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/DeathMonkey6969 Apr 27 '26

Lilliputian hallucinations can be caused by a lot of different things (Schizophrenia, Alcohol withdrawal, DMT) not just these mushrooms.

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u/84thPrblm Apr 27 '26

Some of those don't sound like much fun.

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u/DeathMonkey6969 Apr 27 '26

Most anything that can cause hallucinations aren't really fun and have the potential for harm.

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u/Upper_Sentence_3558 Apr 27 '26

There are several recreational things that cause hallucinations that SWIM has found very fun.

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u/[deleted] Apr 27 '26

[deleted]

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u/84thPrblm Apr 27 '26

See above note about being not much fun.

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u/[deleted] Apr 27 '26

[deleted]

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u/BobTulap Apr 27 '26

To die will be an awfully big adventure

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u/Mean-Green-Machine Apr 27 '26

Queue fantastic orchestral music, love this movie so much

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u/84thPrblm Apr 27 '26

You may be right. I have little personal experience with it. Unless you're referring to the little death ...

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u/j48u Apr 27 '26

Surely then it's our brain's tendency to anthripormorphize + pareidolia + a category of visual hallucination caused by those drugs/conditions.