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Aphantasia and Psychedelics

psychedelirium.substack.com

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Re: Aphantasia and Psychedelics

#101

Post by asdff »

anp wrote: post #9
CjHuber wrote: post #4

I have aphantasia and psychedelics definitely give me visuals. However it‘s more like shifting and warping stuff I and not very pronounced. DMT however is one of the only things that gave me strong visuals, LSD in combination with DXM too so I wonder if it has something to do with the sigma receptor

This matches my experience and I was quite surprised to find out other aphantasiacs have their “minds eye open” when tripping. For me psychedelics only ever produced a fractal overlay on top of what I was already seeing. I wondered for a long time why everyone else experienced such strong visuals and eventually decided on my own it must be related to aphantasia. It’s nice to find out I might not have been a total cra…

It depends on the psychadelic. Acid will be fractal overlay and color shifts, breathing textures. Mushrooms, you will see a face in the treebark and the clouds, plus the color shifts and breathing textures.

Re: Aphantasia and Psychedelics

#102

Post by asdff »

quickthrowman wrote: post #30
CjHuber wrote: post #4

I have aphantasia and psychedelics definitely give me visuals. However it‘s more like shifting and warping stuff I and not very pronounced. DMT however is one of the only things that gave me strong visuals, LSD in combination with DXM too so I wonder if it has something to do with the sigma receptor

> psychedelics definitely give me visuals. However it‘s more like shifting and warping stuff I and not very pronounced. At least with LSD and psilocybin, that’s what visuals are. You don’t hallucinate things out of thin air on either one of those drugs, things morph and shift and wobble and waver and shimmer and so on. At least in the dosage ranges I have explored, 7g dried mushrooms and 10 ‘hits’ of LSD which was pr…

With mushrooms it is certainly possible to see faces/eyes and such in certain textures like bark or cloud formations.

Re: Aphantasia and Psychedelics

#103

Post by asdff »

cassianoleal wrote: post #59
mdswanson wrote: post #10

An aphantasia "beginner's guide" for those who aren't familiar or just want to learn more: https://aphantasia.com/guide/

I read much of that guide. I was initially led to believe that I have aphantasia. I certainly don't see things that don't exist - that would be an hallucination. I can imagine and describe it in vivid detail if I want, but it's not there - I don't see it in the same way I see the physical reflection of light on surfaces. Similarly I don't hear sounds that are not produced by difference in air pressure hitting my ear…

Can you sit back and picture something at all? Like if I said "imagine the exterior of your house" would you actually imagine that or would you just be unable to do that at all?

Re: Aphantasia and Psychedelics

#104

Post by kybernetikos »

bcraven wrote: post #8

I listened to a recent podcast that discussed why giving people with aphantasia the chance to see images is ethically complicated: https://www.hyperfixedpod.com/listen/hyperfixed/third-eye-bl... (Presented by Alex Goldman from Reply All)

My aphantasia mainly feels like a super power, that I process at the conceptual level rather than the visual level. I feel like it helps me focus on the important things and ignore the extraneous. It's strange to read it described as a 'deficit' and as something needing to be corrected.

Re: Aphantasia and Psychedelics

#105

Post by [deleted] »

thrance wrote: post #6

I feel like there's more to aphantasia than just "can you see the apple or not?". I can't for the life of me imagine an apple. At best, I get a very faint and dark picture of something resembling the fruit. Plus, there's one on the desk right next to me, so I shouldn't have too much trouble with the assignment, but here we are. On the other hand, I have a pretty good memory (compared to my peers) and I can recall viv…

[deleted]

Re: Aphantasia and Psychedelics

#106

Post by vidarh »

cnity wrote: post #99
vidarh wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is hard to talk about because all of our terms for it involve assumptions of seeing. But when I "imagine" something, there is unambiguously no visual whatsoever . I can't see lines, colors, points. Nothing, any more than if there was a wall between me and an object I have never seen. But that doesn't mean I don't have knowledge of it. > I also see while dreaming, in a way that is more like my day to day experien…

Maybe let's loop in other senses for a second. Since, presumably aphantasia doesn't apply to all senses? I can imagine the sensation of my tongue on a cold ice cream, and even the taste. But I don't _taste and feel_ it. I can imagine burning my hand on a hot stove, but I don't recoil. See how they are separate but related? The same is true for how I imagine things visually. I don't actually see them, but I imagine th…

What you describe makes it sound like you have aphantasia.

People who don't have aphantasia do report "actually seeing" things with various degrees of fidelity, in some (less common) cases clearly enough to "overlay" on objects with their eyes open.

When I had my experience I did "actually see things". Yes, I know they weren't there, but it looked as if they were, in high resolution, full colour, with motion.

EDIT: Also, people "imagine" things with other senses or without too, and people have or don't have inner monologues, or dialogues, in their own voice, or separate voices - the breadth of inner life is very significant.

For my part, I don't recall sounds either, but I "reproduce them" in inner monologue in my own voice roughly in proportion to my ability to reproduce them out loud, but others do recall sounds as they heard them, reporting various degrees of fidelity. The same for smells. Most assumptions about how people's internal life "must" be tends to fall apart once you ask enough people.

E.g. There are writers I know with no internal monologue or dialogue. I know others for whom writing is like listening in to characters acting out scenes and just transcribing it. In some cases watching them act out scenes and just describing them.

Re: Aphantasia and Psychedelics

#107

Post by red369 »

asdff wrote: post #103
cassianoleal wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read much of that guide. I was initially led to believe that I have aphantasia. I certainly don't see things that don't exist - that would be an hallucination. I can imagine and describe it in vivid detail if I want, but it's not there - I don't see it in the same way I see the physical reflection of light on surfaces. Similarly I don't hear sounds that are not produced by difference in air pressure hitting my ear…

Can you sit back and picture something at all? Like if I said "imagine the exterior of your house" would you actually imagine that or would you just be unable to do that at all?

I've been trying to work out for a while how much aphantasia I have, and I think it might help to give more detail to your instruction, and then your follow-up question.

If you said that to me, I would imagine the exterior of my house. But one of the things I am trying to work out is whether my definition of "imagine" is different. I would think of, and sort of see different details of the house at different times. Sort of like picturing one part at a time, but perhaps more like remembering than picturing. I know the overall layout, but I don't know if I literally "see" it.

I've tried a few times to actually _see_ something in my mind, and there have been moments, usually when I'm close to falling asleep, where I have actually seen something vividly. So much more vividly than usual, that I remember thinking that if this is what other people can do easily, then sketching must be far easier than for me - you'd just copying down what you see in your head!

Edit: I remember thinking the illustration on the Wikipedia page might be a good way to think of it. I picture things with less vividness/detail, so I'm not sure whether I really see them.

Ironically, the Wikipedia image is not loading for me right now, so I can't see that either :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia

Re: Aphantasia and Psychedelics

#108

Post by vidarh »

roxolotl wrote: post #97
vidarh wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether it was an altered state or not, it showed me the ability to see vivid imagery. And the experience isn't even on the high end of reported abilities to visualise.

Yea and it seems weird to assume that since these states are possible that most humans are mistaken when for millennia they’ve talked about having mental imagery. The idea that aphantasia is just language confusion is so strange to me. As someone who has aphantasia I understand the “oh shit” moment when you realize that there’s more going on but the evidence seems pretty overwhelming to me that most people have some…

That almost all our language about recalling physical objects talk in terms related to images in retrospect should've been a dead giveaway, and I do remember many instances growing up I found it weird, because it seemed like dumb ways of talking about things you couldn't see...

It's to the point as we see it's hard to even talk about recall without recalling such words - e.g. "imagination" itself presumes images.

Re: Aphantasia and Psychedelics

#109

Post by quickthrowman »

asdff wrote: post #102
quickthrowman wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> psychedelics definitely give me visuals. However it‘s more like shifting and warping stuff I and not very pronounced. At least with LSD and psilocybin, that’s what visuals are. You don’t hallucinate things out of thin air on either one of those drugs, things morph and shift and wobble and waver and shimmer and so on. At least in the dosage ranges I have explored, 7g dried mushrooms and 10 ‘hits’ of LSD which was pr…

With mushrooms it is certainly possible to see faces/eyes and such in certain textures like bark or cloud formations.

I was going to edit my post and add that mushroom visuals can be more tangible than the swirling/shimmering/morphing of LSD.

During one particularly strong mushroom trip I was seeing geometric patterns on surfaces that were very similar to ‘Navajo Print’ fabrics woven by Native Americans. It was uncanny, and I’m convinced to this day that those patterns were revealed to the indigenous Americans during psilocybin experiences.

Re: Aphantasia and Psychedelics

#110

Post by karmakaze »

kybernetikos wrote: post #104
bcraven wrote: post #8

I listened to a recent podcast that discussed why giving people with aphantasia the chance to see images is ethically complicated: https://www.hyperfixedpod.com/listen/hyperfixed/third-eye-bl... (Presented by Alex Goldman from Reply All)

My aphantasia mainly feels like a super power, that I process at the conceptual level rather than the visual level. I feel like it helps me focus on the important things and ignore the extraneous. It's strange to read it described as a 'deficit' and as something needing to be corrected.

I came to say the same. For the longest time I never realized that I was missing anything. Most of my dreams don't feature color unless its relevant to the story. This is the superpower, no distractions. It allows keeping a large amount of context of related things, even without physical form, abstract things, while working through them. It also explains why I discovered early on that I can't stand descriptive prose that paints with words for pages to set the scene before getting on with why any of it is relevant.

Reminds me of the quote "Mathematics is the art of giving the same name to different things." - Henri Poincaré. [As opposed to Poetry is the art of giving different names to the same thing]. If different things can be the same, then their physical form wasn't relevant and you can consider the abstract thing singular.

Although I don't feel like I'm missing out, I read that Nikola Tesla was able to work out how to construct the first A/C motor by constructing it in his mind's eye. That's pretty cool, I'd never have to draw any system diagram again except to transcribe for communication.

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