Can lion's mane make you feel high?

Five highs, five receptor families: what each kind of high is, what produces it, and the mushroom's constituents checked against every family

Can lion's mane make you feel high is a question whose key word covers five different feelings, and the honest answer takes each in turn, because high is not one state but a family of states with different chemistry, and a substance that produces one usually produces none of the others. The first is euphoria, the warm, expansive sense of wellbeing that opioids produce through opioid receptors and that stimulants produce through dopamine release, two different routes to a similar glow. The second is dissociation, the detached, floating sense of being outside one's body or at a distance from the room, which ketamine and related drugs produce by blocking a class of glutamate receptors. The third is perceptual change, the altered seeing, hearing and thinking of the classic psychedelics, psilocybin, LSD and mescaline, which act on the serotonin 2A receptor and which is the high the word mushroom usually brings to mind. The fourth is stimulation, the buzz, the racing alertness, the sense of being switched on past comfort, which caffeine at high doses, nicotine and the amphetamines produce through the adrenergic system. And the fifth is the relaxed body high, the heavy, loosened, pleasantly slowed state that alcohol and benzodiazepines produce through GABA receptors and that cannabis produces through cannabinoid receptors. Five feelings, five receptor families, and every substance that makes a person feel high acts on at least one of them, which turns the question into a checklist.

Lion's mane's constituents are known, and they can be run down the checklist. The fruiting body extract is beta-glucan polysaccharides, which are fibre and act on no receptor in the brain; a protein fraction, which is digested; and the hericenones, small aromatic compounds present in milligram amounts and studied for their effect on nerve growth factor synthesis in cultured cells. In receptor assays the hericenones and the extract as a whole show no activity at opioid receptors, no dopamine release or transporter effect, no glutamate receptor block, no serotonin 2A binding, no adrenergic activity and no GABA or cannabinoid receptor activity; the mushroom's one pharmacological story is a trophic protein that supports neuron survival over weeks, which is not a route to any feeling, let alone a high. Lion's mane contains no psilocybin or psilocin, which belong to an unrelated genus of small brown mushrooms, is sold as a food rather than controlled under any drugs legislation, and appears on no workplace or roadside drug test panel, which look for specific controlled substances and their metabolites and would find nothing a lion's mane capsule contains. The young-adult pilot, the one study to ask how people felt over the hours after a dose, found no change in mood or stress ratings and nothing resembling any of the five states. On all five counts the answer is no, and it is a no with a mechanism behind each count rather than a reassurance.

The three experiences that get filed under a lion's mane high, the runner's high in particular, the law and the drug test, and the honest buy

People do report feeling high after lion's mane, and the reports sort into three experiences that are real and have other causes. The first is the caffeine buzz, which is the fourth high on the list arriving by its usual route: most lion's mane in the UK is blended with coffee at 50 to 100mg of caffeine a serving, a person who drinks it on top of their ordinary coffees and a pre-workout can pass the dose at which caffeine stops feeling like alertness and starts feeling like a buzz, and the new ingredient gets the credit. The second is the runner's high, and it deserves a paragraph because it is the experience most often attributed to lion's mane by lifters. After roughly thirty minutes or more of sustained moderate to vigorous exercise, many people experience a mild euphoria, a drop in anxiety and a raised pain threshold that lasts an hour or two, and the research now attributes it substantially to endocannabinoids, the body's own cannabinoid signalling, rather than to endorphins alone; it is produced by the exercise and arrives regardless of anything taken beforehand, so a lifter who takes lion's mane before a long session and feels lifted afterward has produced the fifth high on the list themselves, through the cannabinoid family, with the mushroom as a bystander. The third is the word. Mushroom carries psilocybin's reputation, the magic mushroom is the only mushroom most people associate with a high, and a culinary fungus sold in a capsule inherits an expectation it cannot meet, so that a person taking lion's mane for the first time is primed for the third high on the list and reads an ordinary afternoon through that priming; the nocebo and placebo literatures both show that expectation produces reportable experience, and a mushroom is the most expectation-laden word on the supplement shelf.

The law and the drug test follow from the chemistry and should be stated for anyone whose job or licence depends on them. Lion's mane is a food in the UK, sold without restriction, with no scheduling under the Misuse of Drugs Act or the Psychoactive Substances Act, because it is not psychoactive; psilocybin-containing mushrooms are Class A, and the two share a kingdom and a word and nothing else. A workplace drug test, a sports anti-doping test and a roadside drug test each look for specific substances and metabolites, cannabis, cocaine, opioids, amphetamines, benzodiazepines and the rest, and none looks for or would react to anything in a lion's mane capsule; a person facing any of those tests can take the mushroom without the question arising, which is more than can be said for some botanicals and for the pre-workout that may be beside it. The honest answer to can lion's mane make you feel high is therefore no on all five counts, with three explanations for the yes, and a lifter who wants a lift has a coffee, a long session and a word to be careful of. The honest buy is a capsule that removes two of the three explanations before the first dose: the worked example, {FLLM}, is caffeine free, so the buzz is not in the tub, and sold as a stated 5:1 fruiting body extract labelled 1500mg mushroom equivalent in a food supplement with a food label, so the word arrives with its chemistry attached, 120 days for £15.49 at 13p, UK made, independently lab tested, and incapable of any of the five.

What to check on the label

Questions people also ask

Is lion's mane psychoactive?

No; its constituents, beta-glucan fibre, a protein fraction and milligram amounts of hericenones, show no activity at opioid, dopamine, glutamate, serotonin 2A, adrenergic, GABA or cannabinoid receptors in any assay, which are the five families every high runs on, and the one study to ask how people felt over the hours after a dose found no change in mood or stress; it is sold as a food rather than controlled under any drugs legislation because it is not psychoactive.

Does lion's mane contain psilocybin?

No; psilocybin and psilocin occur in an unrelated genus of small brown mushrooms, Psilocybe, which are Class A in the UK, while lion's mane, Hericium erinaceus, is a large white culinary fungus with no tryptamine content and a food label; the two share a kingdom and the word mushroom and nothing else, and the word is the main reason the question is asked.

Why did I feel high after lion's mane?

One of three things: the caffeine in the coffee most lion's mane is blended with, which on top of a lifter's ordinary intake can cross from alertness into a buzz; the runner's high, a mild endocannabinoid euphoria that arrives after thirty minutes or more of sustained training and is produced by the session regardless of what was taken before it; or expectation, since the word mushroom primes a person for a psychedelic experience that a culinary fungus cannot produce; the capsule itself acts on none of the receptor families a high requires.

Will lion's mane show up on a drug test?

No; workplace, anti-doping and roadside drug tests look for specific controlled substances and their metabolites, cannabis, cocaine, opioids, amphetamines, benzodiazepines and the like, and nothing in a lion's mane capsule is on any panel or resembles anything that is; a person whose job or licence depends on a clean test can take the mushroom without the question arising, which is more than can be said for some botanicals and for a pre-workout's undeclared ingredients.

Can you get high from eating a lot of lion's mane?

No; dose changes nothing when a substance acts on none of the relevant receptors, and several grams of extract produce a digestive event in the one-to-three-hour window, bloating, wind or looseness as grams of beta-glucan reach the colon, rather than any altered state; the sixteen-week trial at 3g a day of powder recorded no psychoactive effect of any kind, and lion's mane has been eaten by the plateful as food in East Asia for centuries without a reputation for anything but texture.

Sources

1. The psychoactive drug pharmacology literature: a substance produces an acute subjective effect only if an active compound crosses the blood-brain barrier at a sufficient concentration and acts on a neurotransmitter receptor or transporter within a short time of dosing, criteria that dietary polysaccharides and most food-derived compounds do not meet. PubMed record
2. The exercise euphoria literature: the runner's high, a state of mild euphoria, reduced anxiety and raised pain threshold after sustained moderate to vigorous exercise, is mediated at least in part by endocannabinoids rather than endorphins alone, arrives after roughly thirty minutes or more of effort and fades over an hour or two, and is produced by the exercise regardless of anything taken beforehand. PubMed record
3. UK drug law: psilocybin and psilocin, and fungi containing them, are Class A controlled substances under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, with fresh fungi explicitly covered since 2005. https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1971/38/contents
4. The workplace and sport drug-testing literature: immunoassay screening panels target specific drug classes and their metabolites, confirmed by mass spectrometry, and food-derived polysaccharide or protein supplements contain no compounds cross-reactive with standard panels. PubMed record

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