Stimulants The Nature of Visual Hallucinations from Amphetamine

[SpunkySkunk347]

Back a few years ago on one of my amphetamine binges, I looked in the mirror after having been up for 4-5 nights.
The hairs on my face didn't look like hair, they looked just sort of strange, like they were glowing or there was some aether around them. Although I knew they were hairs, they just looked like something different for some reason. Then, after a split second of thinking they kind of looked like worms, that was all the suggestion it took and it appeared that all the hairs on my face were actually worms squirming around.

Now, I knew that this was just a visual distortion from amphetamine-induced sleep deprivation, and I of course knew that they were just hairs and nothing more (a person would have to stay up way longer than I did and be in a much deeper psychosis in order to actually believe that they were worms).

However, it helped me gain an understanding of how our sense of vision works -- for the most part, we only visually see what we expect, and not what's actually there. It would waste too much time and resources for our brain to constantly have to take in new external visual information, so our brain takes a shortcut: it fills in the blanks itself, and the mind's expectations are what we see the majority of the time (excluding situations when something out of the ordinary occurs and the brain spends the extra resources needed to take in new visual information).

Especially as one gets older into adulthood, the brain begins to rely more and more on its own expectations concerning the external world around it, and relies much less on fresh input from the senses. We basically put ourselves on auto-pilot mode.


One of the most eerie recurring visual hallucinations I will get during an amphetamine psychosis is the scrambling of letters, visually. For example, say you are trying to read the words on a CD case on a table a few feet in front of you, but you are just slightly too far away and can't make out what the letters are - during an incident of "letter scrambling hallucination", the letters on the CD case actually appear to be changing or scrambling into different letters and symbols, almost as if your brain is not actually seeing the letters, but merely seeing "generic symbol gibberish" that it can not comprehend. The best way for me to describe what it looks like is the scrambling downward-falling green symbols in the movie The Matrix. If we think about how this relates to our cognition, the implications are sort of frightening: in some circumstances, there is simply no way of knowing if something is what it appears to be: when our brain is tired or careless, it will make mistakes when attempting to "fill in the blank", and the result is a visual hallucination. Thus, what your brain is showing you and telling you is "reality" is nothing more than its own fabrication.

Here is a really great experiment that anyone can do to understand what I'm talking about:
http://www.moillusions.com/2012/03/find-your-blind-spot-trick.html
The "Blind Spot" experiement. Basically, there is a rather large spot near the center of our vision which we can not actually see out of, because this spot is being occupied by a cluster of blood vessels in the pupil of our eye; yet, this blind spot goes completely unnoticed throughout the day for everyone because our minds just "fill in the blank" for the missing spot in our vision. Our brain's own expectations and what it knows based on past experience is how it figures out "What to put in the blind spot", yet this is all done subconsciously, and our brain actually tries to trick ourselves into believing that there is no blind spot.

Another common visual hallucination I have is not being able to differentiate between a bug crawling on the wall and just a dot/nail/spot on the wall. Sometimes, even if I look closely, the anomalous "moving dot thing" will seem to have legs, and be crawling, even if it is just a piece of dirt or whatever on the wall -- this I haven't been able to figure out or explain, and its a rather common hallucination: Particularly during a sleep-deprived psychosis induced by amphetamine, why do obscure things sometimes appear to be moving when they are not? My main theory has for a long time been that it has something to do with vascular constriction in our eyes caused by amphetamine, and these hallucinations are very much akin to "seeing something out of the corner of your eye" - some kind of twitch occurs in our eyeball due to vascular constriction, and our fatigued brain instead of realizing it thinks that what it is looking at is moving.

 

[mrflowers00]

sleep deprivation will do crazy shit to your psyche

 

[Hiltoniano]

Omg the worst hallucinations are definitely of little shards on the floor. I swear to god, I was on day 2 of a meth binge, and one of my friends apparently had some paper scraps he threw on the carpet. I knew it was paper the whole time, but I could not stop myself from "seeing" shards, and eventually I would reach to pick it up, and confirm my original thought that it was paper. I mean, who the fck just drops loads of shard all over the carpet and leaves it?

 

[tokenname]

i think this is super interesting op.
to think how much we miss by anticipating..
we've spoken about it in class before..all of our senses
become so stagnant..
altho..it's supposed to be for our own well-being and defense..
expectation and anticipating what's next in order to keep us safe..
by filling in the blanks, as you said..with past experience..
but to think about what we don't see and hear in our everyday..
is heartbreaking in a way.
i dunno if this will stay open..but i'm glad i read it.
token

 

[Crazy Matt]

sleep deprivation will do crazy shit to your psyche

I'm living at this 40. a night motel laying in bed looking straight ahead at this bay window, blinds down, curtains pulled back. Been hearing the surrying, squeaks and digging claws of rats this particular day. I think it was 4 days since I last woke up, bad for me. See this field mouse the kind with a square head shoot across the window sill. Started out a corner of the eye thing. But other senses tell me its behind the curtain, no hallucination. A few minutes later sure enough goes back the way he came, slow zigzagging and sniffing as it made its way back. Man peple hate snakes, bats, spiders, anything mine is rats. My nerves are shot from the speed, sleep deprivation, lack of nutrition, chainsmoking etc. and now I'm looking at a mouse in a room I paid for, regardless of how little. Funny thing, it seemed more like a chipmunk or squirrel than these diseased nightmarish fucking rats crawling in the woodwork.
It went away but 5 minutes later I see a little white mouse, labratory type crawl out from behind the same curtain. Now this was kind of blurry but chaked it up to bad vision, eye mucous, and just dulled sense of sight from no rest. Im watching him just wander around on the ledge until it stands on its hind legs. Still beliving this to be reality it occured that I was hallucinating when I started blasting at him with spitwads out of my tooter on the nightstand and I threw something (empty pop can?) at it with all my might, fuck if the widow broke which it didnt. It didnt seem too bothered by any of this, but still nothing impossible. Then it began to perform. Standing towards me broke out into a song and dance routine, kind of thing youd see on a Boardwalk Empire club scene. Music in my head seemed to match. like it wanted to sing but made these dance movements. Walked right over to it until it blurred into the white chipped paint of the trim itself.

Got up, gathered my shit, took out and contemplated a Serquel 300 a work buddy gave me along with a dare to use it. Down to the office to tell the Iranian to do something about the rodent problem and ended up getting my head bit off with furious blurts of "bring food in your room ", water on the floor by the shower, on and on until I mentioned Health Department and IRS, and to be a dick Homeland Security. I made out "drugs " in his hysterical reply and figured Id be on my way. Down the street got a room at similar accomidations (eg, colored condoms taped to the ballistic window at the front desk and an index card noting they cost .75. Took a heavy for me dose of Xanax .5s and slept something like 12 hours.

Only real one I ever had.
The auditory ones can seem real. Crazy how while it may not be clear as day, you can hear whole convos and nothing you make up, its eavesdropping on people talking about you with you hanging on every word. Seems so real. Nothing you'd imagine or want to. Had these a few times and are not cool. One tell tale sign for me if it is a supposed conversation in the next room, there will be weird phrases or expressions.
People will understandably think youre going nuts when you mention what you just heard them say. You are losing your mind.

When will we learn. What goes up...

 

[done juan]

i actually enjoy the kind of hallucinations conjured up from sleep deprivation. if i see something moving i just tell myself its just the lack of sleep,

about 6 months ago i was on plain speed and had a night playing PES. after i had finished i lay down and closed my eyes and i could actually see the players running around playing football. it was if my mind had been imprinted with these images, pretty trippy but enjoyable all the same

 

[Non Nobis Solum]

THey are usually something like a shadow over your shoulder or in the corner of your eye.

 

[blight12]

Yes i enjoy these as well, on day 4 now and it sucked dealing with vaso bullshit, i never usually go past day 3 as it becomes annoying and actually more real, reality is unavoidable from here on where day 1 and 2 are always pure epic high. Im normal doses now. In high doses, the audio stuff is way more crazy then visual.

2 days back was the first time ever i was talking to somebody and heard them clearly, from right next to me, add an additional sentence to a previous one that didnt really make sense. Eventually i realized this other sentence was not real, only the first one was, after probably seeming really weird querying them on this for a while. Never has this clarity before, usually the audio stuff is voices in other rooms and odd sounds you instantly define with some meaning thats not real. Not in your face real stuff you cant tell is possibly not real right away.

Visually the most obvious and cool things i remember is the insane colours from pupils (only or brain as well) and the lol at how this did not help you see better at night as you might expect. Then images of people would wink at me when not staring directly it it plus the obvious stuff always moving around in preferal vision, smoke like stuff in the air and noticing tiny details like dust in the air or marks on your screen etc. And then in the day staring at something in direct sunlight is intense and i guess your pupils dont constrict so eventually it overwhelms your brain and you crash for a second or 2.

Honestly annoyed that things arent a lot more fucked by day 4, but this is prob due to stressing about dose as time goes on, taking less and less concerned about bad effects more and more. And im sure others usually dose more and more as time goes on to make up for ever reduced effects. I cant seem to do this though, it feels wrong somehow, arg.

 

[R(x)AGE]

IME things can get scary, when you dont sleep or eat and take lots of speed the brain will likely develop a psychosis, psychosis can include visual hallucinations that ime seem paranoid in nature. it isnt like you 'see things' it's like your brain is fucked and your consciousness begins to deceive you, or maybe the speed deceives the consciousness, anyhow, speed hallucinations are not enjoyable the way acid or other so called hallucinogenic drugs produce a trip, speed is not, it is a stimulant, a side effect of stimulant psychosis can include various types of hallucinations. The only cure is to abstain for a period of time, this can however be prevented by taking controlled low doses and always eating and sleeping. healthy living's better living

 

[SpunkySkunk347]

THey are usually something like a shadow over your shoulder or in the corner of your eye.

i don't think you've ever had true visual hallucinations from amphetamine psychosis before; where you're staring at something for 10 minutes wondering "is that real, or is it hallucination??"

i didn't believe they existed either until they happened