Mushrooms Are the Safest Drug You Can Take

What if you were reading this….in an email? Keep up to date with VICE and subscribe to our weekly newsletter. Mushrooms, the psychedelic drug that can help treat anxiety and depression and could help with addiction, are the safest recreational drug you can take. That's according to the annual Global Drug Survey, which polled close to 120,000 people in 50 countries about their drug and alcohol use. More than 12,000 people said they did shrooms in 2016 and just 0.2 percent of them said they needed emergency medical care afterward, a rate that was five to six times lower than LSD, cocaine, MDMA, and alcohol, and three times lower than weed.

Adam Winstock, a consultant addiction psychiatrist and founder of the Global Drug Survey, told the Guardian that the bigger risk with shrooms is accidentally eating the wrong variety of mushroom. "Magic mushrooms are one of the safest drugs in the world," he said. "Death from toxicity is almost unheard of with poisoning with more dangerous fungi being a much greater risk in terms of serious harms."

Of course, you might still have a bad trip, so Winfield advises not combining shrooms and alcohol, and using them with trusted company and in a safe place. That will help reduce your risk of injury, disorientation, and panic attacks. Though in a study out of Johns Hopkins last year, 84 percent of users who had a bad trip said they actually benefited from the experience.