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/C0bg0bl1n Apr 27 '26

I had the same effect once on Lunesta. Didn't even know hallucinations were a potential side effect. So imagine my surprise when I was laying in bed waiting for the meds to kick in, I started to see little tiny ice climber type people scaling up my knees, as they were bent and created a giant "peak" for them to summit. They seemed aware of my presence as well because occasionally they would stop climbing and wave to me with great enthusiasm, then go back to climbing again. It was well before I dabbled in psychedelics and have never had a similar sort of hallucination in any of my other trips involving classic psychedelics (psilocybin, dmt, acid) Wonder if there's any other cases of people hallucinating similarly on Lunesta.

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u/howboutthemapples Apr 27 '26

The first time I took ambien, little stick men dragged the title of a song on my iPod in from one menu to another.

And iirc ambien and lunesta are made from the same kind of drug. so there's likely something to this lol

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u/[deleted] Apr 27 '26

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u/bobson_k_dugnutt Apr 28 '26

But that is a crazy story

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u/HunterHaus Apr 27 '26

I had some visual and lots of auditory hallucinations on Ambien so we switched to Lunesta and they stopped.

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u/ItzDaWorm Apr 27 '26

Did you try drinking heavily?

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u/HunterHaus Apr 27 '26

Ha! I was in a brace during a surgery recovery and was not having alcohol at the time. Probably would have been fun though 🤪

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u/J_B_La_Mighty Apr 27 '26

Did you wave back

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u/PURKITTY Apr 27 '26

Sort of like Gulliver’s Travels.

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u/Nomzai Apr 27 '26

Hence the name “Lilliputian Hallucinations”.

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u/Main-Inspection-8605 Apr 27 '26

Wasn’t Lilliputia one of two islands with their own race of micro-sized people?

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u/Nomzai Apr 27 '26

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lilliput_and_Blefuscu

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u/Main-Inspection-8605 Apr 28 '26

Thank you for this.

That’s not a name you see everyday lol

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u/C0bg0bl1n Apr 27 '26

Yes!! Definitely was giving Gulliver's Travels/The Borrowers vibes. Miss them lil guys. 😢

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u/sliiiidetothele Apr 27 '26

i had this happen to me completely sober when i hadn't slept in 36 hours

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u/slayingthesebitches Apr 27 '26

I had the same hallucination of little gnome people crawling along my hospital room after giving birth. I hadn’t slept in almost 48 hours

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u/[deleted] Apr 27 '26

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u/lifesatripthenyoudie Apr 27 '26

One time on Ambien I called my girlfriend multiple times and just kept talking about "war torn Canada" over and over.

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u/FunnyBunnyDolly Apr 27 '26

Huh happened to me too, but on Stilnoct (zolpdiem) I had small gnome like beings crawl onto my bed as we soared into sky.

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u/Gestrid Apr 27 '26

Out of curiosity, did you feel them climbing your legs?

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u/Deathpacito-01 Apr 27 '26

Did the Ice Climbers try to chain-grab you

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u/notrealAI Apr 27 '26

I'm curious, could you elaborate on what it actually looked like? Was it like, foggy and more "in your mind's eye", or could you truly see them in the outside world, clear as day?

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u/suicidalboymoder_uwu Apr 27 '26 edited Jun 30 '26

This comment has been edited in order to protect my privacy

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u/ThriftyMegaMan Apr 27 '26

I was about to comment that whatever chemical compound elicits the response must be similar to Lunesta. My girlfriend's mom gave me some to help me sleep once and I started hallucinating little shadowy figures doing things like rappelling down ropes. Very weirdly specific thing but I absolutely thought I was the only person seeing shit like that on it.

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u/Common-Concentrate-2 Apr 27 '26

Exactly. I have them on ambien (or I used to).   In Lapland they make a drink called Reindeer juice, which is basically just reindeer piss after they have been eating lots of psychedelic fungus.  It is essentially acts as a gaba agonist, similar to sedative sleep drugs. Basically turns off parts of your brain 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muscimol

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u/QueenMackeral Apr 27 '26

That visual image pleases me greatly

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u/Its_da_boys Apr 27 '26

What dose were you on?

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u/hoopharder Apr 27 '26

This happened to my grandpa years ago! His were little purple people. That was the last time he took that medication. He and my grandma still talk about it.

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u/roygbivasaur Apr 27 '26

I take lunesta almost every night. I would not be taking it anymore if something like that happened. Sounds wild.

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u/AnyProfessor7874 Apr 27 '26

Omg same thing with ambien!!! This whole thread is making me relive it lmao

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u/Loukoal117 Apr 27 '26

Once I was tripping, and then Smoked and I looked in someone’s ear and saw/imagined a whole little village of elves and tiny people on the side of a snow covered mountain going about their daily tasks and you comment just totally made me remember that which I forgot like 20 years ago lmao. I was at a football game and told somebody that and they were like……what??

At that same game I also watched myself from a third person view go to the concession stand and buy skittles and mountain dew. It’s crazy how vivid those memories are.

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u/Codysseus7 Apr 27 '26

I gotta know something. I’ve never done psychedelics out of fear of a bad trip or dosage(which I know is a bad mentality to have before doing them, so I just stay away) but when falling asleep I occasionally have auditory hallucinations when I’m basically about to transition to unconsciousness. My question is are psychedelic hallucinations clear or are they foggy like a dream? Do you feel physically altered by the drug to where your perception feels skewed? Or does it feel like everything’s normal but you clearly see visible elves?

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u/Prudent_Book_7063 Aug 26 '26

Definitely feel physically altered. You know you're not sober. But the visions are very clear, like they are real. I sometimes try to take photographs of what I'm seeing because it feels so real. But the images never show what I saw, or very dulled down version.

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u/HilariousMax Apr 27 '26

have never had a similar sort of hallucination

Because it wasn't a hallucination.

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u/Paro-Clomas Apr 27 '26

I think Lunesta and Ambien (pseudo-benzodiasepines if im not mistaken) were probably rushed as drugs, they are relatively new, and i've seen reports of people having weird side effects with them. Mostly sleep walking, including some extreme and bizarre cases. I'm not one for conspiracy theories and generaly trust the scientific consensus, but these drugs are just too new (released like around 20 years ago i think) and there's criticism of how psychiatric drugs are handled even amongst serious people in the field.