I am talking about the kind of voices mostly associated with schizophrenia. As seen in schizophrenia, the nature of the voice(s) would range from just having a second, kind of human, commentator in your thoughts - to at times actually hearing the same kind of comments/opinions, but stronger and more intense. In which case it is categorized as an hallucination, which is associated with psychosis, i.e. your mind in overdrive mode. Hence the voices can reach substance up to the point of being indistinguishable from reality. That is understandably less desirable.
There are a number of people who are in fact hearing voices in a normal, healthy way. Although you might question the circumstances, that made them hear voices in the first place (traumatic brain injury being one possible cause), those people are not mentally ill while hearing them. They never get a psychotic episode, and just don't have any other symptoms, that would qualify them for schizophrenia or other mental disorders. Some dislike hearing them, some are indifferent and some like them. Understandably, as virtually anyone will interpret hearing voices as a sign of insanity, those people do keep quiet about it, and tend to dislike the fact that they are there.
Voices are not real people's personalities, if they were you likely have split personality disorder. They are commenting "thought-entities", and represent aspects of your personality and own emotions to yourself - and no one else. I have read that they can evolve into having more qualities, preferences distinct to them and alien to the person's personality who is hearing them (e.g. different ethnicity, be a demon/spirit - although that's probably a matter of interpretation to the affected person). In the sense of embodying your own emotions (and thoughts, wishes, etc.), they are merely part of yourself, that you might want to ignore or not ignore, convey or not convey to the people around you. As seen in schizophrenia, strong negative emotions such as shame and guilt, can dominate the experience of hearing voices "who" embody them.
However, schizophrenia is a mental illness and torturous emotions that intensify with psychosis are part of that illness, regardless of hearing (them as) voices. Hearing voices itself is not pathological - the same way that being happy or sad as part of your normal life is not. But it can be a sign of something more serious, and it is very easy to recognize and point out. Like a weirdly shaped sunspot on your skin can be a sign of a malignant melanoma. It doesn't have to be cancer, and it doesn't harm you if its not. But it initially strikes your eye, that its a cause for concern, until you gain better knowledge with time.
As far as I understand it, people who hear voices (healthy or not) have no control whatsoever over "who" manifests in the first place. And if that "someone" is there they stick with them for a while, or for life. I have heard that additional voices can come over time, but at average no more than five or so voices at a period of time appear. Also as emotions intensify, the voices usually do, which is often associated with demanding situations in life. Other than that, people can actively try to suppress the voices by will to some extend, but that takes constant effort. I guess as well it could be possible to "let go" of them and unlearn hearing them permanently. As people have learned to change the nature and obtrusiveness of their voices over the years.
Why do I want to hear voices? The answer probably is the same, as to why most people take hallucinogens: Curiosity. An unexplored aspect of cognition that other people can experience and you don't even really know what they know. Its like a savant ability, people have it but no one knows how it works. Like the autistic "human calculators", normal people have now written books about how to construct, memorize and learn mathematical tables and simpler human-friendly functions, that allow everyone to compute complicated mathematical operations close to as fast as a savant. What's the use of that ability you ask, when you can just use a real calculator? When do you even need to compute the square root of 235242 to 12 decimal places? What's the use of learning to hear voices? Its about the same. Still a lot of people try and write books about it. Explore the unexplored and understand the incomprehensible. Learn how to do things you never did before. That's what its about.
No, I'm kidding. I just want to hear an evil sexy sadist woman in my mind, who tortures me and wakes me up at night with laughter and mockery. Because that turns me on, and would make my life so much better.
That said, please do not repeat this in any way in the thread:
1. Hearing voices is a symptom of schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is bad, therefore hearing voices is harmful and bad.
-> this is a very simple fallacy
2. You either hear voices or you don't. Although drugs can change/amplify voices in the affected, drugs have no intrinsic property that would relate to hearing voices in any way. The same way that dairy products do not have an intrinsic property to cause symptoms of lactose intolerance, such as stomach pain, in a person who just doesn't has it.
-> YES. That is general wisdom we all are aware of.
3. Meth and similar stimulants can amplify or temporarily create voices, in a predisposed individual, by neurochemically mimicing a psychotic state of mind. If not as well by causing serious brain damage.
-> Despite the dangers and damage, that entirely disqualify this method, for most people it just doesn't work - even if dumping the LD25 into your system. Which sadly, quite some of us have done at one or more points in their life. I survived, luckily.
Please post any kind of drug, or "magic" ritual performed on drugs, or whatever you did and thought, or events leading up to the experience - that maybe have helped you in the past (by accident or not) to summon voices. Or hear voices in the first place, that stuck with you. Please be aware that almost killing yourself and damaging your brain, with drugs or fever or car accidents, are in essence both not particularly good experiences to share, although they could have paved the way to something that you can elaborate on. Also please describe if you could influence "who" popped up and what they were on about.
I mostly took functional stimulants in huge doses (MPH, EPH, amphetamines), but none of the hallucinogenic kind. I never heard the faintest fart of a voice, and the most prominent hallucination it gave me, before almost dying of high blood pressure while already on beta blockers, was that objects in the dark would rotate to be something that could probably be there (e.g. the teapot on the floor looked like my cat, then like a towel, then like a frying pan, by each second the sequence cycled forward). Not sure if PCP, 2CB or what else would be rather worth a try. But in really safe doses please.
I realize the number of people to share experiences, if on this board at all, must be pretty small. But please understand that this doesn't invalidate the possibility of being able to hear voices by choice - or with drugs. A Fallacy again.
Drugs just are mind-altering substances, and the next best chance of taking a grasp on altering thoughts and perception, in such a profound way. Hence I post this thread on this board.
There are a number of people who are in fact hearing voices in a normal, healthy way. Although you might question the circumstances, that made them hear voices in the first place (traumatic brain injury being one possible cause), those people are not mentally ill while hearing them. They never get a psychotic episode, and just don't have any other symptoms, that would qualify them for schizophrenia or other mental disorders. Some dislike hearing them, some are indifferent and some like them. Understandably, as virtually anyone will interpret hearing voices as a sign of insanity, those people do keep quiet about it, and tend to dislike the fact that they are there.
Voices are not real people's personalities, if they were you likely have split personality disorder. They are commenting "thought-entities", and represent aspects of your personality and own emotions to yourself - and no one else. I have read that they can evolve into having more qualities, preferences distinct to them and alien to the person's personality who is hearing them (e.g. different ethnicity, be a demon/spirit - although that's probably a matter of interpretation to the affected person). In the sense of embodying your own emotions (and thoughts, wishes, etc.), they are merely part of yourself, that you might want to ignore or not ignore, convey or not convey to the people around you. As seen in schizophrenia, strong negative emotions such as shame and guilt, can dominate the experience of hearing voices "who" embody them.
However, schizophrenia is a mental illness and torturous emotions that intensify with psychosis are part of that illness, regardless of hearing (them as) voices. Hearing voices itself is not pathological - the same way that being happy or sad as part of your normal life is not. But it can be a sign of something more serious, and it is very easy to recognize and point out. Like a weirdly shaped sunspot on your skin can be a sign of a malignant melanoma. It doesn't have to be cancer, and it doesn't harm you if its not. But it initially strikes your eye, that its a cause for concern, until you gain better knowledge with time.
As far as I understand it, people who hear voices (healthy or not) have no control whatsoever over "who" manifests in the first place. And if that "someone" is there they stick with them for a while, or for life. I have heard that additional voices can come over time, but at average no more than five or so voices at a period of time appear. Also as emotions intensify, the voices usually do, which is often associated with demanding situations in life. Other than that, people can actively try to suppress the voices by will to some extend, but that takes constant effort. I guess as well it could be possible to "let go" of them and unlearn hearing them permanently. As people have learned to change the nature and obtrusiveness of their voices over the years.
Why do I want to hear voices? The answer probably is the same, as to why most people take hallucinogens: Curiosity. An unexplored aspect of cognition that other people can experience and you don't even really know what they know. Its like a savant ability, people have it but no one knows how it works. Like the autistic "human calculators", normal people have now written books about how to construct, memorize and learn mathematical tables and simpler human-friendly functions, that allow everyone to compute complicated mathematical operations close to as fast as a savant. What's the use of that ability you ask, when you can just use a real calculator? When do you even need to compute the square root of 235242 to 12 decimal places? What's the use of learning to hear voices? Its about the same. Still a lot of people try and write books about it. Explore the unexplored and understand the incomprehensible. Learn how to do things you never did before. That's what its about.
No, I'm kidding. I just want to hear an evil sexy sadist woman in my mind, who tortures me and wakes me up at night with laughter and mockery. Because that turns me on, and would make my life so much better.
That said, please do not repeat this in any way in the thread:
1. Hearing voices is a symptom of schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is bad, therefore hearing voices is harmful and bad.
-> this is a very simple fallacy
2. You either hear voices or you don't. Although drugs can change/amplify voices in the affected, drugs have no intrinsic property that would relate to hearing voices in any way. The same way that dairy products do not have an intrinsic property to cause symptoms of lactose intolerance, such as stomach pain, in a person who just doesn't has it.
-> YES. That is general wisdom we all are aware of.
3. Meth and similar stimulants can amplify or temporarily create voices, in a predisposed individual, by neurochemically mimicing a psychotic state of mind. If not as well by causing serious brain damage.
-> Despite the dangers and damage, that entirely disqualify this method, for most people it just doesn't work - even if dumping the LD25 into your system. Which sadly, quite some of us have done at one or more points in their life. I survived, luckily.
Please post any kind of drug, or "magic" ritual performed on drugs, or whatever you did and thought, or events leading up to the experience - that maybe have helped you in the past (by accident or not) to summon voices. Or hear voices in the first place, that stuck with you. Please be aware that almost killing yourself and damaging your brain, with drugs or fever or car accidents, are in essence both not particularly good experiences to share, although they could have paved the way to something that you can elaborate on. Also please describe if you could influence "who" popped up and what they were on about.
I mostly took functional stimulants in huge doses (MPH, EPH, amphetamines), but none of the hallucinogenic kind. I never heard the faintest fart of a voice, and the most prominent hallucination it gave me, before almost dying of high blood pressure while already on beta blockers, was that objects in the dark would rotate to be something that could probably be there (e.g. the teapot on the floor looked like my cat, then like a towel, then like a frying pan, by each second the sequence cycled forward). Not sure if PCP, 2CB or what else would be rather worth a try. But in really safe doses please.
I realize the number of people to share experiences, if on this board at all, must be pretty small. But please understand that this doesn't invalidate the possibility of being able to hear voices by choice - or with drugs. A Fallacy again.
Drugs just are mind-altering substances, and the next best chance of taking a grasp on altering thoughts and perception, in such a profound way. Hence I post this thread on this board.
Last edited:
