Last Updated: January 24, 2024

By: Rachel Clark, Education Manager

This past weekend at Electric Forest, panic broke out as thousands of people received the following text alert:

“STOP TAKING ANY MUSHROOMS. SEVERAL PEOPLE HAVE OVERDOSED FROM FENTANYL ON MUSHROOMS.

ODs at the Hangar and Tripolee. Confirmed by medical staff. Text your friends, tell the people around you.”

This news has since spread like wildfire, reaching the eyes of millions of people. Questions have started pouring in: “Is there really fentanyl in mushrooms? How do I test them? Was it on purpose?

…is it true?”

The short answer: No. We don’t think it’s true.

The long answer is long. Too long for us to squeeze into the span of a single article today. Instead we’ll provide a simple algorithm for how we evaluate whether a claim made about drugs – especially when it comes to fentanyl adulteration – falls under each of the following categories:

(Note: These are not standardized terms. They’ve been written for the purpose of this article to convey how we encourage readers to review information as peer educators.)

Confirmed true (“confirmatory”): The claim is properly verified and can be quoted as factual.

1. A claim must include the following items to be confirmed as being true:
   1. A toxicology report of the drugs found in the person’s system after the event
      1. This is often unavailable due to HIPAA regulations, but is really one of the only ways to truly verify what was in someone’s system.
      2. In the case of death, an autopsy report can usually reveal similar information but may take months to release.
   2. A lab report on the drugs the person consumed (not just drugs found in their possession)
      1. FTIR, field, or at-home testing technology are not confirmatory. Only advanced testing like GC/MS is acceptable for this.
         1. As an example, we recently used FTIR to test “THC cheez-its.” FTIR did not detect any cannabinoids at all, instead presenting a variety of novel stimulants, but GC/MS identified that the cheez-its did indeed contain only THC.
      2. Confirming that the correct drugs are being tested – the drugs the person actually consumed – also requires having a direct conversation with either witnesses or the person themselves. Even then, there is room for error.
   3. Information sourced directly from individuals who were actually present for the event
      1. It is not sufficient to quote someone quoting someone else. If the actual source of the information is unable to provide confirmatory details about what exactly took place, critical details are missing.
   4. Specific, neutral observational statements about the person’s symptoms and the timelines involved
      1. It’s essential to verify that the symptoms and timelines of the events that took place actually match the effects of the drug(s) indicated in the claim.
         1. We frequently receive reports of “fentanyl overdoses” that involve symptoms and timelines which absolutely do not match the medical profile of an opioid overdose. These reports sometimes come from medical staff or law enforcement.

Contextually likely (“suggestive”): The claim makes sense given the evidence provided, but it still hasn’t actually been proven.

1. Claims like this can be referred to with neutral, honest language like “it appears that…” and “it’s likely, but not confirmed, that…” alongside appropriate disclaimers about what information is missing that could change things.
2. Contextually likely claims that include hard language like “x is y” or “confirmed” are generally tentatively flagged as being hearsay.
   1. Using such certain language indicates a lack of understanding of what’s required for something to be true instead of likely.
3. Using any sort of at-home drug checking materials, or even field spectrometers, will always produce information that is “contextually likely” at best.
4. Festival medical teams, security, and law enforcement are not drug or drug checking experts and are unqualified to make confirmatory claims about what drugs are involved in any medical emergency, even if it seems likely.
   1. There are tens of thousands of drugs circulating on the illicit market right now. The best that a medical professional can do is convey – verbatim – what the patient says they think they took, how the patient presented, and their medical opinion on what seems likely/possible.
      1. This doesn’t mean the patient was telling the truth or that they were correct about what they took.

Contextually unlikely (“assumptive”): The claim doesn’t really add up, includes conflicting information, and/or comes from a game of telephone wherein the original source(s) of the claim are not directly presenting their findings.

1. This is especially problematic when the claim, if true, would represent a first-of-its-kind scenario but doesn’t have hard evidence behind it.
2. Contextually unlikely claims that include hard language like “x is y” or “confirmed” are generally immediately flagged as being hearsay. Using such certain language is dishonest about the limitations of what can be known without confirmation.
3. Most things are technically, theoretically possible, and unfortunately we are frequently in a position of disproving exceedingly unlikely claims about drugs that gain media attention.
   1. A particularly annoying example of this is the urban legend of fentanyl absorption through the skin, which has recently been debunked (yet again) through a scientific journal documenting someone who spilled fentanyl all over his ungloved hand (with a cut on it), washed his hand, and went about his merry way without incident.
   2. There are always outlier situations, but contextually unlikely claims rarely acknowledge the fact that it is much more likely for something to be false and/or misinterpreted than one of the one-in-a-million edge cases that would make it true.

Confirmed false (“debunked”): The claim has been directly disproven and is not factual.

1. A prime example of this was the 2002 incident wherein Dr. George Ricaurte accidentally conducted a study on monkeys using methamphetamine instead of MDMA, causing a moral and scientific panic because the study results showed that MDMA destroyed dopamine neurons en masse (which is false).
   1. This contextually unlikely incident flew in the face of everything known about MDMA and received enormous media attention, but the study’s retraction several months later was barely acknowledged. Its harmful impacts linger to this day.
2. A claim must have evidence presented against it to move from being contextually unlikely to confirmed false, so it’s common for most claims to remain in the former category unless proven otherwise. This is why we give so little weight to contextually unlikely claims.

On the basis of this grading scale, we deem the Electric Forest situation contextually unlikely for the following reasons:

• Providers supplied inconsistent information to the third party who reported the claim.
• No information has been directly quoted from any of the individuals involved – medical, patients, or witnesses alike – including symptoms, timelines, medical conditions, physical health at the time of admittance, etc.
  • Narcan and CPR are standard procedures at festivals when responding to someone who is unresponsive (or unconscious). A patient awakening after receiving one or both of these measures of treatment is not a confirmatory indicator that the person was undergoing opioid overdose as opposed to one of many other reasons.
• The language used to present this information suggested that it was confirmatory (i.e. advanced drug checking, toxicology, symptom reports, and direct information from identified responders) despite insufficient evidence.
  • Statements made on site by medical or law enforcement are not confirmatory.
• The claim does not include any disclaimers about the limitations of the information behind it.
• If confirmed, this claim would represent a one-in-a-million, first-of-its-kind outlier case. Given that it does not currently have sufficient evidence behind it, this possibility does not merit consideration.

The following are red flags indicating that the certainty of information is being inflated:

1. Hard statements that a specific drug was definitely involved in a medical incident based on drug checking performed in the field OR symptomatic observation in the field, which are never confirmatory (contextually likely at best)
2. No quotes from individual(s) involved directly in observing, experiencing, or responding to the incident; no easy paper trail to know exactly who provided the information or made the claim
   1. Having specific information about the credentials, qualifications, and observations of someone reporting information about a claim helps paint a picture of their biases and the limitations of their knowledge/resources
   2. Not having this information removes accountability for inflated claims and makes it impossible to verify any specifics about the situation beyond what is reported through the grapevine
3. Quotes from law enforcement officers or field medics as hard evidence that a particular drug was involved in a situation
4. Strong, certain language about drug(s) involved – from any source – without lab or toxicology verification
5. Lack of acknowledgment of the limitations of the information that’s being presented
6. Declaring fentanyl overdose exclusively on the basis that Narcan was used and the person regained consciousness (article on this coming soon)
7. Claims about debunked or contextually unlikely routes of administration such as transdermal fentanyl absorption (debunked), injection attacks (debunked/contextually unlikely), or powder being blown into someone’s face (contextually unlikely)

It’s okay to not have all the information that’s needed to make a confirmatory statement about a given situation. It’s okay to announce that the cause of an emergency isn’t clear yet, and advise caution in the meantime (as long as there’s follow-up afterwards). It is not okay, however, to advertise a confirmatory statement when it is only contextually likely, or – more problematically – contextually unlikely.

Disseminating contextually unlikely information as though it’s confirmed true is the reason why we’re still going around disproving claims about fentanyl-laced weed. The spread of contextually unlikely claims distracts educational efforts around things that are actually happening and threatening people’s lives on a daily basis. This is not to say that contextually unlikely things are impossible, or couldn’t start happening in the future, but they definitely should not be prioritized.

Way too many people are dying from fentanyl-contaminated cocaine – and way too few people are testing their drugs – for the world to suddenly shift its attention to the one-in-a-million, contextually unlikely scenario of fentanyl-contaminated mushrooms. Once the majority of the world has basic, foundational drug education available, we can move on to discussing the outliers. Until then, these kinds of lengthy conversations about contextually unlikely scenarios might actually be costing lives, especially when major media outlets use them as fuel for anti-drug rhetoric.

A few final notes:

1. You can’t test your mushrooms for fentanyl, and we do not want you to focus on figuring out how to. Testing organic material with the strips can be really tricky and is currently not relevant at all, including with cannabis. If anything changes in the illicit market we’ll update this directive, but it doesn’t seem likely.
2. Everyone needs to become familiar with the symptoms of opioid overdose, as well as the symptoms of panic. Opioid overdose looks like gradually slowing down and falling asleep, NOT feeling faint and sweaty and like your heart is beating out of your chest.
   1. People die from opioid overdose because their respiration and heart rate get so slow they enter cardiac arrest from lack of oxygen. Erratic behavior is NOT a sign of opioid overdose.
3. Either your mushrooms are shrooms, or they’re not-shrooms. Use The Shroomery to help with mushroom identification. Wild harvesting psilocybin mushrooms might lead you to accidentally picking something poisonous.
4. Read our instructions whenever you test your drugs. We’ve worked extremely hard to produce the most comprehensive instructions in the world that we’re aware of, and you can find PDFs of them for free on our website at www.dancesafe.org/shop.

With discretion,

DanceSafe