms of anxiety e.g rapid heart rate. Or is it dangerous ?

[Nature Boy]

Seeing as you're in the UK, Liberty Caps are probably the only shrooms available and they tend to be pretty strong. I would recommend 1.5-2g (dried) of Mexican psilocybe cubensis (less for Liberty Caps, maybe just 1g) to a beginner but seeing as mushrooms are banned now, where are you going to find these? As for the beta blocker, I honestly don't know. It doesn't sound safe. On a low dose, if anxiety hit, you might just be better off riding it out by controlling your breathing rather than potentially having an adverse reaction by loading up on more unpredictable drugs.

Perhaps you might get a few more replies that could shed some more light on the situation. Generally speaking though, if you can't even smoke weed without breaking into a panic attack, what chance do you have with mushrooms? Tread very carefully. Mushrooms are not to be underestimated. They're just as powerful and mind-warping as LSD if you take enough of them.

[SlyTingz2009]

Any more tips

[Smirnoff]

well in itself mushrooms won't increase your heathrate.. its more how you react to what you see/think that makes your hearth rate increase... its your reaction to the effects that makes you nervous, exited, etc... not the mushroom itself

[SlyTingz2009]

Would Philosopher Stones be good for swim in terms of anxiety and heart issues? would they be fine for swim to take

[spunkymunky]

NO - Philosophers stones are extremely strong - mexican are weak and do not cause intense visuals at small doses - SWIM has had an extreme panic attack from taking philosophers stones (although admittedly this was a fairly high (7g) dose of dried). SWIM thinks it may be because he did not realise that he had far too many layers of clothes on and overheated - this caused a horrible trip where the ground started consuming him from the floor so that SWIM could not see where the ground was and threw himself in a heap on the floor where he started to feel as though he were going to die and could not feel his body (removing the layers of clothes led to a quick recovery but the philosophers stones meant he was unaware this was causing a problem until a friend eventually had the idea)

[Nature Boy]

Philosopher's Stones are pretty-much the same as other magic mushrooms. Obviously they're truffles and not typical boomers but they contain the same chemicals, psilocybin and psilocin. The distribution of both chemicals can be at differing levels but ultimately, they produce very similar effects. They're strong too so don't take them lightly. When SWIM first got into shrooms, he made the mistake of listening to some fellow who didn't really know much about drugs. He described Stones as a mellower alternative to mushrooms, a party drug, more like ecstasy or something. Naively, SWIM gobbled back a large dose (they taste disgusting, like rotten almonds) and tripped balls. Lost control, went from a fit of laughter to vomiting to a confusing bout of synaesthesia where he couldn't put words together for about an hour. He had to ride it out on his own in a quiet room and could only rejoin the house party he was at when they started to wear off.

[SlyTingz2009]

Originally Posted by Nature Boy

Philosopher's Stones are pretty-much the same as other magic mushrooms. Obviously they're truffles and not typical boomers but they contain the same chemicals, psilocybin and psilocin. The distribution of both chemicals can be at differing levels but ultimately, they produce very similar effects. They're strong too so don't take them lightly. When SWIM first got into shrooms, he made the mistake of listening to some fellow who didn't really know much about drugs. He described Stones as a mellower alternative to mushrooms, a party drug, more like ecstasy or something. Naively, SWIM gobbled back a large dose (they taste disgusting, like rotten almonds) and tripped balls. Lost control, went from a fit of laughter to vomiting to a confusing bout of synaesthesia where he couldn't put words together for about an hour. He had to ride it out on his own in a quiet room and could only rejoin the house party he was at when they started to wear off.

So if i got them and took a very low dose. would i be ok then it would get me more confidence to try a higher dose once i know what to expect.
The only thing that is on my mind is a fast heart rate from taking them that is what is holding me back

[CrookedEye]

Psilocybe cubensis would be a good strain to start with, at around .5-1g until one knows how they'll react. One could increase the dose on subsequent adventures to find what is perfect, if this dose is not enough. Cubensis are probably one of the easiest to grow, and they have a relatively mild potency compared to panaeolus or woodlover varieties..

The heart rate thing seems to stem from your anxiety troubles, which are controlled by your mind, so taking low doses, to make sure you don't get panic ideas in your mind that cause these symptoms would be a good idea, if you choose to partake. I don't think it's the substance that you use so much as it is the mental state you get into when using any particular drug. Mental states on larger doses of psilocybin/psilocin can be unpredictable and cause anxiety, so one should use caution in dosing and start at the low end of the spectrum if they choose to go ahead with it.

[BloodyMuffin]

Swim will say that his heart rate goes through the roof on shrooms. its almost frightening how fast it gets. this is particularly a problem when he has a bad trip. As far as he knows though his friends do not experience this.

[SlyTingz2009]

Originally Posted by BloodyMuffin

Swim will say that his heart rate goes through the roof on shrooms. its almost frightening how fast it gets. this is particularly a problem when he has a bad trip. As far as he knows though his friends do not experience this.

Does SWIY smoke and do other drugs ? Like cannabis

[BloodyMuffin]

Originally Posted by SlyTingz2009

Does SWIY smoke and do other drugs ? Like cannabis

Yes, but not always. weed does increase these effects in swim but they are there regardless.