I volunteer as a test subject. In the name of science. And to alleviate some of the fucking gloom. I like the idea of living in a world of pixie creatures.
'It sounds so impossible': Student studying fungus that makes users hallucinate tiny people may be on the verge of a scientific breakthrough
You're the true scientist, Ben, a proper explorer...bon voyage!
"Of course I’ve been tempted to. But I haven't actually eaten it raw intentionally for two reasons. One, the effects last several days, and also apparently cause a delirium that might not be so pleasant. So, it's a pretty serious undertaking, I'd say." ~ Colin Domnauer, from the article.
Delerium deschmerium, that's what I always say
Deschmerium indeed 😂
As an ethnobiologist (self-taught), I don't know how anyone can claim to do a whole PhD of science on a freaky new mushroom without even trying it.
@TheBreadmonkey I was about to follow this unknown account, because they must be a awesome person, only to discover that it's Ben in disguise 🥸 Again… 😂🤣
@TheBreadmonkey Someone, somewhere, working for a traveling circus, is very confused about this whole thing.
Mushrooms have to be consumed to hallucinate tiny people?
@TheBreadmonkey
Seems to be paywalled site with obnoxious scripts.
It's annoyingly cluttered, but if you scroll down a bit and see this, clicking the X in the upper right of the box exposes the rest of the article,
@surdfish @TheBreadmonkey
Solving a puzzle (only once) is OK to register/signup.
I'm not going to bother with stupid layouts etc or recaptchas etc simply to read an article.
Too many website operators have lost the plot! Or are outright malicious..
Nor will I blindly allow all third party resources.
Generally:
Also evil are icons to SM sites with scripts rather than a simple link. Those are trackers. Website builders: do not copy/past SM code for an icon.
@TheBreadmonkey What, they are hallucinations??? Brian, Trevor and little Fiona aren’t real?
Well, I won’t be lending them the money for their rocket ship repairs now.
@TheBreadmonkey
How do we know it's hallucinations? Maybe we can finally see them
Jun 27, 2026, 10:14 AM@Just_Tired @TheBreadmonkey This has been my exact thought ever since I heard about this mushroom a year ago
Jun 27, 2026, 8:10 AM@TheBreadmonkey I love that the headline makes it completely unclear as to which entity is on the verge of a scientific breakthrough: the student, the fungus, or the hallucinated tiny people.
@TheBreadmonkey may be its not making them hallucinate them. Maybe its enabling them to see them🤔
@Florapis @TheBreadmonkey someone less sleep deprived than me should write some horror microfic about how the tiny people revealed when taking the mushroom in Yunnan province are friendly and benign. The entities revealed when experimentally taking the mushroom back in the lab in Utah are not.
@TheBreadmonkey
That’s an interesting article, but one possibility the student doesn’t seem to be considering is that the little interacting people might be real. It could be that this is the only way we can open our minds enough to perceive the wider reality that includes them.
@TheBreadmonkey I had this kind of hallucination when I was five and feverish. It was quite alarming tbh. Robert Louis Stephenson had them too, he called them Brownies for some reason. Cf. DMT machine elves.
This whole thing is wild. There was an article on the BBC website a while back about it. Apparently this phenomenon crosses different cultures, and if I recall, it crops in Murakami's 1Q84 at some point.
So many strange and weird things in the world.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20260121-the-mysterious-mushroom-that-makes-you-see-tiny-people
Or maybe we do already and these mushrooms simply help us to perceive the reality at a different angle? We have folk stories about similar little people all over.
@TheBreadmonkey ach, it be the WeeFreeMen. Crivens!
Archive link: https://archive.ph/DQbit
Jun 27, 2026, 3:03 PMI looked and apparently nobody's selling it online.
@Uair @TheBreadmonkey road trip?
Jun 27, 2026, 3:33 PMTo where? China? You buy the ticket, I'm there with flair. I'm in Minnesota...
I'd also like to try mad honey, but refuse to buy it online because of the labor practices in harvesting it.
Jun 27, 2026, 3:34 PMI never wanted to try jimson weed, even though it lives everywhere. I knew a guy who did.