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Do magic mushrooms make your brain bleed?
| Q: |
Do mushrooms make your brain bleed? I have a friend who is convinced that magic mushrooms make your brain bleed, and I can't find any solid answers anywhere. |
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| A: |
In a general sense, there are two sorts of "magic" or psychedelic mushrooms. The term "magic mushroom" is by far most often used to refer to mushrooms that contain psilocybin/psilocin such as Psilocybe cubensis. The term is also sometimes used to refer to mushrooms that contain ibotenic acid/muscimol, such as Amanita muscaria. There is no evidence that either of these categories of mushrooms cause bleeding in the brain.
To check to see how widespread this myth is, I typed "magic mushrooms" and "brain bleed" into Google, and received 375 hits. Surveying the top ten results, all of them asked the same question as you, with various people answering. Even those few who answered with the spurious claim that magic mushrooms cause some other type of brain damage, clearly stated that mushrooms do not cause brain bleeding. Others replied stating that that this is a "common myth". We don't know where the idea of psychoactive mushrooms causing brain bleeding originated, nor how widespread it actually is, but it is absolutely, 100% false.
It also appears that this myth can be found relating to other psychoactive drugs as well. We previously responded to a similar urban legend related to LSD.
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Categories:
[ Health ]
[ Mushrooms (Psilocybin) ]
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