Lanmaoa asiatica. Creative Commons photo, source.
[Given that many of you are interested in psychedelic mushrooms, I thought I would share an excerpt from Scott Alexander's recent Substack issue, "Links For July 2026 (Part 1)." Each link has a few sentences with the link. Here is what Scott posted about an edible mushroom, Lanmaoa asiatica. A lot of the other links are pretty interesting, too, so check them out -- The Management.]
Overdoses of the edible mushroom Lanmaoa asiatica have only two side effects: stomach upset, and seeing hallucinatory gnomes and elves for the next ~week. As far as anyone can tell, the mushroom isn’t psychoactive in any way besides the gnome hallucinations (ie users are still completely lucid, and understand that what they’re seeing isn’t real). It’s not culture-bound or placebo, because the mushroom grows in China (Yunnan) and the Philippines, and both places have independently noticed this, apparently without any contact or discussion with one another. I went down this rabbit hole a little; answers to some obvious questions:
• We have no idea what chemical is involved; state-of-the-art in analyzing the mushroom’s pharmacology is this extremely boring and result-free paper.
• There’s no way to get this mushroom outside of China or the Philippines; all attempts to turn up online vendors have failed.
• Even within those places, it’s not really distinguished from several other similar-looking mushrooms, and your chances of locating it without being a Chinese-speaking mushroom expert are low.
• There is no good information about what constitutes a normal dose, what constitutes a hallucinogenic overdose, and whether there is some even worse level of overdose that will actually hurt you (nobody has described the latter, and it seems unlikely within the bounds of normal Chinese cooking failures, but it might be a different situation if a Westerner who knew nothing about this mushroom took a random amount trying to overdose on purpose).
• The elves and gnomes are described as “mischievous” and are capable of interacting with objects in the environment, eg climbing tables.
• The hallucinations seem similar to other gnomeogenic conditions like Charles Bonnet syndrome, but it’s unclear why this should be true, since the latter usually involves visual injury rather than psychoactive chemicals.
