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Some people who take psychedelics continue hallucinating indefinitely

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Re: Some people who take psychedelics continue hallucinating indefinitely

#141

Post by osullivj »

hppdthrowaway wrote: post #67
Zod666 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have never heard Tinnitus described as a neurological condition. I had pretty bad Tinnitus as a result of a jaw injury. It has gradually faded but it made sleeping difficult for a very long time.

I'm on the run so can't respond in depth, but check out ototoxic drugs which attack the auditory nerve. SSRIs may not be directly ototoxic but numerous studies have shown that sertraline can cause tinnitus, due to the role that serotonin plays in filtering audio signals. So there are multiple causes of tinnitus, and the impact of SSRIs is partially known but not fully understood.

Seconding you're point on SSRIs. I'm currently reading Ed Bullmore's Inflamed Mind, and he makes the point forcefully that there's no way of measuring SSRI levels in regular clinical practice, they way blood pressue, cholosterol or white/red blood cell levels are tested.

Re: Some people who take psychedelics continue hallucinating indefinitely

#142

Post by proverbialbunny »

toxik wrote: post #138
jmiskovic wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please make that argument! I'd say disorder would refer to something unusual, whereas sense of self is very common among humans across different cultures. Am I misinformed?

It’s not a binary thing, to have or not have a sense of self. It’s the strength of that sensation that matters: can you let go of your own shortsighted selfishness to let something else grow? Unusually strong sense of self has been argued to be a cause of longterm depression. Comparison is the thief of joy after all.

You can grow past having a sense of self and still be depressed.

A closer overly simplified cause for many kinds of long term depression is pessimism and doubt. eg, "It will not work [so no need to consider trying]." It will not work is pessimism and not considering trying is doubt. Another terminology to describe this is learned helplessness.

But depression is far more complicated than just that. There is memory compartmentalization in a handful of types of depression, mostly episodic depression.

Sometimes it can be as subtle as not learning to note when you're having a good time. Someone who is depressed may, for example, have fun at an event, but the next time the same event pops up they may be hesitant to go again, because they didn't record when they were happy.

Re: Some people who take psychedelics continue hallucinating indefinitely

#143

Post by proverbialbunny »

coldtea wrote: post #117
trevyn wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think an argument could be made that the sense of self is a psychological disorder.

Not if it is the baseline we measure against (which it is). Or if it has survival/performative utility (which it does).

How does it have a survival / performative advantage?

You can, eg, protect the body from harm, without having a sense of self, which ties into survival.

Re: Some people who take psychedelics continue hallucinating indefinitely

#144

Post by drunken-serval »

perl4ever wrote: post #12

The article alludes to it, but understates how difficult it is to ask questions about things similar to psychosis with no frame of reference. For instance, it is possible to look at a person, see someone else, and be kind of aware of the discrepancy, but not to experience as a visual disturbance but more of a disturbance in the part of the mind that identifies people. Upstream of the visual input, so to speak. But it…

> For instance, it is possible to look at a person, see someone else, and be kind of aware of the discrepancy, but not to experience as a visual disturbance but more of a disturbance in the part of the mind that identifies people.

Yes. I've had a psychotic break and saw my hands as animal paws. At the same time, some part of my brain was vaguely away something was very wrong and as a result, I successfully hid these symptoms for 4 months until they cleared up. For that time, I was an animal pretending to be human.

The memories from my animal self are as real as anything I've experienced as a human. None of it feels abnormal to me.

This isn't just an experience I've had. I've talked to other people in my support group who are bipolar or schizoaffective (bipolar type). They have similar experiences.

My theory is, there's some part of the brain where reality and imagination cross. In me, they merged for a time. So far, antipsychotics have kept this from repeating.

Re: Some people who take psychedelics continue hallucinating indefinitely

#145

Post by proverbialbunny »

bjourne wrote: post #111
proverbialbunny wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DP/DR is like that. Psychedelics are a tool that can be used to remove psychological disorders, but in the same vain can be used to create psychological disorders. In an ideal world, if psychedelics were legal, they'd come with an instruction manual.

How would an instruction manual have helped improv32?

A manual for a trip sitter would have helped more than anything imho.

A trip is steered through belief. It was a belief that gave improv32 DP/DR. (Though there is always edge cases, like toxicity from being a black market drug.) A trip sitter can clarify the faulty belief steering them back in a healthy direction. There are certain techniques to identify this. On the tripper's side of things, they have to be comfortable enough with the trip sitter to openly talk about things, and ofc have a good set and setting, which is also in part the trip sitters job.

Re: Some people who take psychedelics continue hallucinating indefinitely

#147

Post by majos »

collyw wrote: post #133
wahern wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think people's sensory experiences vary wildly by nature, but we have no access to them so can't really prove anything. > ... some people have photographic memories (e.g. Lebron James apparently); some people can factor large numbers in their heads (computation), or recite huge strings of digits (non-episodic memory). Many of these sensory experiences can be empirically and objectively analyzed. For example, phot…

> They see the world in much richer color than normal humans, and this has been empirically verified. I am curious as how you could verify that. You can't observe someone else's experience, just their reaction to it.

Not an expert on this by any means, but you know those color blindness tests where there’s a bunch of red and green dots, the red dots form a number, and you can only see the red number if you aren’t (that kind of) colorblind? It seems to be like that.

From an article [1] summarizing work that claimed to identify one such woman:

> Proving that these people actually see the world differently has involved a two-decade journey, however. Although the relevant combination of genes does not seem to be especially rare – perhaps 12% of women might have four distinct cones – many of the people that Jordan tested just didn’t seem to show any differences in their perception. But by 2010, she had found a subject who perfectly acted the part of a tetrachromat. Jordan’s “acid test” involved coloured discs showing different mixtures of pigment, such as a green made of yellow and blue. The mixtures were too subtle for most people to notice: almost all people would see the same shade of olive green, but each combination should give out a subtly different spectrum of light that would be perceptible to someone with a fourth cone. Sure enough, Jordan’s subject was able to differentiate between the different mixtures each time. “When you ask them to discriminate between the two mixtures, a tetrachromat can do it very quickly. They don’t hesitate,” says Jordan.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20140905-the-women-with-s...

Re: Some people who take psychedelics continue hallucinating indefinitely

#148

Post by kaybe »

proverbialbunny wrote: post #140
trevyn wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think an argument could be made that the sense of self is a psychological disorder.

It's not that simple. All of perception comes from noticing patterns. Labeling a thing, eg an apple, initially happens because you've seen multiple apples, or you've had it explained to you, which is using previous patterns (turned into words) you've already learned to manufacture a new pattern. Without pattern matching we wouldn't be able to identify or perceive things. The mind pattern matches things. It's how we l…

How does language play into this? Is it a skill you have or is it part of the self too? Do you use language while you deliberate on these things?

Re: Some people who take psychedelics continue hallucinating indefinitely

#149

Post by agota »

wavefunction wrote: post #13
dvt wrote: post #4

I have always steered clear of psychedelics. I know some people are super into legalization, but I wager it's a bit irresponsible considering we barely understand their long (and short, for that matter) -term effects. There's some evidence where psychedelics (particularly LSD) may have triggered schizophrenia in some patients[1]. Musician Daniel Johnston (he passed away a few months ago) is a notable case. [1] https:…

Latent schizophrenics shouldn't take psychoactive drugs of any kind. Schizophrenics (like other people suffering from mental illness) are prone to self-medicate as well though. And the evidence that someone prone to schizophrenia who develops it because of drug use but wouldn't have otherwise developed schizophrenia is scant or non-existent.

I think the issue is that someone who is predisposed to schizophrenia might not be aware that this is the case.

Also, we already know that drug use can have permanent effects that presumably would not have manifested if the person had not taken drugs, unless you think that people who didn't see hallucinations before LSD and see hallucinations after LSD would have started seeing hallucinations anyway.

So I don't see why it would be unreasonable to think that drug use can trigger an onset of schizophrenia in an already predisposed person that would have not happened otherwise.

Re: Some people who take psychedelics continue hallucinating indefinitely

#150

Post by aphextim »

precisioncoder wrote: post #123
improv32 wrote: post #92

I'm the one who provided the third quoted anecdote in the article. What I didn't mention was the HPPD coincided with a sort of depersonalization/derealization effect. Basically I got very checked out from my own life. I felt as if I was a spectator watching my life happen and I didn't really feel any connection or agency towards anything coming into my sensorium. It was a really weird and hard time for me. Those feel…

Something I'm surprised hasn't come up yet is the ability to flex... "something" in your brain and turn hallucinations on and off. I grew up in a Buddhist family and was meditating since an early age. I'm not sure if this was related at all but since I was young I could look at things when I was bored and do something in my brain that would cause the patterns to move. If I then needed to concentrate I could focus and…

This came naturally for me although I'm sure the technique is not as refined as someone who practices it a lot.

When I first tried this I noticed that the hallucinations were very similar to those old magic eye books.

https://www.amazon.com/Magic-Eye-New-Looking-World/dp/083627...

In those books you relax and are able to see the image through the chaos.

The same can be said for when you are on these types of drugs, or at least for me personally. When I was able to relax and let my mind go, the hallucinations and visuals would come at a greater intensity. If I needed to, I was able to snap out of it by focusing my mind on the moment and tangible reality in front of me.

When I was leading a few people on their first experience I explained this to them, that if they are unable to relax and let go, the visuals would not come as quickly or be as intense. Do not be afraid, relax and let go and if needed you can ground yourself back if you have a decent mind and didn't take an amount larger than you can handle.

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