People Are Tripping on 100 Grams of Mushrooms on IG

“I definitely took more than I should of,” aspiring fitness influencer Joe Collinson told his few thousand Instagram followers in July after holding up a branded package of mushroom chocolates. “I couldn’t remember, so I just thought fuck it, but I tell you what, I am flying.” Mushrooms, he says, “are the best pre-workout you will ever have.”

“Effortless,” he exclaimed, wearing a black running shirt, sunglasses, and bucket hat, as he jogged down a country road in the north of England, channeling a boyish sense of euphoria and reckless abandon. “Just fucking gliding,” he added, as a high-tempo house track drops into the reel. “You probably aren’t seeing what I’m seeing, but I’m honestly flying. I love mushrooms.”

Collinson had not run so quickly, at such a consistent pace, “in forever,” he began to explain, before admitting: “I can’t speak.” By the end, he had clocked 30 km (or just under 20 miles) in two hours and 48 minutes, and the reel went viral, amassing almost 700,000 views, and — alongside a follow-up in which he ate a three gram mushroom rice crispy cake in an apparent collaboration with a psychedelic brand, and another clip of him running a marathon powered by a white chocolate mushroom bar — brought Collinson to more than 25,000 followers. He was soon thanking his mushroom chocolate bar brand sponsors in his posts.

All of this heralds a new era of psychedelic exhibitionism. No longer fearing arrest or censure, a raft of budding social media influencers and psychonauts are documenting, and in some cases live-streaming, themselves tripping. A brave — and perhaps naive — new world is upon us, and mushroom-powered runs, workouts, and marathons could become the latest ice bucket challenge. 

“OK, 1 km in,” another would-be fitness influencer, Ethan Wellington, told his relatively small number of followers after eating a mushroom chocolate bar in Ibiza, Spain, and setting out on a run. “We had the mushies about 20 minutes ago. Started to feel a little bit nice, you know. Can’t lie, a little bit rude!” After running several kilometres in the late September sun, a sense of gratitude came over the exuberant Wellington. “How blessed are we to be alive?” The video amassed almost 650,000 views in just over a week.

Collinson and Wellington follow in the footsteps of giants who have been causing psychedelic shenanigans online of late. Last year, Ollie Guarnieri posted a video on TikTok of himself taking four tabs of LSD at the beginning of an 18-hour flight. The short clip — which mostly featured him wearing sunglasses and tripping in his extra-legroom seat alongside a travel companion and tripsitter — garnered 62,000 likes, and he launched a range of merchandise. The “Mexican Mycologist” took nine grams of mushrooms in a “challenge” and videoed himself roaming a Walmart store. A man named Chris, who went by “Chompers2024” on X, live-streamed himself eating 19 grams of mushrooms in his car. Former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson also ate a handful of mushrooms while smoking a joint on the Logan Paul podcast. “It’s a fungus, it’s what we’re made out of,” Tyson declared. 

But most consequentially, Matthew Johnson, aka Mushroom Matt, has made a YouTube documentary about his quest to consume 100 grams, blended into a foul-looking smoothie, as part of an effort to eat more mushrooms than any human in apparent history, far beyond the 50 grams reportedly consumed by high-dose mushroom guru Kilidi Iyi. Johnson started by taking 20 grams — “past 10 grams, you’re getting into God dose levels,” he said — and increased the dose in 10g increments each month, allowing his tolerance time to reduce.

“The 60, 70, 80 [grams]: That’s when things become overwhelming to the point where the mushrooms are almost yelling at you,” he said in the film, also disclosing that he has bipolar disorder. “So 100 grams, that was the first time I honestly felt possessed. Where I felt a different entity come inside me and almost take over my body.”

(DoubleBlind Disclaimer: While we support thoughtful, intentional engagement with psychedelic medicines, we do not endorse the use of psychedelic mushrooms by individuals with bipolar disorder or other serious mental health conditions for which psychedelics are clinically contraindicated. Psychedelics can pose real psychological risks, and anyone exploring them should do so with appropriate guidance, harm-reduction practices, and experienced support.)

Now, it goes without saying that this cast of men are not the greatest ambassadors for responsible psychedelic use. Entity possession isn’t a vibe, after all. But neither Johnson nor Collinson ever explicitly presented themselves as psychedelic gurus. “I don’t promote [mushroom use],” Collinson told DoubleBlind, acknowledging the outright illegality of psilocybin in the UK. “I don't tell people to do anything, if you know what I mean. I just show me doing it, and then if anyone asks me for advice, I would always just say, ‘Start on half a gram’. I would never tell anyone to take three and a half grams and run.”

Instead, he says, he has sought to demonstrate the mental health benefits of going running in nature, and the remarkable apparent ability of psychedelic mushrooms to turbocharge his speed. Collinson claims to have easily achieved several personal best times on the occasions he has consumed what he now refers to as “performance-enhancing” mushrooms. Naturally, he wanted to spread the gospel. Who can blame the 25-year-old?

In a culture where psychedelics remain illegal but increasingly decriminalized and culturally sanctioned, there is an absence of initiation rituals or a guiding set of principles around their best use, says Dennis Walker, the founder of mushroom podcast and platform Mycopreneur, noting a set of “increasingly brazen and sometimes downright foolish stunts” posted on social media recently.

“We can expect to continue seeing this type of brazen exhibitionism and increasingly ostentatious behavior by psychedelic users,” Walker adds. “Mainstream celebrities and athletes have also provided a sense of normalization around this type of outlandish behavior.” 

The live trip report videos appear to attract so much engagement because social platforms incentivize extreme, emotional, or taboo content — and psychedelics hit all three, when the posts aren’t censored by the algorithm, that is. And so, in the attention economy, tripping provides a rich stream of content where vulnerability becomes performative, even while remaining somewhat authentic.

Neither is it difficult to ignore the emergence of a new masculine archetype: Men using psychedelics not necessarily for introspection, but to prove stamina through pain and transcendence.

In one of his more recent mushroom run videos, Collinson compares himself to Super Mario. “Today we have a fucking mushroom rice crispy cake,” he said. “Very, very excited to try this. It’s three grams in one go, so let’s see how we get on.” He then ate the bar in several bites. “Let’s fucking go!” 

“It’s actually wild, right, because you can just feel the mushrooms kicking in because you literally feel like you’re just starting to float,” he remarked. When the full effects take hold, Collinson added, “it’s what I would imagine Super Mario feels like when he hits the mushroom [charge-up] and goes super fast. That’s exactly what I’m feeling right now.”

Psychedelics may have once promised transcendence, but now they promise engagement. In 2026, the psychedelic renaissance will not just be televised — it will be livestreamed.

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