First formal publication regarding Wood-lover Paralysis

Recent news from the psilocybe research space has been the publication of the first formal paper describing Wood-lover paralysis (WLP). “‘Wood-lover paralysis’: Describing a toxidrome with symptoms of weakness caused by some lignicolous ‘wood-loving’ Psilocybe mushrooms” by authors Simon Beck, Caine Barlow, Liam Engel and Monica Barratt, was published in Toxicon on the 7th of June 2025. WLP is often described as a transient weakness that occurs following the ingestion of mushrooms, or a mushroom preparation, from Psilocybe subaeruginosa or closely related species from Section Subaeruginosae.

The paper describes the results from an online survey conducted in 2020 by Simon Beck and Caine Barlow to systematically describe WLP. There were 392 participants, 71.8% of whom were male, with 34.1% aged between 26 and 35 years, and primarily from Australia and New Zealand. The paper reports that 42.1 % of people who responded to the survey experienced WLP, with the onset typically occurring within four hours of ingestion. WLP is regarded as rare, the high percentage of individuals who reported WLP resulting from an expected bias in reporting due to interest from the community. The weakness primarily impaired mobility (80.4%), with some individuals reporting difficulties with swallowing (26.7%) and breathing (16.6%). Symptoms persisted into the following day for nearly half of those affected (48.1 %), and 21.5 % experienced a fall or accident. 

WLP was reported as occurring regardless of the different methods of mushroom preparation, and the habitat or substrate from which the mushrooms were collected.  No significant associations were observed between WLP occurrence and age, gender, health status, or allergies. 

While WLP has been discussed in various online forums since at least the early 2000s, very little is known about the cause of the toxidrome. The most likely theory is that WLP is the result of a compound being produced by the mushrooms themselves; this compound is yet to be identified. 

The paper has been published as open access and can be read in full here:

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.toxicon.2025.108450