A Chinese man, high on magic mushrooms and alcohol, tried to climb out of his 27th-floor flat to become immortal. He was sliding down a pipe when his friend on the 26th floor pulled him to safety in a dramatic rescue.
A man, completely high after mixing magic mushrooms with alcohol, climbed out of his 27th-floor apartment window. He later told people he was ‘training’ himself to overcome suffering and become immortal. The man, a 40-year-old named Xu from Yunnan in southwest China, had eaten a type of magic mushroom called Jianshouqing.
From the 27th floor to immortality
Xu later said he was in a daze when he tried to climb out of his 27th-floor flat’s window. He first tried to climb up but couldn’t. Then, he tried to use a pipe to climb, but his stomach scraped against it, and he started sliding down.
Just then, his friend on the 26th floor heard a noise. When he looked out the window, he saw Xu sliding down the pipe. In a nail-biting rescue, the friend managed to pull Xu into his apartment, the South China Morning Post reported.
A Chinese fantasy novel plot
Right after the rescue, Xu was rushed to a hospital, but he slipped into a coma. He was then moved to a hospital linked with Yunnan University. There, he was treated by a Dr. Xu, who is famous for treating hallucinations caused by magic mushrooms.
Dr. Xu said they had to make Xu have diarrhoea several times to flush the poison out of his system. Xu had eaten two portions of the Jianshouqing mushroom. He cooked the first part in a curry and ate it one day. The next morning, before the high wore off, he ate the second part with alcohol. This made the effect much stronger and he lost all sense of reality, Dr. Xu explained.
Xu started believing that his family was calling him to “train himself to overcome hardship and achieve immortality.” This is a common theme you see in Chinese fantasy novels.
The ‘Blue Hand’ mushroom
Jianshouqing is a poisonous mushroom also known as the ‘blue hand’. It gets this name because it stains your hand blue when you cut it. Dr. Xu added that these mushrooms are safe to eat only if they are cooked at 120 degrees Celsius for at least 15 minutes to remove the poison.
He also mentioned that every year, from June to August, many people from Yunnan province end up in the hospital after eating such poisonous mushrooms.
After he got better, Xu told the media that he had been cooking and eating Jianshouqing for years. But this time, it wasn’t cooked properly, which caused the problem. He said the experience terrified him and he has now promised to never drink, smoke, or eat magic mushrooms again. On social media, many people commented that Xu’s ‘journey to immortality’ would have surely ended in death if his friend hadn’t spotted him in time.