Concerned about friend's physical reaction to shrooms

[Zapp]

Greetings psychonauts! I've got a friend who is having a strange physical reaction to shrooms and I'm looking for some advice/ideas about it. I'll try to keep it brief.

Friend has tripped four times, all in the 2g-3g dose range. I have done all the trips with him with the same shrooms and I've been 100% fine every time. Three different types of shrooms were taken.

On my friend's first trip which was 6 years ago, he had no bad effects. On the more recent 2nd, 3rd and 4th trips he got very weak - so weak he could barely stand up. His hands got cold and on one trip his visibly began to turn blue. On the last trip he continued to have visuals 6 hours in when the rest of us had already come down. This low-energy state lasts for a good 6-8 hours. He loves the trips and has a great time and the next day he's fine, but it's freaky. I'm concerned that this might be exacerbating a medical condition or something, but I don't know what? He says he's not on any other drugs (like SSRI's) and I believe him.

I've read about some brief light-headedness or fainting but never anything like this. Any ideas? At this point I'm wondering if it's just plain unsafe for him to dose at all.

Thanks in advance!

 

[buffachino]

Based on the scant information you provided about your friend, its sounds like acute anaemia or hypotension.

If I remember correctly, psilocin's affect on the brain can have downstream histaminergic side effects.

Does your friend have any known allergies or food sensitivities?
Does he experience bloating, nausea, inflammation, swelling, a rash or large changes in body temperature during the symptoms you described? (temperature fluctuation or deregulation is a known effect of psilocin itself which may be unrelated to a potential allergic reaction)
How is his general health, diet, exercise etcetera?
Does your friend take other psychoactive drugs with any regularity (that includes alcohol, tobacco and caffeine)?
Were the mushrooms home grown, purchased or collected from the wild?
Do you know what species your mushrooms were on each occasion?
Did you weigh your doses?

There are so many factors that could be involved that it's almost impossible for any speculation on the behalf of forum members to provide conclusive answers.
From your description alone it sounds as if there is a lack of oxygenation of your friends body, from whatever possible cause.

I would suggest your friend pay attention to his overall physical well-being prior to, during, and after taking any drugs whatsoever, observe good dietary practice and get a broad physical examination from a doctor to help ascertain if there are any underlying medical conditions that remain unaddressed.
You could investigate this yourselves if you have access to a blood pressure monitor/gauge so you could test him when he feels weak and goes visibly pale.

The disparity in the overall duration of the visual effects of the mushrooms could be due to several factors which are probably unrelated to the lack of sufficient oxygenation and probably have more to do with stomach contents and individual metabolism.

Hope your friend gets his body sorted out and can continue his exploration absent worrisome physical symptoms. Good luck!

 

[Zapp]

Thanks buffachino for your reply. Not much more info to give unfortunately, my friend's overall health I would say is OK though his diet is pretty crap (fast food, soda etc). No known allergies. No other drugs other than some caffeine daily. No other symptoms during the trip that we noticed. We did weigh the mushrooms though I can't say for certain what type they were, we bought them from someone. For me they felt like run-of-the-mill cubensis and they looked like them (dried).

I think a doctor visit is in order for my friend. I'm more concerned that he has something completely unrelated to mushrooms at this point, and it's just not apparent normally.

If anyone else has seen anything like this I'd really appreciate a chime-in. I'm kind of surprised that I find no other similar reports anywhere around the web, people love to talk about their mushroom trips! My friend apparently has some freakishly rare condition. Bleh.