꩜ Shroomulator ꩜

In most of the world, no. Psilocybin is classified as a Schedule I controlled substance in the United States and under equivalent frameworks in the UK, Canada, Australia, and most of Europe — meaning it is illegal to possess, sell, or produce without a specific research exemption.

Notable exceptions and grey areas:
Netherlands: Psilocybin mushrooms are illegal, but psilocybin truffles (sclerotia) are legal and widely sold in smart shops.
Portugal: Personal possession of all drugs was decriminalized in 2001 — not legal, but not criminal. Trafficking remains illegal.
Oregon (USA): Psilocybin therapy was legalized under Measure 109 (2020). Licensed service centres can legally administer psilocybin to adults.
Colorado (USA): Proposition 122 (2022) legalized personal use and gifting for adults 21+, with licensed healing centres following.
City-level decriminalization: Denver, Oakland, Santa Cruz, Seattle, Detroit, and several other US cities have deprioritized or decriminalized personal possession — but this is not the same as legal.

Legal status changes frequently and varies at country, state, and city level. This tool is for harm reduction only — not legal advice. Check the most current information for your jurisdiction before making any decisions.

Psychedelic Alpha — worldwide psychedelic laws tracker ›

Psilocybin is not recommended for anyone with a personal or family history of schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, bipolar I, or any psychosis-spectrum condition — major research programs, including Johns Hopkins and Imperial College London, have generally excluded these individuals. The risk is not physical toxicity but triggering a latent psychotic episode that may not resolve. Active severe depression or suicidal ideation are also exclusion criteria in all published research.

Medications: SSRIs and SNRIs blunt or block psilocybin effects via 5-HT₂A receptor down-regulation — many people on SSRIs report needing 2–3× the normal dose or feeling nothing. Do not taper or stop SSRIs without medical supervision. MAOIs are a separate category entirely: combining with psilocybin can cause serotonin syndrome, a genuine medical emergency. If you're on any psychiatric medication, research that specific interaction before proceeding.

There are no documented deaths from direct psilocybin toxicity in healthy adults (as of 2026). The real risks are behavioural and psychological. Physical: at very high doses, loss of coordination and judgment can lead to accidents. Psychological: an overwhelming experience with ego dissolution, terror, and complete loss of reality anchoring is possible and can have lasting effects.

"Non-toxic" does not mean "safe at any dose." Dose, set, setting, and having a sober presence all still matter — not because the compound will kill you, but because the experience can exceed what you're prepared for.

Cannabis amplifies psilocybin for most people — sometimes dramatically. Many unexpectedly overwhelming experiences involve cannabis added mid-trip when things felt manageable. If you do combine, use it sparingly, only after the peak, only if you have experience with both substances separately.

SSRIs/SNRIs: see the contraindications entry above — these blunt or block effects and stopping them to "fix" this is dangerous.

MAOIs: can potentiate psilocybin but the combination is unpredictable and the risk of serotonin syndrome is real. Avoid unless you have deep specific knowledge of what you're doing.

Alcohol: tends to blunt the experience and increases nausea. Not dangerous but not useful.

Lithium: one of the most important combinations to know about. Multiple case reports document seizures when lithium and psilocybin are combined — including at doses that would otherwise be considered moderate. This is not a theoretical risk. If you take lithium for any reason, do not combine it with psilocybin.

In general: add complexity only if you're already experienced with both substances separately and have a specific reason, not because you're curious mid-experience.

A difficult experience still has a frame — you know what you took and that it will end. A challenging trip loses that anchor: real fear, paranoia, or ego dissolution with no sense of time or ground. Dose matters, but set and setting are usually the larger factor.

If you're struggling: Change your environment — go outside, lie down, or move to a quieter room. Change or turn off the music. Surrender rather than resist; fighting the experience tends to intensify it. Remind yourself what you took, that you are safe, and that it will pass.

Trip sitting — what it means and why it matters: A trip sitter is a sober, trusted person whose role is to keep the space safe — not to guide or talk the person through it. At high doses (Level 5–6), a sitter is strongly recommended regardless of experience level.

As a sitter: Stay sober for the full duration. Keep the environment calm, quiet, and familiar. Speak quietly and get physically lower than the person — sitting or kneeling rather than standing over them. Avoid direct eye contact if they seem threatened. Remind them gently that they are safe and that it will end. Do not restrain, do not argue with their perception of reality, and do not leave them alone. Discuss in advance whether they want physical reassurance (touch) or prefer space — do not assume during the experience.

Wood lover's paralysis (WLP) is temporary leg weakness or inability to walk that some users experience after consuming wood-loving psilocybin species — primarily P. azurescens, P. cyanescens, P. subaeruginosa, and related wood-loving species. It has not been observed with cultivated P. cubensis.

What it feels like: Heavy, leaden legs — ranging from difficulty walking to complete inability to stand. Sensation is usually preserved (you can feel, just not move well). Upper body is rarely affected. Onset is typically during the come-up, lasting 1–4 hours, then resolving completely without lasting effects.

Cause: Unknown. Aeruginascin (4-phosphoryloxy-TMT), present in wood-loving species but absent in cubensis, is the leading candidate. Not everyone experiences it — prevalence likely depends on dose, individual sensitivity, and batch.

What to do: Lie down somewhere safe and flat. Do not panic — it is not a medical emergency and doesn't affect breathing or heart rate. This is why wood-loving species should never be used alone. Always have a sober companion who knows WLP is possible. Avoid environments where sudden loss of mobility is dangerous: stairs, water, heights, traffic.

High potency means the strain contains significantly more psilocybin per gram than average P. cubensis. This calculator adjusts your dose down automatically — but a number alone doesn't capture all the practical risk.

Potency figures are averages across batches. A "1.8×" strain can hit 2.4× in a specific flush. At higher dose levels, that difference is the gap between a strong experience and an overwhelming one.

The most important thing to understand: you are working with an estimate, not a measurement. Every new batch should be treated as its own first encounter — even if you've used the same strain before.

With any high-potency strain (PE family, azurescens, cyanescens, TTBVI, Enigma, natalensis):
— Start at 50–60% of the calculated dose with any new batch
— Wait the full come-up (45–90 min) before considering supplementing
— Do not combine with cannabis at High or Heroic levels
— Have a sober companion present regardless of experience level

Somewhat, but less than most people assume. This calculator uses body weight as a scaling factor because it's the most practical variable available — and a larger body does mean the drug gets spread across more tissue. 70kg is the standard reference body weight used in pharmacology.

However, psilocybin's effects are primarily receptor-mediated rather than purely concentration-dependent. Individual variation in serotonin receptor density, stomach acidity, enzyme activity, and psychological state matters at least as much as mass. Clinical trials use weight-adjusted dosing mainly to standardise across subjects — not because weight is the dominant variable.

What this means practically: weight nudges where your dose lands within a fixed range — it doesn't change the range itself. A 50 kg person lands near the low end; a 100 kg person near the high end. Individual receptor sensitivity, tolerance, and gut chemistry vary more than body mass — none of that is captured by a scale.

Psilocybin tolerance builds fast — often after a single dose — your serotonin receptors quickly become less responsive. Dose two days in a row and the second will be noticeably weaker. Most people find full tolerance reset takes around 2–4 weeks. Some people notice partial recovery after 10–14 days with low doses. Cross-tolerance with LSD, DMT, and other classics means recreational weekend use produces rapidly diminishing returns.

Psilocybin is generally considered to produce no physical withdrawal and has low addiction potential — tolerance is not dependence.

See the Microdosing section below for protocol details.

Three common reasons, roughly in order of likelihood:

Food: a full stomach can cut absorption dramatically. The same 2g that would floor you fasted might barely register after a meal. Try again on an empty stomach before assuming anything else.

Tolerance: if you dosed within the past 2–3 weeks, your receptors are still recovering — full reset takes 2–4 weeks. Cross-tolerance with LSD and other classics also counts.

Batch variation: potency varies 15–30% between flushes of the same strain from the same grower. The number you have might just be a weak batch.

If it genuinely didn't work after 2.5 hours on an empty stomach, try 15–25% higher next time — not double. Never redose before 2 hours — the first dose and a second peak simultaneously is one of the most common causes of overwhelming experiences.

If you're on SSRIs or SNRIs: increasing the dose is not the answer — the issue is receptor availability, not amount. A higher dose raises risk without reliably improving the experience. See Who should not take psilocybin?

Yes — and this is one of the most practically relevant and overlooked factors. Multiple grow reports and a handful of small assays suggest that first flush mushrooms are often the most potent, with potency declining in subsequent flushes. The pattern isn't universal but it's consistent enough to be worth noting.

The proposed mechanism: the mycelium allocates the most metabolic resources — including psilocybin biosynthesis — to the first fruiting event. By later flushes, substrate nutrient density has dropped, and the metabolic cost of producing alkaloids may be deprioritised relative to just fruiting. Some growers observe the reverse — that later flushes produce smaller but chemically denser fruits — but the first-flush-stronger pattern is the more commonly reported finding.

Practically: if you have a mixed bag from multiple flushes, don't assume uniform potency. The 2025 Nammex HPTLC reference study noted flush number as a confounding variable in their assays.

This calculator supports both dried and fresh mushrooms — select your form in the Advanced panel. Dose values update automatically. For fresh weight, a rough conversion is 10:1 (15g fresh ≈ 1.5g dried); the app applies this internally.

Why dried is more reliable: fresh mushrooms are ~90% water and water content shifts with age and handling, making consistent dosing harder. Always use a 0.01g precision scale for dry weight — kitchen scales are not accurate enough for sub-2g doses.

Storage: bone-dry mushrooms in an airtight jar with a desiccant packet, stored cool and dark, retain most potency for 1–2 years. Blue bruising when broken is a good sign — psilocin is oxidising, meaning it's still active. Note: storing fresh mushrooms in a freezer before drying may degrade psilocybin and should be avoided.

Discard if: visible mold (white or green fuzz), musty or sour smell, or visible slime — these indicate contamination regardless of storage. Soft or bendy mushrooms may still be usable if the jar was sealed, but re-dry them before use and reduce your expected potency.

Sclerotia are compact underground masses of mycelium — hardened food reserves the fungus produces as a survival mechanism under stress. In psilocybin species, they're produced primarily by Psilocybe tampanensis, P. mexicana, P. atlantis, and P. galindoi. They're legally sold in the Netherlands and are the basis of "truffle" products sold there.

Potency is generally lower than the fruiting bodies of the same species — sclerotia from P. tampanensis average ~0.5% total tryptamines, versus higher figures in some fruiting body assays. However they're more chemically consistent than fruiting bodies because they don't degrade the same way during drying. The experience is widely reported as milder and smoother than equivalent fruiting body doses — possibly due to slightly different alkaloid ratios or more predictable absorption from the denser substrate.

Conversion: sclerotia are typically sold fresh. Fresh weight to effective dried-equivalent depends on water content, which varies (~60–75% water). A rough rule is that 15g fresh sclerotia ≈ 1g dried cubensis baseline, but verify with the specific product.

Not precisely — but you can confirm that psilocybin is present and rule out dangerous substitutes.

Ehrlich reagent (p-DMAB) turns purple when it contacts psilocybin, psilocin, and related compounds. It doesn't distinguish between them or quantify potency, but a positive test confirms you have something in the right chemical family. A negative test on something marketed as psilocybin mushrooms is a red flag.

Hofmann reagent also reacts with tryptamines and can help distinguish some compounds. Using both together increases confidence.

Neither reagent can detect potency, identify species, or confirm the absence of contamination or adulterants. For actual potency data — mg/g psilocybin — you need HPLC or LC-MS/MS analysis, which requires a laboratory. Services like Bunk Police (reagent kits) and community assay labs (Hyphae Cup, Miraculix, Rose City Laboratories) are the primary options outside formal research settings. Drug checking services are available in some jurisdictions.

A microdose is a dose small enough that you don't feel high — no visuals, no altered state, no impairment. The effects are subtle by design: a mild lift in mood, slightly sharper focus, more emotional resilience. If you clearly feel different, the dose is too high.

People microdose for different reasons — focus and creative work, mood stability, or general wellbeing. What matters is starting low and paying attention. Use this calculator's Microdose trip level to get a starting estimate, then adjust gradually based on how you feel on off-days.

Important: Microdosing is not a substitute for mental health treatment. Anyone on SSRIs, antidepressants, or psychiatric medication should check with a doctor before starting — interactions are real and poorly understood.

Set is your mindset going in — mood, intentions, any unresolved anxiety. Setting is where you are and who you're with. Research consistently shows these two factors shape the experience more than dose alone. A moderate dose in a bad environment can be harder than a higher dose in a trusted, calm one.

Fasting: eat nothing for 3–4 hours minimum. A full stomach doesn't make things safer — it makes onset slower, less predictable, and often significantly weaker. Fatty meals are worst — they delay gastric emptying the most. Ginger tea beforehand reduces nausea without blunting anything.

Plan the day: full experience is 4–6 hours, peak 2–3 hours, come-up 30–90 minutes. Heroic doses can run 6–8 hours. Clear the next morning for anything Normal level or above — the afterglow is real.

Yes — and the mechanism explains why. Because psilocybin loosens the brain's normal filtering rather than generating fixed content (see: How does psilocybin work in the brain?), whatever emotional state you bring in gets amplified, not replaced. Anxious going in → amplified anxiety. Calm and intentional → usually calmer experience.

The clinical evidence is direct: the Johns Hopkins and Imperial College London trials both found that mystical-type experiences and therapeutic outcomes correlated far more strongly with preparation quality and guide rapport than with dose alone. In one Johns Hopkins study, participants who felt safe and well-prepared reported meaningful, lasting psychological benefits at rates several times higher than those who didn't — even at the same dose.

Set = your emotional state, unresolved anxieties, and intentions going in. You can't fake this — if something is weighing on you, a high dose will probably find it.
Setting = physical environment, who's present, whether you feel safe. Familiar and comfortable beats novel and impressive almost every time.

The drug is more like a catalyst for existing mental content than a generator of fixed effects. Dose determines intensity. Set and setting shape direction.

How you consume mushrooms affects onset speed, peak intensity, and duration. The short version: psilocybin needs to be converted to psilocin by your body before it works — anything that affects that conversion or slows digestion changes the experience. (Full mechanism in What is the difference between psilocybin and psilocin?)

Main absorption inhibitors:
Fat: Fatty meals slow gastric emptying significantly — the same dose can feel meaningfully weaker and take twice as long to onset. Fasting 3–4 hours removes this variable entirely.
SSRIs/SNRIs: Blunt or block effects at the receptor level — not an absorption issue. See Who should not take psilocybin? for the full picture.
Antacids: Reduce stomach acidity, potentially slowing psilocybin-to-psilocin conversion and delaying onset.

Preparation methods:
Lemon Tek — soak ground mushrooms in fresh citric acid (lemon/lime juice) 20–30 min before consuming. The acidic environment partially pre-converts psilocybin to psilocin before ingestion, bypassing some gut conversion steps. Onset is faster (15–30 min) and more front-loaded. Because bioavailability improves, this calculator reduces the displayed dose by ~12% when Lemon Tek is enabled — you need slightly less to reach the same effect level. The actual conversion varies with grind, temperature, and juice concentration.
Tea — hot water extraction (not boiling, ~80°C). Pulls alkaloids into solution, easier on the stomach, similar onset to whole mushrooms. Strain and drink the liquid; the remaining material still contains alkaloids.
Capsules — no effect on absorption vs whole mushrooms. Same onset time, useful for precise microdose measurement.
Chocolate / honey — no meaningful pharmacological interaction. Fat content in chocolate is low enough at typical amounts to be negligible.

Nausea: extremely common, especially in the first 30–60 minutes. The main cause is chitin — the tough structural compound in mushroom cell walls that the human gut struggles to break down. It's not the psilocybin causing nausea, it's the plant material. Ways to reduce it: grind mushrooms finely before consuming, use lemon tek or tea (both remove the need to digest raw material), take ginger 20–30 min before, or fast for at least 3–4 hours beforehand. Nausea almost always passes before the peak and doesn't indicate something is wrong.

Ego dissolution is the temporary loss of the sense of being a separate self — the boundary between you and everything else dissolves. At its best it's described as oceanic, liberating, or mystical. At its worst it's terrifying, because the part of you that knows "this will end" is the same part that disappears.

It typically requires a heroic dose (4.5g+ at cubensis baseline) in the right setting with preparation and intention. It's not a goal to chase casually. The clinical research showing psilocybin's most profound therapeutic outcomes also involves its most intense experiences — that's not a coincidence. Approach it with respect, not ambition.

The afterglow is a lift in mood, increased openness, and mental clarity that follows the acute experience — typically lasting 1–3 days. Clinical research shows measurable wellbeing improvements persisting for weeks after high-dose sessions. Participants in psilocybin trials consistently rate wellbeing higher in the days following a session than at baseline.

Mechanistically, it's thought to involve neuroplasticity-related changes — increased BDNF and temporary shifts in default mode network activity — that leave the brain in a more flexible, receptive state. (Full mechanism in How does psilocybin work in the brain?) This is why clinical protocols treat the integration period as therapeutically important, not just the session itself.

Practically: don't make major decisions or have difficult conversations during the acute experience. The day after is often genuinely useful for reflection, journalling, and integration. Avoid alcohol and other substances during the afterglow. Sleep quality is often notably better the night of the experience for most people.

HPPD (Hallucinogen Persisting Perception Disorder): a small minority of users experience lasting visual disturbances after psychedelic use — trailing visuals, halos, geometric patterns, or visual snow that persist for weeks or months. True HPPD is rare, but mild visual after-effects (particularly in the days following a high dose) are more common and usually resolve on their own. Risk factors include high doses, frequent use, pre-existing anxiety disorders, and cannabis use during or after the experience. If visual disturbances persist beyond a few days, avoid further psychedelic use and speak to a doctor familiar with psychedelics.

Integration is the process of making sense of what came up during the experience and finding ways to carry it forward into daily life. Clinical protocols treat this as seriously as the session itself — the insights and emotional material that surface during psilocybin experiences don't automatically translate into lasting change. They need to be processed, reflected on, and acted on.

Practical integration steps:
Journal soon after: Write down what you experienced, what felt significant, and any specific insights or images — not to analyse immediately, but to capture it before it fades. Psilocybin experiences can be vivid during the session and surprisingly hard to recall a week later.
Give it time before deciding what it means: The afterglow can produce strong feelings of clarity and certainty. Some of that will be real. Some of it needs time to settle before you can evaluate it accurately. Avoid major life decisions in the first 1–2 weeks.
Talk to someone: A trusted person, therapist, or integration circle. Keeping the whole experience internal often limits what you can do with it.
Notice what changes — and what doesn't: Integration isn't necessarily about dramatic change. Sometimes it's about noticing a shift in how you respond to something that used to trigger you, or returning to a creative practice you'd abandoned.

Difficult experiences especially need integration. A challenging trip that felt overwhelming in the moment often contains the most material worth working with — but it may also leave you feeling shaken, confused, or temporarily worse. If this is the case, don't rush back to another experience. Give it weeks, not days.

The experience is the beginning, not the destination. What you do with it in the weeks after is usually where the actual value lives.

The vast majority of cultivated "strains" — Golden Teacher, PE, B+, Tidal Wave, Enigma and hundreds of others — are Psilocybe cubensis. Wild species like P. azurescens, P. cyanescens, P. semilanceata (Liberty Caps), and Panaeolus cyanescens are entirely different organisms, often meaningfully more potent, and vary more with season, habitat, and drying method.

Panaeolus cyanescens (Blue Meanie) is typically 2–3× stronger than average cubensis — a handful that looks modest can be an intense experience. P. azurescens is the most potent reliably documented Psilocybe, averaging around 2× cubensis based on multiple HPLC studies. Both can cause wood lover's paralysis in some users — temporary leg weakness or inability to walk during the come-up, lasting up to a few hours. It resolves without permanent effects but is alarming if unexpected. Don't use wood-loving species alone.

Marketing names for cubensis strains multiply endlessly. For anything unknown, use Golden Teacher as a conservative baseline, or Penis Envy for anything marketed as a PE variant. Start at 50% of the suggested dose for anything you haven't tried before.

Psilocin (the active form) is structurally similar to serotonin and binds primarily to 5-HT₂A receptors — most densely concentrated in the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for reasoning, self-referential thought, and filtering sensory input. This isn't what causes hallucinations directly; it's what loosens the brain's normal suppression of signal.

The most significant effect is on the Default Mode Network (DMN) — a cluster of brain regions that generate your internal narrative: your sense of self, rumination, mental time-travel. Under psilocybin, DMN activity drops sharply. This is likely why the sense of "self" becomes fluid or disappears at higher doses, and why insight tends to arise — the usual self-protective filtering relaxes.

Simultaneously, connectivity between brain regions that don't normally communicate increases dramatically. Brain imaging studies show that psilocybin produces a state of higher "entropy" — more cross-network communication, less habitual routing. This is thought to be the mechanism behind both the experience feeling novel and the documented therapeutic effects: rigid patterns of thought (depression loops, anxiety patterns) become temporarily malleable.

Finally, psilocybin appears to promote neuroplasticity — increased BDNF (a growth factor that supports neuron maintenance and connection formation) and, in animal studies, measurable synaptogenesis in the prefrontal cortex. Whether this directly explains the lasting mood effects in humans is still being studied, but it's a leading hypothesis behind why a single experience can produce changes that persist weeks or months.

The short version: psilocybin doesn't add content — it quiets your internal editor and increases cross-network communication, making the brain temporarily more flexible and less self-referential.

Psilocybin is the compound present in the mushroom. It's chemically stable, doesn't cross the blood-brain barrier directly, and isn't itself psychoactive. After you eat them, an enzyme in your gut strips off part of the molecule, converting psilocybin to psilocin — the active form.

Psilocin is structurally similar to serotonin and acts primarily as a 5-HT₂A receptor agonist. It crosses the blood-brain barrier readily, and all the subjective effects occur through this action. Psilocin is also significantly less stable than psilocybin — it oxidises rapidly when exposed to air, heat, or moisture, which is why blue bruising occurs (psilocin oxidising on contact) and why fresh mushrooms degrade fast.

Practically: HPLC potency data reports psilocybin content because that's what survives drying and storage. Total tryptamine figures include both. The conversion ratio is roughly 1.4:1 by weight (1g psilocybin → ~0.71g psilocin), so strains with high psilocin content register higher in total tryptamines than their psilocybin figure alone suggests.

These are minor compounds in the same chemical family as psilocybin, found alongside it in many species. Their role in shaping the overall experience is debated but increasingly studied.

Baeocystin (4-phosphoryloxy-NMT) was first isolated from Psilocybe baeocystis by Leung & Paul in 1967. It's structurally similar to psilocybin but slightly simpler. In lab tests it weakly activates the same serotonin receptors as psilocybin. Whether it meaningfully affects the experience at typical concentrations is unresolved — it's often present at 10–15% of psilocybin levels.

Norbaeocystin is even less studied. Present in trace amounts in some species; no confirmed psychoactivity data.

Aeruginascin (4-phosphoryloxy-TMT) is found in wood-loving species — P. azurescens, P. cyanescens, Inocybe aeruginascens — but not in P. cubensis. It's the leading candidate for explaining wood lover's paralysis, though causation is not proven. It may also modulate the quality (not intensity) of the experience — some reports associate aeruginascin-containing species with a more euphoric, less anxious character.

The idea that these minor compounds meaningfully change the overall experience is plausible but not yet proven in human trials.