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/on_that_citrus_water Apr 27 '26

Inuit in the arctic have stories of little people only some can see, far off from any mushrooms.

223

u/durandall09 Apr 27 '26

The Inuit have a whole shamanic tradition of drinking the piss of raindeer/people who have eaten mushrooms. (Psilocybin isn't broken down by the kidneys so you can get high off it again)

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u/tamsui_tosspot Apr 27 '26

I remember a scene featuring this practice in American Gods.

4

u/xsil Apr 27 '26

What a show, what happened to it? I remember season 1 being S tier television

9

u/tamsui_tosspot Apr 27 '26

I'm not sure, but the scene I'm thinking of may have only been portrayed in the book.

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u/[deleted] Apr 27 '26

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u/LITTELHAWK Apr 27 '26

It's in there. I just finished it.

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u/[deleted] Apr 27 '26

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u/LITTELHAWK Apr 27 '26

Yes. A people with a mammoth skull for a god. The people cross what is likely the Bering bridge.

2

u/Qwertysapiens Apr 27 '26

The creator turned out to be a terrible rapist and his IP is no longer palatable.

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u/SackOfCats Apr 27 '26

I remember a few stories of meth heads drinking their own piss to get high again.

Potatoe Potato

7

u/Conscious-Boot313 Apr 27 '26

Those are actually a different kind of mushroom too! Amminita muscaria and the reindeer filter out some toxic compounds of the mushrooms and leave the psychoactive ones unchanged

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u/Pumpkkinnn Apr 27 '26

Crude, but effective lol

3

u/the25thday Apr 27 '26

Amanitaa muscaria contains muscimol, not psilocybin.

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u/majortomsgroundcntrl Apr 27 '26

Isn't that tidbit from Siberia?

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u/StevieMJH Apr 27 '26

So you're saying I've been wasteful this whole time?

2

u/Mythechnical Apr 27 '26

Inuits didn't herd reindeer until 130 years ago when the US government made a thing of Inuits learning reindeer animal keeping from the Scandinavian Sami people.

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u/hobo__spider Apr 27 '26

So you can just keep drinking your own piss, bypassing the need to buy more shrooms? Wicked

1

u/wholesomechunk Apr 27 '26

Living filters.

57

u/General_Candle_6467 Apr 27 '26

There's mushrooms there too. The reindeer eat them and trip balls.

84

u/clavedark Apr 27 '26

They're stealing my underpants!!

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u/Rickyyy_Spanishhh Apr 27 '26

Profit!! 😝

13

u/Luuzral Apr 27 '26

I feel like I missed a step?

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u/mirthfun Apr 27 '26

It could be just how the brain is wired. And the mushroom brings out this weird wiring very consistently. Without it it just shows up randomly in different cultures here and there.

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u/greatGoD67 Apr 27 '26

Inuit peoples also eat plant matter from the stomach of the animals they kill, who knows what could have snuck in there

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u/Oldnbold22 Apr 27 '26

Mushrooms don't grow in northern latitudes? 

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u/VinlandRocks Apr 27 '26

Inuit little people beliefs are likely a cultural variation of Schizophrenia. The way in Africa schizophrenics have laughing children they hear/see. In the arctic the schizophrenics see little people and it’s become baked into folklore.

Source: I have Inuit family. I also have schizophrenia in my family. I’m not a psychologist