If you’ve taken magic mushrooms lately, you’re probably asking yourself two questions: 1) Where can I get more; and 2) do shrooms show up on a drug test? While I can’t legally help you with the first one — psst, look in a subtropical meadow — I do know a thing or two about drug tests.
For one, there are many different tests on the market, which makes it hard to say for sure if the one you’re being forced to take detects shrooms. However, five-panel urine tests, which are the most common ones used by employers, typically identify weed, coke, PCP, amphetamines and opioids, not psilocybin.
While there are tests specifically designed to spot shrooms, they’re more expensive and therefore less likely to be conducted, unless someone really, really suspects you’ve been taking them. The same goes for specialty hair tests, which can detect shrooms taken in the last 90 days. However, they’re metabolized too quickly to be uncovered by blood or saliva tests.
Speaking of, psilocybin typically leaves your system within 15 hours or so. It may take less or more time depending on your metabolism and how much you took — the more you ingest, the longer it remains in your system — but a standard pee test will be hard-pressed to discover shrooms 24 hours after you’ve taken them. That said, some research has found trace amounts in people for up to a week after their trip, which again suggests that everyone’s different (and also that those people likely took heroic doses).
In short, unless you’re still actively tripping, you probably don’t have to worry too much about shrooms showing up on a drug test, which I’m sure you’re relieved to hear.
So, have you found anything in that subtropical meadow yet?
Ian Lecklitner
Ian Lecklitner is a staff writer at MEL Magazine. He mostly writes about everyone's favorite things: Sex, drugs and food.
