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Comment by blaze33 | Hacker News Reader

And now I wonder what someone with aphantasia would see using psychedelic drugs, or while meditating... Still nothing ? Could that help ?

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I would describe my ability to visualize as almost exactly like that in the article. I can't answer these questions directly, but I can tell you that when I am falling asleep there is a 'switch' that turns on in my brain and all of a sudden whatever I'm thinking about will appear before me in full detail, color, texture as if I were viewing an image of it. The sudden change has been enough to wake me up at times, otherwise I probably just forget about it as I drift asleep.

Similarly for sounds, except that I can always imagine sounds. However I can only imagine sounds that I can try to 'subvocalize' with my own voice (plus humming, whistling, etc.). When on the verge of sleep I will hear gorgeous, fully orchestrated (as far as I can tell) songs. Sometimes memories of ones I know well, sometimes either something I don't recognize or am subconciously improvising. It's extremely alluring and makes me annoyed that I can't do this at command. (Though friends who always have a tune of music in their heads tells me it gets annoying too.)

Number 8 makes me think the author is even more extreme than I in aphantasia.

> I can tell you that when I am falling asleep there is a 'switch' that turns on in my brain and all of a sudden whatever I'm thinking about will appear before me in full detail, color, texture as if I were viewing an image of it.

Whoa, cool. Like the author, I rarely remember any dreams (last night, total blank) and they are never visual.

Meditating has never done anything for me visually. I thought the idea of "visualizing" while you meditate was just a figure of speech.

I haven't tried psychedelic drugs. Maybe I should start.

> I haven't tried psychedelic drugs. Maybe I should start.

If you ever do (and I'm not encouraging you to do so) please document it!

So you cannot visualize things while trying to but do you dream at night ?

About psychedelic drugs, it's not something I would advocate lightly as it has the potential to mess you up pretty badly. From my limited experience it was more like having my imagination on steroids so I wouldn't know what happens if there's nothing to enhance in the first place... That said I've never taken hardcore stuff like lsd or dmt where some people report having full visual hallucinations.

That's one of the FAQ's in the piece:

8. Do you dream? No, or I don’t recall them. I’ve had a couple dreams but there was no visual or sensory component to them. When I woke up, I just knew a list of “plot points” about things that happened. This is also how I digest fiction.

Ah thanks, I missed this one when reading the article. Some other commenter talks about having a coworker with aphantasia but still being able to dream so they may well be a whole spectrum of what people can / cannot visualize.

I would be surprised if you weren't capable of "seeing" the typical colorful geometric patterns of a DMT not-quite-breakthrough with your eyes closed, and the experience of having something pass through your mind's eye just once might trigger dormant pathways.

Anyway, as a quasi-professional, my advice if you were going to pick just one to try, would be vaporized freebase DMT.

I always suspected my internal experience was atypical, but for a long time I just chalked it up to differences in how people talk about it. I realized I was aphantasic by going to a Tibetan buddhist meditation class. It's all about visualization and a few sessions in, I was like, "Wait, do you really see these things in your mind's eye?!" The teacher/monk suggested I try visualizing a stop sign or a white square. Nothing. I sit Vipassana now.

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