Wood-lover paralysis probed in death of magic mushroom tea drinker

3 months ago 12

A Melbourne mother who died after consuming magic mushroom tea at a wellness retreat may have experienced a rare phenomenon known as “wood-lover paralysis”.

Rachael Dixon, 53, a personal trainer from Ringwood North, died hours after drinking a psychedelic beverage at an event run by healer Deanne Mathews, also known as Diane Matthews.

Coroner Audrey Jamieson this week released new details about the death and Dixon’s experience at Soul Barn in Clunes, near Ballarat, on April 13 in 2024.

This included that the 53-year-old’s symptoms before she collapsed were consistent with wood-lover paralysis. This, she said, was a poorly understood phenomenon often linked to psychedelic mushrooms.

Born in New Zealand, Dixon moved to Australia in her 20s after some time working as an electrician in the army. She married in 2002 and had a son the following year. While she later separated from her husband Richard Mountain, they remained close.

“Rachael had a passion for fitness and healthy living. Throughout her life she held various jobs including as a myotherapist and personal trainer. She is fondly remembered as someone who was ‘always happy, laughing and positive’,” Jamieson said.

Dixon struggled with mental health challenges and even though her ex-husband was against drugs, he believes she saw magic mushrooms as “a natural thing”, and in the years leading up to her death, experimented increasingly with psilocybin.

Jamieson said Dixon first met Mathews in 2016 to learn reiki, an alternative healing therapy originating in Japan. In 2022, the healer sent Dixon a copy of a 28-day micro-dosing book on using psilocybin at home, which she advertised as a “$500 investment”.

More recently, Mathews began renting the Soul Barn property where she held healing sessions which she described as “an intimate group of people together [who] consume magic mushrooms for the purpose of healing”.

The retreats cost money and the magic mushrooms were sourced by her, the coroner said, before they were ground into a powder.

“Participants begin the ritual by ingesting blue lotus, to help ‘relax the body in preparation for the journey’. They consume rice with a ‘small sprinkle’ of mushroom and perform a round of breath work. Participants consume the mushroom power, brewed into a tea, in two servings,” the coroner said.

“According to Deanne, the first dose contains between 1 and 3 grams of mushroom powder, ‘depending on how much they want’.

“In the eighteen months prior to her death, Rachael attended all sessions Deanne held at Soul Barn – approximately every three months. According to Deanne, Rachael consumed the mushrooms on each occasion ‘without any problem’,” the coroner said.

“However, Richard recalled differently. According to him, Rachael told him about her most recent experience at Soul Barn: ‘She said that she had had a bad experience. She said that she went to a dark place and didn’t feel great after that consumption of psilocybin.’ Rachael believed this was because ‘they had upped her dose of the psilocybin’.”

On April 13, 2024, Dixon left home for a retreat at Soul Barn, telling her family, “she thought this was going to be her big breakthrough moment”.

After consuming the tea she began crying, before falling and being taken outside for fresh air.

“There is little evidence from other participants regarding the events of the evening – noting that they were under the influence of psychedelics at the time,” Jamieson said.

“One participant recalls that at approximately 11.20pm, she heard Rachael say ‘help’. ”

She died at 12.45am. Her cause of death is unascertained.

As part of her investigation, the coroner said a search of the coronial databases identified 20 deaths in Victoria between 2014 and 2025 where psilocybin was detected in forensic toxicology.

She said her attention was also drawn to a toxidrome called “wood-lover paralysis” associated with the magic mushrooms and characterised by transient weakness anywhere from 10 minutes to 18 hours after consumption that can affect limbs, swallowing and breathing.

The coroner agreed Dixon’s symptoms were consistent with the condition but stopped short of finding it contributed to her death.

On March 15, 2025, Mathews, 54, was fined $3000 after pleading guilty to trafficking the illicit substance.

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