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Blind people on Psychedelics

T

toomuchtv

Bluelighter
Joined
Jun 30, 2007
Messages
115
Something I've been wondering for a while - do blind people (that have been from birth) see things when they take psychedelics and hallucinogens?

Would they see colors and patterns? Is it possible for them to see beings and entities or even people or worlds like the non-blind?

Does anyone know any blind trippers that could answer?
 
no i dont not think that a blind person would be able to see what colors and patterns due to the fact that they were born with out the idea of what a color or a pattern is...

they would feel the psychedelic but i dont think they would see anything
 
Yeah blind people dont just "see" black all day. But yes, the human mind is capable of imagination even if lines and shapes have never been seen"
 
I would go with the assumption that a blind persons LSD trip would be better than mine. I don't know about DOM and others though...
 
I would imagine that they would see CEV's.
I am not sure how blindness works though.


But if they didnt get any visuals, then thier trip would be more focused on the mental aspects which would be alot stronger than someone focusing on visuals
 
This reminds me of a very similar thought I've had before: imagine what an amazing experience it would be for a person who was blind from birth to suddenly be gifted with vision. It would be dumbfounding. An entirely new sense being introduced to the brain.

As a matter of fact, my curiosity of psychedelics like LSD was piqued when I read about that type of "sixth sense" phenomena occuring under the influence of the drugs.
 
Mildly off topic...

But LSD can help colour blind people pass Ishihara tests..Though this was crazy till I tested it for myself.
 
It depends if the abnormality is located within the optical nerve (for instance it has been severed) or if it is located within the visual cortex. If the former, then very likely a blind person could have visuals very close (if not identical) to ours. If the latter, then there might be difficulty depending on the depth and breadth of the lesion.

There is also the confounding factor of conceptualization. It appears as if at least some of our visual phenomena must be conceptualized before it is conscious (read blindsight for more info). This may be a tad misleading since perhaps it is the process of becoming conscious of visual representations that we are calling 'conceptualization.' Same difference.

A person that is congenitally blind (ie from birth) may have difficulty conceptualizing abnormal (to them) phenomena and thus 'block it out.' There are studies with macaque monkeys and this type of thing (involving training certain monkeys with snake stimuli and others without snake stimuli and MRI studies of their brains).
 
Surprisingly, there is no evidence that psychedelics act directly on the visual cortex (you would think, right). Right now the going theory is that they act on the neo-cortex and, in 'feedback loops' inhibit the visual cortex in unusual ways (for instance, we all have experience with their edge distortion effects - this is indirect inhibition of edge detecting 'grandmother' cells).
 
Here's another point:

If a congenitally blind person did in fact have visual hallucinations during a psychedelic trip, they wouldn't be able to describe it in a trip report. They couldn't say that they had a "visual". They have no clue what vision even is. Try to describe the color "red" to a blind person: you can't. It's just a word we learn to associate with a certain perception.

We can only speculate as to whether congenitally blind people can "see" with the help of drugs like LSD.
 
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Unfortunately any blind people out there who have done acid won't be able to read the question. Not alot of visually impaired people perusing BL I imagine.
 
i believe there is actually a trip report up on erowid submitted by a blind person who has experienced sensory crossover
 
thujone said:
i believe there is actually a trip report up on erowid submitted by a blind person who has experienced sensory crossover
Click to expand...

Insane. I'm going to find this.
 
It depends on the blind person!!

There are blind people who start out without sight and they completely lose this part of their brain when they don't use it. There was a study done on kittens, where they blindfolded them for the first part of their life and then took the blindfold off, and the kittens could not see at all. However, some blind people who start off with sight will often hallucinate anyways. I'm sure their vision would be affected.

If you have never seen anything before in your life, and you loose the ability to use your brain that way, then you won't ever see anything regardless of what drugs you take.
 
marley said:
Mildly off topic...

But LSD can help colour blind people pass Ishihara tests..Though this was crazy till I tested it for myself.
Click to expand...

Haha, i guess it helps you think alternatively, it wouldnt fix the perception problem, just like someone with normal vision can usually see what the blind person is meant to as well as the (more dominant) normal thing.
 
Wasn't Aldous Huxley blind (the author of a Brave New World) and was a volunteer of , if im not mistaken< some of Hoffmans Mescaline experiments, I wonder what his comments on the trip were, heh. He must of loved em, going to heaven on 200 mics intramuscular... man what a trip for real.
 
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