Skip to content

Never eat a wild mushroom identified from a website. This one helps you rule things out. It cannot rule anything in.

Mr Mushroom
← All syndromes

Unpleasant

Coprine, the alcohol reaction

Coprine

Onset after the meal

20 minutes to 2 hours after drinking, and the mushroom may have been eaten days earlier

Inside six hours, which is the reassuring side of the line, with one qualification: a mixed wild meal can produce an early reaction that hides a late one.

Attacks

Alcohol metabolism

What it does

Sudden flushing of the face and neck, a pounding heart, throbbing headache, nausea and a powerful sense of impending doom. It is the same mechanism as the drug disulfiram used to treat alcoholism.

How it runs

Passes within a few hours and does lasting harm only in people with heart disease.

Treatment

Supportive. Avoid alcohol entirely for at least three days after eating the mushroom.

The catch

The delay is what makes it strange. The mushroom is harmless alone, and the reaction can be triggered by a drink taken up to about three days later, so people blame the drink and never connect it to a meal from earlier in the week.

Species that cause it

This is reference material, not clinical guidance and not a substitute for a poison centre. If somebody is unwell after eating a wild mushroom, call one now, tell them the interval between the meal and the first symptom, and keep an uncooked specimen.