These commonly referred to as “shrooms” psychedelic mushrooms are amongst the most widely consumed hallucinogenic drugs. They have two active ingredients, which include psilocybin and psilocin and sometimes result in extreme, though sometimes surreal, visual and sensory outcomes. While people have consumed shrooms for thousands of years to achieve spiritual or cultural reasons, for the last couple of years, the usage of these shrooms has been at a peak for recreational purposes. But the more these shrooms become used, the more questions arise among many people on whether they will appear on a drug test. So, the following article looks into how psychedelic mushrooms affect drug tests and whether it is possible to detect them and their effects in the body for a certain period.
What Are Shrooms?
Shrooms are fungi containing the psychedelic chemicals psilocybin and psilocin. The latter is converted to psilocin in the body, where this latter compound exerts hallucinogenic activity. Shrooms bind to serotonin receptors once ingested and alter perceptions, mood, and cognition through such action. Some of the effects as produced by shrooms include hallucinations that are vivid, distorted experience of time, and greatly increased emotional experiences.
People usually ingest shrooms in their dried form. People may ingest them raw or add them to tea. Shrooms do not produce physical addiction, though for the users, psychologically they tend to become habitual.
Drug Tests and Their Purpose
Drug tests are most commonly used at work, in schools, and during sports to check for illegal or performance-boosting drugs. Almost every drug test screens for drugs that interfere with one’s ability to work or pose a significant health threat, including marijuana, cocaine, opioids, amphetamines, and benzodiazepines.
The most common drug tests used are:
Urine Tests: The most popularly used and applied form of drug tests is through urine tests when conducting a workplace screening or rehabilitation program on drugs. It can detect substances present in the system a day up to several weeks following the substance used.
Blood tests: Although less common, they are also more accurate. Blood tests can detect drugs for a very short period of ingestion. In general, the period ranges from several hours to one day.
Hair Tests: Hair Follicle tests can drug screen for a longer period that one might have taken up in the body system for as long as 90 days. However, people do not commonly use it as a test for shrooms.
Saliva tests: These tests are rarer and can still detect drugs, but in a relatively shorter time, usually 24 hours.
Do shrooms appear on drug tests?
Short answer is that psychedelic mushrooms are rarely detectable on the most standard drug tests. Standard employment and probation drug tests normally look for marijuana, cocaine, heroin, methamphetamines, opiates, and other commonly used and prescribed drugs. People consider these drugs more widely abused and with a higher direct threat potential.
Regular drug tests usually do not detect psilocybin and psilocin, the active constituents of mushrooms. Most often, tests are on for the metabolites of drugs such as THC, found in marijuana, cocaine, or opiates; but they are not providing special tests for psilocybin or psilocin.
Special Tests for Psilocybin and Psilocin
Although normal drug tests do not detect shrooms, advanced tests can prove the presence of psilocybin and psilocin. Such tests usually do not occur but might when one has a suspect use of psychedelic mushrooms. Researchers or legal cases typically use high-level tests to detect psilocybin usage.
Urine Tests: There are complex urine tests that can be able to detect the presence of psilocybin and psilocin. Such tests are rare and often encountered only in clinical or forensic study environments.
Even both psilocybin and psilocin can be traceable in the blood as well. However, the window here is very short, to say the least, usually from just a few hours. That makes blood tests an unsafe bet for detecting shrooms usage beyond the immediate period after ingesting.
Hair Tests: Hair tests are sometimes utilized in screening for several classes of drugs, including cannabis and cocaine. Experts do not commonly use this technique to identify psilocybin and psilocin. Psychedelic mushroom metabolites don’t remain in the body long enough to deposit in hair follicles before excretion.
How long do shrooms stay in your system?
Psilocybin and psilocin have a short detection window, with recovery time varying based on metabolism and drug tests.
Urine: Psilocybin and psilocin are typically detectable in urine for 1–3 days after ingestion, but this is highly variable based on metabolism and history of use; chronic users can have a longer window of detection.
Blood: Generally, psilocybin stays detectable in the blood for a few hours after consumption. Because psilocybin metabolizes quickly, a blood test may not detect it more than 24 hours later.
Hair: Theoretically, the psilocybin content can be detected in a hair test, but that’s highly improbable because the half-life of psilocybin is extremely short. Hair tests are designed to identify drugs that people take daily. However, people rarely take mushrooms often.
Factors Affecting Detection
A few variables may influence the period over which shrooms will linger in your body. Some of them are as follows:
Dosage: The more psilocybin a person takes in, the longer it stays in the body to metabolize and excrete the substance.
Metabolism: Higher-metabolism people could metabolize psilocybin at a faster speed than people with low-metabolism.
High Use: Prolonged consumption of shrooms may result in psilocybin accumulation within the body, thus making the detection window more protracted.
Body Fat: Since psilocybin is water-soluble, it may stay in the system longer in people with higher body fat.
Conclusion
In most cases, shrooms don’t appear on standard drug tests. Drug tests for employment or sports screenings typically do not check for psilocybin and psilocin, the psychoactive substances in magic mushrooms. If necessary, special tests can detect psilocybin and psilocin. But that is usually not their usual application. If you’re concerned about drug tests, the chances of shrooms showing up are low with infrequent use. If drug testing for psilocybin is a concern, it’s important to understand how long it stays active. Always remember the dangers of recreational substances: legal implications vary by location for possessing and using illegal drugs.
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