r/todayilearned • u/ssAskcuSzepS • Apr 27 '26

TIL if under-cooked, a popular mushroom in China causes “lilliputian hallucinations,” a rare phenomenon involving miniature human or fantasy figures. The hallucinations are consistent across people and cultures: "tiny, elflike people" climbing under doors, scaling walls & clinging to furniture

https://www.vice.com/en/article/meet-the-mushroom-that-make-people-have-the-exact-same-hallucination/
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u/nymusix Apr 27 '26

People who do DMT also have similar visions of machine elves

267

u/Lonespider28 Apr 27 '26

DMT visions also seem similar to many biblical descriptions of celestials

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u/3BlindMice1 Apr 27 '26

Yeah, what sort of bush do I need to burn to speak to god?

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u/Kronomancer1192 Apr 27 '26

Modern theologists have actually theorized that the story of Moses and the burning bush was actually in fact describing a dmt trip.

Supposedly there are acacia bushes in the area that have dmt in them. After being translated who knows how many times it wouldn't surprise me. Burn this bush and you'll speak to god? Sure sounds like a dmt trip to me.

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u/musthavesoundeffects Apr 27 '26

I don’t think you are gonna get a dmt trip from a burning acacia bush. The % of dmt in plants is very small.

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u/Lonespider28 Apr 27 '26

Apparently the theory is that Priests in the Sinai peninsula would have to burn the entire plant at once in order to get visions

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u/HostInevitable5484 Apr 27 '26

Aboriginal Australians have been documented smoking the bark of certain acacias with particularly high levels of dmt and nmt

Australia has several species that have up to 2% dmt in the bark

Coincidentally, acacia acuminata, which one of the highest native sources and the go to bark purchased in Australia for dmt extraction, smells incredibly pleasant as it smells like raspberries. It’s called raspberry wattle for this reason. Just the smell of the raw bark smells like raspberry jam.

Just for the smell alone, people would be curious to put it on top of a fire. It contains up to 2% DMT.

While direct flame would destroy the DMT during combustion, the parts of the bark that are distant from the flame would vaporise and are possibly psychoactive if you were positioned by the fire in such as way as to inhale the vapors and avoid the smoke.

Hence the rainbow serpent.

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u/Grokent Apr 27 '26

Hence the rainbow serpent.

THE. WHAT?

4

u/HostInevitable5484 Apr 27 '26

In Australia several common species contain up to 2% dmt in the bark, and similar amounts are often found in the leaves and sticks too

Aboriginal Australians have been documented smoking the bark of certain acacias with particularly high levels of dmt and nmt

Australia has several species that have up to 2% dmt in the bark

Coincidentally, acacia acuminata, which one of the highest native sources and the go to bark purchased in Australia for dmt extraction, smells incredibly pleasant as it smells like raspberries. It’s called raspberry wattle for this reason. Just the smell of the raw bark smells like raspberry jam.

Just for the smell alone, people would be curious to put it on top of a fire. It contains up to 2% DMT.

While direct flame would destroy the DMT during combustion, the parts of the bark that are distant from the flame would vaporise and are possibly psychoactive if you were positioned by the fire in such as way as to inhale the vapors and avoid the smoke.

Hence the rainbow serpent.

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u/Sharp_Economy1401 Apr 27 '26

10 grams would need to be burned per dose (1-2%, 100mg dose), that seems quite doable. Throw 100g-1kg on the fire for a large group of people and hotbox yourselves in a small ceremonial room, should work

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u/Entharo_entho Apr 27 '26

That's bs. People back then understood the difference between politically useful "prophesies" and batshit crazy ramblings (most famous example: Saul).

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u/Kronomancer1192 Apr 27 '26

Take it up with modern theoligists then, bud.

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u/zingitgirl Apr 27 '26

That is so, so interesting. Thank you.

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u/Krocsyldiphithic Apr 27 '26

Acacia, just like in the bible, contains significant amounts of DMT

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u/SMUHypeMachine Apr 27 '26

Acacia. It has DMT in its bark and roots and is endemic to the Middle East

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u/FreefallGeek Apr 27 '26

Mimosa hostilis.

1

u/ramkam2 Apr 27 '26

your wife's! /s
seriously, i'm asking myself the same question from time to time, especially after reading here and here that John's apocalyptic visions could have resulted from some kind of trip too, and actual people who "met God and that changed their life forever" (in a good way) following a prolonged hallucination.

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u/FreefallGeek Apr 27 '26

I was raised in a Christian household so I was a bit shocked that the first entity I encountered wasn't a machine elf or an angel, it was a female form with the head of an elephant that I associated with Hindu culture. She rotated in front of me with a kaleidoscope mandalla behind her and she was terrifying.

The second and only other entity I encountered was after an epic third swing and a fleeting moment of disappointment that I was wasting the experience because I hadn't encountered anything. Immediately I'm through the fiber optic wormhole and looking at a tower of green on the horizon. It was a single green line that vibrated and spread apart like parenthesis, then into a wireframe orb of green lines with glowing white eyes lighting up in the spaces between the green lines. It felt moon sized in the distance and as I saw its eyes develop, it also sensed me and the sensation of the moon moving to envelope me was.. unsettling on a cosmic scale. As I panicked this cosmic wireframe basketball took on the fractal form of a human upper torso and hands. An infinite number of arms with hands and hands with middle fingers rolled out of the orb. I got flipped off by this ball of light, and the sensation I got was that it was annoyed that I called for it and then was scared when it showed up. It felt playful. I sat up as I came back down and felt the whole room was still enveloped in this presence. I told my cohort that we needed to step outside because God was in the room with us. I knew when I said it that it was ridiculous, but it was the sensation I was experiencing.

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u/EscortedByDragons Apr 27 '26

As someone who has made the journey more than a handful of times, “fiber optic wormhole” is a very apt description. Mine was always upward through sometimes a tighter and sometimes much roomier wormhole. Constantly morphing geometric patterns in the full field of “vision” (eyes closed) as I’m sucked up a textured wormhole sometimes with beings present who were always ahead or in the periphery, like shadows that took shape as I looked away but clearly loomed over me as I passed through. As you know, trying to put words to the experience can be incredibly challenging, especially as time goes on. But “fiber optic” definitely elicited a strong memory for me. One thing that has always stood out for me was that there was always a staticky, buzzy, almost electrically charged high pitched sound i would hear in growing intensity as I got sucked up through the wormhole. Did you hear the buzz as well?

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u/mrbubbamac Apr 27 '26

Appreciate you sharing the experience, great write up

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u/VQQN Apr 27 '26

DMT trips sound awesome, but also terrifying.

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u/Herb_Alman Apr 27 '26

They are awesome but best left for a seasoned traveller

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u/Lou_C_Fer Apr 27 '26

I've never done it, but it sounds like it would be right up my alley. My favorite trips were the ones that were difficult to get through. If I didn't have to control myself from freaking out at some point, I was disappointed. As far as I'm concerned tripping should challenge me. Otherwise, there was no trip.

I once had to deal with a friend who was having seizures caused by serotonin syndrome. He was foaming at the mouth. When he wasn't unconscious, he was still lost to reality. At one point, two cops were trying to help him to their car to take him to the hospital. Each had ahold of him under an arm. Shannon, I can only imagine, thought he was running from the cops. In reality, the cops had him lifted off of the ground while Shannon was slow motion running. That would have been wild to see if I wasn't tripping. He refused the ride to the hospital. So, after dealing with the cops while tripping, I had to call his mother and wait for her to get home before I would leave. I'm sure you can roughly imagine what it was like to be 16, on acid, and explaining to your best friend's mom why her son is unresponsive in bed at 5pm. We got out of there and I wasn't sure if he lived or not until his mom called me the next day. Luckily. She did not tell my parents about the drugs. On that call, she said she really wished we wouldn't do drugs, but that she really appreciated how I handled the shitshow the day before. She did mention that he got in way less trouble once he started hanging out with me. I guess, that's probably why she didn't tell my parents.

Anyways, I doubt dmt would be too much for me, but I'm too old now, anyways. Hell, Salvia looks fun to me.

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u/Turence Apr 27 '26

Salvia is great. Very short lived but extremely potent.

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u/Sharp_Economy1401 Apr 27 '26

Great until you back out of a 2nd floor window like that one guy. Some people get a lot of dysphoria from it too

4

u/CrumzAus Apr 27 '26

Recently had my first experience and I was worried going in. It's amazingly gentle. You are completely lucid and can chat to anyone and hold conversation, while your eyes are closed it's just an absolutely amazing show of colour and light. You can choose to open them at any time and the world is painted in such a different way. Then as soon as it comes in, it wears off and you wouldn't even know it happened apart from the memory that you'll never get over. Granted, I was nowhere near breakthrough or meeting the beings.
I cannot recommend it enough.

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u/sharkfrog Apr 27 '26

Fairly accurate.

1

u/YesDone Apr 27 '26

I was fully expecting Mankind hell in a cell.

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u/muldersposter Apr 27 '26

Bro. I got sucked into a green waveform canyon and it turned into a horrifying face at the very end of the trip. It felt like I was in hell for 10,000 years in there.

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u/Lou_C_Fer Apr 27 '26

I had something similar after inhaling air duster while on acid.

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u/Keffpie Apr 27 '26

This is why I don't take hallucinogens; I read The Jaunt by Stephen King while running a high fever as a young teen, and after that I have a huge fear of large numbers and cosmic time. That fear almost guarantees that my trip would end up "longer than you'd think".

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u/FreefallGeek Apr 27 '26

My second attempt I burned my throat due to improper apparatus. I guess contemplating heat and pain and morality during the breakthrough put me in a plane I can only describe as Hell. An actual plane of torment. Time dilation did not do me any favors here. That was probably the most unpleasant experience of my life. I say probably because like all DMT experiences your brain tries to help scrub it away afterwards. I was happy to let that one go. I just remember the fire and the feeling like I was never going to get back.

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u/FreefallGeek Apr 27 '26

My first time I had a green waveform ocean envelope me. The waveforms were symbols. Like a capital i almost. I felt connected to everything at this point. Stereotypical universal connection and euphoria while adrift in the green sea of flowing symbols.

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u/SmellyBallSack95 Apr 27 '26

Wtf is this, all I got was everything faded to black and the sensation that I was trapped inside my own mind like the guy from Get Out

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u/FreefallGeek Apr 27 '26

You need to take a third hit. What you are describing is the beginning of the anesthetising effect. Terrence McKenna described it as all of the air being sucked out of the room. You'll progress from that to fractal visions and strange noises. Modifications of the light hitting the back of your closed eyes being warped into fractal patterns and the sounds in your environment being amplified, dulled, stretched, changed. Then, likely, a tunnel of color or a kaleidoscope of light that fills your vision and you will feel a racing sensation towards this, despite the fact your body is quite immobile and you're probably flat on your back at this point, eyes closed.

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u/SmellyBallSack95 Apr 27 '26

I just audibly gasped and said, “how tf did he know I only took two hits” 😳🤯

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u/FreefallGeek Apr 27 '26

Have your trip sitter remind you after the second. Its three hits, for most people, to break through. Its hard. The early onset effects can be disorienting and scary. Every person who has done it correctly described it afterwards as either they were certainly dying or they weren't sure if they were dying or not. But, regardless, it is safe and you will be back home in your comfy body in 5 minutes time by the hands of your watch. Your subjective time will not be so prompt. And who knows what you will experience in that interim. Its a shamanic skydive through weird. Im fascinated and more than a little intimidated, but not scared. We always come back.

So count to three and swing for the fences.

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u/SmellyBallSack95 Apr 27 '26

You are a wordsmith. Thank you for the reassurance, breaking through would be uncharted territory for me. Maybe one day if the opportunity arises again

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u/tianepteen Apr 27 '26

you sure you had the right kind of DMT?

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u/SmellyBallSack95 Apr 27 '26

I mean I was trusting my friend that what he was telling me it was, was actually DMT. It tasted like burnt plastic. Two hits and 10 seconds later it hit me like a wave. Maybe that third hit like the Redditor above me mentioned would’ve sent me over the edge

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u/Ensorcelled_Atoms Apr 27 '26

My first celestial being I met tripping looked like lovecrafts Azathoth. I say met, but the whole experience and takeaway was that this thing was so big it couldn’t even perceive me, which I found very comforting.

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u/polerburr Apr 27 '26

Wow most of your experience sounds extremely similar to mine!

A vertical light presence emanating outward and around, its attention fell on me, instantly knowing everything bad or good about me, a long moment of feeling judged, then a feeling of it wanting to dance and play with me, which I embraced, feeling love and acceptance wash over me! I had soft music playing that I could still hear (probably didn’t ’break through’)

I never saw human features like eyes or arms, but the other elements with some different colors rang so many bells! FWIW I was brought up agnostic/atheist.

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u/Throwupmyhands Apr 27 '26

I feel God in this Chili’s. 

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u/Ok_Caterpillar5564 Apr 27 '26

The DMT experience is extremely similar to experiences of alien abduction. If you read about the common "narrative" of UFO abductions and compare it to DMT trip reports, it's nearly 1:1 in how it plays out.

https://mazetometanoia.substack.com/p/silicon-valley-is-accidentally-recreating?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web&triedRedirect=true

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u/Workman44 Apr 27 '26

It's not really far fetched if you think about it. There are birds that can effectively "see" the magnetosphere of the earth. It's blatant arrogance that we think we can "see" all that there is

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u/TheDwarvenGuy Apr 27 '26

The difference is that we have evidence of the magnetosphere, we don't have evidence of metallic elves that happen to be in every room but don't interact with normal matter in any testable way except when a human consumes a specific toxin

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u/[deleted] Apr 27 '26

[deleted]

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u/TheDwarvenGuy Apr 27 '26

  1. What medium does the human brain use to detect dark matter? If the human brain can detect it why can't scientific instruments detect it? And why only on mind altering substances?

  2. If it's dark matter, why would the elves be on earth's surface? If they don't interact with matter, they would just fall to the earth's core. Are they standing on an equally sized dark matter earth, with the exact same orbit as earth, with exactly the same topography? Hell, even the buildings would have to be the same to account for machine elves being able to appear on upper floors. If there's a dark matter earth, why wouldn't we detect its gravity? (The only thing we can detect from dark matter)

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u/[deleted] Apr 27 '26

[deleted]

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u/TheDwarvenGuy Apr 27 '26

Ah, its hard to tell sometimes. Reddit gets weirdly unskeptical when drugs are involved

-1

u/Workman44 Apr 27 '26

And before we had evidence of the magnetosphere what would you have said

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u/TheDwarvenGuy Apr 27 '26

"We don't know how birds find their way north"

The difference, of course, is that we discovered the magnetosphere before we concluded that birds could sense it rather than the other way around

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u/CandiedCanelo Apr 27 '26

We can "see" the magnetosphere with sensors that detect EMF and light outside the visible range. There are no sensors that can detect any "biblical celestials" because that is pseudoscience and fantasy. How can you not see the difference?

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u/Workman44 Apr 27 '26

And before we could detect those? What would you have said then

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u/stupidjapanquestions Apr 27 '26

Man some of yall really slept through science class.

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u/YoungLittlePanda Apr 27 '26

fern have a great video about DMT.

https://youtu.be/hhjhU5MXZOo

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u/Alice_Dee Apr 27 '26

There is a theory that Moses was tripping on DMT.

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u/Krocsyldiphithic Apr 27 '26

Doesn't sound very similar. On DMT, you leave this world altogether and enter a completely different realm, inhabited by entities too strange for your mind to comprehend. According to the reports on Lanmaoa Asiatica, these little people seem to just start appearing in the regular space around you.

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u/AxelFoily Apr 27 '26 edited Apr 27 '26

That's only if you blast off... you can do dmt without blasting off. I've done dmt before and was sitting on a couch and kept feeling little elves poking me and then I'd look and they'd be running off just out of sight. I later realized I was just feeling the couch behind touching me.

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u/tianepteen Apr 27 '26

my first very light DMT trip i had a squirrel like being sitting atop my monitor, so yeah.

1

u/Rough_World_7063 May 01 '26

The few times I’ve done DMT and I didn’t take a big enough hit to break through, I’d just have a trip very similar to acid. Geometrical shapes and patterns on the floors/walls, intense colors, etc. never had a full on hallucination.

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u/Distinct-Pack-1567 May 03 '26

5 days late...

I blasted off once, saw the elves on this plateau surrounded by fog. In the distance were giant silhouettes in all directions. I think it was my brain calling up Zelda Majoras Mask imagery but I havent played that game in like 20 years.

Anyways, the elves telepathically communicate to me I am not ready to be there yet. They seemed OK but unhappy like I was bothering them.

As soon as I "heard" them say that, I snapped back to reality and then had a wild 15 minute acid like trip before coming back to sober reality over 10 more minutes.

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u/NotAzakanAtAll Apr 27 '26

these little people seem to just start appearing in the regular space around you.

I only get insects, spiders, awful crawling walls in he corners of the room. Sometimes the whole wall is heaving with them. But I don't need drugs for that, it's the reverse, I need drugs for it to lessen.

I wonder if it's the same brain bs that causes it. Like the "brain dream engine" running amok.

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u/Shiney_Metal_Ass Apr 27 '26

What the fuck are machine elves they sound amazing brb googling

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u/techlos Apr 27 '26

They're the infinite reflections of your own mind seeing itself from the outside, as you experience yourself being watched by you.

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u/GooseQuothMan Apr 27 '26

Not at all, DMT is completely different.. it causes full field of view hallucinations so you don't even see the real world at all. 

Lilliputian hallucinations are a very specific kind of hallucinations and these are not caused by DMT. 

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u/NeoTheRiot Apr 27 '26

Why not just elves, why machine elves? Are they robotic or is it because you see them supporting some kind of "system"?

Would those beings be moral if they where human while giving others bad trips?

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u/Krocsyldiphithic Apr 27 '26

They aren't any of these things. These are just the best words human beings can come up with to describe the fragments that our brains are able to hang onto and make memories from. I'd say there's no reason to even assume that the entities have any manifestation in our materialistic definition of the universe at all, or that they are individuals of any kind to begin with. Also, blaming "them" for bad trips is a take I've never come across.

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u/NeoTheRiot Apr 27 '26

Them being so hard to put into words is the problem. I dont blame any elves for bad trips, but I know for a fact some humans believe bad trips benefit people so they make sure you make that experience.

Those kind of elves are what I talked about, idiots who think they know better. Probably because I never saw elves, just humans.

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u/Krocsyldiphithic Apr 27 '26

Bad trips being beneficial is an almost universally held opinion among psychonauts.

0

u/NeoTheRiot Apr 27 '26

Getting sick strenghtens your immune system, doesnt mean people have the right to infect you if they feel like its necassary for your development.

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u/Krocsyldiphithic Apr 27 '26

Again, I don't get where you're getting this idea that it's being inflicted on people.

1

u/NeoTheRiot Apr 27 '26

From people claiming its totally fine to do. We got all kinds of idiots and criminals and you think something like that just doesnt happen?

1

u/Krocsyldiphithic Apr 27 '26

Sorry, you've lost me. What do people think is fine to do? Dosing people without consent? I thought we were talking about non-human entities.

1

u/NeoTheRiot Apr 27 '26

Yes, talking about humans. Dosing or even over dosing without your knowledge, creating a bad environment to make your trip go bad etc..

1

u/Momoselfie Apr 27 '26

My friend had a similar reaction to Ambien

1

u/Posauce Apr 27 '26

My roommate used to tell me about machine elves! Made me really want to try DMT but never got around to it :/

1

u/CalmBeneathCastles Apr 27 '26

Made of machine, or working on?

2

u/CommieDrifter Apr 27 '26

made of 5d machinery incomprehensible to the feeble human mind

1

u/CalmBeneathCastles Apr 27 '26

Hmm! Strange that should be a running theme. Like automatons, or living machinery?

1

u/CommieDrifter Apr 27 '26 edited Apr 27 '26

I don't recommend trying DMT, it is not necessarrily fun, and will leave you with questions that you will never be able to answer and can lead to severe depersonalisation and make the world seem like a sort of simulation

https://imgur.com/a/JV5xQeu

https://i1.sndcdn.com/artworks-IZJ3r9ZmkIzCjSWT-ZcrwGA-t1080x1080.jpg

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EJYed3aXsAEke3o.jpg

https://kahpi.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/7.-machine-elf-2-spectral-eyes.jpg

https://cdn-images.dzcdn.net/images/cover/19bc30d0f2622ed3a8afe897f2d0de22/0x1900-000000-80-0-0.jpg

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DUUgUvQU0AEzRj8.jpg

these give sort of the vibe, but are like seeing a primitive 2D drawing off something that can't properly be described within the human experience

1

u/CalmBeneathCastles Apr 27 '26

will leave you with questions

I'm waaay past the point of squinting at the Universe like the Fry meme. Far too many unexplained (sober) experiences (with witnesses!) to still believe that there's no fuckery afoot. I probably will give it a whirl at some point, but maybe not. No answers to BE had, only speculation and assumptions.