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The Big & Dandy Blindness/Vision Problems & Psychedelics Thread

i have a friend who is legally blind (pretty much just blind at night, but has very limited vision during the day) and i just asked him yesterday what he "sees" when he trips, considering we usually trip at night, or in a darker environment. he didn't really answer the question though. he pretty much just said he gets visuals all the time, b/c his vision is worsening every day, and all the time he sees little black spots flying around...
 
Well, people who are blind from birth tend to dream with their other 4 senses instead of sight, so I would guess acid would be the same way.
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Harlequin
~Someday your ship will come in. Today...is not that day.~
 
LSD+effects on blindness

I was just thinking by myself and I wonder, Do BLers know of any type of expierments or experences (sp?) with pyschedelic drugs and people effected by blindness or maybe possibly even deafness? Would they have CEVs or maybe the deaf have audio hallucinations?
Sorry this my be just me rambiling.....
 
Hehe yeah it's a little rambly :)
Still a curious question though. I'm on a nice vic buzz right now so I can't think of anything smart at all to say.. boy do we sound hopeless hehe!
It's hard for me to picture what a blind person might "see" or a deaf person could "hear". Maybe, though, since they say when you lose a sense, the others become sharper, a deaf person would have much more amazing visuals. Just a thought.
 
There was a thread about this awhile ago. Summed up was that someone blind after birth (i.e. they have had a glimpse at the world, however short it may of been) usually sees closed eye visuals more of the remembering stages of their life when they could see. I.E. remembering their few sights, usually rapidly, dreamlike, etc. Those that were born blind usually consider their first experience with a pyschedelic to be a milestone/breakthrough in their life regarding their feelings towards their handicap.
 
^^^ just wanted to clear things up. I wasn't saying that only people with a handicap consider their first pyschedelic experience a breakthrough, just usually their first experience is more cathartic than "normal" people.
 
This is slightly off topic, but an interesting story IMO. I once looked after a woman who went deaf as a toddler and went blind a few years later. As a 38 year old adult, she had a psychotic episode with both auditory and visual hallucinations. She relayed this via an interpreter. Visual hallucinations are not common in psychosis, so this was pretty bizarre. Just thought someone might find that interesting. :)
 
the blind tripping!

Does anyone know anything about studies where psychedelics were given to blind people and what they noticed. I assume they would get kind of a nonstop CEV effect but don't know, also the little light they can see might get magnified dramatically?
 
this has been addressed before i think.. blind people live in their own realities just like we live in our own realities.. blind people would experience all phenomena of tripping that we would.. except they wouldn't "see" visuals in the way that we do..
 
i think whoever wrote that was full of shit! because they don't ever talk about any closed eye visuals during their trip, and honestly who want to watch videos while tripping especialy if your blind.
Also i know blind people are alive! So they have to be living in a reality! My whole point was about what they percieve VISUALY, and it isn't neccesarily different from what we see with our eyes shut, CEV's, but probably heightened by their imaginitive psychological influences. It would be interesting to have someone who was fully blind and had been their whole life smoke 75mg of DMT i cant imagine what their psyche would produce visualy having had very little or no visual influences to draw from preceeding their dosing. this would also apply to a blind person undergoing sensory deprevation, how would the innate mind build itself. just a thought.
 
^^^
Did you ever consider the possibility that their minds would not construct any kind of visuals at all? Maybe the visual world just isn't a part of a blind person's reality.
 
I think a blind person would still have visions while tripping! I think at least some of the stuff generated in a trip during a CEV comes from somewhere other than your subconcious mind simply replaying or altering sequences/memories in your head. I agree with Strassman in his belief that DMT and we can imply that other similiar tryptamines,phenethylamines put humans in touch with another dimension other than just creating or recalling visions based on memory. By the way i think this theory got him into some trouble with the authorities and resulted in a sort of abrupt ending of his research. Obviously this is an old belief but its interesting that he an M.D. came out and said it. Damn i wanted to be in that study!
 
Whatever dude. I still think its kinda fucked to dismiss the guy as "full of shit," just because HIS trip didn't conform to YOUR expectations. WTF is up with that?
Like they say on Erowid, "you cannot deny the experience of others.
 
It depends on if theyve always been blind. if they have, they would not have CEV's, its impossible.... they have never sen colour,nor line, nor shade, and your brain cannot make that up from nothing, so they would "See" nothing
 
Thats my whole point! i think alot of stuff generated by psychedelics or hallucinagens comes from outside ones personal expierences. that these chemicals act as doorways to other dimensions. Rick Strassman after doing years of DMT studies in human volunteers, concluded that the visions expereinced are not derived from what one has seen in their lives, or simply the splicing of past memories played back in chopped up sequences that has been the common medical belief for a long time. But instead the chemical puts us in touch with another dimension altogether, with its own entities! This i believe to be true as it relates to my own visions. Just because you can't phathom what it would be like to see something after being blind for your whole life does not mean you should dismiss it. What was interesting about one study i read was that among people who had been blind their whole lives, the ones who reported rarely having slight visions on their own, reported having strong visions while under the influence of LSD. Plus if your saying that people who have not been born blind will have visions but people who have been blind their whole lives wont, your saying that the whole visual aspect of these chems is based on memory, I think i can say clearly that it isn't all based on memory. Most of my visuals on these chems are completely forign to my normal eyesight, creating complex patterns and color space distortions that are aren't coming from my past but being created by my mind.
 
Some more fuel for the debate:
The effects of hallucinogens on blind monkeys.International Pharmacopsychiatry Vol 11(3), 1976, 150-156.
Abstract: Studied 2 blind male macaque monkeys, using an observational profile that previously was shown to distinguish the effects of hallucinogens from those of other classes of drugs. LSD and dimethyltryptamine could be distinguished from saline, chlorpromazine, dextroamphetamine sulfate, and bromo-LSD by the increased frequency of spasms, stereotypy, bump, and tracking. The hallucinogens also produced dramatic increases in exploration and related behaviors normally seen only in response to real visual or auditory stimuli. These behaviors are discussed in terms of their similarity to behaviors observed with sighted monkeys in light and dark environments.
Click to expand...
 
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