Have you ever had a hallucination? What was it like? (page 2)

Jeffro

TweetieBird:

I was slipped something at a party once when I was a teenager (maybe LSD) and for years after I would have hallucinations when I slept.

Years after? Probably not associated with the drink spiking. More likely a sleep disorder.

I had a creepy experience one time while assigned to work in the nursery at the hospital. The room was packed with about 15 cots, each with a baby in it. One of my colleagues had asked me to bathe one of the babies in her care while he was in the nursery - his mother had gone for a shower and she didn't want to leave the baby unattended.

So I set to looking around for this baby, checking the names on each bassinette, when suddenly I hear a male voice call my name. I turned around toward the sound of the voice, but nobody was there. However, right in front of me was a baby who was silently choking and gray in colour - it was the baby I was looking for actually - and I grabbed him and brought him to the resus area and started resuscitation efforts and then pulled the emergency alarm to bring more help.

That was probably 13 or 14 years ago. I was still a sort-of believer at that point in time and it gave me the heebie-jeebies, as did a lot of other weird stuff that happens at the hospital. Now, I'd probably ascribe it to the fact that I had been working a string of nights and still had young children who needed my attention after school, so I was quite sleep deprived.

Nathan Natas

JeffT asked, " Are asking with or without chemical involvement?"

Either. If you want to be judged, NewYork44M might be available.

I'm seeking an understanding of what these experiences are like. My limited experiences were brief, but I "knew" they weren't real. The brief visual hallucination seemed semi-transparent, but more importantly, when I got to where the hallucination appeared to be, there was nothing there. The highway was a long unlighted drive with forests on both sides. I slowed down and turned the radio on REALLY LOUD. The auditory hallucination was clear as a bell ans at first seemed completely well, but it was my wife's voice I heard, and she was asleep next to me.

Personally, I don't think that drugs are a doorway to a different reality; they're ways to screw up the signal processing of the brain. Sometimes our brains can screw up the signal processing without any help, as with fatigue or an inherited chemical imbalance, or maybe a neutrino from deep space smacks the bull's-eye on just the right neuropeptide...

Nathan Natas

WOW Scully, THAT is one for the X-files!

Thanks for sharing.

DATA-Dog, would you be willing to elaborate a bit on what your experience was like?

Snare&Racket, I am inclined to agree that as we fall asleep auditory hallucinations are possible.

rebel8

Fatigue-related, yeah several. Dark shadows that look like ghosts, etc.

I once had my drink spiked without my knowledge, and everything looked bizarre into the next day--the road was in the air, the stop sign was bended and swirly, etc. Not fun.

nonjwspouse

My father, while in the hospital on an IV refusing pain meds or any sleep medication etc, ( after surgery) was unable to sleep in the hospital ( nurses walking in every what 3 hours or so taking vitals, changing wastecans etc etc.... anyway. he eventaully began hearing a "radio" coming out of his iv pole. He was serious and kept asking us "there, did you hear it?" It wasn't until he finally accepted a sleeping medication and got some sleep that the "radio" was gone. He was still unsure about it the next morning, but pretty soon recognised it as a hallucination.

Years later, he also recognised his halucination, and differenciated between them and reality ( mostly) when he was in ICU for 2 weeks on the brink of death, again, with reduced pain meds and sedation. ( his heart was going haywire) After the ordeal was over, he remembered the "dreams" that were so real to him at the time, and after talking about them again and again finally realied how they were not real. He remembers with great clarity. He would see people in the room convinved they were the German Police coming after him. It was me my Mom and sister, and so we had to hide in the back of the room for a few days. When he saw us and got very upset. Afterwards, he remembered it all. It was hugely unsettling. He was in excruciating pain and we knew it......we were helpless.

I don't know if he rememberd it or not when he motioned asked ( just got off the vent and coudn't talk) me to bring an extra pillow over to the bed. All these weeks he had been restrained so his arms were not strong enough to pull the pillow from under his head. He wanted me to put it there at his hand and leave him alone. I know what he was wanting and kept making the excuse they were not pillows. I never cried more than I did that night on the cot in the corner of his room. He never mentioned this to me later, and I am thankful for that.

So in his lucid moments he recognised the hallucinations. But not during them. His hallucinations were not drug caused. After deep brain Surgery he also hallucinated, but not from taking any mind altering drugs.

A specialist wanted to do a study on him while he was in the ICU but we were afraid consent because they might deny him a medication he needed. Looking back I believe he would have been an absolutly facinating study. We were just to afraid he might be put through more pain, but as it is, nothing could have been worse than what he went though.

rubadubdub

Yes, I have experienced a visual hallucination. I don't remember being fearful, only concerned that it would not stop. I was prescribed an exceedingly low dose of Cortef for adrenal fatigue and had been taking it for about a week. The Cortef induced mania (I have never been diagnosed as having bipolar disorder) which lasted for over 24 hours. I was in an altered state in the sense that there is much I don't remember, my husband described behavior not typical to me and one day felt like three days’ time. to me

My husband and I were out of state. I didn't want to go to the ER, so I called my psychiatrist who was treating me for severe, recurrent clinical depression which had lasted decades. He prescribed one pill, a very low dose of Thorazine as a sedative and told me if I didn't get better to go to the ER. Thinking back on this, I wonder how I talked an MD into this! I don't remember the conversation.

After taking the Thorazine, for six 1/2 hours I had a visual hallucination. I still felt like time was moving much too slowly. If you are familiar with the Escher print The Birds, you will be able to picture what I saw. The individual black birds in the print would come alive, turn a brilliant color and fly slowly away, one after the other, one color after the other. There was only silence and brilliant color.

I have had many adverse reactions to prescription medications including anaphylactic shock. I have also been hospitalized for toxicity due to a drug accumulating in my system rather than being processed through my kidneys as it should have. I have never done any illicit drugs.

Thankfully upon leaving the JWs and with effective therapy, I have remained depression free for nearly two years. I am not currently on any medications, and I think I would have to be on death’s door before I would risk taking another pill.

KariOtt

I have had some awsome ones when I was teenager and droped acid. I have also had some freakie ones from being sleep deprived while in college.In both cases they were very real to me.

Comatose

On prescribed medication I woke up from a dream in a panic. I told my wife I knew what she was going to say before she said it. She just was unsure of what the heck I was talking about. It was horrifying. I knew the future. I was dumbstruck. I was in a locked mental state, because I knew what I was going to say and what she would say and then I would say. So I didn't need to talk. I just begged her to pray. I could literally feel my sanity slipping away. I felt like I was on a cliff and about to fall into insanity. It started to wear off after a few minutes then came back and then left. Terrifying At the time. I can't explain it but it was similar to permanent deja vu. I was living ahead of time...

Jeffro

Comatose:

because I knew what I was going to say and what she would say and then I would say

This may be delayed memory formation, resulting in remembering it before the actual memory of experiencing it has fully formed, giving the impression that you knew about it in advance. The earlier dream would only need to be superficially similar to the subsequent conversations where the actual delayed memory formation was taking place.

Or it could just be a distorted memory of a dream which is later incorrectly recalled as 'exactly the same'.

Have you ever had a hallucination? What was it like?

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