Relationship between psychedelic synesthesia and auditory input

[Hilopsilo]

The thread about DMT and auditory hallucinations reminded me I was going to make a topic about this.

So, this is simply a thing I noticed and don't really have much substance to back it up, could just be placebo, but it was interesting to me nonetheless.

I was at a music festival the other weekend, I had taken both 2C-B and LSD. When I'm at these sorts of events, I always wear earplugs. I don't have extremely amazing custom ones or anything, but they're a pretty decent and preserve a lot of the sound quality. Aside from turning it down for my ears, the main impact it has on the sound is that the music becomes a bit more muffled; you lose a good bit of high frequencies, probably from about 4,000hz and upwards (music in a human context exists between ~20hz to 20,000hz), less "bright" in musical terms. These frequencies have a tendency to hurt your ears, or what we perceive as "harsh", so it makes sense that earplugs would get rid of that.

Anyways, after being in the crowd and dancing for hours on end, we left the crowd and I finally took my earplugs. This always feels good since its sort of like a breath of fresh air for your ears; you're now hearing the full spectrum of your hearing all the way up to the crispy and detailed top. And I SWEAR, my visuals also became a bit sharper, detailed, brighter and more defined as I did this.

This made me think, since the visual aspect of my trips is always influenced by music, especially when its the main focus blasting incredibly loudly with this massive lit-up stage, by removing frequencies from my auditory perception maybe thats also removing something from the way my visuals interact with it? We perceive sound in frequencies, and color/light are also perceived as wavelengths/frequencies. And there has always been this human struggle to describe sound, and we usually end up using words that would typically be used to describe things related to our other senses. As I mentioned before, we often describe sounds that are high frequencies as cold, bright, or sharp, and low frequencies as warm, dark, or dull.

With earplugs in, I felt as if my visuals were more smeared, smoothed in an almost pixelated way. Again, I can't tell if I experienced this simply because I started thinking about and it got stuck in my head, you know how that goes with tripping lol.

I figure when you trip, all your senses get a bit jumbled up and interact with each other in ways they didn't before. Even outside of a live music settings, playing music at home very obviously impacts the shades and hues of colors I'm perceiving around the room.

Anyone else have any thoughts on this?

 

[spacejunk]

Wow, this is a super cool topic.
I can't think of any comparable experiences, but i think it makes a certain kind of sense that the sensation of heightened sensory possibilities that you get in taking out yor earplugs is accompanied by a little psychedelic kick to the visuals - prompted by the aural unshackling when you take the plugs out.
Psychedelics take environmental, physiological and mental cues in how they affect your consciousness and perception - a bit like watching the golden light streaming through your windows in late afternoon, or something - it not only shapes the visual path your trip takes, but also colours the mental journey you're on, and your moods and feelings.

I find that earplugs can make you feel a bit detached - or like, riding a bike wearing sunglasses, helmet and earphones - you can see just fine, but when you take the helmet and stuff off, it's like you're stepping back into reality or something.
That's a weird analogy that probably says more about me cycling stoned than anything else....but it's that unmasking feeling of removing an object that is altering (and dulling) your perception - and you notice the contrast between "muffled" and the full sensory perception of not having earplugs in.

I'm inclined to think that's it's more of a little psychedelic boost you get from the added sensory imput of taking the earplugs out - as well as a slight sense of relief, perhaps. The pressure in your ears and sinus probably drops, and that in itself can kinda feel nice.
So with all of those things happening - and your mind and body reacting to them - i'm not at all surprised that you'd have a little added burst of psychedelic sparkle.

Just my theoretical 2c - i'm keen to hear what other people's thoughts are.

 

[Hilopsilo]

Wow, this is a super cool topic.
I can't think of any comparable experiences, but i think it makes a certain kind of sense that the sensation of heightened sensory possibilities that you get in taking out yor earplugs is accompanied by a little psychedelic kick to the visuals - prompted by the aural unshackling when you take the plugs out.
Psychedelics take environmental, physiological and mental cues in how they affect your consciousness and perception - a bit like watching the golden light streaming through your windows in late afternoon, or something - it not only shapes the visual path your trip takes, but also colours the mental journey you're on, and your moods and feelings.

I find that earplugs can make you feel a bit detached - or like, riding a bike wearing sunglasses, helmet and earphones - you can see just fine, but when you take the helmet and stuff off, it's like you're stepping back into reality or something.
That's a weird analogy that probably says more about me cycling stoned than anything else....but it's that unmasking feeling of removing an object that is altering (and dulling) your perception - and you notice the contrast between "muffled" and the full sensory perception of not having earplugs in.

I'm inclined to think that's it's more of a little psychedelic boost you get from the added sensory imput of taking the earplugs out - as well as a slight sense of relief, perhaps. The pressure in your ears and sinus probably drops, and that in itself can kinda feel nice.
So with all of those things happening - and your mind and body reacting to them - i'm not at all surprised that you'd have a little added burst of psychedelic sparkle.

Just my theoretical 2c - i'm keen to hear what other people's thoughts are.

The bike analogy totally makes sense, often in the crowd I'll have shades and earplugs on, and I feel as if I can sort of recede to a more introverted, less vulnerable/exposed, dissociated place. The earplugs give a more underwater impression of the music, as if its further away than it is, and the shades make me feel hidden partially removed from where I am physically. Taking them both off is like, whoosh back into a much more intimate, detailed, crisp world. Both sunglasses and earplugs are both "dimming" their respective senses.

A more scientifically experimental way to explore this further for the auditory aspect would be to get some sort of noise cancelling headphones and mess around drastically with equalization of the music you're listening and see how that effects the visuals directly with all else controlled.

 

[SunriseChampion]

Sounds quite interesting....and fun. I would literally be running around the festival playing around with my sensory inputs.
I used to do something that is sort of the opposite: When friends and I would do psychedelics (pretty well just shrooms and LSD) at my place back in the day, I would invariably end up in a corner listening to my portable CD Player with headphones on. I always found this to boost both visual hallucination as well as mental imaging. I would periodically "cease to be" in the same room as everyone else.

I'm with spacejunk on this.....I think it's a function of increased sensory input.

By the way, if you're going to experiment with this, please do let us know. I'd be super interested and, unfortunately, I don't do much in the way of psychedelics anymore so I can't be relied on to try it out myself.

Cheers

 

[Beenhead]

you guys need to read the David Luke book Otherworlds. He studies synesthesia and its role in DMT andpsychedelic experiences. He has amazing descriptions of it and uses it as a hypothesis to say that possibly what you experience on LSD and DMT isnt so much of a hallucination as we think.

He says that sciences describing psychedelic visual phenomena as Entoptic is completely wrong. There are many ways in which we can basically show that the hallucinations do not come from the retina, but somewhere else. Synesthetic visuals are one way. The people who generally think that have done tried a psychedelic and have not seen how amazingly complex and real they are compared to the junk you may or may not see before you dream, or put pressure on the eyes.

In my experience, most synesthesia that I get from listening to electronic music is in the form of very complex, muted in color geometric patterns. Usually a metallic color of some sort in the blue range. They are almost impossible to explain, except they are very similar from the CEVs you see, but I do not see them as a blanket over my closed eyelids, rather, I see them somewhere else in my being, almost in my soul or something, but they are unmistakably there, and not like some sort of imagination, memory recall, but a visual phenomena.

I do not get the same complex visions from psychedelic rock, like Gong or FLoyd. Its more organic in nature, less patterned, and more in the way of surrealist.

I have no way of knowing what role my experiences, memories, and personality play in this, but there is an unmistakable difference between the two and I prefer the synesthesia of electronic music.

I really enjoy this topic!