Can you smoke shrooms?

Thus far, the 2020s have been the best decade yet for shroom lovers. They were first scheduled as a Schedule 1 substance in 1970. Many people turned to shrooms and psychedelics to cope with early pandemic isolation, and new research has indicated psilocybin, the primary psychoactive compound in shrooms, holds big potential for helping patients with mental health struggles and addiction. By 2023, both Oregon and Colorado decriminalized them, along with local municipalities that include DC, San Francisco, Oakland, Seattle, and parts of Massachusetts.

As people get more comfortable taking shrooms, it reasons that they want to experiment and find the best consumption method that works for them. There are many ways to consume shrooms, from capsules to chocolates to lemon tekking, but what about smoking them? Cannabis lovers and shroom lovers have a lot in common, but these two mystical plants can’t be consumed in the same ways. While it’s possible to smoke shrooms, the cons far outweigh the benefits.

Ultimately, while you can smoke shrooms, we at Leafly advise that you don’t. Smoking shrooms does not “activate” psilocybin like it does for THC in cannabis, and exposing shrooms to direct flame effectively degrades most of the psilocybin in the plant, while also potentially exposing the smoker to fungal infection. The most effective way to take shrooms is to ingest (eat) them.

If you don’t want to take our word for it and really want to try smoking shrooms, here’s some advice. Shrooms don’t light well like cannabis or other smokable herbs, so we advise you start with that as your base. You can use your existing smoking paraphernalia for this: A pipe, bong, rolling papers, grinder, and a lighter are all you need. If you aren’t a regular cannabis and shroom user, use a non-psychoactive smokable herb like cloves.

Use approximately 0.3 g to 0.5 g of shrooms maximum so you aren’t wasting your stash, and grind them up in a clean grinder beforehand. Sprinkle the ground shrooms on top of your bowl or in your rolled joint, light up, and enjoy. Because smoking shrooms is more wasteful than it is productive, don’t waste your high-quality shrooms on this.

As with any new psychedelic or cannabis venture, start low and go slow. Even though smoking shrooms likely won’t have an intense effect, combining it with cannabis may have adverse effects. The quality of the smoke may also disagree with some consumers.

Don’t use more than a half a gram of shrooms to smoke, and take time between each inhalation to assess how you feel. Some people say they feel a high similar to an uplifting cannabis strain, but there is no way to predict how smoking shrooms will affect an individual.

While smoking shrooms isn’t necessarily life-threatening, it comes with some risks. Shrooms, like all mushrooms, are fungi, and can accumulate unwanted mold and bacteria if not grown and stored properly. Smoking mold can lead to nausea, coughing, and irritation in the throat and chest. In severe cases, smoking moldy shrooms can even cause infection.

We think smoking shrooms is pointless because it can cause:

Smoking shrooms should be the last resort. Shrooms have much better Therapeutic and psychedelic efficacy when eaten or made into a tea or lemon tek. We recommend:

To ensure you have a great shroom trip, stick to how people have been doing it for thousands of years. Our best tips include:

Both shrooms and weed have long, storied histories, and it’s not uncommon for people from various societies to combine them. Leafly contributor Alexa Peters reported that consuming cannabis concurrently can intensify a psilocybin trip, sometimes to an uncomfortable extent. Some anecdotal evidence suggests microdosing both substances can help improve mood and lower anxiety, and cannabis can help with the comedown of shrooms.

As is usually the case, medical professionals say more research is needed to better understand how these two substances work together and affect each other’s efficacy.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but smoking shrooms just isn’t a good way to benefit from shrooms and psilocybin. Save the smoke for weed, and enjoy your shroomies in the old fashioned ways.

New York-based freelance cannabis journalist Amelia Williams is a graduate of San Francisco State University's journalism program, and a former budtender. Williams has contributed to the San Francisco Chronicle's GreenState, MG Magazine, Culture Magazine, and Cannabis Now, Kirkus Reviews, and The Bold Italic.