Déjà vu so extreme that I can’t tell what’s real | Hacker News Reader

Déjà vu so extreme that I can’t tell what’s real

mosaicscience.com

108 pointsdaddy_drank38 comments

I once had this feeling while being stoned. It was maybe my fourth or fifth time smoking marijuana. For a good two or three hours, every moment I experienced, every conversation I had, I had the feeling that I've lived through it before. A constant Deja Vu.

I knew I was stoned, but it still freaked me out. After talking to my friends about this (while still being high), I was able to enjoy and explore it. I asked my friends some questions to which I didn't knew the answer. Still, when they answered me, I knew with great certainty that "I've heard this before". My friends came up with all sorts of fun experiments to further explore my state.

I later read that this feeling (i.e. a normal Deja Vu) presumably is caused by the brain storing information immediately into long term memory, instead of keeping it in short term memory first. When the information is in long term memory while you are still experiencing it, you get the feeling that you've experienced it before.

Scratching the surface of how my own brain works (and can be rewired), was extremely profound and quite unsettling. I stopped smoking since.

Explains why my boss is always tellung me my ideas are not new, he is always stoned. I'll raise this issue on Monday.

This is a great setup for a dilbert comic strip actually!

If only this were a common side effect.

I randomly get such a thing - hours worth of deja vu. Even when I know I've not been in the situation before. Smoking semi-regularly actually makes this happen less often.

I have this same experience with dreams at least a few times a month. For example I'll have a dream where I'm recounting a real-life story to a friend or family member. Later on, during my waking life, I'll tell the story again to someone and I won't be able to tell if I've told the story to them before or not, regardless if they are the person from the dream. Sometimes, I won't even remember the dream and I have the same feeling. I usually catch myself while telling them whatever I am sharing, and ask "Have I told you this before? No? Ok...". It's supremely weird, and I've just learned to either ignore it or catch myself.

Also, with the same frequency, can't distinguish if something (realistic) actually has happened to me or if it was in a dream. Something as simple, for example, as going to the beach and playing volleyball with my friends. I will catch myself going through a memory of something, only to realize it actually was from a dream. The memory is as real as any others I have - vivid detail, feelings attached to it, etc. I have to think back on what I've done that week to see if it actually happened or not.

Observing the inner workings of memory and the brain as symptoms is one of the oddest things in life, in my opinion. I've learned not to be scared of it and instead enjoy it as part of the human experience!

Strangely, these are the only types of dreams I can ever recollect. On the occasions that I do remember my dreams after waking up, it's often because they are related to a very specific thought I had before falling asleep (especially during short naps) and I immediately think of that after waking up. In these situations, it becomes very difficult to discern what has and hasn't happened, and I often need to think for a few minutes or check my texts in order to solve the mystery. Other times, it just comes down to a goal coming to mind that I feel like I have accomplished already, even though it only occurred in a dream. It's almost as if my thoughts from the dream remain in my subconscious, and despite being able to tell what was and was not real in these situations, I have a lingering feeling of some sort of experience related to the specific goals that I use to "dig up" the dream from my memories.

you've just described exactly the same experience which happens to me quite often. I must say that I'm quite relieved that I'm not the only one like that. thank you for taking time to write this

Absolutely! I'm trying to share more with friends and other mediums about the odd things I experience in my life. I'm coming to the realization that these are just glimpses into how the brain works that we interpret in odd ways with our higher level thought - not things that separate me and my own experience from the experiences of others. It's important to open a dialog about these things and not cycle deep in your own conscious thoughts about it all :)

There's a hypothesis that this is why we (normally) forget our dreams; it prevents us from getting confused about what's real.

Ahh, thanks, I hadn't thought of that! That would explain a lot.

My hypothesis is that dreams don't actually happen as we sleep, just that the conscious state "arrives" in the brain before the cleaning/storing processes have completed. The brain then creates a memory to explain what's hanging around from the clean-up. So the dream happens during waking, the brain inventing new parts as we try and recall the dream so that the dream state can be established from a logical timeline.

Analogy: a magical secretary is tidying your desk and files. They pull out some files to re-order, put some files you were working on away, lift it pages/images to see where those files should go, etc.. You interrupt them and they scuttle away. You don't believe in magical secretaries so you quickly (and inconsistently) imagine that you were working on the files that were out making a story that explains how those files came to be there, in that arrangement.

Presumably if scanning techniques can show images of what we see in dreams that provides some evidence against this hypothesis, however it doesn't defeat it unless it shows we _experience_ those images through the period when we suppose we're dreaming.

Evidence that refutes this idea gladly considered.

If you've ever experienced lucid dreaming, I believe your hypothesis can be considered refuted _while_ you are in a lucid dream (for the same reason that the phrase "I think therefore I am" carries any weight). After the fact though, it doesn't seem possible to distinguish between a real memory of a lucid dream and your idea of a created memory of a lucid dream.

Another possible argument against is if a partner next to you observes you tossing and turning and possibly speaking in your sleep over time, and then you wake up and describe a dream you were experiencing consistent with what they saw. How would you explain the tossing and turning and talking in one's sleep in your hypothesis?

People have been able to communicate to the outside when lucid dreaming (via eye movement mostly), during controlled experiments.

So at the very least lucid dreams happen in 'real time'.

I've not heard of this phenomenon, communicating with a person in a dream state: could you cite it?

People saying things could be like the images appearing in the visual cortex that I tried to address in brief. They can appear, be processed, provide external output and such without necessarily being part of a dream experience happening at that time.

Back to my analogy, the magic secretary plays back some sound files, which maybe someone in a different office hears and attributes to you being present, but which you aren't "there" to experience. When you start to wake to consciousness you see the files and infer you were working on them, your partner mentions utterances consistent with one file and your brain meshes that in to part of the "story" it is writing of the dream experience (a la deja-vu).

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24171230

I considered lucid dreaming, indeed that was the spur that drove me to this hypothesis - your suggested counter argument was my thought there, one can't tell if one constructed a dream with a lucid characteristic after waking rather than actually having a lucid dream experience extending through the time you were asleep.

See however the sibling comment.

All they had to do is to ask you to write down the answer before you heard it. And then compare to the actual answer.

I've had the same experience while being high! But I was alone, listening to comedy podcasts, not finding them funny because I was -sure- I had heard it before, and all the punchlines were known to me already. It literally made everything not funny because it was old news.

But the extra weird part was that after that, I'd occasionally get similar episodes while sober, for a couple of years

I think that, to some extent, psychedelic trips can "awaken" the mind to future experiences. Like LSD or psilocybin, THC seems to have some of these elements that cause an "awakening". While there may be no physical changes to the brain, you still "wake up" to new types of experiences that you did not know were possible before, and the pattern-recognition part of your brain tries to connect new thoughts to those memories. So when your brain enters a similar headspace to where you were during the original "episode," it will try to find similarities between those events (despite the absence of THC). This connection might be as simple as just listening to jokes, and your brain would connect the action of processing a joke to what you felt at the time of the high. Using its "learned experiences," your brain would try to apply the old thought-process to that moment. Then again, THC has been shown to have some persisting effects on memory and these are not fully understood yet. For all we know, it could be a long-lasting effect of THC. Either way, this sounds kind of similar to HPPD, and the idea that it could be a subconscious attempt to connect two events seems very possible as an explanation to HPPD in general.

Something similar happened to me one of my "first times" as well (I had tried weed a number of times beforehand, but all of those times had been spaced out by months and none were very intense). I had smoked only smaller amounts before and ended up smoking many, many bowls out of my friend's bong without really thinking much of it. A moment of panic set in as I was inhaling my last hit and began to feel the effects of all the THC in my body at once, which made the high feel almost overpowering. A couple minutes later as the high began to set in in full charge I got to a point where I could not discern reality from what was in front of me; I could carry conversation with my friend or perform basic tasks, but every single second I would have a mental breakthrough that what I was experiencing was real. I still remember every moment of it, but during that experience it was as though my short-term memory had entirely ceased to function and I was forced to relive the previous moments by recalling them from my long-term memory. It definitely felt like Deja Vu, but the experience was also very unique (and frightening). The message I was left with was that drugs can be very profound, and they're likely the key to understanding many phenomena behind how the brain works. As frightening as it was, I would like to venture that deep to experience the same things again and hopefully explore that part of my brain.

After smoking a good amount I had a similar experience in which it seemed, as you said, that I stopped forming short term memories. I also had a nearly constant sensation of "just having woken up," as if every minute or so I was regaining consciousness after having been asleep. I even asked my friend several times, "Was I asleep?" to which the reply was always, "No, you've just been sitting there."

The Virtuals seek many different modes of gnosis or enlightenment. This slogan refers to one of the foremost of these "horizonless goals:" the gnosis of "staying awake", or more specifically, always waking up. This is the most exalted yet everyday mode of enlightenment, one which is not attained so much as continually rediscovered. There is only waking up and rubbing your eyes . One of the techniques to developing these moments--which we err in considering "states" of consciousness--is to allow these very slogans to randomly erupt in the mind. Spontaneously "mad" behavior, tricks, and optical illusions are also common approaches, but the moment they become fixed as "techniques" they begin to lose their efficacy. The point is to cut against established patterns--to "kill the Buddha," as the Ch'an patriarchs say. For example, rather than staring at a beautiful object that catches your eye in the market, observe how others relate to the object.

As in English, ngHolo's Indo-Chinese dialect contains the image of the dawn as a "crack" or "break." The peasants believe this crack is real--that a day literally ossifies over its 24-hour period, trapping the earth inside a cosmic shell. The shell is then ruptured by the rising sun. But the Virtuals play with this image to emphasize both the violent and nurturing aspects of "always waking up". On the one hand, perpetual gnosis constantly rends the dreamlike illusion--or more exactly, the tentative construction--of your present plateau. On the other hand, such gnosis pervades the mind with the empty but pregnant emptiness of the glowing dawn sky.

Wow that sounds eerily familiar. I remember I was standing up and was sort of okay, and then all of a sudden I just became completely unaware of my surroundings and had to think about where I was. After that it really started to kick in and I kept getting the feeling of waking up. I remember trying to walk around thinking that doing something would keep me "awake," but it just made all the actions almost mechanical. Like moving my legs was automatic and I didn't know why I was doing it until I "woke up" again.

I experience intense moments of deja vu probably 2-3 times a year. I'm 90% sure it's connected to dreams for me, because even on one occasion, waking up, I made the mental note "remember this intensely specific dream, and see if you get deja vu", and I actually did, in the middle of a presentation. I'm guessing it's because when dreaming my mind goes through a vast volume of possible scenarios, so statistically I'm bound to encounter something that it's internally 'rehearsed.' Maybe I sleep too much though, perils of freelancing.

Unless you write it down, it could simply be your brain fooling itself, pretending you took a mental note. I had the exact same hypothesis, and so I started writing down the details of my hyper-real dreams. So far none of it came back in the déjà vu form.

In fact, if it turned to be real, it would have far reaching consequences on the nature of reality.

Check out this past thread about theories on the potential connections between Déjà vu and short and long term memory.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14075757

I've had recursive deja-vu. In them, I remember having a deja-vu (about a deja-vu about a deja-vu ...) in the exact same circumstances. During those, I typically try to do something different than last time, only then "remembering" that I've already tried it in the N-1st layer...

I get it too. We have to break the loop somehow.

My wife gets a kind of de ja vu.

She's had a peculiar persistent condition ever since taking a very large dose of lsd with me.

On a near-nightly basis for the last two years her dreams have been entirely different in quality to before her trip.

Prior to the trip she always dreampt in third person, as if watching a story unfold. Now she often has first person dreams.

These first person dreams are so much more real to her than her prior dreams. Indistinguishable from reality.

She often will learn things in the dreams that she doesnt know in real life.

When she woke up from the time she was dreaming as an autistic Vietnemese man during the Vietnam War and started talking Vietnemese to me, that was weird. Pulling out Google translate and having it accurately translate.

Or when she mentioned acute details of a person that neither of us had met before, but soon would be introduced to by a mutual acquaintance of ours. She knew this person because she had a dream where she was that person. The girl was described as chubby with dark hair and had a missing ring finger since birth, as well as being a mutual acquaintance of the friend who would introduce us.

It would take me days of writing to capture the adventures we've been on since this strange phenomenon began. Too many of her "alternate lives" for lack of a better word. And to be honest neither of us talk about it much. Even our closest friends just know the vague superficiality of it. Who would believe us? Most would be incredulous or write us off as nuts. The last place I'd expect this comment to meet welcoming eyes is a place like HN, and for good reason. There's no evidence of this nonsense outside of anecdotes. My wife certainly can't control her dreams to do a repeatable experiment. However now that I mention that, I wonder what lucid dreaming could be like for her.

Neither of us believed in psychic phenomenon before this, but now we just sort of accept that there are greater mysteries than the narrow lens of materialism is now focused on.

We can't explain these occurrences.

have you ever looked up clairvoyance?

it's pretty fascinating stuff and your story sounds somewhat familiar to this biography i once read about not too long ago.

it makes you wonder if this stuff is indeed real.

http://www.baba-vanga.com/2015/09/04/baba-vanga-biography-in...

btw, don't fall for the whole media stuffs about her predictions, many of them are bs, stick to the original source.

I've had the sensation of deja vu on and off (particularly when tired) over the past 10 years. This began after experimenting with lsd in my early twenties and has sort of tapered off since. On one of the first occasions trying the drug I had a momentary (and vivid) recall of what felt like the hundreds of times in my lifetime I had the sensation of deja vu. Sort of like some circuit for deja vu related memories was activated. For many of the memories, I had remembered them previously as being about the sensation of deja vu (so in one sense I could at least validate some of them were correct when recalled agian). There were many others I couldn't be sure were actual fragments of my past that were being recalled for the first time. Fleeting.

The persistence of the sensation has broken over the years. Only when jetlagged or exhausted will the deja vu filter reappear.

Another thing I've noticed is that if I'm super tired - that type of tired when you can fall asleep in 10 seconds - is that one half of me will fall asleep faster than the other. If I'm woken in those few seconds I awaken with what feels like two sets of memories for those few seconds that goes with a strong sense of deja vu.

* I've been to doctor and discussed this. Had MRI & EEG (nothing unusual), and removed a lot of stress my life combined with a good diet and exercise. I've had little in the way of such strange experiences in a long while except a little deja vu every now and again.

A few years ago I had a dream that I was roughly 5 years in the future. I was in a car with some people that I don't know. We were driving near the house I grew up in.

They gave me a drug that hasn't been invented yet. It was called 'cloud'.

In the dream I could feel the drug as if I was awake. It made me see a huge amount of colors I can't normally see. As if I had an extra cone in my eye.

Then we swam in blue tiled baths in the hills behind my house that aren't there in waking life.

Not sure what it means.

One of the weirdest things about Deja Vu is that (in its most intense form) it can often seemingly create future memories. My first experience with Deja Vu that I can remember involved what I could only describe as predicting the future. While the events I "predicted" didn't end up happening, it felt as though I knew exactly what "path" I was on and what would happen next. It's a very scary feeling that makes it seem as if you've been sent back in time or you are presently dreaming.

My deja vu situations are usually not pleasant and I feel exactly the same way as you do!

"It was a pleasant and extremely vivid recollection. The problem was that it never actually happened. What I was experiencing was an extreme form of a very common mental illusion: déjà vu."

It's possible that he dreamed this, forgot his dream, and then remembered it, causing the feeling of having been there before. He had been there before, in his dreams.

Sounds like derealization: "a feeling that one's surroundings are not real, especially as a symptom of mental disturbance."

I've been having an experience very similar to deja vu, but not quite the same. I've developed some kind of accidental mental hack where reading nursery rhymes to my kids makes me fall asleep. I could be wide awake but I'll literally open page one of a book and yawn immediately. My wife thinks this is hilarious.

As I'm just reaching the edge of losing consciousness, my brain starts to manufacture false memories about whatever nursery rhyme I'm reading. For example if I'm reading "sing a song of sixpence" my brain will say "ah yes, I remember this one, the king and the maid are having an affair, and the queen learns about it and has her killed". Then I'll shake off sleep and realise that it was a false memory

It's an odd feeling.

Similarly, sometimes when drifting off I'll find myself at the end of a train of thought which I did not have. I don't know how else to describe it. It's like my subconscious was having a train of thought and i jumped in and claimed it.

I've had many similar experiences right before falling asleep as well, though I wouldn't have known to describe it as well as you have, but yes, I'd be mid-thought in something and forget the thoughts leading up to that one.

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