Due to social media life cycles, a lot of people are constantly about Lanmaoa asiatica.. it all sounds completely made up until you realize.. it’s not.
It’s a mushroom eaten in southwestern China, particularly Yunnan Province, where it’s known as jian shou qing. Apparently it’s delicious.
There’s just one small problem.
You better cook the thing long enough.. if you don’t, you might start seeing little people.
And this isn’t just a hallucinogenic mushroom that makes people see random things. We’re not talking about the usual psychedelic experience — colors changing, walls breathing, strange patterns appearing or somebody seeing a dragon dancing across the ceiling.
No.
Little people. Like the smurfs..
Tiny humanlike figures have been reported walking across plates. Climbing furniture. Marching around rooms. Going underneath doors. Sometimes dozens or even hundreds of them, apparently existing right there alongside the normal world.
They’re known as Lilliputian hallucinations, named after the tiny inhabitants of Lilliput in Gulliver’s Travels.
People in Yunnan are so familiar with what can happen when these mushrooms aren’t properly cooked that making sure they’re thoroughly prepared is simply part of eating them. Researchers have described restaurants where timers are used before the mushrooms can be eaten, with diners being warned about what could happen if they don’t wait long enough.
Hospitals in the region have treated mushroom poisoning cases involving these hallucinations, and researchers have documented this strangely specific recurring experience.
If ten people took some random hallucinogenic drug, ten wildly different experiences might be expected. One person sees geometric patterns. Somebody sees a dragon. Somebody thinks the ceiling is melting.
But with this mushroom, one particular theme keeps showing up:
Little people.
Not everyone who becomes sick from the mushroom sees them, so that part shouldn’t be exaggerated. But among people who experience hallucinations, reports of tiny humanlike figures have appeared often enough that researchers have specifically taken notice.
Scientists are now trying to figure out exactly what chemical in the mushroom causes it. . The familiar psychedelic compounds that might immediately be suspected, such as psilocybin or muscimol, haven’t explained what’s happening. Whatever is producing this extraordinarily specific effect may be something that isn’t fully understood yet.
Which brings us to the completely scientifically irresponsible portion of today’s program.
What if the mushroom isn’t making people see things that aren’t there?
What if it’s temporarily allowing people to see something that’s.. already there?
Maybe somewhere beside ordinary human perception — fourth dimension, fifth dimension, sixth dimension, take your pick — thousands of tiny people are going about their tiny lives while completely unaware that we’re here.
And every once in a while somebody in Yunnan doesn’t cook the mushrooms long enough, looks down at the kitchen table and suddenly realizes:
No, there is absolutely no scientific evidence that Lanmaoa asiatica opens a portal into the tiny-people dimension.
But until scientists figure out exactly what is happening inside the human brain when this mushroom is eaten undercooked — and why such strangely similar imagery keeps being reported —
Maybe the little door should be kept open.
