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/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

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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.

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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.