Hallucinations: The Waking Dream

[DeliveryGodNoah_v1legacy]

Having a hallucination, whether brought on by severe sickness or medication, can be an absurdly surreal experience. Some of them you remember vividly, or someone else witnesses you having one, and I'm interested in hearing them.

I'll share a couple of my own to start things off, naturally.

My first was induced by a sleep aid my mother gave me. I have times where I'll have trouble sleeping for weeks at a time, and this night in particular was important for me since I had to be ready for a trip by 4 in the morning. To help me get some rest, I was given one of my mother's prescription sleep aids (I cannot remember the name). She told me I better be prepared to go to bed very soon after taking it because I will be out cold quickly.

I laid there, waiting for it to take effect, and in this state between actually falling asleep and still being conscious I had hallucinated Joe Camel from Camel Cigarettes standing over my bed talking to me about my "cool posters" on the wall. My mother said she couldn't exactly hear what I was saying, but clearly heard me talking to someone while alone in my bedroom for a solid 5 minutes or so. I do actually remember some sort of vision of the camel guy, but cannot remember any sort of conversation other than mentioning my posters.

This other hallucination actually happens to me quite frequently (in relation to the span of my life). It usually happens when I have a fever, or when I am extremely sleep deprived. I will lay in bed and be looking at a wall on the other side of the room, and I swear I can both see and feel the wall getting rapidly closer to me, and then quickly zoom back out like someone is rapidly changing between a zoomed lens and a fish-eye lens. It's entirely disorientating and actually caused me to cry out for help when I was young.

 

[DeliveryGodNoah_v1legacy]

The first one you mention is quite hilarious, if you don't mind my saying so, lol.

But the second one sounds a little similar to sleep paralysis, an affliction I suffer with to quite an extreme (I have it more nights) - where you are processing your real-world environment to a degree, but while still asleep. You cannot move your body or wake up but you are aware of what is going on in the real world as if you were waking up, however, you're also prone to halucinate while in this state. Often you feel you're being attacked or are in imminent danger, but as you cannot move, it can quite easily escalate into a seriously frightning experience. On some occasions, it does escalate to serious halucinations somewhat similar to what you describe, I've often had it where I've believed a plane was crashing into my house, for example, and it's all too vivid sometimes.

So yeah, it's an interesting thing. I've learned to live with it and manage it, though.

 

[DeliveryGodNoah_v1legacy]

The first one you mention is quite hilarious, if you don't mind my saying so, lol.

But the second one sounds a little similar to sleep paralysis, an affliction I suffer with to quite an extreme (I have it more nights) - where you are processing your real-world environment to a degree, but while still asleep.

I don't mind at all, my family brings it up quite frequently to pick on me, and I go with it as it was very funny.

As for sleep paralysis, that seems likely. I also have "night terrors" where I will just barely be coming out of deep sleep and I'll hallucinate something above me, such as an incredibly large spider and I'll jump out of bed swinging at it. Obviously only to find nothing there at all.

 

[lacktheknack]

Another sleep-paralysis sufferer here.

I once entered sleep-paralysis from a state of awakeness, which sucked a lot. Everything got really loud all of a sudden and something was sitting on me. I didn't see what it was, sadly/thankfully.

 

[happyninja42]

Well, my experience with hallucinations have all been self-induced via LSD or mushrooms.

None of them were anything like what you see in movies, and I suspect that it's totally fabricated for visual effect. I never had all of reality melt away, and found myself in some bizarre location. What I would see, is Reality at a Slant, is usually how I would put it. I would still be Here, but little things would be off. Visual effects similar to the OP's moving walls, in fact the first time I was tripping, I remembered feeling/seeing my dorm room wall breathing in and out, in time with my oscillating fan's movements. The Susan Seddon Boulet poster for Libra that I had on my wall, which are basically designed for tripping, suddenly had a little squirrel in a top hat poke out from underneath the Libra woman's blindfold, and look at me, then scurry back under the fold.

I remember going out to my car to drive to the store, and waiting for the window to defrost, which was pretty awesome, because it was like 2am, and the parking lot was lit up by those amber colored lights. So I had this amber colored light, refracting through the ice crystals as they shifted and melted. It was pretty badass. I remember having the sensory effect of my cigarette in my hand, feeling like it had been bent at a 90 degree angle to the butt, and was resting against my fingers.

I remember feeling like every time I took a step up a flight of stairs, I kept going up for a split second longer, so I found myself running up and down our 7 flights of stairs because if felt really cool.

I remember looking up at the night sky, and seeing new stars exploding into existence in front of me, as if their light was only just now hitting the earth, and I could see it.

When I did mushrooms, I remember going to a 311 concert during the summer, and it was an outside concert. I remember feeling/seeing an energy aura around the crowd of 400+ kids, all shirtless (or sports bras in the case of the women) as we danced and jumped and frolicked. I remember feeling like I could almost reach out and touch the crescent moon in the sky, it was so crisp and clean in my mind.

I remember doing acid at a rave or two, and falling into this meditative, moving trance, where I could feel the music and lights flowing in and out of me, and having one of the most religious experiences of my life of sensory attunement and joy.

But I never saw someone that wasn't there, nor did I ever see anything incredibly unrealistic. I don't count the squirrel in the poster, because the poster was designed to be trippy, so having my imagination create this squirrel in the designs was totally understandable. Hell I even remembered thinking when I saw it "Whoa, ok yeah I'm really tripping now, becuase I know there's no squirrel in that poster."

The closest I've seen Hollywood portray an actual trip, was in 2 situations that I can recall. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, would get it right sometimes. Like when they are coming into the hotel, and the rose pattern on the floor is moving on them. The lizard lady behind the counter? Not so much. The other is in an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, where Buffy takes some kind of drug/magic trance, to try and figure out what Glory is actually trying to accomplish. As Buffy is walking through the house, there are a lot of subtle little things that are happening, that remind me very much of peripheral vision hallucinations, which were very much a thing.

Beyond that, it would be very much like normal life, just little things in what you see/hear would be tweaked in subtle ways.

Those are my experiences with hallucinations.

 

[NPC009]

Ah, sleep paralysis! Fun times!

I experience it several times a week when I'm stresses and they usually come in two variations:
-Bloodcurdling screams and other hellish sounds
-Amazing music I have never heard before and will never hear again

There might be a third, a more visual one in which I feel a presence in my room, but that one comes right before a lucid dream, and I'm not sure where the hallucination ends and the dream begins.

 

[sky14kemea]

Oh wow, can we start a sleep paralysis club?

Mine are mostly physical, for some reason.

Like the most commons ones, I'll hear loud footsteps or crashing, and the footsteps will get closer and then burst into my room. Then something will climb all over the bed and end up resting behind me.

Usually 20% of the time it'll make noises or whisper something.

I used to see some scary ones but I've learnt to just keep my eyes closed and try to go back to sleep until I can move again.

 

[hooblabla6262]

Spoiler

Well, my experience with hallucinations have all been self-induced via LSD or mushrooms.

None of them were anything like what you see in movies, and I suspect that it's totally fabricated for visual effect. I never had all of reality melt away, and found myself in some bizarre location. What I would see, is Reality at a Slant, is usually how I would put it. I would still be Here, but little things would be off. Visual effects similar to the OP's moving walls, in fact the first time I was tripping, I remembered feeling/seeing my dorm room wall breathing in and out, in time with my oscillating fan's movements. The Susan Seddon Boulet poster for Libra that I had on my wall, which are basically designed for tripping, suddenly had a little squirrel in a top hat poke out from underneath the Libra woman's blindfold, and look at me, then scurry back under the fold.

I remember going out to my car to drive to the store, and waiting for the window to defrost, which was pretty awesome, because it was like 2am, and the parking lot was lit up by those amber colored lights. So I had this amber colored light, refracting through the ice crystals as they shifted and melted. It was pretty badass. I remember having the sensory effect of my cigarette in my hand, feeling like it had been bent at a 90 degree angle to the butt, and was resting against my fingers.

I remember feeling like every time I took a step up a flight of stairs, I kept going up for a split second longer, so I found myself running up and down our 7 flights of stairs because if felt really cool.

I remember looking up at the night sky, and seeing new stars exploding into existence in front of me, as if their light was only just now hitting the earth, and I could see it.

When I did mushrooms, I remember going to a 311 concert during the summer, and it was an outside concert. I remember feeling/seeing an energy aura around the crowd of 400+ kids, all shirtless (or sports bras in the case of the women) as we danced and jumped and frolicked. I remember feeling like I could almost reach out and touch the crescent moon in the sky, it was so crisp and clean in my mind.

I remember doing acid at a rave or two, and falling into this meditative, moving trance, where I could feel the music and lights flowing in and out of me, and having one of the most religious experiences of my life of sensory attunement and joy.

But I never saw someone that wasn't there, nor did I ever see anything incredibly unrealistic. I don't count the squirrel in the poster, because the poster was designed to be trippy, so having my imagination create this squirrel in the designs was totally understandable. Hell I even remembered thinking when I saw it "Whoa, ok yeah I'm really tripping now, because I know there's no squirrel in that poster."

The closest I've seen Hollywood portray an actual trip, was in 2 situations that I can recall. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, would get it right sometimes. Like when they are coming into the hotel, and the rose pattern on the floor is moving on them. The lizard lady behind the counter? Not so much. The other is in an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, where Buffy takes some kind of drug/magic trance, to try and figure out what Glory is actually trying to accomplish. As Buffy is walking through the house, there are a lot of subtle little things that are happening, that remind me very much of peripheral vision hallucinations, which were very much a thing.

Beyond that, it would be very much like normal life, just little things in what you see/hear would be tweaked in subtle ways.

Those are my experiences with hallucinations.

99% of my mushroom/lsd experiences are very much the same. I always assumed that Hollywood and attention-seekers exaggerated the effects as well.

Then I had a monster trip. They called this acid "The Million Fingers of God"

In it I experienced my hands melting, the sky changing color, shared auditory hallucinations, saw a man's face simultaneously reach the floor and ceiling, touched the vibrations of a conversation, and had an entire room shrink. It was a long and wild night.

One of the coolest parts was an argument that occurred between two friends of mine. As one person dominated the argument, he would begin to appear larger. As the argument devolved into lsd insanity, they too began to look more ridiculous taking on an almost clown like appearance.

Moral of the story: drugs can be unpredictable.

 

[happyninja42]

Spoiler

Well, my experience with hallucinations have all been self-induced via LSD or mushrooms.

None of them were anything like what you see in movies, and I suspect that it's totally fabricated for visual effect. I never had all of reality melt away, and found myself in some bizarre location. What I would see, is Reality at a Slant, is usually how I would put it. I would still be Here, but little things would be off. Visual effects similar to the OP's moving walls, in fact the first time I was tripping, I remembered feeling/seeing my dorm room wall breathing in and out, in time with my oscillating fan's movements. The Susan Seddon Boulet poster for Libra that I had on my wall, which are basically designed for tripping, suddenly had a little squirrel in a top hat poke out from underneath the Libra woman's blindfold, and look at me, then scurry back under the fold.

I remember going out to my car to drive to the store, and waiting for the window to defrost, which was pretty awesome, because it was like 2am, and the parking lot was lit up by those amber colored lights. So I had this amber colored light, refracting through the ice crystals as they shifted and melted. It was pretty badass. I remember having the sensory effect of my cigarette in my hand, feeling like it had been bent at a 90 degree angle to the butt, and was resting against my fingers.

I remember feeling like every time I took a step up a flight of stairs, I kept going up for a split second longer, so I found myself running up and down our 7 flights of stairs because if felt really cool.

I remember looking up at the night sky, and seeing new stars exploding into existence in front of me, as if their light was only just now hitting the earth, and I could see it.

When I did mushrooms, I remember going to a 311 concert during the summer, and it was an outside concert. I remember feeling/seeing an energy aura around the crowd of 400+ kids, all shirtless (or sports bras in the case of the women) as we danced and jumped and frolicked. I remember feeling like I could almost reach out and touch the crescent moon in the sky, it was so crisp and clean in my mind.

I remember doing acid at a rave or two, and falling into this meditative, moving trance, where I could feel the music and lights flowing in and out of me, and having one of the most religious experiences of my life of sensory attunement and joy.

But I never saw someone that wasn't there, nor did I ever see anything incredibly unrealistic. I don't count the squirrel in the poster, because the poster was designed to be trippy, so having my imagination create this squirrel in the designs was totally understandable. Hell I even remembered thinking when I saw it "Whoa, ok yeah I'm really tripping now, because I know there's no squirrel in that poster."

The closest I've seen Hollywood portray an actual trip, was in 2 situations that I can recall. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, would get it right sometimes. Like when they are coming into the hotel, and the rose pattern on the floor is moving on them. The lizard lady behind the counter? Not so much. The other is in an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, where Buffy takes some kind of drug/magic trance, to try and figure out what Glory is actually trying to accomplish. As Buffy is walking through the house, there are a lot of subtle little things that are happening, that remind me very much of peripheral vision hallucinations, which were very much a thing.

Beyond that, it would be very much like normal life, just little things in what you see/hear would be tweaked in subtle ways.

Those are my experiences with hallucinations.

99% of my mushroom/lsd experiences are very much the same. I always assumed that Hollywood and attention-seekers exaggerated the effects as well.

Then I had a monster trip. They called this acid "The Million Fingers of God"

In it I experienced my hands melting, the sky changing color, shared auditory hallucinations, saw a man's face simultaneously reach the floor and ceiling, touched the vibrations of a conversation, and had an entire room shrink. It was a long and wild night.

One of the coolest parts was an argument that occurred between two friends of mine. As one person dominated the argument, he would begin to appear larger. As the argument devolved into lsd insanity, they too began to look more ridiculous taking on an almost clown like appearance.

Moral of the story: drugs can be unpredictable.

Actually, I remember being able to see lightwaves at one point in my room. Like actual ripple distortions coming in the open window from the parking lot. When I'd close it (the blinds were pulled shut), the waves would stop. Yes, drugs are unpredictable, but for me, most of it was mental stuff, with minor sensory hallucinations. Maybe I never got really good acid, I dunno, it was pretty good from my point of view. I personally didn't like the crash afterwards, where I felt like warmed over ass because I'd been running in high mental/physical gear for like 12+ hours (my first dose didn't kick in after a few hours, so I took another one...and about that time, the first dose kicked in...yeah...long night for me too). The experience was fun, but I felt the fun wasn't worth the recovery from it for the next few days. Mushrooms were never much of an issue. I'd be trippy for a few hours, and then come down.

 

[MHR]

That's some hardcore subliminal marketing. Joe camel comes to you in your hallucinations to sell you cigarettes, telling you your posters are cool and smoking is cool too. O.O

 

[Nuuu]

Well now I feel like a party pooper. Not a lot sleep paralysis here.

I can only remember having two sorts of visual hallucinations, both happening in the last 2 years:
- I remember waking up at night and thinking I saw a giant spider right above me, causing me to scramble out of bed in a panic. There was nothing there, not sure why I saw what I did.
- On a less creepy note: A few times I had minor peripheral hallucinations of black dots whizzing around. I would be surprised for a second thinking they were small bugs until I realized otherwise. Never had that happen aside from maybe three times last year. Don't know why it randomly started happening back then.

 

[pookie101]

well bipolar sufferer here so if my mood hits rock bottom or i get loopy high i tend to hallucinate off my ass.

having a running commentary in back ground is annoying but i can mostly ignore it. olfactory hallucinations are some of the worst things ever a smell you cant describe and cant be stopped and is horrific to put it mildy.. visually seeing the odd animal or person where there obviously isnt any isnt great either and can scare the crap out of you

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

Constant hallucinations are part of my daily routine. Some audible, some visual, mostly easy to identify as "not fucking real" though. There's a few messed up times, due to a fucked brain chemistry, that the "real" feels unreal and the "unreal" feels more real. Bipolar mixed with schizoaffective disorder (I'm fairly certain my psych's just pigeonholed me in the middle because they can't decide) is the best explanation I've got. Makes it so that I rarely ever want to interact with humans the older I get.
Lucky me my psychosis are just, for the most part, benign. An extra neat thing that happens and adds some color to an otherwise mundane world.
I could do without the aural hallucinations though, they're annoying.

 

[Niflhel]

- On a less creepy note: A few times I had minor peripheral hallucinations of black dots whizzing around. I would be surprised for a second thinking they were small bugs until I realized otherwise. Never had that happen aside from maybe three times last year. Don't know why it randomly started happening back then.

Could be a floaters aka flying flies, which are not actual hallucinations, but actually imperfections present in the eye. Pretty much everyone has them, but you normally don't notice them. I've experienced it myself, and to me, it literately looked like tiny flies buzzing about. I've been told people often start noticing them during periods of stress.

The first hallucination I remember was quite cute. When I took the train to school, I'd sometimes spot a little ball of fur rolling down the aisle. Around the same time, I started noticing something odd - buildings I was familiar with suddenly looked.. Different, as in taller and leaning at an impossible angle.
Walking down paths at night with trees near, it often felt like the branches were grasping out, trying to grab and immobilize me.
Some times, I'd get filled with a weird sense, when I looked at the ground it seemed like it was 10 feet away from me, I literately felt like a giant.
I went through a rather long period where my vision was grainy, blurry, as if watching a VHS movie on an old TV. Sometimes I thought that I was not actually I, but rather an observer sitting in a room, watching a live stream of some random persons body. It felt like I was not in control.

Once I had a quite terrifying hallucination. I was sitting in my room, it was late at night and the lights were on. Suddenly, I noticed these strange, almost see-through like worms crawling along the floor, going for my legs. I pulled my legs up from the floor, but then this spiderweb from the upper corner started stretching for me, trying to wrap itself around my body. Then, at my computer desk, I saw a baby just sitting there, staring at me while laughing. It just wouldn't shut up - and neither would the two people behind my desk (that I couldn't see), who kept talking nasty shit to me. Quite a terrifying night, all in all!

Another time I was very sleep deprived, I hadn't slept in 3 full days even though I'd taken my sleep medicine. I was given something stronger, and when I entered my room and turned of the light and laid in bed, I started noticing these little people all over the place, working, playing, just living. It felt like I was a part of Gulliver's Travel, and it was very fascinating, I just lay there studying them as I finally fell a sleep.

A couple of days ago I was visiting family. I was sleeping in a room with curtains that shut out almost all light. During the night I woke up and had to pee, a lot. As I rose from the bed, something weird started happening in the total darkness - objects, people and places flashed before my eyes very rapidly, I couldn't really tell what I was seeing as it happened so fast. It really just felt like my visual sense was overwhelmed. After around 2 minutes I finally found the light switch, and could get to the toilet. But man, that was really really stressful, it was very hard to keep calm because I just wanted to lay down and close my eyes, but that would result in me soiling myself.

 

[Voidrunner]

- On a less creepy note: A few times I had minor peripheral hallucinations of black dots whizzing around. I would be surprised for a second thinking they were small bugs until I realized otherwise. Never had that happen aside from maybe three times last year. Don't know why it randomly started happening back then.

Could be a floaters aka flying flies, which are not actual hallucinations, but actually imperfections present in the eye. Pretty much everyone has them, but you normally don't notice them. I've experienced it myself, and to me, it literately looked like tiny flies buzzing about. I've been told people often start noticing them during periods of stress.

This, used to see those floaters all the time and thought I was going mad. Looked them up and yeah, just problems with my eyes. Seeing them managed to put me into the very bizarre psychotic delusion that I was the only person in the world who could see bacteria with the naked eye. That what I thought until I looked it up. It wasn't always just black dots though, I could also see these tiny, I guess cell like things? Blue with tentacles coming off them. That's where I got the bacteria thing from, though I suspect that was just another random eye fluctuation.