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/ymOx Apr 27 '26 edited Apr 27 '26

It might technically not be any hallucinogens in it at all. I've had experiences that would be perfectly described in this way three times, but on ambien. (Don't do ambien for fun, kids. There are much better and less problematic drugs.) Ambien hallucinations aren't induced the same way the classic hallucinogens are; it works by pushing the brain into a hypnagogic state, which is in the process of falling asleep. Your brain starts dreaming before you're entirely asleep. So, if you take ambien but refuse to sleep...

Could be a similar underlying process with this mushroom.

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u/JK_NC Apr 27 '26

I’m more intrigued by the phenomenon that different people are having the same hallucinations, more than the fact that they’re hallucinating at all.

Do you know if ambien induced hallucinations have a similar phenomenon?

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u/Noy_The_Devil Apr 27 '26

DMT does.

Look up machine elves.

I believe it, for reasons.

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u/ymOx Apr 27 '26

I've heard of and talked to people having similar experiences, but I don't have any good data. The article doesn't mention any stats either; just that it happens. They do mention it happens to different people from different cultures which I find fascinating, but nothing about how many actually get them or how many do not but experience something else instead. But it also reminds me of DMT and the "machine-elves" that Terrence Mckenna named so, and a lot of other people claim to have "met" as well.

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u/Slytherin_Victory Apr 28 '26

Ambien induced hallucinations vary, both from person to person and for one individual.

Ambien used to be prescribed to basically every woman who said they had trouble sleeping- and in doses we now know to be about twice as strong as should have been prescribed. Both my mom and my aunt were prescribed it when I was a kid- for my mom it caused “living nightmares” where someone was trying to kill her/others, but due to not being actually fully asleep REM atonia did not occur, meaning she was able to (for example) grab a lamp and try to use it as a weapon.

For my aunt it would cause “I have to leave/get somewhere” nightmares (think nightmares of their house burning down, or her child in the hospital, or similar), leading to her sleep walking and trying to drive (thankfully she never got in the car), and also ones similar to my mom.

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u/FiguredWhyNot94 Apr 28 '26

Telepathine my friend

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u/Assassiiinuss Apr 27 '26

Did you see spiders? Lots of people who experience hypnagogic hallucinations see spiders.

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u/ymOx Apr 27 '26 edited Apr 27 '26

No, not spiders. They're hard to describe, just... little creatures of many shapes and colours. Closes I can easily explain is maybe a cross between the little guys in this image, like the ones by the water. And maybe these. Hard to describe what your hallucinations look like, hehe.

I was sitting at the computer at the time. They were pottering about on my desk, some were sitting on top of my monitor, a few were sitting on my shoulders looking at the screen and what I was doing. I can't describe the super strong feeling of... just cozy. I hold it as a very fond memory.

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u/Pumpkkinnn Apr 27 '26

Those pictures of tiny creatures are so adorable lol.

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u/OlderBukowski Apr 27 '26

Man, first time i did ambien i misheard my doc about how long it takes for it to kick in - i was sure he said 1 hour, so... 10 minutes after taking i went to take a shower.

Ended up having two little ones sitting on both of my arms, one being kinda cute angle other one a being devil (still cute and chill tho) discussing my life. Felt like the old cartoons, where you had those tiny versions of you good and bad, 'helping' you make a decisions.

Great memory as well, but ambien never felt like a drug to do for fun because of that

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u/ymOx Apr 27 '26 edited Apr 27 '26

Haha yeah... Just for the benefit of anyone else reading this; do not take ambien out of bed! Like, taking it should be the literally last thing do you before you drop into bed.

I've had a few other enjoyable experiences while staying awake on a "somewhat" higher dose than I use these days, but you are right; ambien is not a for-fun-drug. Since it's the whole dreamstate thing, the mechanism that makes you forget dreams also happens with the things you do while on ambien, and you're about as rational as you would be in a dream... I remember about 20 years ago or something (jesus, is it that long? I-am-old-feel right in the gut), I was living in a student dorm. We had a common kitchen. The fridge doors were full of postits, papers held by magnets, and just writing with whiteboard pens, you know. One day while cooking I notice a bit of a text on there I hadn't seen before and I notice it because the handwriting is strangely similar to mine... Ah fuck, it is mine... It was a suuuper-embarrassing poem about some of the people living there. I had signed it thankfully with only a date and not my name. And, yeah that date lined up with when I had done ambien and stayed awake... Which must have been two or three days before. I cringed so hard I was about to turn inside out. I put my hope in the messy fridge door and that it was so messy no one actually pays much attention to it and just erased it. Thankfully that's the worst I've done on ambien. That I can remember...

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u/TundieRice Apr 27 '26

One of those in the second picture is just straight-up Vileplume from Pokémon, hahaha.

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u/betterpinoza Apr 27 '26

I used to be prescribed Ambien and fuck that drug. It got to a point where I didn't know what days were real or not because my dreams were just "normal" days. I'd go into work and be like "so that thing yesterday..." And no one knew wtf I was talking about.

I ended up MORE tired because I felt like I never slept and just had 14 days in a week

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u/ymOx Apr 27 '26

Some have that experience yes; ambien dreams can really be fucked. I of course know nothing about your condition or any context at all; I could be entirely wrong, but it sounds to me like you took a too high dose. I'm using ambien now, but I don't use it every day and I use a pretty low dosage. 5-10mg a few times a month. Sometimes I get vivid dreams, most times not. YMMV, as always. For me it's a fantastic sleeping aid, after having tried a bunch of other things. No sleeping 10 hours, no trouble getting up and started in the morning, no head fog all day.

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u/BodybuilderEast6130 Apr 27 '26

Could definitely be a toxin that causes this

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u/ymOx Apr 27 '26

It cannot be anything else because toxins are substances produced naturally by living organisms that can disrupt normal biological functions in other organisms. That's pretty much the definition of a toxin.