Luigi Mangione: 5 things to know about alleged UnitedHealthcare CEO killer

4. Psychedelic mushrooms and deconstructing religious beliefs

Mangione's social media was replete with interactions related to psychedelic drugs and New Age teachings, which some users speculated he could have been exploring as a solution to his chronic pain.

Luigi Mangione interacted a LOT with content regarding:

-Psychoactives
-Psychedelics
-Mushrooms/Micro-dosing
-Depression
-The Human Psyche
-Deconstructing his religious beliefs

I think Luigi Mangione could have taken a bad mushroom trip and went insane. pic.twitter.com/zsK2Z6PBzF

— Evan Kilgore ???????? (@EvanAKilgore) December 10, 2024

Political commentator Evan Kilgore noted that Mangione, whose X account featured a mushroom-like Pokémon character, had extensively interacted with posts and accounts related to microdosing psilocybin, also known as "magic mushrooms."

The hallucinogenic substance is illegal in most jurisdictions in the United States, though some cities have decriminalized it and Johns Hopkins has been exploring it as treatment for depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and other mental illnesses.

Kilgore also noted that some of the books Mangione expressed interest in on his Goodreads account included several about mushrooms and "spiritual enlightenment." One of the books includes The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle, a mystic promoted by Oprah Winfrey who is not a Christian and teaches that Jesus Christ was not divine, but rather an enlightened being who had hidden teachings.

Kilgore speculated without evidence that Mangione's alleged homicide could have been induced by "a bad mushroom trip" that drove him insane.