Self-Induced Auditory and Visual Hallucinations

[3rdEyeOpen]

Ok so I am a fairly average human in most respects. I am a bit of an insomniac, I sleep about 4 hours per night on average, frequently staying up for 36+ hours straight. I have frequent headaches that as of yet no doctor can seem to explain and a near-photographic memory. Ok so maybe I'm not so average, but recently I discovered that I can sort of 'force' myself to hallucinate. I was at a buddies house and I was bored, just staring off into space with my mind wandering aimlessly. Slowly my eyes started to feel strange, like they were constantly focussing and unfocussing. The room started to sort of melt and warp and my ears started ringing. I kind of shook my head and it went away, but now I can do this to myself whenever I want. It's kind of fun to do actually but I'm not sure if it's dangerous to my sanity. It's been a couple of months since the first time it happened and now I can make shapes and colors appear and hear music whenever I want, I sort of play it from my head from memory, but I actually hear it. I'm sure this sounds rather unbelievable, but humor me. If anyone has any explanation for any of this it would be much appreciated. Oh and if it makes a difference I am an 18 year old white male.

[tomgwyther]

Sounds like Hypnagogia. it's a state which i can also induce a little bit, especially at the weekend when my sleep wake cycle is a little chaotic due to my work (Musician.) For example, whilst lying in bed, one stares at a fixed point and after a while peripheral visual information is lost as is auditory sensation (until I can just hear my own tinnitus - Ringing in the ears)

This is not especially abnormal or extraordinary. Playing music in your head from memory is also quite normal; I rely on this abilty for my work in fact. that said, being able to actually, physically hear music or sounds in your head maybe of concern as this is not normal.

 

Things that might help:

If your drink caffeine; reduce or even eliminate you caffeine intake. The same goes for alcohol (or any other drug for that matter.)

Better still is to regiment your sleep pattern. e.g. Make yourself go to bed at 11:00pm and make yourself get up at 7:00am. This will be difficult at first, but after a week or so it will become natural... you'll feel much better for it.

 

here's a very useful link which describes the condition in far more detail.

 

My link

[3rdEyeOpen]

that said, being able to actually, physically hear music or sounds in your head maybe of concern as this is not normal.

 

 

I do physically hear the music, but it sounds disembodied. Somewhat reminiscent of a radio playing in another room. It doesn't overpower 'real' sounds, but I can hear it.

[tomgwyther]

Is it to the extent tat you could actually mistake the music in your head for rea lmusic being played on a radio? i can vividly hear music in my head but not in such a way that it sounds like real sound.

[charles brough]

My phenomenon is less dramatic but also strange. I love to play FreeCell on the computer. It is easy for me to spend several hours at it. But if I do it in the afternoon, I find that when I watch the TV news, I am subconscioulsy trying to move the speakers features around like cards! Then, at night when I go to sleep, all the cards are there before my eyes and I am trying to move the right ones. Unfortunately, as soon as I move one, it changes on me and I can never succeed!

 

Normally, I have trained my "mind's eye" to carry on a seriel drama when I am lying down to sleep. In it, there is no one I know and there is no sex, nothing that might send the hormones into circulation. The drama goes on each night where I left it and I usually go to sleep before it has progressed more than a very little.

 

I understand that there is a rare condition some individuals (not me), a condition called sub-clinical epilipsy in which they have occasional illusions. The only illusion I have experienced was seeing a boat slowly rise out of the water off in the distance and dissapear slowly in the sky. It was a mirage.

[Realitycheck]

The river Styx! Could it be self-manufactured from your own memory, or would it be born out of chaos?

[3rdEyeOpen]

Is it to the extent tat you could actually mistake the music in your head for rea lmusic being played on a radio? i can vividly hear music in my head but not in such a way that it sounds like real sound.

 

 

I don't think I've ever mistaken it for an actual radio because it only happens if I start focusing hard on a song. I have to mentally "play" the song to hear it, it doesn't just happen out of nowhere.

[lawljj]

it's like that experiment where you put covers on your eyes and leave the radio on static and eventually you start to hallucinate

[anch0red]

Hiya, I joined the site because I was searching similar things. Going to start with a bit of background into how my mind works.

 

I can't say that the audio is as clear for me as you, and usually if i think it up its more like I'm turning another noise into music, like rain or a car engine into loud classical operatic hell music or something like that. I might also occasionally snap myself awake hearing a noise or a voice when I'm just drifting off. That's annoying. I spend a lot of time doing nothing and sleep a LOT, and lounge around a lot, (partially depression, partially I like it, partially nothing to do) but I used to be a big insomniac. I recently started practising a bit of lucid dreaming, for which doing that thing where you try to see your room with your eyes closed is really helpful to self induce. its very similar to the situations where you think you've woken up and got up but you just dreamt it, even though you're half awake. its also the sort of thing which may lead to sleep paralysis. I've always had a very creative imagination; vivid as a child. I remember being 3 and waking up from a nightmare and thinking that there were these skeletons in the room. dressed, and some with long hair. They were actually talking to me and telling me to calm down and being nice, and even though they were obviously my imagination, made from dots in the dark (quantum dots?) which I was telling to behave in that way, I was scared regardless of their behaviour and ran into my parents bedroom because, like I say, I was awake. Being an insomniac later in life, I managed to get a lot of my rest whilst I'm awake, by simply zoning out in my classes to the point where my daydreaming is that strong that I don't remember I'm in class at all. Only fell 'asleep' once, when I noticed there was a calculator on the wall and bolted upright. This may have been a particularly bad coping mechanism as someone who suffers from ADHD like myself who may even when listening intently zone out or even when zoned in not be able to follow someone's words and process them at the same time so that they go straight through me without going into my memory storage as if that event never happened. This means that my memory of where I put my keys is actually less present and vivid than my daydream that I was chatting to someone about something when I walked home when I was actually alone, (I have a very cognitive brain. If I use words rather than images it will bring on further insomnia.) even when that memory is jolted or I find out where I put my keys. I don't have that memory in my conscious mind. It doesn't exist. Possibly subconsciously.

 

(On a side note, as vivid as a lucid dreams have been a few of my dreams that reached dé ja vu status, but that's something for another thread. Lets just say I've told people what was going to happen before it happened, but usually I forget my dreams and when I remember it's generally about something really boring and inane, so it has only been a couple times where I'm sure I dreamt it first. It isn't a case of "making it happen" or coincidence because it was that vivid and exact, and it was a music teacher making us sing a song that I didn't even know etc, but you only have my word on that so yeah, scientific people shouldn't really buy that unless they've experienced it themselves. None of the explanations so far have worked for my experiences, or your brain reading the same thing twice. That only explains the feelings, but anyway, I just added that point in to say that sometimes the things in my head like dreams, daydreams, or whatever the hell that shit is, are often more real to me, or as real to me, or if I'm down, more comfortable and enjoyable to me than pulling up real things, just to give you a taste of my head.)

 

Anyways, Last year I had my first time on acid. No need to explain the symptoms I'm sure, just to say that I didn't see anything from my imagination, but instead an interesting eye puzzle of how light refractions and shadow work, how light makes colours, how we see 3D, and physical patterns in the world a la Alan Turing (lots of other senses too etc) . I spent the next morning very 'half' tripping. I was very tired and I found whilst it didn't actually STOP moving for a long time, and I was absolutely amazed by the colours of the Summer fauna etc, if I stared at something, like a twig for a few seconds, I could will it to move more than it would be if I wasn't trying, because by this point it was largely ignorable that we were on something. I remember saying to myself that I could probably put my eyes in a way to push this if I practised enough, similarly to how i can occasionally push lucid dreaming. It wore off quite soon apart from some of the more typical effects of appreciating certain things more etc.

 

Did it for a second time around the next month. Sound played into it a bit more, and felt semi-telepathic (Top Answer) towards the other persons on it in comparison to everyone outside my bubble. after a while on it i orgasmed a second time on it (tmi, i know but its part of it) and after that I felt myself needing to move and tap to the beat of the room movements. I tend to fidget and tap a lot anyway. It's just something I do, but I realised after a while that I found it really hard not to do so unless totally distracted. I'm a very psychosomatic placebo affected person really, so it may for all its worth have been a fit because I felt forced to spasm. It wasn't a scary experience btw. Just a bit unnerving. It wasn't erratic, and I was controlling how i moved, just not if i moved. If I forcibly stopped I found that I'd be trying to hard that my eyes would water, and focusing this hard on anything on an acid trip is hard work. As such, I went into a state of lucid dreaming with my eyes open where I was totally aware and conscious of what I could see and hear, but knew I was asleep. Very strange indeed.

 

After that I found myself a few times, in the bright sun or whilst dehydrated zoning out into the type of hallucination that you get when you are in a desert or watch the grand prix on TV, but a lot closer and more like the dregs of an acid trip. Also, my eyesight has been getting worse, and I found that in the dark when I was camping out that things in the distance were blurrier but very similar to the 'pastel' stage of a trip (so I made sure I got glasses now) and certain things, like shadows on a stony texture for example, i could make move slightly as well, and things like that, but mostly when half awake, in the dark, or not in a good body state.

 

So on Monday I dropped a load of MDMA at a free party. Don't remember much of the crazy part of it apart from blurry vision, airy hands, a big buzz and losing someone's hat. But in the morning, half awake, I could see what is similar to the after-effects of acid. Certain things were a little swirly, and there was a map of red dots in square formation in front of my eyes, like when you close your eyes and there's light, but it was still quite dark, and I was seeing things out the corner of my eye, and sometimes if i zoned out then the red dots would start moving around, even though they were more like pixels of the world. My eyes would start to join up the dots and make shapes. One time it was a green spider next to my head. All in squares though, not scary, more like an 8-bit computer game. The red dots didn't fade out for hours. It's 3 days later and I'm still able to stare until I see things move. I haven't done it much because it strains my eyes, and I'm suffering a few other after effects. Apart from the physical ones I was having some real buzzing sounds whirring around.

 

But yeah, I like hallucinogens, but as someone who has trouble with memories and dreams and real and not real, I'm probably going to take it easy, esp on the MDMA, and I'd suggest that drugs will enhance your powers to see these things, but to be cautious of getting into it if the lines blur for you as to when you are or are not on a trip. Being mentally sane now isn't going to help you if in your old age you're more likely to think there's pink elephants running around the room.