🍄 Tiny People Mushroom Mystery

👋 Welcome

Hey friends,

This week feels like one of those reminders that psychedelics are a lot bigger than “trips.”

You’ve got hard science getting more surgical with researchers using an engineered rabies virus to trace how psilocybin reshapes neural pathways. You’ve got harm reduction maturing in public, with crowdsourced advice that reads like a friend pulling you aside and saying, “Here’s what actually matters.”

Then you’ve got policy doing its usual awkward shuffle forward: one state accelerates, another hits pause, and lawmakers keep circling the same question: how many people need to suffer before access stops being theoretical?

Let’s get into it.

🔝 Weekly Highlights

• 🧠 Engineered rabies virus reveals how psilocybin reshapes neural pathways

  This is one of the most concrete “show me the wiring” stories we’ve seen in a while. Researchers used an engineered rabies virus as a tracer to map how psilocybin changes large-scale brain communication. It helps explain why people often describe the experience as mental flexibility returning, like the grooves in the mind soften a bit. Read more
  

• 💨 Nitrous oxide shows promise for depression in major review

  Nitrous gets dismissed as “dentist gas,” but the data keeps pushing it into serious conversations. This Lancet EBioMedicine meta-analysis looks at nitrous oxide for depression—fast-acting effects that raise the same bigger question psychedelics do: what happens when you interrupt the brain’s default emotional loop, even briefly? Full story

• 🧭 Crowdsourced harm-reduction advice for first psychedelic experiences

  Thousands of community recommendations were gathered and analyzed to surface what people consistently say helps most: how to prepare, what to avoid, what to prioritize during the experience, and how to handle the “now what?” afterward. Learn more

🧬 Quick Hits

RESEARCH 🔬

• 🌀 DMT study shows how the brain loses its sense of self

  New neuroimaging data digs into what “ego dissolution” can look like under the hood—how the networks that maintain a stable sense of identity loosen their grip, and what that might mean for consciousness research more broadly.
  Read more
  

• 💢 Preliminary psilocybin-assisted therapy findings in fibromyalgia

  Fibromyalgia sits at the crossroads of chronic pain, nervous system sensitivity, and long-term psychological burden. This early study explores safety and effectiveness signals for psilocybin-assisted therapy in adults living with the condition. Read the study
  

• 🎨 Microdosing may temporarily improve mood and creativity

  Another microdosing paper worth paying attention to—short-term improvements in mood and creativity measures, framed as temporary and context-dependent rather than life-changing magic. Full paper
  

• 🧠 Psychedelics disrupt the usual link between neuronal activity and blood flow

  Psychedelics can alter the normal relationship between neuronal firing and blood flow, which matters because brain imaging often relies on blood flow as a proxy for activity. More here

POLICY 🏛️

• 🌵 New Mexico accelerates its launch of therapeutic psilocybin access
  New Mexico moves faster than expected, signaling that regulated access is shifting from planning meetings to actual rollout. Full story
  

• 🧊 Alaska’s psychedelics campaign ends push for 2026, shifts focus to 2028
  A miss for 2026, but not a retreat as advocates pivot to a longer runway, which usually means clearer strategy and stronger infrastructure next round. Read more
  

• 🏛️ Trump may be about to announce marijuana reclassification
  Rescheduling rumors, public denials, political warnings. Either way, federal drug policy is still in motion, and it tends to move in waves that spill into adjacent conversations. Coverage
  

• 🌾 Ohio lawmakers mull psychedelic drug for addiction and PTSD treatment
  Ohio exploring a pathway here is a quiet sign of where the conversation is heading: less “culture war,” more “what actually helps.” Read more
  

• 📜 Massachusetts bills offer a pathway toward expanded psychedelic access
  A structured approach is on the table, and regardless of where you land on access politics, the fact that it’s being treated as a real legislative topic matters. Full analysis

BUSINESS 📊

• 📦 $3.88B psychedelic drug market spurs packaging challenges
  It’s funny how the “boring” stuff becomes the barrier once a field scales: stability, dosing precision, compliance, child safety, labeling—packaging becomes part of the medical system whether anyone likes it or not. Read more
  

• 🏔️ Psylutions leads Colorado’s regulated psychedelic market with healing center collaborations
  A look at how one company is positioning itself inside Colorado’s regulated framework through partnerships with healing centers. Full story

CULTURE 🎭

• 🧠 Peter Sjöstedt-Hughes on psychedelics’ hidden impact on philosophy
  It’s not recent, but it’s still one of my favorite Ted Talks. Psychedelics and metaphysics have been influencing each other for a long time, and this conversation helps connect the dots. Watch
  

• 🌈 “Beyond gender”: psychedelics reveal hidden sides to identity
  A BBC feature exploring how some people report shifts in self-perception around gender and sexuality after psychedelic experiences. It’s nuanced, personal, and worth reading slowly. Read more
  

• 👁️ Psychedelics, the paranormal, and consciousness
  A provocative piece that leans into anomalous experience research and asks the kind of questions polite conversations usually avoid. Even if you’re skeptical, it’s an interesting temperature check on what mainstream outlets are willing to publish now. It’s behind a paywall, but worth reading if you can. Read more

⚱️ Main Feature

A Wild Mushroom With No Psilocybin Is Making People See “Fairytale” Humans

This story sounds unbelievable until you realize how consistent it is.

Researchers and mycologists are closely examining a wild mushroom called Lanmaoa asiatica, a bolete species found primarily in southwestern China, especially in Yunnan Province. Locally, it’s known as Jian Shou Qing, and it’s long been recognized as a mushroom that demands caution—not because it’s deadly, but because of how strangely it alters perception.

Unlike psilocybin-containing mushrooms, Lanmaoa asiatica does not produce the familiar abstract visuals, emotional introspection, or sense of expanded awareness people usually associate with psychedelic experiences. Instead, reports describe something far more specific—and frankly, unsettling.

People who ingest the mushroom have repeatedly described seeing small, human-like figures: animated “little people,” sometimes dressed in bright colors, sometimes interacting with one another, sometimes appearing to move through fully formed miniature environments. These visions often feel external, vivid, and narrative-driven, as if the brain suddenly begins projecting a populated storybook world.

What makes this particularly striking is how similar these accounts are across different individuals.

Witnesses describe scenes unfolding rather than morphing. Characters appear with intention. The hallucinations feel less symbolic and more observational—less like dreaming and more like watching something happen. In some cases, people report being fully aware that what they’re seeing is not real, while still finding the experience immersive and emotionally engaging.

And again, this is worth emphasizing: this is not psilocybin.

The compounds responsible for these effects are still being investigated, but researchers believe the mushroom’s chemistry interacts with the nervous system in a fundamentally different way than classic psychedelics. Rather than loosening perception broadly, it seems to trigger a very narrow and specific hallucinatory channel—one that reliably produces “lilliputian” imagery.

That specificity is what has scientists paying attention.

From a neuroscience perspective, it raises fascinating questions about how the brain constructs visual reality. If one compound can consistently evoke tiny humanoid figures across unrelated individuals, what does that say about shared perceptual architecture? Are there dormant “templates” in the human mind that certain chemicals can unlock?

Culturally, the story hits an even deeper nerve.

Folklore around the world is filled with tales of little people, fairies, and miniature beings. Those stories have often been dismissed as metaphor or myth. Yet here we have a modern biological trigger producing experiences that echo those narratives with eerie precision.

At the same time, the real-world takeaway is practical and serious.

Lanmaoa asiatica is sometimes mistaken for edible mushrooms and has been consumed accidentally. This is exactly why mycologists and public health experts stress that “hallucinogenic mushroom” is not a single category. Different species mean different chemistry, different risks, and very different outcomes.

This mushroom isn’t recreational. It isn’t predictable. And it definitely isn’t interchangeable with psilocybin-containing species.

If anything, it serves as a reminder that the fungal world still holds enormous unknowns—and that the human brain, remarkable as it is, can be pushed into highly specific perceptual states with surprising ease.

Strange science. Real consequences. And one of the most genuinely fascinating mushroom stories to surface in a long time.

👉 Read more

🎁 Psychedelic Utility Belt

• 🍫 How to make psilocybin mushroom chocolates, gummies, & capsules
  A practical guide to preparation, consistency, and dosing considerations for both macro and microdosing formats. Read the guide
  

• 🦺 Psychedelic safety: crisis & support resources for harm reduction
  A centralized page of support resources for difficult experiences, integration help, and harm-reduction guidance. Dive in

👋 Signoff

This week has a little bit of everything: lab-level precision, lived-experience safety culture, and state-by-state momentum that keeps building even when the headlines slow down.

If there’s a theme, it’s this: the field keeps maturing. More rigor. More responsibility. More real-world infrastructure. That’s where the future gets built.

As always, thanks for reading, and thanks for staying grounded while we explore the edges.

Have a peaceful weekend!

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