Magic mushrooms? You have gnome idea.
Move over psilocybin — there’s a new psychoactive agent on the scene. A study published last month in Mycologia has unearthed new details on how one freaky fungus makes those who ingest it hallucinate teeny, tiny people all around them — something that no other ‘shroom is known to do.
A typical magic mushroom contains the compounds psilocybin or psilocin. They take about a half-hour to kick in, and produce well-known psychedelic effects like heightened color perception, pulsating objects or moving geometric patterns in the scenery. Users also experience physiological side effects, such as dilated pupils, elevated heart rate, nausea and impaired coordination.
Not the Lanmaoa asiatica. Most of those who eat it report none of this: they can seem functionally sober and their surroundings remain largely unchanged — except for the miniature people.
Thus far, it’s the only fungus, let alone food, on the planet known to produce such a hallucination — and scientists have no idea how it’s doing that.
“Even to this day science doesn’t understand what’s going on in the brain to cause this, or how to treat it, and this mushroom is the only thing that we currently know of to reliably produce this effect,” said University of Utah researcher Colin Domnauer in a new interview with Livescience, adding that the gnome-like beings appear after about 12 to 24 hours and may stick around for several days to follow.
“These aren’t like some vague hallucinations, these are like three-dimensionally-rendered, highly-detailed figures inhabiting your exterior world. And they’re also interacting with objects in the real world — like crawling up chairs and tables or under doorways.”
L. asiatica, a type of bolete mushroom, is native to pine forests in both southwestern China and the northern Philippines, where it’s wild-harvested and sold in local markets for typical culinary use. Yet, despite decades of anecdotal reports of hallucinations — usually as a result of undercooking the ingredient — the species became known to science only about 10 years ago, according to Domnauer, a preeminent expert on the genus Lanmaoa.
“The little people are said to typically like teasing, playing with or harassing the person seeing them,” said Domnauer.
Yet, no one seems surprised by this, he explained. “Everyone knows that this mushroom has this property and can make you see little people, but they’ll continue to eat it anyway, because they’re just not afraid of that effect.”
Just how that effect is produced is what Domnauer’s reserach is all about. Where research into psilocybin has exploded in recent decades, the effects of L. asiatica are woefully understudied — likely due to the fact that scientists have not yet been able to isolate and name the psychoactive compounds that’s causing them.
In other words, the ingredient in L. asiatica that makes users see tiny people — also knows as Lilliputian hallucinations after the miniscule Lilliput people depicted in Jonathan Swift’s 1726 novel Gulliver’s Travels — is completely unknown to science. Donmauer hopes to change that by sequencing the genome of every mushroom in the Lanmaoa group.
Whereas the genes responsible for synthesizing psychoactive compounds in typical magic mushrooms are well-documented, Donmauer’s team found none in L. asiatica.
“There weren’t even any known psychoactive compounds, so it seemed like this must be some new hallucinogenic compound waiting to be discovered, because there’s nothing that matches anything in our database.”
Currently, tests on mice have narrowed their search down to “a few candidates,” but they’re still a ways off from determining which one that is — and whether it impacts humans the same way.
For his part, Donmauer can only speak to reports of L. asiatica‘s effects. He has no intention of tripping on raw shroom anytime soon, and potentially losing days of work for the sake of first-hand experience.
For now, he’ll sticking to the fully cooked version.
“It tastes very good and has a great flavor.”
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