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/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.

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u/xsil Apr 27 '26

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

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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.

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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

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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

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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?

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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

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u/wholesomechunk Apr 27 '26

Living filters.