Hallucinations ain't all bad?

March 22, 2009 2:30 PM

Does anyone know anything about benevolent/useful hallucinations?

Years ago I was hooked on over the counter sleeping pills. I know it's a strange addiction, but it got so bad that I was extremely paranoid and depressed and experienced mild visual and sometimes auditory hallucinations. I was eating a lot of blue pills. The weird thing is that the auditory hallucinations were supportive and sometimes informative. One of them helped me make my decision to change majors, which was a very good decision. On another occasion, it told me someone's name when I couldn't remember it.

I never see any reference to this kind of thing, though. Does anyone have any information, or just anecdotes? I'm really just curious about this.

Incidentally, I kicked the habit years ago and don't even like how benadryl (diphenhydramine, same stuff as sleeping pills) makes me feel now. Any hallucinations I experience nowadays are pre-planned and consensual.

posted by cmoj to health & fitness (11 comments total)

I don't know from hallucinations per se, but I had a fairly epic neurological migraine once that had me sitting on my bed alternating between hysterical tears and massive giggle fits about how much my job sucked, how I was doing three people's work for the pay of one, and how I wasn't getting enough sleep and so on, which led me to reconsider having the job at all.

I eventually quit. I haven't had anything like that since, and I figure the inflammation from the migraine was pinching off the blood vessels that controlled my ability to rationalize my shitty job. ;)
posted by fairytale of los angeles at 2:33 PM on March 22

Hallucinations usually seem to open a line of communication between our conscious and unconscious minds, just like dreams. From there, any number of external or internal factors may dictate what kind of experience you have and whether it is of any enduring personal significance. Sometimes people look to hallucinations or dream experiences for creative inspiration, or for professional guidance, or personal insight. It's a very "YMMV" territory, with a full spectrum of mixed results, and outside of any deep-rooted cultural or religious understanding of the world, purely yours to make of what you will. There are tons of anecdotes -- via everyone from scientists to shamans -- about this, but it's something that we really just don't know very much about otherwise.
posted by hermitosis at 2:37 PM on March 22 [1 favorite]

Sounds a little like pronoia
posted by bottlebrushtree at 2:57 PM on March 22

The Third Man Factor (recently a book).
posted by Hildegarde at 3:33 PM on March 22 [1 favorite]

A lot of people report similar experiences with ayahuasca, salvia divinorum, etc. If you haven't read Daniel Pinchbeck's book Breaking Open the Head, you might find it interesting on this topic.
posted by Sidhedevil at 3:54 PM on March 22

My mother had migraines, and during one particularly bad one she said an angel appeared and told her she would never have another migraine. My mother was a very religious woman, and not as much was known about migraines at the time, so she took this hallucination to truly be a messenger from god. Of course, even if she had known that migraines can produce hallucinations, she still would have believed she saw an angel.

On the other hand, she never had another migraine.
posted by Evangeline at 4:03 PM on March 22 [3 favorites]

Auditory hallucinations supposedly provided inspiration for the composers Shostakovich and Schumann. [cite]
posted by musicinmybrain at 8:32 PM on March 22

Depersonalization and dissociative events can be triggered from drugs.
posted by damn dirty ape at 10:31 PM on March 22

If you know me, you'll know my reliance on superstition over rationalism is nonexistent.

Now let me tell you about the angel that saved my life. Earlier in the day I was driving my beloved 20 year old 2002 BMW, my first car, bought from a old couple in Florida, garaged, with 4,000 miles on it. Fighting rush hour traffic in to NYC on the LIE, traffic up front braked abruptly, I slammed on mine, stopping just inches from the car upfront.

Then some guy slammed me from behind into the car ahead. My front was crushed inward, everything crumpled into a big V. But nothing was scraping the tires, so I decided to limp in to my destination, and stash it in a lot. Late Sunday night I decided to carefully drive it back out to my house, and pursue any repairs there.

When I turned the car on, and made the first tentative advance down a quiet dark ally, I had to laugh at what I saw in front of me. The headlight beams now crossed together on the street about 10 feet in front of the car. The mottled lenses formed an image projected on the ground, that looked like an angel with spread winds poised for forward flight on the street in front of car.

When I say it looked like an angel, I don't mean the shape or the outline. This thing was freakishly detailed, the left and right eyebrows were perfectly placed, the slight smile, the bird-like patterns of feathers on the wings. Well, at least that's amusing, I thought.

So I'm on the LIE amused by the angel flying out in front of me, and following its lead as it gracefully weaves through traffic, cutting a clear path for me.

I come to a slight hill, three lanes, left open, right open, a heaving big rig truck slowly grinding up the center lane in low gear. I begin to follow the angel around the left of the truck, and see above me the exit number near where the accident had occurred on the way in.

Somehow, I imagined the angle saying, "no, respect this place, back off and just slowly pass with dignity on the right side of the truck." Whatever you say, angel, this is your spot after all.

As I slowly came around the front of the truck, I lid back into the center lane. At that instant, a car came traveling up at least 80 mph, shooting by going the wrong way. He was in the left lane from my direction, and his car screamed between the truck and the railing, in just such a way that had I passed on that side, the direct head on would have been corralled by the truck with no escape.

Very considerate angel. The car was deemed totaled but I spent a rather ridiculous sum restoring, so the angel would have some place to visit for a while, although now he was just formless light projecting ahead of me.
posted by StickyCarpet at 2:39 AM on March 23

I have definitely experienced auditory hallucinations that were helpful suggestions.
posted by solipsophistocracy at 9:03 AM on March 23

Thems that do hallucinogens know hallucinations ain't all bad. However, they're not reliably good or accurate either, which means that confirmation bias is in heavy effect.
posted by klangklangston at 2:11 PM on March 23