The spell has been broken on some magic mushrooms this week, as poison control experts at the University of Virginia Medical Center have just announced they’ve found illegal, potentially harmful ingredients in legal "brain-health" mushroom gummies widely sold at smoke shops and convenience stores.
Among the unexpected findings, prompted by five emergency-room visits, were psilocybin and psilocin, the two active and illegal components of psychedelic mushrooms.
This news comes on the heels of a June recall on such products from one particular brand, Diamond Shruumz, and amidst an unrelated investigation by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration into 69 illnesses—including seizures, loss of consciousness, and vomiting—associated with the brand’s chocolates, cones, and gummies across 28 states.
On Tuesday, the FDA issued an update, warning that, despite the recall, the products are still on shelves “at several smoke/vape shops, and at retailers that sell hemp-derived products.”
The Diamond Shruumz candies—as well as the similar products from other brands, including Urb and Wonderland, tested by UVA—claimed to contain either a "proprietary mushroom blend" or muscimol, derived from the red and white-spotted Amanita muscaria mushroom. That does have psychoactive properties but can also cause a “nasty” experience if processed improperly in the body, according to a Canadian company working on muscimol’s therapeutic potential.
California-based Prophet Premium Blends, the makers of Diamond Shruumz, initiated the recall, offering a refund to customers and noting on its website, “Due to consumers becoming ill after consuming the entire chocolate bar and some products containing higher levels of Muscimol than normal, it is crucial that all of our consumers refrain from ingesting this product while we, alongside the FDA, continue our investigation as to what is the cause of the serious adverse effects.”
The company’s customer service line was not available on Thursday, and a voicemail message left by Fortune has not been returned.
Higher levels of muscimol, though, was only part of the story, according to both UVA and the FDA. At UVA, researchers analyzing the gummies found caffeine, ephedrine, and kratom—an herb that produces opioid-like effects and carries the risk of addiction—along with the psilocybin, which remains a Drug Enforcement Agency Schedule 1 classified drug (despite being decriminalized in Oregon and Colorado and widely studied for its therapeutic effects).
The FDA’s testing and analysis of chocolate bars, meanwhile, found evidence of O-acetylpsilocin, a psychedelic that has a chemical structure similar to that of psilocybin and LSD; plus desmethoxyyangonin, dihydrokavain, and kavain, all derived from the kava plant and known to cause sedation, dizziness, and gastrointestinal upset, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
A series of five emergency room cases at UVA Health Medical Center between September and June—including an overnight stay by a 3-year-old who had accidentally ingested one of the products—prompted poison experts with UVA’s Blue Ridge Poison Center to test five different brands of the products sold in Central Virginia gas stations and smoke shops, according to a news release. Of those, three were found to contain the hallucinogenic substances.
Since June, says researcher Avery Michienzi, DO, the poison center’s assistant medical director, they have seen "a few more" ER incidents related to these products. She tells Fortune she's spoken to smoke shop proprietors to try to understand why consumers purchase these products, and has basically been told, "People looking for a different type of experience … a different type of high," she says.
“People tend to equate ‘legal’ with ‘safe,’ which is not necessarily the case. These products are not regulated and can contain any number of unlabeled substances which, when consumed, can cause undesired symptoms," she says.
Even for over-the-counter medications like pain relievers or antihistamines, Michienzi notes, are not without risk. But, she adds, if you can buy these mushroom gummies at grocery store or gas stations, "people think it can’t be that bad, because it’s not illegal. So they buy them thinking they’re safe and that certainly somebody has regulated them. But that could not be more false."
