The hallucinogenic mushroom that contains no known psychedelic

ggm•about 3 hours ago

"seeing little people" is such a hyper specific visual effect, it begs questions. Since I am well aware how my mind fills in gaps in the visual field with attempts to map what I would expect or want to see (try holding your head rigidly ahead and look with a steady gaze at a near field pattern like floor tiles to experience your brain filling in the missing pieces in the field) I ask: what could this actually be?

For instance, when I get (got: my blood pressure is treated) migraine visual effects, I would say "lightning bolt" but thats just a textual analogue/simile. What I actually saw was more complex than that: lightning is white. My effect was polychrome.

When I had posterior vitreous detachment (PVD), the visual effect was as if I was looking at TV "snow" from the analogue days, combined with a shape unquestionably like red blood cells. Was I seeing blood? I am told no: I was seeing small points inside the focal zone of my eye, below the minimum resolving size, and the optical path turns points into rings.

So is "little people" moving stimulation of the nerve endings interpreted as "walking" and a strong vertical alignment for some reason? Is the colour an aspect of rods and cones being involved, or the nerves going to rods and cones being differentially effected?

ammario•7 minutes ago

Similar phenomena consistently reported in high doses of Benadryl: little spiders.

not_kurt_godel•22 minutes ago

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

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

altairprime•about 3 hours ago

One wonders how it would affect someone who has been blind from birth: would they hear little people? Would their optic system be activated by the unknown compounds? etc.

bozhark•37 minutes ago

You’re thinking perception

When it’s not perceived from a visual cue

allears•about 2 hours ago

I've heard of this before, including a first person account, and the effects are apparently that specific. Lots of people consistently report the same thing. It's not just moving patterns, it's actually a bunch of tiny people running around, climbing on the furniture, etc.

ggm•19 minutes ago

I'd be asking if the back record had hyper specific reports of people in clothing which was period appropriate for how "little people" are ideated, or if instead they were tiny angels and daemons (or skeletons) because how you culturally project what you see would inform how they describe it.

I very much doubt that in future times, people will be reporting seeing tiny people in North Face fleece tops and leggings, or with Asymmetrical haircuts and goth make-up but you never know..

nilamo•9 minutes ago

This sounds like the HBO Common Side Effects almost to a tee

monster_truck•about 3 hours ago

How can I buy some? For science

bethekidyouwant•about 1 hour ago

It sounds like it’s almost impossible to differentiate them from other blue bruising boletes, so by chance in an asian market only.

functionmouse•about 2 hours ago

visit China

reedf1•about 2 hours ago

Huh weird. When I have a high fever, usually from the flu, sometimes I start to hallucinate. The typical hallucination is lots of "little people", usually doing something I don't like. I wonder if it triggers a similar part of the brain?

jayelem•about 2 hours ago

Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallucinogenic_bolete_mushroom...) points to a Hamilton Morris podcast (https://www.patreon.com/HamiltonMorris/posts/64560770?utm_ca... paywalled) where Hamilton and Dennis McKenna discuss the mushroom.

vibcdingenjoyer•about 2 hours ago

Probably DMT clockwork elves.

functionmouse•about 2 hours ago

nah these just seem like normal wood elves, perhaps of the keebler variety

functionmouse•about 2 hours ago

maybe it's not a hallucination; maybe the minish have simply made it their mission to troll people who eat their favorite mushroom

SV_BubbleTime•about 2 hours ago

Saying you’ll trip off it is a surefire way to drive up its use.

hmokiguess•about 2 hours ago

Smurfs?

hoopla_ching•34 minutes ago

The wild part isn't just that the compound is unknown, it's how specific the hallucination is. 96% of people see tiny figures, and there's a third-century Chinese text describing the same mushroom letting you "see a little person." That kind of consistency across centuries feels less like a random trip and more like it's reliably tripping some existing brain circuit.

Worth noting micropsia ("Alice in Wonderland syndrome") shows up in migraines and epilepsy too, so maybe the mushroom just hits a failure mode that's already wired in. Still, "evolved its own psychoactive pathway, and it's closer to porcini than to anything in Psilocybe" is a great sentence.

The hallucinogenic mushroom that contains no known psychedelic

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