A few hours later, the youth was rushed to Kona Hospital with multiple, self-inflicted stab wounds after he started hallucinating and became violent. He was admitted to the hospital with both deep and superficial lacerations to his face and stomach.

"I came home and went upstairs. I was having a good trip when for some reason, I don't know, I became confused. Then I did it, but I don't really remember why," the Konawaena High School student said in a telephone interview.

I wasn't visualizing demons or anything. I totally remember everything except being carried down to the ambulance. Why I did it and why I went in to take another shower, I don't know," he said. "I remember I was in the bedroom and just stood up. I remember turning around and grabbing the knife, then I just did it."

The young man, who also holds a part-time job, said he cut his face and stabbed himself in the stomach.

The teen who has since been released from the hospital and is recuperating at home, said he had eaten mushrooms several times previously with no bad effects.

He said a week ago Friday he ate "a small handful...I've eaten more than that before." Although he says he has found three psychedelic types of mushrooms growing in Hawaii, identified from pictures in books about mushrooms and calls them by their scientific names, he called the kind he ate last week "conehead."

"They were big one-inchers," he said, adding they were sticking out of cow paddies in Makua fields. He had eaten that kind twice before with no bad effect.

"They were smaller before, but that is the only difference I can think of. I wouldn't ever, ever eat a mushroom I wasn't sure of," he said.

He said he and his friend ate the mushrooms fresh this time, although they were collecting and bagging them for drying. "It's not as bad to eat them dried, because they taste really bad," the youth explained. He said mushrooms are not always available, but are frequent after a day of "real wet rain and cloudy sunshine." He said he's probably eaten them less than half a dozen times in the year-and-a-half since he started eating them. The youth's mother permitted him to be interview about his experience because she said she was concerned that other people may be unaware of the possible pitfalls of picking mushrooms and eating them. <"He just walked down the stairs, bleeding. I didn't really understand what had happened. I thought it was a joke, that he was using Vampire's blood (make-up)," the youth's mother said.

He came home in the early evening after taking the mushrooms in the presence of a group of friends, according to his mother, and went upstairs to his room after telling her he wasn't hungry and didn't want any dinner.

"After a couple of hours up there, he decided he was freaking out so he tried taking a shower," the mother said, adding the shower didn't help and the young man became violent. "He was flailing out at things. He was pretty strong, in spite of his wounds," she said.

Her sons' friend also had "a very bad reaction" to the mushrooms the pair consumed, the woman added. "He thought he was going to die. He made himself throw up."

When asked if they might have picked the wrong-kind of mushroom, she replied, "They know what to look for."

The woman said she has not really questioned her son about the details of the incident but was concerned that others should be made aware of the possible effects of eating magic mushrooms.

She said she has heard "a lot" of people, high school-aged kids as well as adults talking about eating the psychedelic mushrooms.

She says she has never heard of anyone having a toxic or violent reaction to magic mushrooms and she was also unaware that they are illegal. "I've never heard of anybody worrying about it," she said.

"I never knew they were illegal myself," her 17-year-old son said. "I never heard of any law against it like marijuana."

Checks with big Island health and law enforcement authorities show little experience of knowledge of problems locally caused by people eating psilocybin mushrooms. Possession and distribution of the magic mushrooms are felonies in Hawaii.

Howard Medeiros, director of Awareness House, Hilo's drug treatment program, said he was unaware of any instances of drug abuse through the consumption of mushrooms. He said he suspected mushrooms may be secondary to other drug usage.

Psychiatrist Sam Paltin, head of the Hawaii Community Mental Health Center, said he is aware some segments of the community are using mushrooms "very informally," as opposed to a regular basis. But he said he has not heard of any toxic reactions and the consumption of mushrooms is not a factor in his clients' lives.

"One guy I know is going into the business of raising the mushrooms because you don't have the problems of Green Harvest and it's not that hard to grow them," Paltin said. When told Psilocybin is illegal, he added: "He was probably kidding."

A statewide Department of Health survey released last month indicated more than 75,000 residents would admit they have experimented with such hallucinogens as LSD and magic mushrooms. Keith Cernal, the DOH statistician, said he has no specific evidence to support it, but he believes the consumption of mushrooms would be more prevalent on the Big Island than other hallucinogens such as peyote or mescaline.

Michael Moore, a Department of Health drug specialist, said psilocybin is a naturally produced "pseudo-hallucinogen" that is chemically related to LSD. He said mushrooms are less potent than LSD and the effects generally occur within 30 minutes of consumption and last four to 10 hours.

"Research indicates there is no physical addiction to psilocybin but a tolerance tot he drug's effect does develop, requiring greater amounts over a period of time," Moore said, adding he has never heard that psilocybin accumulates in the body and would believe that to be false.

He said psilocybin is a fungus that occurs in about twenty types of mushrooms, found primarily in Europe and North America, with some strains found in Mexico and South America. He added that only one variety is found in Hawaii, to his knowledge.

The health department drug specialist said the mushrooms are found in cow fields and other natural settings.

"They have sort of a goldish cup on top. When you pick it, press the stem and if it turns to purple on your fingers, that's it," Moore said, explaining that is the rule of thumb street people use to identify the psychedelic mushrooms. The blue or purple staining is the oxidation of the psilocybin, he added.

"If you eat the wrong ones, you can die. There are numerous cases of young people being rushed to the hospital and having part of their abdomen removed.

Moore said there is no way to tell how much of the hallucinogenic agent is in each mushroom. "It's a hit-or-miss thing."

Dr. William G. Cooper, the Kona doctor of osteopathy who treated the Big Island youth who suffered the bad reaction last week, warned against eating the mushrooms.

"For those who say 'Oh, I've done it before and it's safe,' it's not safe, even if in fact you've done it before and done it safely," Cooper said, adding users can't be sure they are ingesting the same amount of psilocybin even if they consumed the same amount of mushrooms.

"The main message is: don't get false security from it and of course, you certainly shouldn't encourage other people to do it. hallucinogens have no predictable effect," Cooper said.