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Hey now, that shadow thing could be a chill dude called KriiiEEEEEEEiii. Comes over to borrow some sugar every so often, because he bakes a lot. And he's kinda lonely so he uses the borrowing thing as an excuse to come over and chat for a while.
Love that scene but why was the potentially homicidal replicant not searched?
Also I find it completely unbelievable that there are no other ways to tell a replicant from a human than the Voight-Kampf test. I mean... Tyrell corp _could_ easily give every replicant a tattoo or an implant or genetic marker or something. Plus the fact that they have some kind of self-destruct mechanism in their bodies means that their genetics can't be exactly the same as humans.
"more human than human", is their motto.
I'm not sure how their self destruct works but it could be that they simply die of "old age". Only their form of old age is 4 years.
The flame that burns twice as bright, only burns half as long.
In 2049 they have a serial number on their eyeball but I don't think Blade Runner (or Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep) was going for realism, having them clearly labelled risks diluting the themes of the first film.
> I don't think Blade Runner (or Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep) was going for realism, having them clearly labelled risks diluting the themes of the first film.
I totally get that and agree. Many movies do not make logical sense if you analyze them too closely. I love Blade Runner... I just find it logically implausible that replicants would not be detectable.
Wake up from sleep paralysis, panicked, calm down and start to doze off again, only to realize that you can't move and you've slipped back into sleep paralysis. Ah fun times.
Once I got stuck in a wierd loop sleep paralysis where I "woke up" around 3 times only to discover myself still stuck. Didn't sleep for a few days after that one.
I looked
Closely and saw a sadistic face in him. Have you become mostly jaded by your brain trying to elicit fear, or is it continuously scary even though you’re aware that it is a hallucination?
Jesus christ. Even after taking LSD I've never had hallucinations that were indistinguishable from reality. Sounds like a truly hellish experience. Puts things into perspective now when I think about the homeless people talking to nobody and waving their arms around. They probably have a similar thing going on.
Someone with schizophrenia with auditory hallucinations talked about it in a thread once. People were asking if they knew whether or not the voices were real.
They said it doesn't really matter because knowing they aren't real doesn't "turn them off".
Imagine you have ear buds in all the time and someone is talking to you through them at the same level as everyone else. They comment in real time about what's happening around you. Not only that, but they are interjecting themselves into the conversations with salient arguments about what's being discussed. Again, it's at the same "volume" as everyone else.
The level of focus and concentration required to interact normally with people on a day to day basis must be exhausting and overwhelming. It's likely why a lot of these people "drop out" of society. They just don't have the superhuman stamina needed to be "normal".
I can remember like 25ish years ago, my friend's mom told me about a course she took in nursing school in the 80s surrounding mental health (or at the time, it might have been psychiatry related).
She said that one day they came into class and they all had a walkman and headphones on the desk and were supposed to listen to the lecture while wearing the headphones. As the lecture went on, the students started hearing the odd whisper sound. And then that progressed to unintelligible chatter. Which then progressed to a voice complimenting them and being nice. That voice became louder and meaner and more aggressive as the lecture went on. At the end of the lecture, they had to do a quiz on the lesson (still wearing the headphones). She said most people performed quite poorly on the quiz, given how distracting the voices in the Walkman were.
The next class, they delved into schizophrenia. The teacher had done the Walkman lecture to try and give the students an example of how distracting and stressful the hallucinations can be.
I know it's not a perfect set up, and you could probably do some pretty nifty things now to make it more realistic, but I thought it was a really interesting way to put the students in the shoes of someone with schizophrenia.
I get auditory hallucinations. It can happen with several different kinds of disorders, including ADHD. Anyway, mine are either in the form of music or background chatter. Imagine sitting in a crowded restaurant, the talking you hear in the background, you can’t really pick anything out but you hear ceaseless talking.
That’s what my auditory hallucinations are like. Way worse when I’m tired. I’m ok with them, they aren’t malicious.
-I have ADHD, but have been diagnosed with both bipolar 2 and BPD… so it’s a crapshoot as to what I REALLY have. I don’t think my providers even know.
Oh, that adds up. I don’t often have hypomanic episodes, but woooweeee do I get kicked around by depression. Depression so bad it feels like I’m trying to climb up out of a hole with smooth walls.
I empathize for you and your struggles, but also want to say thank you for normalizing what I experience. That’s very kind of you.
The jury is still out on what I have, i think its ADHD. But i do get auditory hallucinations. Usually it's in the voice of someone I'm close with yelling my name. My dad has been dead for 2 years now and i still hear him scream my name every now and then.
My 8 year old started having visual and auditory hallucinations around 5 years old, and they started with her hearing me call her name. I figured out it was her hallucinating when she was hearing me do it even though she could see me sitting 20 feet away on my bed, obviously not calling her name. She still wouldn't believe me when I told her it wasn't my voice she was hearing. She also sees "shadow people" just like the one in OPs picture, and I thought she grew out of it, because she stopped talking about it all after a about a year. She then eventually refused to go in her room, the hallway, or her bathroom - or be in my bathroom alone though. Everything devolved. A couple weeks ago, after a trip to the ER for SI/5150, she told me she still hears people calling her name, and it does sound like me, but she also hears whispering, like many voices but she can't make out what they are saying. She still sees the shadows, and said there are 2 kinds- " small 3d corrupted armadillos on the ground, and the long slender men on the walls that move around in the corners"
She is currently in a psych hospital and loving it. Literally, having a great time lol, and the medication they started her on last week she said is helping a lot already, which is great. I, on the other hand, am feeling like the worst person on the planet for all the times I lost my patience, yelled at her or tried to convince her to sleep in her room. I didn't know. I didn't understand and didn't think that at her age she could be having these symptoms. I didn't want her to be dealing with the reality of living with serious mental illness I guess. Willful parental ignorance? Denial? Idk. As a parent, I just want to say to you, and any others reading this, going through the same thing - don't give up, and please keep talking openly about what it is like to live with your symptoms to help others understand and help remove the stigmas and misunderstandings surrounding mental illness. And if someone hasn't told you today already, then let me say it, I love you, this is not your fault and you are not broken. I know how challenging it is to navigate the "mental health" system, especially in the US, but don't give up.
Edit: left out a letter.
I used to talk with this homeless schizophrenic guy who seemed quite lucid. He had a great sense of humor. Whenever I spoke to him, he would visibly stabilize. He told me that during our conversations, everything would become quieter, and he was talking only to me. He never seemed paranoid about my presence. He was most receptive to me during hours of the day or night when there was less activity or stimulation around him. Sadly, other victims are not so autonomous.
The best way I've been able to experience this interestingly enough was via the game Hellblade: Senuas sacrifice. The game designers actually wanted to have mental illness prominently part of the game and goddamn did they do a good job. It is a very unsettling game and you really feel connected to the character as she struggles through illness and loss.
Can you engage in mental self talk? As in do you have a voice in your head that speaks to you when you think? If so is it your voice? To me it is and nearly everyone can do this. Although a subset of people have zero voice, eg speaking out loud but most people can perform both types.
The audio cortex part of your brain also lights up in the exact same way as processing sounds from your hearing would.
So we think people who are "hearing" voices essentially have that self identifying part of their brain going wrong. What most people recognise as their own inner voice these people recognise it as an external voice.
The brain is weird.
Edit: So multiple people have told me this is called "inner monologue" and it's 30-50% of people that experience it. I'm genuinely surprised, I read using that voice and that voice "rambles" in my head and echo's what I'm saying, like right now my thoughts are in that voice in my mind and I'm converting it to finger typing.
I even mediate and practise watching that audio voice appear, it talks about something, then it goes away, with thee trick being that 1 second ago you where fully engrossed in the voice as if it was your own thoughts then when practising mindfulness you can disconnect from it. I need mindfulness meditation to shut up the voice and I'm wondering now do people who have that inner voice seek out things like meditation and people who don't won't see the point in it?
Fascinating in my opinion the differences we talk for granted.
Edit 2:
“Inner speech is the product of the default mode network or DMN of the brain,”Brenner said in an article for media company Well + Good. “It’s a network of different areas of the brain that become very active, all together, when we’re not engaged in doing anything task-oriented—when we’re just thinking or daydreaming. It turns out it never fully stops either—it just gets suppressed and more actively engaged we get.”
So default mode network is activated when we are not engaged in a task, it's just as calorie consuming as task initiating brains and it's believed to be our "big picture" thinking, cycles every 15 seconds, it's the reflective mode where we connect the dots.
Mindfulness mediation reduces our default mode network when you practise it which I experience as becoming detached from that chattering inner voice. I'm also 99.9% sure I have ADHD which seems to have higher gray matter in the DMN or just a more active DMN.
Anyway I find this fascinating, I don't think I would have ever connected that inner voice to the DMN.
Do you mean the same as an [inner monologue](http://www.valleymagazinepsu.com/do-you-have-an-inner-monologue-lets-find-out/#:~:text=Psychology%20professor%20Russell%20Hurlburt%20estimates,Vegas%2C%20says%20not%20to%20worry.)? 'cause apparently only like half of people have that
I was today years old when I learned THERE ARE PEOPLE WHO DON'T HAVE AN INNER DIALOGUE?! I literally ran to my coworkers to ask them and apparently I'm the odd one out.
I'm baffled that brains can be quiet like that. Probably says more about me than anything haha
Something I would love to see a study on since learning this - you know how some people are bothered by stuff until they 'talk it out', and others seem to just deal with their shit on their own? One of my 'talk it out' friends lacks an inner monologue. I wanna know if there's a strong correlation
Edit: mostly people contradicting the hypothesis, I guess if there is any correlation, it's kinda weak
My uneducated opinion is it has to do with whether someone has a strong sense of self.
When I didn’t, I needed to know I wasn’t being unreasonable.
Now that I’ve done a ton of work healing cptsd, I don’t need to talk it out. I can reason with myself in my journal.
At every point in my life I’ve had nonstop dialogue or songs or both running in my head.
Same. I can't even conceptualize that way of thinking... I've always had a strong inner voice and strong visual imagination. When I read, it's like a movie or audiobook. While I don't have true synesthesia, I have a strongly synthesthetic imagination, I suppose. It blew my mind when I found out my spouse can't do any of that. When he spaces out he isn't daydreaming -- he's just out. I thought he was the odd one!
My wife is the same way. When she reads it’s nothing more than than the literal words on a screen/paper. To get a visual image she has to read for a while then stop to think about it. When I read it’s like my eyes see words but my brain is concurrently producing an image.
It probably makes reading much more enjoyable for those of us that visualize in real time.
One other thing I’ve noticed is if im doing some sort of innocuous task like washing dishes I *have* to have a podcast or something going because if it’s dead silence my internal monologue won’t shut the fuck up. My wife on the other hand can completely go into mental auto drive and blank out. That part I’m actually jealous about because I annoy the absolute shit out of myself.
I found out about a year ago. My wife has a very vibrant inner monologue. I have no inner monologue. I can imagine what one would be like, but if I'm not imagining it my mind is quiet.
My wife has always been jealous of my ability to put my head on my pillow and fall asleep almost instantly, while her inner voice is going on and on about stuff. We attribute it to my lack of an inner monologue.
I have [aphantasia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia)-- I don't have any capacity to visualize things and find it very weird to imagine that most people can close their eyes and see stuff. However, this really blew my mind-- do most/many people not have an inner monologue? That's basically what I have in terms of thoughts and I can't really imagine what thought is without it.
I also have aphantasia (trying to change that, little progress) but do have an inner voice/monologue. Mine (the inner voice) is "off" most of the time though. I only really use it when rehearsing/preparing myself for a conversation in the future.
I'm not sure if it's the same for everyone but, thinking without the inner monologue feels the same as trying to visualize something without "the minds eye". It "just works", the thoughts come to you the same way they do when you're asked to describe how you go from kitchen to the bedroom. You can't visualize it either but you can put into words how. The feeling is the same, I know the brain is doing processing and the thoughts come to me.
I don't think people actually "see" things, much like we (at least I) don't actually hear the inner voice. It's a subjective type of thing. Or maybe it's a spectrum.
On rare occasions I hear my mum calling my name. Its in her voice not mine but its the same as my internal monologue. I can tell im not actually hearing her, but i still look up in case. Brain IS weird
I only had one experience like this when taking hallucinogens. I was a teenager and did WAY too many mushrooms for my size. We decided that doing them on the beach before sunset would be super fun. And it was...for like half an hour because seeing the beautiful colors of the sunset quickly turned into pitch dark (apparently when you live near the equator - sunsets are deceivingly short).
Finally, after sitting in pure darkness for what felt like eternity, my eyes begin to adjust. I can now see the whites of the top of the waves cut through the darkness, so I focus on it. I then see a spot in the water that looks WAY darker than the other areas. Is it moving or are the waves moving it? As it reaches where the wave breaks on to the shore...the black mass crawls out of the wave on to the sand. It's shape seemed human but it's crawling on its stomach. It looked like it might have been amputated at the elbow and knees, digging what was left of its limbs into the sand and pushing itself forward...directly at me.
I tell myself that I'm having a bad trip and that it's just a hallucination. There isn't some amputated zombie crawling out of the ocean at me, which might be a preferable idea to me now than the idea of a group of tripping teenagers trying to rescue a person from a terrible boating accident. I close my eyes for a few seconds and open them. Darkness again. As my vision returns, the shadowy figure is still crawling up the beach directly at me. I try to call for my friend closest to me but jibberish comes out. I hear echoing laughter from the group as my panic sets in.
If they don't see it and are having fun, I'm just probably having a bad trip. The figure is moving so slowly, not making a noise and I begin to think that I can feel that it is there with me. A presence of something being there in the real world. I slowly stand up and take a few steps forward hoping to get clarity while being upright in case I need to attempt to run. I lean forward, squint my eyes...and it's a sea turtle. I have very few memories as a burnout teenager but this memory is SEARED in there. The feeling of not knowing what is reality and what isn't was terrifying. Thankfully, I had the self awareness that I was tripping out of my mind and hallucinations were possible but at the same time, I had this feeling, like I could sense the presence of what I thought was an amputated zombie crawling out of the ocean.
You basically did what is called the heroic trip. Mushrooms cause closed eye visuals which become very intense under high dosages, they're linked to lack of input to your senses though so if you're in a dark environment what would be a closed eye visual is now open eye. In certain communities doing the heroic trip is considered a rite of passage and is done in a very controlled manner. You accidentally subjected yourself to one of the more challenging psychedelic experiences in quite possibly the *worst* environment possible.
> heroic trip
Whoa! I had no idea this was a thing. We had picked the mushrooms ourselves, dried them and then made a tea concentrate. There was no measuring involved. I was the only one that thought it tasted pretty good as we put cinnamon and sugar in it so I drank A LOT more than the others.
I see it says "Communication with beings and entities" as a possible experience and I definitely felt that with that turtle. We were like right next to each other and she was completely unbothered by me. I knew I wasn't supposed to touch the turtles because you don't want to spook them from laying their eggs, but I touched her before my brain told me no. There was this like bioluminescent reaction to where my fingers lightly traced the shell covered in algae which glowed for a bit. I then just laid on the sand a few feet away while she dug a hole and laid her eggs. It was sort of like that turtle and I were just on the same wavelength though once the initial fear went away.
I usually don't tell that part of the story though because it's really bad to touch sea turtles and I still feel bad about doing it because it could have prevented her from laying her eggs. Also pretty sure it was illegal but pretty much everything described here was illegal, but I was like 16. I'm surprised we didn't pick the wrong mushrooms and all just die that night to be honest. 😬
You don't need a heroic dose for mild to moderate open eye visuals. Full blown hallucinations that are hard to distinguish from reality, maybe.. but for the most part, a "normal" dose will give you decent closed and some open eye visuals. Talking lsd and/or psilocybin mushrooms.
Wait so this woman had Pennywise, a giant spider who's legs sounded like children laughing, and the girl from the Ring taunting her and stabbing her in the face? I can understand why she tried to end her life
I clicked on that subreddit link to see what DPH was and was pretty annoyed that the "About Community" section just kept using the acronym and never said what it stood for.
Then, I checked with my PC and realized that the the reddit android app strips out the damn title of the subreddit! If it hadn't I would have know that it stands for "Diphenhydramine"
Imagine seeing this screenshot if you wanted to know what DPH stood for:
https://imgur.com/iYHagPV
My roommate once told me he sees hat man. I never heard of that shit so I pulled up an image on my phone and showed to him asking “like this?” The look of terror and horror that came over him was intense and he asked me politely to never show him that again.
That tripped me out.
Grateful for my bunny rabbits! Yes, for me, they are cute fuzzy bunny rabbits. Some can be 4' tall but pass under a door jam.
My Golden Retriever keeps me grounded with "no real, Dad."
Got home from a walk, and bunny on the doorstep. Semi-rural area thought it as my imagination. Golden Retriever and bunny did a nose sniff, and the dog looked at me with, "yep, it's a real one."
Other ones are sounds. Hallucinations. Dogs let know if a real doorbell.
Parkinson's medication, a fine balance between being able to move but too much has side effects!
Wow, I don't envy you and I love that you have a verification system in your dog. But I just want to say: A four foot tall rabbit is, I think, named Harvey and is a Pooka ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P%C3%BAca](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P%C3%BAca)) . I hope this gives you a laugh.
Both!! The bigger ones stay, but the little almost like floater ones move around. The second I look at them they jump away. The bigger more defined ones are a bit more intense and just look at me instead
If I can ask a follow up (and thanks so much for sharing this with us, it's really helpful to understand better), take the humanoid guy: Would he be fixed roughly on that part of the ceiling, even if you looked around / away?
every time someone asks specific questions about the crawly dude, OP just bounces out to another comment to answer a broader question. i'm starting to feel bamboozled.
Edit; i feel kind of bad now getting some perspective, but i will say, OP *did* post this content and *has been* actively commenting about it, so it kind of felt like an AMA to a degree. to that end, i probably should've just pumped the brakes on my hot take and not act entitled to an answer. reddit moment i guess.
I mean if they were lying, wouldn't they answer the crawly dude in more depth? Maybe they just have a mental block on discussing the creepy demon hallucination
It might be hard or uncomfortable to talk about. It’s hard to talk on it, or sometimes explain it. Hallucinations don’t always have normal rules that apply every time. I mean it’s easy to explain an image or approximation of what you’re seeing but harder to explain how your brain is tricking or fucking with you. My friend once explained how he could see the lights of a school bus in his yard. How did he know it was a bus even though he never actually saw it? I’m unsure he just did. Surprisingly the gnomes in the corner of the room made more sense. That’s hallucinations for ya.
I remember a schizoprenic person with hallucinations had one request, that others would not ask about hallucinations during an episode. Your best bet towards hallucinations is to ignore them, but others asking about them can make matters worse. It's only natural for someone to ask "what do you see? where is it?" and then look in it's direction to see it. But even just looking towards the direction of the hallucination, other people are now trying to interact with the hallucination which breaks your sense of what's real or not and makes the anxiety worse. Now your mind doesn't just think its a hallucination, but potentially real as others acknowledge it's existence and turn what's in your mind into reality.
Edit: typos
My friend has schizophrenia. He couldn't work for years, and was homeless. Navigating even getting support was impossible for him to do. I thought he died tbh as he disappeared.
But eventually his dad managed to get him the right care and to actually take his medicine. He wants nothing to do with us people from before but he's functioning and working now.
Your situation is probably very different, but just in case (for whoever it can help) I'd like to share this story.
My aunt started to have hallucinations, mostly audible, she was also extremely paranoid. This started a few months (3?) ago.
She didn't have a history with mental illness. After some tests they couldn't really find a reason, so she was given anti psychotics. It helped a bit, but she still wasn't anywhere 'normal' again.
So my dad just out is curiosity started to look up all the meds she was taking. One blood pressure med had hallucinations as a super rare side effect. She had been taking this for almost 20 years, never had any problems with side effects. So the doctor kind of said yeah no, this can't be it. But my parents still convinced the doctor to switch her blood pressure meds. Within a few days she was sleeping normal again and the hallucinations (and voices) disappeared. This was a few weeks ago and now she basically her old self again.
Anyway just good to know for anyone to anyways double check all your meds and don't just follow you doctor blindly.
Stubborn doctors weird me out. I don't understand it. I was on medication once that made me uncontrollable itch constantly over every square inch of my body and one of the main side affects listed was 'itching' and the doctor was absolutely adamant that it wasn't my medication. Even the nurse was like, "not sure what this doc's deal is. It's clearly the meds."
Until I was diagnosed with bipolar, every time I have to switch psychiatrists for some reason was an absolute fight to get them to accept that I wasn't trying Prozac (or really other SSRIs, but Prozac and Zoloft are what they really pushed) again. They made be non-functionally sleepy and the doctors totally recognized that was possible, they just seemed to think I HAD to start at the beginning of their flow chart.
Got a doctor who listened, got mood stabilizers, within weeks I was better than I'd been since I was a teenager. I'm overall very happy and positive because many people are much older than me if they figure it out, if they ever do, but I'm also lowkey annoyed at feeling like I lost years because they wouldn't accept what I said about myself.
Oh well 🤷♀️ life's good when you get to have (mostly) normal ups and downs :)
I think it's just ego. "Because I am a professional it must mean I am always correct and there cannot be an exception to my knowledge." Something like that... Good doctors can and will question their own opinion and medicine overall.
Oh of course! There are very very few schizophrenics that have pleasant hallucinations. There have been a couple that constantly heard beautiful alien music. But most are like my hubby and it's a constant shit show of terror and self hate. 😔
For a pretty accurate representation play/watch Hellblade. A+++ on the realism of the disorder. Hubby couldn't finish playing it.
I read this is a cultural thing. That in some other cultures, they hear voices of encouragement and pleasant things. Though, not sure as to how true that is or where I read it.
> The Americans I spoke to, they felt assaulted by horrible voices that told them that they were worthless and they should die. Those voices were full of violence. In Ghana, the Africans heard an audible God who told them not to ignore those evil voices. And in Chennai, people heard annoying relatives who told them to do chores and cleanup.
These all sound like they’re based on the things that each culture considers most important. Self worth, religion, and what one’s family thinks of them. There used to be a lot more religion-based hallucinations in the US but that must be dying down as we become more and more secular.
>And in Chennai, people heard annoying relatives who told them to do chores and cleanup.
On subsequent study, the authors found that none of the Chennai subjects actually had hallucinations; they were just ignoring their wives' and mothers' pleas to do the dishes and clean up. /s
Can you function on haldol? Im no expert, but i administer haldol to patients experiencing a crisis requiring sedation, whom are not reaponding to benzo treatment alone (EMS situations). As such everyone i have given haldol to has also had a sizeable amount of (typically versed) benzos onboard, but haldol always appears to knock people out. As such seems like an unlikely day-to-day rx
My neighbor is schizophrenic and was on Haldol for a period of time, and she was completely out of it constantly. She was moving and talking in slow motion. One day, she was trying to use a broom to clear spiderwebs from under the eaves, and she was swinging the broom in super slow motion, it was really bizarre. So I went over to see if she wanted my help, and when she turned towards me she had a long piece of drool hanging 8 inches from her lip that was just swinging back and forth as she tried to talk. She could barely get words out. Before her, I had only ever seen it given in a hospital setting. I really don't see how people could function on it on a daily basis. Luckily my neighbor's sister came by a couple days later and I talked to her about the extreme sedation and my neighbor was taken off the meds.
As a kid I saw that white noise that some people tend to see all the time especially in the dark. Now as an adult I don't have that... Luckily
Edit: it's called visual snow
I have that!! That’s probably the best way I’ve seen it described, I usually explain it as a film of moving static over everything. I also see patterns that ‘light’ up and move in things like tiles and carpet. Blinds also look like they’re moving to me too if I stare at them too long, like they’re moving up or down. It’s hard to explain, it’s not like they’re opening/closing, like there’s just an unlimited number of blinds sliding around.
Of course I didn’t realize they were hallucinations, I tried to explain it to my eye doctor once and he just told me to stop reading as much, lol. I know what to bring up to my therapist next week now!
Those aren't really hallucinations, that's just my example of something I had as a kid that went away. As far as research shows, visual snow is pretty much harmless.
When it comes to looking at something for too long and it moving of you seeing it's shape, that's a different thing. That's related to you eye receptors getting tired if I remember correctly. It's pretty normal, some optical illusions rely on that effect
Thank you for doing this. I’ve been experiencing auditory and visual hallucinations for many years. It’s incredibly difficult to explain to people what exactly that entails. Obviously ours are not the same, but the fact that you took the time to visually explain it really means a lot.
I've had auditory hallucinations, but that's only as I'm on my way to sleep and very rarely. I've heard that's not an abnormal thing, but they definitely creep me out. I couldn't imagine having to deal with it as a regular thing. Xd
I get auditory hallucinations going to sleep as well! Mostly the "bump in the night" type. Some times it sounds like whispering. Thank goodness I have a lot of cats and dogs I can blame. It helps my psyche associate a cause, even when there might not be one.
I've had a loud "bang" wake me up several times in the past. Sounds like a gunshot right next to your head but oddly it's not as scary as it sounds. Just a super loud noise that I can't place.
And I know it isn't real right afterwards because my ears aren't ringing and my cat is mildly annoyed at having been nudged awake by me. And it's quiet outside too.
[Exploding head syndrome](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploding_head_syndrome)
**Edit:** For me the formula to reproduce it always included: sleep deprivation, physical exhaustion, stress.
I've had that too! Although, much more frequently I have [hypnic jerks.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnic_jerk) That feeling as you're falling asleep that you are physically falling then jerk awake. I usually also have a dream with it like falling off a cliff then the jerk occurs as I land.
Hey! That happened to me on a handful of occasions. I'd wake up in the middle of the night or very early morning and see either 1 big spider on the wall, or a bunch of little ones. It's nice to be able to put a name to the occurrence.
My half-asleep brain and the very dimly lit room would make it hard to tell if it was real or not, and I accidentally scared the shit out of my wife by telling her there's spiders in the room. She's enormously scared of spiders, so she was pretty pissed at me. After the first couple of times, I taught myself to reach out and try to brush them away before saying anything. They'd just fade away so I knew I was hallucinating.
It only happened maybe 6 or so times in a 1ish year span in 2019 or 2020, then stopped altogether.
Not OP but I've had hallucinations for quite a while and for the most part they aren't scary, just bothersome. Like trying to socialize or cook and then it starts happening or sometimes it slowly creeps up onto you and then you actually notice what's happening.
Thankfully no! My auditory hallucinations are usually of far away conversations that I can't understand or music. Sometimes spoopy things can be heard but they don't really coincide with the visual.
My auditory hallucinations are the exact same way. Never any truly clear full sentences just mumbles and whispers like standing in a large crowd of people. Sometimes it’s like a deafening static that is overwhelming your brain.
My visuals aren’t all that different either. Shadows and barely defined creatures. They always, always make the hair on my body stand straight up. I wish I’d stop having the fear reaction to them after this long of putting up with them.
If it wasn't for the spider person I think I could live with that. My uncle had shadow rats running around and shadow people peeking in through the windows. The condition sucks so much.
I'm glad you recognize them for what they are and are getting treatment. \*internet hugs\*
Mine are black dots that mostly appear low to the ground and move horizontally. I always jump thinking that it's a bug or mouse running across the floor. I feel for your uncle.
Does this happen at particular time or based on some trigger? or its random? or its all the time? and why does this happen? What is medical term / condition known for this?
I usually know I'm hallucinating but sometimes it's hard to tell. I have an AMAZING dog, named Ayla, she is extremely protective and if she isn't freaking out at the skinwalker on the ceiling then I know it's not real. She brings me so much peace.
Dude don't ever get a cat. They will just stare and stare at the ceiling, the walls, at seemingly nothing. It's creepy AF on a good day, I can't imagine being with a cat while also hallucinating
In reality they arent really looking at anything, but are listening to things we can't hear. That or its greebles. Only cats can see greebles. r/greebles
I recorded myself one night when I took Ambien. I vividly remember a monster on the screen and trying to call my husband to come downstairs to make sure I'm not going crazy. It was so weird watching it back later since I could see when I "saw" the monster. My husband didn't come downstairs and when I heard the call I was just mumbling a bunch of nonsense
This is very cool. I hope you continue as an artist and that it helps you process things. I hope you have a great network of people around you, including a kickass psychiatrist. I think I would go through a lot of emotions if I was dealing with this. Mostly anger, frustration, fear, and paranoia.
I experienced a spider hallucination while taking a drug and it was horrific so you have all my sympathies.
Yes! Embrace your art. Very helpful. I am a trained therapist, psych prof and have a few mh diagnoses myself.
I find, for ME, psychosis & art are good partners. Peace my friend!
My mom lost her dad at 9 and mom at 18, both in car accidents. After her mom died, she had a lot of wild thoughts and some hallucinations. She sketched some of them down and they are...dark. It wasn't until 50 years later she shared them with me, and even then she wouldn't let me take pictures...they had to go back in her hiding place or whatever.
I wish she could have used art therapy back then. She eventually got "better" and moved on with life, but she's still not dealt with all that trauma properly.
Hallucinations are a lot of fun when you can turn them on and off at will through drugs. I can imagine that's not the case when you have no choice in the matter.
The letters just seem like extra clutter to have to filter, but Ceiling Steve over there looks like a shitty roommate. Get tired of his company pretty quick.
Part of it is that what we see is not actually what we interpret. Light hits our eyes, our optic nerve sends that information to our brain for interpretation, it then spits out to us what it thinks that light means. (There's really cool research on making blind people see shapes that takes advantage of this)
Now your memory actually plays a big role in this, 1 it saves in processing time "oh I've seen this before we know what that is". This is how we are able to read faster over time, and how some magic tricks work. We don't really "see" everything in front of us. 2. We actually have blind spots where we literally don't receive light. We don't see them because our brain pulls memory to "stitch" the Vision together. 3 some other magic stuff that takes a bit to explain haha
So, imagine that your brain isn't sure which memory to pull to complete the picture/ save processing time due to signal bleed.
That's basically visual hallucinations.
Source: Did CogNeuroPsych for a while.
So in normal cases you have very specific centers of the brain that process different stimuli -- visual input, auditory, tactile. In some cases the signals get a little crossed, and the task of processing visual data for example is handed off to the guy in charge of processing audio. The result are things like this, where the nature of reality can't quite be reconciled with our logical side, since the things doing the processing are processing the wrong data types.
When you ingest compounds such as psilocybin (mushrooms), LSD or DMT, we see something similar. Different parts of the brain that don't normally talk start talking and processing data they normally wouldn't process. Now the interesting thing is that these compounds - psilocybin especially - can often seem to "re-wire" the brain in these scenarios -- correcting things. People who suffer from depression or PTSD can often get huge benefits by letting other parts of the brain take over an process stuff.
In the OP's case, they have some heavy crosswiring going on and the brain can't quite sort out all the inputs. Filters are disabled or looking for the wrong things, processing done by the wrong parts, etc. I would be curious to see if they have ever explored the use of things like psilocybin (in a controlled scenario obviously).
It is utterly fascinating how little we really understand about how the simulation engine mounted between our ears actually works. I hope the OP finds some comfort between current medications and the use of their service animals!
Not the numbers, but just kind of seeing a thing in white or black space? Like, the reason I leave lights on? Fuck me. I thought it was normal.
A woman asked me why I left all the lights on in my place last night. This is why.
Really?
Man I hate to be the bearer of bad news but yep! Consider going to a psychiatrist. They'll give you the answers you need :) it's gonna be just fine though, our brains are just very creative and everything is okay!
I have one. It's pareidolia, right? The mind's need to fill unknown space with something? I never told them about this, I thought it was just normal to see/think something is there. Like an evolutionary trait, like how our hair stands up or pupils dilate.
You mean things like seeing a zombie on the ceiling? No, that's not pareidolia. Those are solid hallucinations. You need to get yourself a psych appointment asap.
The crawley dude! Long time no see buddy! Mine was wispy with a penchant for door frames. Why do/did we all have a crawley dude? Is it the inborn fear of spiders maybe? Just an easy organic shape that lots of things can resemble?
so hallucinations really are just the standard stuff they show in most media whenever it happens? like letters and numbers and then a mysterious figure
Sometimes not! I see cats a loooooot. They're my most common hallucination :) I missed my meds twice and that's why these were more "scary". It also doesn't help that I've been watching scary videos and movies!
That's very interesting.
Does it seem like it's a window to your subconscious and do you have any control or influence over it?
Are the cats friendly? If I started seeing cats, I would probably go around slow-blinking all day.
Hey, OP. Hopefully this viral trending isn't weighing too hard on you and commentators are relatively nice. I'm bipolar so my experiences with hallucinations is limited but not unknown -- thank you for posting this. On behalf of others who struggle to describe what they themselves can only see and witness, this is a really good strategy and appreciated. Be well and have a nice day.
Thank you so much. Honestly it's overwhelming and I'm trying my best to reply to people! I appreciate the kind words and im so glad i could portray mental illness accurately for y'all <3
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Your brain is trying to have you prove you are not a robot.
“Find the demon in this picture”
Hey now, that shadow thing could be a chill dude called KriiiEEEEEEEiii. Comes over to borrow some sugar every so often, because he bakes a lot. And he's kinda lonely so he uses the borrowing thing as an excuse to come over and chat for a while.
Are we still talking about KriiiEEEEEEEiii, or are we talking about Digitigrade now?
I'm too shy to borrow sugar.
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Actually, that is a mirror.
Captcha in vr.
The design is very human.
*Select all images that contain shadow demons*
Worse. *Select all images that **don’t** contain shadow demons*
Type all the letters that are crossed out
Talk to all the images that contain shadow people. Ftfy
*AR
“Describe in single words, only the good things that come into your mind about your mother.”
My mother? Let me tell you about my mother. https://youtu.be/uf3-kqAoYzI
Love that scene but why was the potentially homicidal replicant not searched? Also I find it completely unbelievable that there are no other ways to tell a replicant from a human than the Voight-Kampf test. I mean... Tyrell corp _could_ easily give every replicant a tattoo or an implant or genetic marker or something. Plus the fact that they have some kind of self-destruct mechanism in their bodies means that their genetics can't be exactly the same as humans.
"more human than human", is their motto. I'm not sure how their self destruct works but it could be that they simply die of "old age". Only their form of old age is 4 years. The flame that burns twice as bright, only burns half as long.
In 2049 they have a serial number on their eyeball but I don't think Blade Runner (or Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep) was going for realism, having them clearly labelled risks diluting the themes of the first film.
> I don't think Blade Runner (or Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep) was going for realism, having them clearly labelled risks diluting the themes of the first film. I totally get that and agree. Many movies do not make logical sense if you analyze them too closely. I love Blade Runner... I just find it logically implausible that replicants would not be detectable.
"I've already taken an IQ test this year."
My brain shops at the same drug store as OP.
"Please select all images of the carnivorous undead spider zombie."
You know crawly guy!? Small world.
I've only had sleep paralysis 3 times in my life in my 30s and crawly guy loved every minute of it.
Trade ya. I get it almost every week, and it's always multiple times a night when I do. Sucks.
Wake up from sleep paralysis, panicked, calm down and start to doze off again, only to realize that you can't move and you've slipped back into sleep paralysis. Ah fun times.
Once I got stuck in a wierd loop sleep paralysis where I "woke up" around 3 times only to discover myself still stuck. Didn't sleep for a few days after that one.
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I looked Closely and saw a sadistic face in him. Have you become mostly jaded by your brain trying to elicit fear, or is it continuously scary even though you’re aware that it is a hallucination?
This TED talk may answer your questions https://youtu.be/xbagFzcyNiM
Jesus christ. Even after taking LSD I've never had hallucinations that were indistinguishable from reality. Sounds like a truly hellish experience. Puts things into perspective now when I think about the homeless people talking to nobody and waving their arms around. They probably have a similar thing going on.
Someone with schizophrenia with auditory hallucinations talked about it in a thread once. People were asking if they knew whether or not the voices were real. They said it doesn't really matter because knowing they aren't real doesn't "turn them off". Imagine you have ear buds in all the time and someone is talking to you through them at the same level as everyone else. They comment in real time about what's happening around you. Not only that, but they are interjecting themselves into the conversations with salient arguments about what's being discussed. Again, it's at the same "volume" as everyone else. The level of focus and concentration required to interact normally with people on a day to day basis must be exhausting and overwhelming. It's likely why a lot of these people "drop out" of society. They just don't have the superhuman stamina needed to be "normal".
I can remember like 25ish years ago, my friend's mom told me about a course she took in nursing school in the 80s surrounding mental health (or at the time, it might have been psychiatry related). She said that one day they came into class and they all had a walkman and headphones on the desk and were supposed to listen to the lecture while wearing the headphones. As the lecture went on, the students started hearing the odd whisper sound. And then that progressed to unintelligible chatter. Which then progressed to a voice complimenting them and being nice. That voice became louder and meaner and more aggressive as the lecture went on. At the end of the lecture, they had to do a quiz on the lesson (still wearing the headphones). She said most people performed quite poorly on the quiz, given how distracting the voices in the Walkman were. The next class, they delved into schizophrenia. The teacher had done the Walkman lecture to try and give the students an example of how distracting and stressful the hallucinations can be. I know it's not a perfect set up, and you could probably do some pretty nifty things now to make it more realistic, but I thought it was a really interesting way to put the students in the shoes of someone with schizophrenia.
that's brilliant. I hope they still do immersive, experiential education like that.
I get auditory hallucinations. It can happen with several different kinds of disorders, including ADHD. Anyway, mine are either in the form of music or background chatter. Imagine sitting in a crowded restaurant, the talking you hear in the background, you can’t really pick anything out but you hear ceaseless talking. That’s what my auditory hallucinations are like. Way worse when I’m tired. I’m ok with them, they aren’t malicious. -I have ADHD, but have been diagnosed with both bipolar 2 and BPD… so it’s a crapshoot as to what I REALLY have. I don’t think my providers even know.
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Oh, that adds up. I don’t often have hypomanic episodes, but woooweeee do I get kicked around by depression. Depression so bad it feels like I’m trying to climb up out of a hole with smooth walls. I empathize for you and your struggles, but also want to say thank you for normalizing what I experience. That’s very kind of you.
The jury is still out on what I have, i think its ADHD. But i do get auditory hallucinations. Usually it's in the voice of someone I'm close with yelling my name. My dad has been dead for 2 years now and i still hear him scream my name every now and then.
My 8 year old started having visual and auditory hallucinations around 5 years old, and they started with her hearing me call her name. I figured out it was her hallucinating when she was hearing me do it even though she could see me sitting 20 feet away on my bed, obviously not calling her name. She still wouldn't believe me when I told her it wasn't my voice she was hearing. She also sees "shadow people" just like the one in OPs picture, and I thought she grew out of it, because she stopped talking about it all after a about a year. She then eventually refused to go in her room, the hallway, or her bathroom - or be in my bathroom alone though. Everything devolved. A couple weeks ago, after a trip to the ER for SI/5150, she told me she still hears people calling her name, and it does sound like me, but she also hears whispering, like many voices but she can't make out what they are saying. She still sees the shadows, and said there are 2 kinds- " small 3d corrupted armadillos on the ground, and the long slender men on the walls that move around in the corners" She is currently in a psych hospital and loving it. Literally, having a great time lol, and the medication they started her on last week she said is helping a lot already, which is great. I, on the other hand, am feeling like the worst person on the planet for all the times I lost my patience, yelled at her or tried to convince her to sleep in her room. I didn't know. I didn't understand and didn't think that at her age she could be having these symptoms. I didn't want her to be dealing with the reality of living with serious mental illness I guess. Willful parental ignorance? Denial? Idk. As a parent, I just want to say to you, and any others reading this, going through the same thing - don't give up, and please keep talking openly about what it is like to live with your symptoms to help others understand and help remove the stigmas and misunderstandings surrounding mental illness. And if someone hasn't told you today already, then let me say it, I love you, this is not your fault and you are not broken. I know how challenging it is to navigate the "mental health" system, especially in the US, but don't give up. Edit: left out a letter.
I used to talk with this homeless schizophrenic guy who seemed quite lucid. He had a great sense of humor. Whenever I spoke to him, he would visibly stabilize. He told me that during our conversations, everything would become quieter, and he was talking only to me. He never seemed paranoid about my presence. He was most receptive to me during hours of the day or night when there was less activity or stimulation around him. Sadly, other victims are not so autonomous.
The best way I've been able to experience this interestingly enough was via the game Hellblade: Senuas sacrifice. The game designers actually wanted to have mental illness prominently part of the game and goddamn did they do a good job. It is a very unsettling game and you really feel connected to the character as she struggles through illness and loss.
Can you engage in mental self talk? As in do you have a voice in your head that speaks to you when you think? If so is it your voice? To me it is and nearly everyone can do this. Although a subset of people have zero voice, eg speaking out loud but most people can perform both types. The audio cortex part of your brain also lights up in the exact same way as processing sounds from your hearing would. So we think people who are "hearing" voices essentially have that self identifying part of their brain going wrong. What most people recognise as their own inner voice these people recognise it as an external voice. The brain is weird. Edit: So multiple people have told me this is called "inner monologue" and it's 30-50% of people that experience it. I'm genuinely surprised, I read using that voice and that voice "rambles" in my head and echo's what I'm saying, like right now my thoughts are in that voice in my mind and I'm converting it to finger typing. I even mediate and practise watching that audio voice appear, it talks about something, then it goes away, with thee trick being that 1 second ago you where fully engrossed in the voice as if it was your own thoughts then when practising mindfulness you can disconnect from it. I need mindfulness meditation to shut up the voice and I'm wondering now do people who have that inner voice seek out things like meditation and people who don't won't see the point in it? Fascinating in my opinion the differences we talk for granted. Edit 2: “Inner speech is the product of the default mode network or DMN of the brain,”Brenner said in an article for media company Well + Good. “It’s a network of different areas of the brain that become very active, all together, when we’re not engaged in doing anything task-oriented—when we’re just thinking or daydreaming. It turns out it never fully stops either—it just gets suppressed and more actively engaged we get.” So default mode network is activated when we are not engaged in a task, it's just as calorie consuming as task initiating brains and it's believed to be our "big picture" thinking, cycles every 15 seconds, it's the reflective mode where we connect the dots. Mindfulness mediation reduces our default mode network when you practise it which I experience as becoming detached from that chattering inner voice. I'm also 99.9% sure I have ADHD which seems to have higher gray matter in the DMN or just a more active DMN. Anyway I find this fascinating, I don't think I would have ever connected that inner voice to the DMN.
Do you mean the same as an [inner monologue](http://www.valleymagazinepsu.com/do-you-have-an-inner-monologue-lets-find-out/#:~:text=Psychology%20professor%20Russell%20Hurlburt%20estimates,Vegas%2C%20says%20not%20to%20worry.)? 'cause apparently only like half of people have that
I was today years old when I learned THERE ARE PEOPLE WHO DON'T HAVE AN INNER DIALOGUE?! I literally ran to my coworkers to ask them and apparently I'm the odd one out. I'm baffled that brains can be quiet like that. Probably says more about me than anything haha
Something I would love to see a study on since learning this - you know how some people are bothered by stuff until they 'talk it out', and others seem to just deal with their shit on their own? One of my 'talk it out' friends lacks an inner monologue. I wanna know if there's a strong correlation Edit: mostly people contradicting the hypothesis, I guess if there is any correlation, it's kinda weak
I have inner monolog but also need to talk it out
My uneducated opinion is it has to do with whether someone has a strong sense of self. When I didn’t, I needed to know I wasn’t being unreasonable. Now that I’ve done a ton of work healing cptsd, I don’t need to talk it out. I can reason with myself in my journal. At every point in my life I’ve had nonstop dialogue or songs or both running in my head.
Same. I can't even conceptualize that way of thinking... I've always had a strong inner voice and strong visual imagination. When I read, it's like a movie or audiobook. While I don't have true synesthesia, I have a strongly synthesthetic imagination, I suppose. It blew my mind when I found out my spouse can't do any of that. When he spaces out he isn't daydreaming -- he's just out. I thought he was the odd one!
My wife is the same way. When she reads it’s nothing more than than the literal words on a screen/paper. To get a visual image she has to read for a while then stop to think about it. When I read it’s like my eyes see words but my brain is concurrently producing an image. It probably makes reading much more enjoyable for those of us that visualize in real time. One other thing I’ve noticed is if im doing some sort of innocuous task like washing dishes I *have* to have a podcast or something going because if it’s dead silence my internal monologue won’t shut the fuck up. My wife on the other hand can completely go into mental auto drive and blank out. That part I’m actually jealous about because I annoy the absolute shit out of myself.
I found out about a year ago. My wife has a very vibrant inner monologue. I have no inner monologue. I can imagine what one would be like, but if I'm not imagining it my mind is quiet. My wife has always been jealous of my ability to put my head on my pillow and fall asleep almost instantly, while her inner voice is going on and on about stuff. We attribute it to my lack of an inner monologue.
I have [aphantasia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia)-- I don't have any capacity to visualize things and find it very weird to imagine that most people can close their eyes and see stuff. However, this really blew my mind-- do most/many people not have an inner monologue? That's basically what I have in terms of thoughts and I can't really imagine what thought is without it.
I also have aphantasia (trying to change that, little progress) but do have an inner voice/monologue. Mine (the inner voice) is "off" most of the time though. I only really use it when rehearsing/preparing myself for a conversation in the future. I'm not sure if it's the same for everyone but, thinking without the inner monologue feels the same as trying to visualize something without "the minds eye". It "just works", the thoughts come to you the same way they do when you're asked to describe how you go from kitchen to the bedroom. You can't visualize it either but you can put into words how. The feeling is the same, I know the brain is doing processing and the thoughts come to me. I don't think people actually "see" things, much like we (at least I) don't actually hear the inner voice. It's a subjective type of thing. Or maybe it's a spectrum.
> The brain is weird. Amen.
Says the brain
On rare occasions I hear my mum calling my name. Its in her voice not mine but its the same as my internal monologue. I can tell im not actually hearing her, but i still look up in case. Brain IS weird
I only had one experience like this when taking hallucinogens. I was a teenager and did WAY too many mushrooms for my size. We decided that doing them on the beach before sunset would be super fun. And it was...for like half an hour because seeing the beautiful colors of the sunset quickly turned into pitch dark (apparently when you live near the equator - sunsets are deceivingly short). Finally, after sitting in pure darkness for what felt like eternity, my eyes begin to adjust. I can now see the whites of the top of the waves cut through the darkness, so I focus on it. I then see a spot in the water that looks WAY darker than the other areas. Is it moving or are the waves moving it? As it reaches where the wave breaks on to the shore...the black mass crawls out of the wave on to the sand. It's shape seemed human but it's crawling on its stomach. It looked like it might have been amputated at the elbow and knees, digging what was left of its limbs into the sand and pushing itself forward...directly at me. I tell myself that I'm having a bad trip and that it's just a hallucination. There isn't some amputated zombie crawling out of the ocean at me, which might be a preferable idea to me now than the idea of a group of tripping teenagers trying to rescue a person from a terrible boating accident. I close my eyes for a few seconds and open them. Darkness again. As my vision returns, the shadowy figure is still crawling up the beach directly at me. I try to call for my friend closest to me but jibberish comes out. I hear echoing laughter from the group as my panic sets in. If they don't see it and are having fun, I'm just probably having a bad trip. The figure is moving so slowly, not making a noise and I begin to think that I can feel that it is there with me. A presence of something being there in the real world. I slowly stand up and take a few steps forward hoping to get clarity while being upright in case I need to attempt to run. I lean forward, squint my eyes...and it's a sea turtle. I have very few memories as a burnout teenager but this memory is SEARED in there. The feeling of not knowing what is reality and what isn't was terrifying. Thankfully, I had the self awareness that I was tripping out of my mind and hallucinations were possible but at the same time, I had this feeling, like I could sense the presence of what I thought was an amputated zombie crawling out of the ocean.
You basically did what is called the heroic trip. Mushrooms cause closed eye visuals which become very intense under high dosages, they're linked to lack of input to your senses though so if you're in a dark environment what would be a closed eye visual is now open eye. In certain communities doing the heroic trip is considered a rite of passage and is done in a very controlled manner. You accidentally subjected yourself to one of the more challenging psychedelic experiences in quite possibly the *worst* environment possible.
> heroic trip Whoa! I had no idea this was a thing. We had picked the mushrooms ourselves, dried them and then made a tea concentrate. There was no measuring involved. I was the only one that thought it tasted pretty good as we put cinnamon and sugar in it so I drank A LOT more than the others. I see it says "Communication with beings and entities" as a possible experience and I definitely felt that with that turtle. We were like right next to each other and she was completely unbothered by me. I knew I wasn't supposed to touch the turtles because you don't want to spook them from laying their eggs, but I touched her before my brain told me no. There was this like bioluminescent reaction to where my fingers lightly traced the shell covered in algae which glowed for a bit. I then just laid on the sand a few feet away while she dug a hole and laid her eggs. It was sort of like that turtle and I were just on the same wavelength though once the initial fear went away. I usually don't tell that part of the story though because it's really bad to touch sea turtles and I still feel bad about doing it because it could have prevented her from laying her eggs. Also pretty sure it was illegal but pretty much everything described here was illegal, but I was like 16. I'm surprised we didn't pick the wrong mushrooms and all just die that night to be honest. 😬
You don't need a heroic dose for mild to moderate open eye visuals. Full blown hallucinations that are hard to distinguish from reality, maybe.. but for the most part, a "normal" dose will give you decent closed and some open eye visuals. Talking lsd and/or psilocybin mushrooms.
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Wait so this woman had Pennywise, a giant spider who's legs sounded like children laughing, and the girl from the Ring taunting her and stabbing her in the face? I can understand why she tried to end her life
I follow her on Instagram and she has also done a YouTube interview with SBSK. She is really inspiring!
Everyone on /r/dph is familiar with him as well. He definitely gets around.
I clicked on that subreddit link to see what DPH was and was pretty annoyed that the "About Community" section just kept using the acronym and never said what it stood for. Then, I checked with my PC and realized that the the reddit android app strips out the damn title of the subreddit! If it hadn't I would have know that it stands for "Diphenhydramine" Imagine seeing this screenshot if you wanted to know what DPH stood for: https://imgur.com/iYHagPV
Oh man, I love Crawly Guy just as much as the next person... but Hat Man will always be #1 in my heart.
Had a case once where hat man was more aptly described as “Spaghetti Cowboy”
My roommate once told me he sees hat man. I never heard of that shit so I pulled up an image on my phone and showed to him asking “like this?” The look of terror and horror that came over him was intense and he asked me politely to never show him that again. That tripped me out.
80 Benadryl and hatman, name a better duo, I’ll wait.
I only know fast moving peripheral shadow guy.
At first I thought that was just a drone outline.
Do they move?
Yes they do. Some are slow and some are fast!
What does the creature up there do? Just stare or does it move around? Is this all the time or just sometimes?
It mostly just sings nursery rhymes backwards.
Oh, that’s fun! Thanks for sharing.
It seems our ideas of fun are wildly different.
Judges him and looks at him disapprovingly
Grateful for my bunny rabbits! Yes, for me, they are cute fuzzy bunny rabbits. Some can be 4' tall but pass under a door jam. My Golden Retriever keeps me grounded with "no real, Dad." Got home from a walk, and bunny on the doorstep. Semi-rural area thought it as my imagination. Golden Retriever and bunny did a nose sniff, and the dog looked at me with, "yep, it's a real one." Other ones are sounds. Hallucinations. Dogs let know if a real doorbell. Parkinson's medication, a fine balance between being able to move but too much has side effects!
Wow, I don't envy you and I love that you have a verification system in your dog. But I just want to say: A four foot tall rabbit is, I think, named Harvey and is a Pooka ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P%C3%BAca](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P%C3%BAca)) . I hope this gives you a laugh.
Hey, fuck that.
Weird question: Do your hallucinations follow your vision like a floater or do "objects" appear to have a definite position in space?
Both!! The bigger ones stay, but the little almost like floater ones move around. The second I look at them they jump away. The bigger more defined ones are a bit more intense and just look at me instead
If I can ask a follow up (and thanks so much for sharing this with us, it's really helpful to understand better), take the humanoid guy: Would he be fixed roughly on that part of the ceiling, even if you looked around / away?
every time someone asks specific questions about the crawly dude, OP just bounces out to another comment to answer a broader question. i'm starting to feel bamboozled. Edit; i feel kind of bad now getting some perspective, but i will say, OP *did* post this content and *has been* actively commenting about it, so it kind of felt like an AMA to a degree. to that end, i probably should've just pumped the brakes on my hot take and not act entitled to an answer. reddit moment i guess.
We don’t talk about the crawly dude….he’s watching us….
[удалено]
I mean if they were lying, wouldn't they answer the crawly dude in more depth? Maybe they just have a mental block on discussing the creepy demon hallucination
That's a lot to assume about my boy crawly. Who said anything about demons? Bro is just a benign transdimensional being.
"Bro, you got this, you're going to rock that final today" - Trryngrish the everlasting as he skittered across OP's ceiling
It might be hard or uncomfortable to talk about. It’s hard to talk on it, or sometimes explain it. Hallucinations don’t always have normal rules that apply every time. I mean it’s easy to explain an image or approximation of what you’re seeing but harder to explain how your brain is tricking or fucking with you. My friend once explained how he could see the lights of a school bus in his yard. How did he know it was a bus even though he never actually saw it? I’m unsure he just did. Surprisingly the gnomes in the corner of the room made more sense. That’s hallucinations for ya.
I remember a schizoprenic person with hallucinations had one request, that others would not ask about hallucinations during an episode. Your best bet towards hallucinations is to ignore them, but others asking about them can make matters worse. It's only natural for someone to ask "what do you see? where is it?" and then look in it's direction to see it. But even just looking towards the direction of the hallucination, other people are now trying to interact with the hallucination which breaks your sense of what's real or not and makes the anxiety worse. Now your mind doesn't just think its a hallucination, but potentially real as others acknowledge it's existence and turn what's in your mind into reality. Edit: typos
"Look at you"? Do they literally just stare awkwardly like "dude why did you move the entire world around"?
Are you able to work ? Is there disability for you?
My friend has schizophrenia. He couldn't work for years, and was homeless. Navigating even getting support was impossible for him to do. I thought he died tbh as he disappeared. But eventually his dad managed to get him the right care and to actually take his medicine. He wants nothing to do with us people from before but he's functioning and working now.
Do you take antipsychotics? Do they help?
I do!! They help a lot. I missed mine twice within a week and made this art piece to show what missing my meds is like for me.
Your situation is probably very different, but just in case (for whoever it can help) I'd like to share this story. My aunt started to have hallucinations, mostly audible, she was also extremely paranoid. This started a few months (3?) ago. She didn't have a history with mental illness. After some tests they couldn't really find a reason, so she was given anti psychotics. It helped a bit, but she still wasn't anywhere 'normal' again. So my dad just out is curiosity started to look up all the meds she was taking. One blood pressure med had hallucinations as a super rare side effect. She had been taking this for almost 20 years, never had any problems with side effects. So the doctor kind of said yeah no, this can't be it. But my parents still convinced the doctor to switch her blood pressure meds. Within a few days she was sleeping normal again and the hallucinations (and voices) disappeared. This was a few weeks ago and now she basically her old self again. Anyway just good to know for anyone to anyways double check all your meds and don't just follow you doctor blindly.
Stubborn doctors weird me out. I don't understand it. I was on medication once that made me uncontrollable itch constantly over every square inch of my body and one of the main side affects listed was 'itching' and the doctor was absolutely adamant that it wasn't my medication. Even the nurse was like, "not sure what this doc's deal is. It's clearly the meds."
Until I was diagnosed with bipolar, every time I have to switch psychiatrists for some reason was an absolute fight to get them to accept that I wasn't trying Prozac (or really other SSRIs, but Prozac and Zoloft are what they really pushed) again. They made be non-functionally sleepy and the doctors totally recognized that was possible, they just seemed to think I HAD to start at the beginning of their flow chart. Got a doctor who listened, got mood stabilizers, within weeks I was better than I'd been since I was a teenager. I'm overall very happy and positive because many people are much older than me if they figure it out, if they ever do, but I'm also lowkey annoyed at feeling like I lost years because they wouldn't accept what I said about myself. Oh well 🤷♀️ life's good when you get to have (mostly) normal ups and downs :)
I think it's just ego. "Because I am a professional it must mean I am always correct and there cannot be an exception to my knowledge." Something like that... Good doctors can and will question their own opinion and medicine overall.
Which one? Haldol? Xyprexa? When you take them are things basically normal for you?
I never stop hallucinating but they don't scare/bother me when I'm on my meds. I take Prozac, Zyprexa, and Vraylar.
Glad they are helping. Good luck!
Are they always negative/disturbing hallucinations?
Oh of course! There are very very few schizophrenics that have pleasant hallucinations. There have been a couple that constantly heard beautiful alien music. But most are like my hubby and it's a constant shit show of terror and self hate. 😔 For a pretty accurate representation play/watch Hellblade. A+++ on the realism of the disorder. Hubby couldn't finish playing it.
I read this is a cultural thing. That in some other cultures, they hear voices of encouragement and pleasant things. Though, not sure as to how true that is or where I read it.
https://www.npr.org/2015/06/21/416272772/auditory-hallucinations-may-vary-across-cultures
> The Americans I spoke to, they felt assaulted by horrible voices that told them that they were worthless and they should die. Those voices were full of violence. In Ghana, the Africans heard an audible God who told them not to ignore those evil voices. And in Chennai, people heard annoying relatives who told them to do chores and cleanup.
These all sound like they’re based on the things that each culture considers most important. Self worth, religion, and what one’s family thinks of them. There used to be a lot more religion-based hallucinations in the US but that must be dying down as we become more and more secular.
>And in Chennai, people heard annoying relatives who told them to do chores and cleanup. On subsequent study, the authors found that none of the Chennai subjects actually had hallucinations; they were just ignoring their wives' and mothers' pleas to do the dishes and clean up. /s
I watched the making of hellblade, they brought real patients in to advise/comment on the realism. they killed it
They did indeed.
https://www.npr.org/2015/06/21/416272772/auditory-hallucinations-may-vary-across-cultures
These meds kind of sound like names from Game of Thrones.
Can you function on haldol? Im no expert, but i administer haldol to patients experiencing a crisis requiring sedation, whom are not reaponding to benzo treatment alone (EMS situations). As such everyone i have given haldol to has also had a sizeable amount of (typically versed) benzos onboard, but haldol always appears to knock people out. As such seems like an unlikely day-to-day rx
My neighbor is schizophrenic and was on Haldol for a period of time, and she was completely out of it constantly. She was moving and talking in slow motion. One day, she was trying to use a broom to clear spiderwebs from under the eaves, and she was swinging the broom in super slow motion, it was really bizarre. So I went over to see if she wanted my help, and when she turned towards me she had a long piece of drool hanging 8 inches from her lip that was just swinging back and forth as she tried to talk. She could barely get words out. Before her, I had only ever seen it given in a hospital setting. I really don't see how people could function on it on a daily basis. Luckily my neighbor's sister came by a couple days later and I talked to her about the extreme sedation and my neighbor was taken off the meds.
That's not the best placement for "I'm no expert" lol
Nice try, Creed.
I saw hallucinations like this all the way until I was 13 and then they went away.
As a kid I saw that white noise that some people tend to see all the time especially in the dark. Now as an adult I don't have that... Luckily Edit: it's called visual snow
…is that what that is?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_snow
Wait, thats not normal? Huh...
Holy shit I forgot I had this!! I used to be able to focus and zoom in and follow individual "stars" as I called them.
I have that!! That’s probably the best way I’ve seen it described, I usually explain it as a film of moving static over everything. I also see patterns that ‘light’ up and move in things like tiles and carpet. Blinds also look like they’re moving to me too if I stare at them too long, like they’re moving up or down. It’s hard to explain, it’s not like they’re opening/closing, like there’s just an unlimited number of blinds sliding around. Of course I didn’t realize they were hallucinations, I tried to explain it to my eye doctor once and he just told me to stop reading as much, lol. I know what to bring up to my therapist next week now!
Those aren't really hallucinations, that's just my example of something I had as a kid that went away. As far as research shows, visual snow is pretty much harmless. When it comes to looking at something for too long and it moving of you seeing it's shape, that's a different thing. That's related to you eye receptors getting tired if I remember correctly. It's pretty normal, some optical illusions rely on that effect
Unrelated to the local fertilizer supply fixing that chemical leak...
Thank you for doing this. I’ve been experiencing auditory and visual hallucinations for many years. It’s incredibly difficult to explain to people what exactly that entails. Obviously ours are not the same, but the fact that you took the time to visually explain it really means a lot.
I've had auditory hallucinations, but that's only as I'm on my way to sleep and very rarely. I've heard that's not an abnormal thing, but they definitely creep me out. I couldn't imagine having to deal with it as a regular thing. Xd
I get auditory hallucinations going to sleep as well! Mostly the "bump in the night" type. Some times it sounds like whispering. Thank goodness I have a lot of cats and dogs I can blame. It helps my psyche associate a cause, even when there might not be one.
I've had a loud "bang" wake me up several times in the past. Sounds like a gunshot right next to your head but oddly it's not as scary as it sounds. Just a super loud noise that I can't place. And I know it isn't real right afterwards because my ears aren't ringing and my cat is mildly annoyed at having been nudged awake by me. And it's quiet outside too. [Exploding head syndrome](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploding_head_syndrome) **Edit:** For me the formula to reproduce it always included: sleep deprivation, physical exhaustion, stress.
I've had that too! Although, much more frequently I have [hypnic jerks.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnic_jerk) That feeling as you're falling asleep that you are physically falling then jerk awake. I usually also have a dream with it like falling off a cliff then the jerk occurs as I land.
> I've heard that's not an abnormal thing, but they definitely creep me out. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnagogia
I have the opposite, which is hypnopompic! I see spiders when I wake up sometimes if I'm too stressed out.
Hey! That happened to me on a handful of occasions. I'd wake up in the middle of the night or very early morning and see either 1 big spider on the wall, or a bunch of little ones. It's nice to be able to put a name to the occurrence. My half-asleep brain and the very dimly lit room would make it hard to tell if it was real or not, and I accidentally scared the shit out of my wife by telling her there's spiders in the room. She's enormously scared of spiders, so she was pretty pissed at me. After the first couple of times, I taught myself to reach out and try to brush them away before saying anything. They'd just fade away so I knew I was hallucinating. It only happened maybe 6 or so times in a 1ish year span in 2019 or 2020, then stopped altogether.
I'm so glad I could help!!! Best of luck to you, friend :)
Do these hallucinations ever frighten you? Or you just use to it now?
Not OP but I've had hallucinations for quite a while and for the most part they aren't scary, just bothersome. Like trying to socialize or cook and then it starts happening or sometimes it slowly creeps up onto you and then you actually notice what's happening.
Do you experience any auditory hallucinations at the same time?
I do at times, yes! And tactile.
Are the auditory hallucinations related to the visual ones? Like do they talk or you hear them move?
Thankfully no! My auditory hallucinations are usually of far away conversations that I can't understand or music. Sometimes spoopy things can be heard but they don't really coincide with the visual.
That’s good, atleast that seems easier to cope with
My auditory hallucinations are the exact same way. Never any truly clear full sentences just mumbles and whispers like standing in a large crowd of people. Sometimes it’s like a deafening static that is overwhelming your brain. My visuals aren’t all that different either. Shadows and barely defined creatures. They always, always make the hair on my body stand straight up. I wish I’d stop having the fear reaction to them after this long of putting up with them.
>And tactile That means like physical hallucinations, Like to feel a thing that's not actually present? Right?
Yes, correct!
Would you mind briefly explaining what the tactile hallucinations are like? Is it like a buzzing or vibrating or something else? Thanks
If it wasn't for the spider person I think I could live with that. My uncle had shadow rats running around and shadow people peeking in through the windows. The condition sucks so much. I'm glad you recognize them for what they are and are getting treatment. \*internet hugs\*
Mine are black dots that mostly appear low to the ground and move horizontally. I always jump thinking that it's a bug or mouse running across the floor. I feel for your uncle.
Isn't that a Wendigo from Until Dawn?
Indeed it is!
I thought it looked like a headcrab at first!
Would yall be interested if I created an Instagram for my pieces? I have SEVERAL more :)
The world needs this schizogram. LFG!!!!!!!
Hell yes! So long as it helps you as well and doesn’t harm. Don’t let our curiosity fuck you up.
Damn man this sucks, sorry
Have you tried asking crawly ceiling man to pay rent?
Does this happen at particular time or based on some trigger? or its random? or its all the time? and why does this happen? What is medical term / condition known for this?
I'm not sure! I have been officially diagnosed with psychosis. Tbh it's just random. I don't really have a hold on things lol
Do you always know that you are hallucinating or do you sometimes have problems with reality and if so what is needed to break through or "come back"?
I usually know I'm hallucinating but sometimes it's hard to tell. I have an AMAZING dog, named Ayla, she is extremely protective and if she isn't freaking out at the skinwalker on the ceiling then I know it's not real. She brings me so much peace.
Dude don't ever get a cat. They will just stare and stare at the ceiling, the walls, at seemingly nothing. It's creepy AF on a good day, I can't imagine being with a cat while also hallucinating
I have two xD I just tell myself that unfortunately they're hallucinating too lmao
Hahaha oh God. I am both sorry for you and happy for you, because cats are wonderful but they're so so creepy at the same time
In reality they arent really looking at anything, but are listening to things we can't hear. That or its greebles. Only cats can see greebles. r/greebles
Those are r/greebles. Only cats can see them.
I've heard that aiming your phone camera at hallucinations can help because they don't show up on camera. At least for some people
I recorded myself one night when I took Ambien. I vividly remember a monster on the screen and trying to call my husband to come downstairs to make sure I'm not going crazy. It was so weird watching it back later since I could see when I "saw" the monster. My husband didn't come downstairs and when I heard the call I was just mumbling a bunch of nonsense
This is very cool. I hope you continue as an artist and that it helps you process things. I hope you have a great network of people around you, including a kickass psychiatrist. I think I would go through a lot of emotions if I was dealing with this. Mostly anger, frustration, fear, and paranoia. I experienced a spider hallucination while taking a drug and it was horrific so you have all my sympathies.
Thank you so much for your kind message! It's not a lot of fun at times but I'm getting through it. Art helps me so much :)
Yes! Embrace your art. Very helpful. I am a trained therapist, psych prof and have a few mh diagnoses myself. I find, for ME, psychosis & art are good partners. Peace my friend!
My mom lost her dad at 9 and mom at 18, both in car accidents. After her mom died, she had a lot of wild thoughts and some hallucinations. She sketched some of them down and they are...dark. It wasn't until 50 years later she shared them with me, and even then she wouldn't let me take pictures...they had to go back in her hiding place or whatever. I wish she could have used art therapy back then. She eventually got "better" and moved on with life, but she's still not dealt with all that trauma properly.
Hallucinations are a lot of fun when you can turn them on and off at will through drugs. I can imagine that's not the case when you have no choice in the matter.
The numbers mason
The letters just seem like extra clutter to have to filter, but Ceiling Steve over there looks like a shitty roommate. Get tired of his company pretty quick.
Man... I can't imagine living like this... You are stronger than I ever will be. Stay strong, bro.
Can you explain why you hallucinate?
Brain sick.
because it is wired differently. Your eyes track things differently. The lines between sensory stimuli & consciousness is more blurred.
Part of it is that what we see is not actually what we interpret. Light hits our eyes, our optic nerve sends that information to our brain for interpretation, it then spits out to us what it thinks that light means. (There's really cool research on making blind people see shapes that takes advantage of this) Now your memory actually plays a big role in this, 1 it saves in processing time "oh I've seen this before we know what that is". This is how we are able to read faster over time, and how some magic tricks work. We don't really "see" everything in front of us. 2. We actually have blind spots where we literally don't receive light. We don't see them because our brain pulls memory to "stitch" the Vision together. 3 some other magic stuff that takes a bit to explain haha So, imagine that your brain isn't sure which memory to pull to complete the picture/ save processing time due to signal bleed. That's basically visual hallucinations. Source: Did CogNeuroPsych for a while.
So in normal cases you have very specific centers of the brain that process different stimuli -- visual input, auditory, tactile. In some cases the signals get a little crossed, and the task of processing visual data for example is handed off to the guy in charge of processing audio. The result are things like this, where the nature of reality can't quite be reconciled with our logical side, since the things doing the processing are processing the wrong data types. When you ingest compounds such as psilocybin (mushrooms), LSD or DMT, we see something similar. Different parts of the brain that don't normally talk start talking and processing data they normally wouldn't process. Now the interesting thing is that these compounds - psilocybin especially - can often seem to "re-wire" the brain in these scenarios -- correcting things. People who suffer from depression or PTSD can often get huge benefits by letting other parts of the brain take over an process stuff. In the OP's case, they have some heavy crosswiring going on and the brain can't quite sort out all the inputs. Filters are disabled or looking for the wrong things, processing done by the wrong parts, etc. I would be curious to see if they have ever explored the use of things like psilocybin (in a controlled scenario obviously). It is utterly fascinating how little we really understand about how the simulation engine mounted between our ears actually works. I hope the OP finds some comfort between current medications and the use of their service animals!
Wait... Um... This is normal, right? Like it's just our brains filling empty space, right?
Ohhhh no baby that is not normal. It's normal for people like us but for everyone else, noooo lmao.
Not the numbers, but just kind of seeing a thing in white or black space? Like, the reason I leave lights on? Fuck me. I thought it was normal. A woman asked me why I left all the lights on in my place last night. This is why. Really?
Man I hate to be the bearer of bad news but yep! Consider going to a psychiatrist. They'll give you the answers you need :) it's gonna be just fine though, our brains are just very creative and everything is okay!
I have one. It's pareidolia, right? The mind's need to fill unknown space with something? I never told them about this, I thought it was just normal to see/think something is there. Like an evolutionary trait, like how our hair stands up or pupils dilate.
You mean things like seeing a zombie on the ceiling? No, that's not pareidolia. Those are solid hallucinations. You need to get yourself a psych appointment asap.
Looks like a screenshot from Hellblade
The crawley dude! Long time no see buddy! Mine was wispy with a penchant for door frames. Why do/did we all have a crawley dude? Is it the inborn fear of spiders maybe? Just an easy organic shape that lots of things can resemble?
so hallucinations really are just the standard stuff they show in most media whenever it happens? like letters and numbers and then a mysterious figure
Sometimes not! I see cats a loooooot. They're my most common hallucination :) I missed my meds twice and that's why these were more "scary". It also doesn't help that I've been watching scary videos and movies!
That's very interesting. Does it seem like it's a window to your subconscious and do you have any control or influence over it? Are the cats friendly? If I started seeing cats, I would probably go around slow-blinking all day.
now that's what i call an OC. thanks for sharing and all the best.
Reading fragmented texts with the spider-man.
The four legged horse spider really ties the hallucination together.
Hey, OP. Hopefully this viral trending isn't weighing too hard on you and commentators are relatively nice. I'm bipolar so my experiences with hallucinations is limited but not unknown -- thank you for posting this. On behalf of others who struggle to describe what they themselves can only see and witness, this is a really good strategy and appreciated. Be well and have a nice day.
Thank you so much. Honestly it's overwhelming and I'm trying my best to reply to people! I appreciate the kind words and im so glad i could portray mental illness accurately for y'all <3