This is a bit disturbing to read as someone who had perceptual distortions in my late teens. I always attributed it to HPPD after using LSD around 15 years old. Now I'm not so sure.
All of these occur very rarely. Like I said, maybe twice a year, but closer to once per year. I can't find it now, but I had learned about seizure activity and how you can experience one without really knowing it, things just might get wonky like your perception, feelings, smells, etc.
I think this is very common and occasionally experienced by most people, including myself. Typically when you're on the border between being awake and falling asleep.
>I also sometimes get this weird perceptual thing where objects look huge, again, normally while in a dark room.
Haven't experienced this one, but perceptual distortions in a dark environment shouldn't be a concern, I think. I definitely get thrown off sometimes. It's natural, since your brain is constantly trying to predict what should be there, and ambiguous signals due to limited light can throw a wrench into that, especially if you're not habituated to the light conditions.
>I've also had odd sensations that accompany these perceptual changes.
Could there be a nocebo effect? After learning about seizure auras, it's possible that when these things happen, you might enter a brief positive feedback loop where aura-like things could psychogenically manifest. Was this also the case before you learned about such things?
Does this happen in total black ? I sometimes (really rarely, like once or twice a year) have a strange « feeling » at night while in my bed without any source of light : I can distinctively see the objects around me.
The twist is : I’m heavily myopic and even with my glasses (which I don’t wear at night) I can’t see anything in the darkness. So there is no way I could distinctly see things with their contours in the darkness.
It only happened in places I know, so I can’t know if my brain is making my bedroom up or if I really see something, or if it’s a combination.
For me it was in a dark environment (bedroom), but I was looking at my phone, without glasses, and holding it pretty close to my eyes (I'm also heavily myopic) so that it occupied maybe ~60% of my field of vision.
The "picture" I had in my field of vision never changed, the "pixels" (though I don't think there is such a thing) did not change. But suddenly my phone was this giant monolith just above my head.
Consciously I could clearly tell this was a hallucination, but the dissonance of having this seemingly suddenly huge object held right above my head was really unsettling to me, a bit scary even.
I'm so used to not questioning how my sense of scale pretty much always matches what I see, it never occurred to me my instinct could be fooled by this wide a margin while consciously seeing that everything was normal.
But on the other hand, I can't say I've really ever had an unusually distinctive awareness of objects like you describe.
I noticed while at the eye doctor when testing different lenses I guess he could recreate the feeling by using incorrect magnification on one eye? Making my brain thing the room is tilted left or right.
Unrelated, anybody ever feel like they lost consciousness for 250ms? Super rare, but I get the feeling that I feel asleep and all my muscles went limp in that moment. It's like when you are falling asleep and you sometimes jerk yourself back awake.
https://epilepsysociety.org.uk/about-epilepsy/epileptic-seiz...
I thought I was going crazy for a while until I found out what it was.
Every once in a while, i'll have this and there's an entity in my room. Once, everything in my room flew and the world 'cracked'. It's just a waking dream. Wiggle your toes, and things will go back to normal. Toes still work when the delusion sets in because it takes time for the hormone that causes bodily paralysis to get to your toes, and when the brain notices you moving your body, it wakes back up.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_in_Wonderland_syndrome
A bit of hallucinating here and there is quite common especially as you age and isn't a big deal (though if it happens suddenly go see a doctor, it can be a symptom of something happening), being unable to determine what is and is not real can be quite a problem.
[1] Or ever, really, unless fever dreams when being really sick count. Though, without any reference point to compare to, they really seemed more like intense dreams.
> is it your brain’s pattern recognizer making an incorrect guess
This part is more or less an accurate explanation of a lot of hallucinations. Input misinterpreted and incorrectly "output" into consciousness.
They always scared me even though the audible events would be something simple like a "Hello!" or like, a bottle cap opening or a bit of music and the visual events would be like, a match striking or a bit of fire.
I am not sure what causes this transition of perception. Some people say its your brain releasing DMT, some say it's activation of your parasympatheic nervous system. I don't know for sure, but I don't think it is anything to be afraid of.
oh, here's an interesting one I hadn't seen before: https://akjournals.com/view/journals/2054/aop/article-10.155... "Lifetime use of psychedelics is associated with better mental health indicators during the COVID-19 pandemic"
But even if psychedelics were a causative risk in some mental disorders, shouldn't we as a society entrust adults to determine their own risk tolerance? We don't ban alcohol because a certain percentage of drinkers will develop alcoholism. We don't ban smoking even though it is a (or even THE?) leading cause of preventable death in the US. Why should other drugs be any different?
The truth is the drug is a mixed bag. Some people take it and may only report benefits. However, some people take it and develop intense psychological disorders they may not have ever developed otherwise. Simply saying 'oh they were pre-disposed' is hardly an excuse. Maybe they were pre-disposed, but not enough to develop it without an intense trigger event, like an LSD trip.
Here's a similar situation. Auto-immune disease runs in my family. My older cousin has vitiligo. My brother didn't have it, but then one day he suffered a severe burn. A few weeks later, he started developing vitiligo. Burns and other severe events are known to trigger vitiligo. Had he simply avoided it, he would likely never have developed vitiligo. But alas he did.
My uncle has schizophrenia. I see how it can affect him and the family negatively. You can't put me within 10 feet of LSD. Sorry, I'm just not interested. The risk of me developing actual schizophrenia is simply not one I'd be willing to take, but most LSD advocates would not even mention this, instead mentioning the silly pleasure it brings them. Sorry, no amount of poetic creativity, artistic brilliance, or musical talent is going to convince me that a non-zero risk of beginning to hear random voices is good.
The negative symptoms are so bad, that the positive ones, which are basically momentary pleasure, are simply not worth it being tolerated as a self-medicated drug. Even the supposed medical benefits deserve intense scrutiny given how dangerous the drug can be.
No, because such allowances are made with the assumption that people act reasonably. GK Chesterton said we should tolerate all thoughts except for the thought that stops thought. We can tolerate all kinds of insane thoughts. The only thought we cannot tolerate is the thought (the will to take LSD for 'fun') that has the potential to stop all thought. LSD, and other psychedelics, cause the breakdown of rationality that is the very reason we allow adults to make their own decisions. It is completely incoherent to allow LSD while also using adult cognitive skills as the basis of adult freedom.
Seriously, you propose to deny adults freedom of thought because there are "wrong" thoughts, defined by "reasonability ", which isn't and can't be defined?
In this line of thought your thoughts about banning thinking should be banned.
See where this leads?
No, because acknowledging the existence of such a thought does not imply thinking it.
The flaw with your claims is the underlying belief that human thought tends -- if left untouched by others -- tends towards freedom.
There is little reason to believe this. Throughout history, many civilizations have independently arisen that have fully embraced the thought that stops all other thought. You see this is in various cultural degradations, human atrocities, etc that have occurred over and over again.
In reality, human thought is not totally 'free'. There are some thoughts that you can think that make you less free, and should be discouraged.
Here's a more poignant example, would you allow adults to drive a metal spike into their brain to allow 'freedom'? Why or why not? If you do allow them, how can you possibly claim to desire 'freedom' for others, since -- by definition -- doing such a thing to your body is going to put you at the mercy of others for many years to come (and if they can't help you, then to the mercy of nature). If you don't allow them, why? If encouraging every liberty is not the goal of this exercise of freedom, then exactly what are you arguing about?
considering the potential mental health uses and the extremely low toxicity (i'm not sure anybody has ever overdosed on lsd) banning psychedelics would be a huge mistake.
and > They can turn functioning people into permanently non-functioning ones. It is an incredibly dangerous drug. applies to legal drugs too. alcohol for example. or painkillers or benzos.
I didn't call for a blanket ban. LSD may have therapeutic uses (other debilitating drugs like paracetamol do), but the self-dosing that people do 'for fun' shouldn't be tolerated.
By 'absolute ban' I mean they should be controlled, and classified as an illegal drug. This is not something people should self-medicate. Those using without a prescription or worse, distributing, should be jailed.