How to take shrooms

Taking magic mushrooms can be a healing and transformative experience, provided you know what you’re doing. Being prepared before going on a shrooms trip is an extremely important step in avoiding a bad trip and its potential traumatic impacts. Whether you’re asking, “how much shrooms should I take?” or “are shrooms addictive?” – we have answers for you. Gwella aims to radically improve lives by introducing more people to functional, adaptogenic, and psychedelic mushrooms. We envision a world where access and acceptance of ethnobotanicals and psychedelics is the norm, so let’s get learning!

What preparation do I need to consume Shrooms?

The most important factor going into a shroom trip is your mindset and attitude, otherwise referred to as the “set and setting.” Keeping an open mind, being in a positive headspace and creating an environment in which you feel safe are all great steps toward creating a positive trip. Some professionals go as far as to say that preparing your set is a way of taking care of the earthly dimension so you can sink into your psychedelic experience without worrying about what’s going on around you. This brings us to the highly recommended task of finding a “trip sitter” – someone who is more experienced in psychedelic mushroom trips, who can keep you company during your trip and be there for you in case your trip turns sour. 

How do shrooms taste?

Many people say that shrooms taste earthy, bitter or even compare the flavor to dirt, which makes sense, because mushrooms grow straight from the soil. However, there are ways to make the flavor less abrasive and more enjoyable, including shroom tea, lemon tek or edibles. 

What supplies do I need?

In order to have a shroom trip, all you really need is magic mushrooms and a scale to weigh your dose. That said, there are a number of tools that can make your experience much more enjoyable and easier on your body and mind. 

It’s most important to make sure you have a scale, because winging a mushroom dose is a dangerous game to play. It’s easy to get too high, especially when you’re a beginner, so make sure you have an accurate scale to weigh out your dose before you dive in!

It can also be helpful to have a cannabis grinder or coffee grinder in order to grind up your mushrooms for use in shroom tea, lemon tek or edibles. The greater the surface area, the easier it will be for your body to metabolize the prodrug psilocybin into the psychedelic compound psilocin. Your high will kick in faster (and sometimes more intensely), and that’s why drinking tea or lemon tek is a popular way to take shrooms!

If you’re making tea, lemon tek or edibles, you will need the ingredients required for your chosen method of consumption. Depending on the recipe and how you’ve chosen to embark on this psychedelic journey, you may need green or black tea, ginger for nausea, honey for flavor, snacks to mix the shrooms into or lemon juice in which to soak them. All of these options create a better tasting psychedelic consumable, making your trip yummier and often, easier to digest. 

What different ways can I consume shrooms?

• Raw
• Shroom Tea
• Chocolate
• Putting it in food
• Lemon tek
• Blue Honey

As touched upon previously, there are a million and one ways to take shrooms, some of them more palatable than others. Some people prefer going the hardcore route and chewing raw mushrooms like they’re eating a bag of chips. 

Others much prefer the softer, more calming experience of making shroom tea. This option allows for you to adapt to your flavor preferences, adding honey, ginger and/or lemon for flavor and to help with nausea. Lemon tek is a slightly more flavorful version of shroom tea, and works by activating the psilocybin’s breakdown into psilocin with the help of the acidity of lemon juice. Soaking your ground-up shrooms in lemon juice for 15-20 minutes can help boost the onset of your trip, and it sure tastes a lot better. 

Still others make shroom chocolates in the form of chocolate bars or truffles, making the experience of going into a trip better by combining a psychedelic high with a homemade dessert. You can also mix shrooms into food, whether this means blending them into your pesto to put over pasta or adding them to your salad for an extra psychedelic kick. However, these methods must be approached with caution due to the frequent unpredictability of dosing within the edible options for magic mushroom consumption. 

Do different consumption methods result in a different experience?

Eating straight shrooms can be hard on your stomach and requires digestion to kick in which can take up to an hour. While this is technically the easiest way to consume shrooms, it is not very tasty and can cause nausea because it’s difficult to digest. Edibles can be more palatable, but still take a significant amount of time to digest, which is why many people prefer drinking tea or lemon tek.

Drinking mushroom tea can help speed up the onset of your psychedelic experience by creating an easily digestible form of shrooms and offering more surface area with which your body can react and experience psychedelic effects. 

If you’re looking to boost the onset of your trip even more, try lemon tek. The acidity of lemon juice helps speed up the transformation of prodrug psilocybin into psychedelic compound psilocin, which actually causes the experience of altered consciousness. 

How much should I take for a first trip?

A good starting amount is anywhere between 0.5 and 1.5 grams of dried mushrooms, which will have you feeling the effects on your body and mind while minimizing the risk of a bad trip. Studies show that bad trips are more likely to happen on high doses of magic mushrooms. A typical beginner’s dose is 1 gram of shrooms, while a more experienced user might take 2 grams of shrooms or more.

How much should I take for specific effects?

You should begin to feel some effects at 0.25 grams of shrooms, which is what most call a threshold dose. Experiences may include feeling cold and seeing more vivid colors. A light dose is anywhere between 0.25 grams and 1 gram of shrooms, whereas a “common” dose is anywhere from 1.1-2.5 grams. Smaller doses should take 15-30 minutes to kick in.

Higher doses should be reserved for more experienced psychonauts, to protect both your mental sense of safety and limit the possibility of a bad trip. Moderate doses (1.1-3g) usually take 20-40 minutes to take effect, and doses above 3 grams often take between 30 and 60 minutes to set in. 

You may also experience effects on higher doses including intense visual tricks, euphoria, time and space distortion, spiritual awareness and sometimes ego death. These effects can be intense, which is why high doses are recommended for experienced users only. 

Whatever dose you choose, make sure your research is thorough and you do everything in your power to ensure a feeling of safety, security and positive vibes during your trip. Shroom trips can last up to 8 hours, but this again depends on the person, the context and the dosage. Be careful, but don’t be afraid to experiment with it! You could stumble upon an amazing experience.

Can you eat too many mushrooms?

While many people believe that you can’t overdose on magic mushrooms, it is in fact possible to take too many. You may experience ego death, get physically sick from nausea or taking the wrong kind of mushroom, or extreme psychological distress. You can read more about the possible impacts of taking too many shrooms here. If you do your research and start “slow and low” like many experts suggest, overdose is possible, but not probable.

So there you have it: Shrooms 101. The best way to consume shrooms is dependent on the person taking them and their personal preferences, as well as their time constraints, sensitivity to nausea and preferred dose of shrooms. We know it can be overwhelming to learn all of this important information about magic mushrooms, but trust us when we say that the research will pay off. Your first trip should be a great experience, not a traumatic time. Proper preparation, a solid set and an experienced trip sitter should do the trick, then you’re off to the races! Enjoy, psychonauts.

Eating Fresh, Raw Mushrooms

Foraging or growing mushrooms cultivates a relationship with fungi and can add a beautiful layer of meaning and connection to a trip. But it also is a serious commitment of time and effort. Learning to identify mushrooms is a big undertaking and can be dangerous as there are look-alikes to certain psilocybin mushrooms. Growing mushrooms is easier than you might think to start; however, mastering cultivation is no small feat. Consuming your homegrown mushies or some precious specimens from the land is pretty special.

If you are a beginner, a dose of fresh shrooms should be done with someone experienced for several reasons. First, because of water weight, the dosage will be trickier to gauge (you might have to eat a lot of them!). And second, as a general rule (although also hotly debated), fresh mushrooms are thought to be stronger and a more intense trip.

Dried Magic Mushrooms

Dried is likely how your magic mushrooms will be. Dried mushrooms are easier to store as fresh ones likely won't last much longer than a week in your fridge. The table above is based on the assumption that you have dried shrooms.

Dry mushrooms are not a pleasant culinary experience. They are chewy and taste very "earthy," so many people disguise the flavor and texture. Some popular methods are blending the mushrooms into your favorite smoothie, on top of a pizza, or even hydrated and adding to pasta, although some claim very high heat can degrade psilocybin.

If you are not into cooking, tossing your mush in a peanut butter sandwich, jamming them between a couple of Doritos, chasing them with a tasty drink or snack also does the trick. If you have a sweet tooth, put your dose into a small jar, pour honey on top and mix everything around to coat your mushrooms thoroughly.

Of course, you can also just eat them. Some people claim that this leads to nausea and prefer to take mushrooms on an empty stomach. Keep in mind eating mushrooms on an empty stomach will have quicker effects than eating them with a meal.

Mushroom Tea

Mushroom tea is a pleasant experience. While it still retains a reasonably strong mushroom flavor, there is an opportunity to add herbs, other tea, or honey to sweeten the experience. Ginger is also a popular choice to aid with nausea, although even plain mushroom tea is generally easier on digestion.

Making mushroom tea is simple. Hot water + Mushrooms = Mushroom tea. Be sure to give the mushrooms enough time to steep, at least 10 minutes. Some people like to grind their mushrooms for alleged improved extraction of psilocybin, but this is up to you.

Mushroom tea will likely bring you deeper into your mushroom journey faster, so be prepared if this is your first time making tea! The quicker onset can also make the trip dissipate more quickly.

> > How to make shroom tea guide.

Blue Honey

Making honey with magic mushrooms is quite easy and requires no special equipment. It's an easy way to make your shrooms last longer and taste MUCH nicer. Check out our guide here. 

Chocolate Bars and Gummies

The Aztecs of Central America traditionally took their mushrooms with cacao as a sacrament. The tradition continues today, but if you don't have access to raw cacao, mushrooms chocolates are the next best thing.

Making chocolates or brownies at home can be a fun project; however, with the explosion of psychedelics into the mainstream, it is now straightforward to buy premade chocolates, gummies, candy, or just about any other sweet you can think of. My personal favorite is peanut butter cups. These methods are almost too good (start low and go slow!) with only a slightly mushroomy flavor, depending on the dose.

This method is also gentler on the stomach than raw or dried mushrooms, with the effects being the typical 4-6 hours. As Vincent from Blue Goba shared, chocolates account for almost half of their sales… So people are catching on to these psychedelic delicacies for the mind and the body.

>> Shroom chocolate guide. 

Lemon Tek

Lemon tek emerged from the online amateur mycology scene. The Shroomery message boards began entertaining the idea, and it now it some folks preferred method of dosing themselves. lemon tek is grinding up mushrooms, soaking them in lemon juice, and doing them like a shot.

Originally excitement around this method was that lemon tek brings on the trip faster, is quite strong, and is over quicker. It also has gained popularity for reducing nausea for some people.

While nobody has studied lemon tek, the theory is that the acidity of the lemon begins breaking down the mushrooms before they hit your stomach.

>> Lemon Tek guide. 

Final Advice for Beginners Taking Shrooms

Curiosity about magic mushrooms is worth exploring. Whatever your motivation, the world of psychedelics has been influencing human consciousness for millennia, and wanting to join the fun is an exciting and natural impulse.

Taking the time for proper preparation by cultivating your mindset, creating the setting that feels right for you, and giving yourself space to make sense of your experience will reap benefits. However, no matter how much effort you put into your trip, be it a spontaneous adventure with friends or a full-on ceremony, respecting that mushrooms are mysterious helps us be ready for whatever comes up.

With openness, flexibility, surrender, and deep breaths, mushrooms can take you to some pretty amazing places where you can join generations of millions of other explorers seeking the magic of the mushroom. See you there!

Extra resources that you may find useful: 

Magic Mushroom dosage guide

How many shrooms should a beginner take?

How long does it take for shrooms to kick in?

How long do shrooms stay in your system?