I see live people

May 29, 2009 12:33 PM

Was this a hallucination?

I have had a rather distressing week, and on Wednesday and Thursday I had strange experiences that make me wonder if they were hallucinations.

a) Wednesday afternoon, while sitting with my coworkers and drinking coffee, I clearly saw a woman reflected in a framed poster on the wall. I got up to check the entire area behind me but there was noone there, and noone in the office who resembled this person (white shirt, dark hair pinned up).

b) On Thursday afternoon I was surprised to see somone who looked very like a client of mine outside a shop I was about to enter. The city center is far from wherethe person lives and from my workplace. I wasn't sure enough to say hello though. I pass her and enter the shop. About 3 meters into the shop I run into... the woman in question, with a friend and stroller. We greeted eachother, I asked if she had been outside a minute ago, or just gone into the shop, or if she had a sister or something waiting for her outside. She didn't, we laughed it off, and went on our way.
Before you ask, when I met her the next day, she confirmed that we had indeed met the day before.

Were these hallucinations?

FTR: I am female in my early 30's. I semi-regularly have smell and taste "hallucinations" that I have always attributed to being "hormonal". I am under treatment for depression and will be bringing this up with my drs next week. Throwaway = [e-mail]

posted by anonymous to health & fitness (14 comments total)

a) You weren't looking hard enough.
b) A funny coincidence.
posted by Sys Rq at 12:39 PM on May 29 [1 favorite]

While very specific, these sound a lot like Pareidolia. Some people see Jesus in their marmite; you see people in reflections.

I would talk to your doctor about it though, more because you're reading a lot into a situation - you might want to talk about things that may be making you particularly worried at the moment.
posted by Coobeastie at 12:48 PM on May 29 [2 favorites]

I don't mean to be presumptuous, but it sounds to me like in combination with the smell and taste hallucinactions you experience, along with your depression treatment, that you're concerned you may be experiencing the onset of a psychotic disorder, or perhaps the development of a psychotic feature to your depression. Aside from discussing it with your doctors, maybe you could take a look at something like The Center Cannot Hold, which is a memoir written by a USC law professor about the onset of her schizophrenia and subsequent bouts of psychosis. Her descriptions are quite vivid and may help you get a sense of how your experience compares to someone who was later confirmed to have suffered a break with reality.
posted by The Straightener at 12:52 PM on May 29

I would definitely chalk those up as hallucinations, though I wouldn't sweat it too much as they can encompass a spectrum all the way from mild deja vu to being in some kind of lucid alternate reality.

Your treatment for depression might be the key here; it seems to imply you're on medications. If so, it could be a side-effect of the medications and should probably be discussed with your doctor for that reason. Perhaps there was some sort of interaction with something you ate, so I would be attentive to that (e.g. alcohol, other meds, or even grapefruit which has weird interactions).

It's imperative between now and seeing the doctor to work on getting a full night's sleep, being relaxed, and eating healthy so you can develop a baseline for figuring out whether this is an exhaustion/mental issue or a medication issue.
posted by crapmatic at 1:01 PM on May 29

I don't want to dissuade you from seeing a doctor. But that thing about seeing someone you think you know, and then shortly afterwards seeing the actual person you know, happens to me all the time, and I'm pretty sure I have no hallucination issues. I think it's just a very striking example of confirmation bias; ie, I must see people I mistakenly think I know all the time, but forget when the actual person doesn't subsequently show up.
posted by game warden to the events rhino at 1:06 PM on May 29

I really do not believe so--at least not in my experience. They were quite transient, you were immediately aware of their inconsistency with understood reality and I assume you have no history of audio/visual hallucinations or delusional states. Hallucinations do not just happen and they seldom start at age 30+/-. I agree with "cootiebeastie", talk with your physician but I am guessing they are an artifact of a hyper-awareness on your part. I assume you are not using illicit drugs, detoxing nor have any neurological diseases/symptoms. This is the kind of thing that is "interesting: but very unlikely "worrisome"
posted by rmhsinc at 1:13 PM on May 29

Further to The Straightener's comment (which I agree with); auditory hallucinations at least are common, and not necessarily linked to mental ill health. Some research gives as many as 1 in 25 people experiencing them. So even if you are having an occasional hallucination (perhaps, as crapmatic suggests, linked to external environmental causes) it doesn't mean you're heading for psychosis.
posted by Coobeastie at 1:18 PM on May 29

Was going to come in to say more or less what The Straightener said. Hallucinating smells are markers of psychotic episodes (often associated with schizophrenia, but could just be an episode that resulted from your depression), so the fact that you mention these in conjunction with the others throws up the red flag for me. Bring it up with your practitioner like you say, and ask about side effects of your meds.
posted by messylissa at 1:36 PM on May 29

Ask your doctors about narcolepsy:

It usually makes its first appearance between the ages of 15 and 30
...
Other symptoms of narcolepsy may include sleep paralysis, very real appearing hallucinations—complete with smells, sights and sounds—or automatic behavior—a frightening phenomenon where the affected person may be involved in an activity (driving, talking, writing) while alternating between sleep and wakefulness.
posted by jamjam at 3:13 PM on May 29

Sleep paralysis is nothing like that. It's a much more vivid and sustained hallucination- you can reach out and put your hand through the person or object you're hallucinating like in a ghost movie. The hallucination generally linger for 5 to 30 seconds and are not questionable, you definitely see/ hear/ smell them.

Plus you have to be waking up from sleep or near sleep.
posted by fshgrl at 4:47 PM on May 29

I saw a girl on the train last month that looked alot like a girl I know, and then looked down the train car and the one I know was sitting right there.. it was SO WEIRD.

I'd say that twice is not enough to make this an issue, five times? Probably time to see a Doctor.
posted by pwally at 5:03 PM on May 29

Have you recently changed your medications for depression, altered the dosage, or had anything happen to you that would reduce absorption of the drugs (e.g., diarrhea)? My sister's a psychiatrist specializing in hospital consultations on non-psychiatric wards (i.e., where the patients were mentally "just fine a minute ago..."), and a lot of the requests she gets for consultation occur when there's a change in medication levels.

In general, if you begin, stop, or modify taking any psychoactive drug (or any powerful drug, for that matter) you should pay close attention to any perceptual or mood disturbances and report them diligently to your psychiatrist or GP. They'll thank you for it, trust me.

Oh, and IANAD, just related to one.
posted by LMGM at 5:15 PM on May 29

Are you getting enough sleep? The brain tries to make sense of ambiguous input and once it thinks it has identified an image, will keep "seeing" it until you look away. This is more common if you are tired.

Obviously, the possibility of this being a side effect of your medication is a real possibility. If the doctor rules this out, you might want to know that schizophrenia is not the only mental illness associated with hallucinations. Depression "with psychotic features" is not that uncommon. IANAD but I think even if you are having hallucinations, they are not a major concern as long as they are not disturbing or distressing images.
posted by metahawk at 8:45 PM on May 29

If the experiences you had were indeed disconcerting and are making you uncomfortable, then whether any given layperson or health care professional considers them hallucinations is beside the point. "Hallucination" is a seriously loaded word, and one that I think is poorly understood by folks on both sides of the stethoscope.

I have experiences akin to those you mentioned pretty frequently, but I kind of like them. However, they don't ever make me feel bad. Because I generally realize pretty soon that they were something only I experienced, not something that's objectively measurable, I just chalk it up to weird synchronicity.
posted by solipsophistocracy at 9:40 PM on May 29