I have a migraine and daily headache condition and one of the side effects is a changing assortment of hallucinations. It’s nothing to worry about, we keep track of them as part of my treatment and do periodic MRIs just to be sure when the hallucinations change…
But they are pretty damned normal, even outside of having a condition that impacts your brain, and most people don’t really understand that, and keep it to themselves if it happens to them, so I figured it’s worth asking.
Without drugs being involved, have you had hallucinations? Not just sounds or visions, but smells or touch or proprioception (body position) hallucinations? Those are far more common and much less talked about than hearing voices. Do you know what caused them, if you had them, or was it an alarming experience?
My biggest one is that chicken usually smells like peanut butter. I hate peanut, and actively avoid anywhere that uses peanut oil, and yet chicken still smells and tastes like it’s cooked in peanut flavoring. Awful hallucination.
Recently I’ve had some other olfactory (smell) hallucinations, lavender, sage, etc. sometimes a mild burning smell which is alarming because that’s associated with other issues like stroke. Have also had some audio hallucinations, the sort of thing I pause whatever’s playing to see if I’m imagining it. No big deal, because I’m aware of it happening.
I’ve experienced psychosis and hallucinations before, it happens to me sometimes when I’m under a lot of stress, I think I have some latent schizophrenia that kicks in or something like that.
It’s strange, because there’s always a part of me that recognizes that I’m hallucinating/delusional, and it’s very scary to me, it always feels very dangerous, like I am at risk and I need to be careful.
The actual things I see and hear varies wildly. Most commonly, I will see weird lights, like the flash of a camera. Often, my brain will kinda play tricks on me, and turn shadows or tricks of the light into something that looks like some kind of monster out of the corner of my eye, but when I focus on it, it looks normal.
My sister’s schizophrenia is far worse than mine. She has told me a number of crazy stories, and she’s been committed to mental hospitals a few times unfortunately.
Feel free to ask, if anyone has any questions
I have something like this. It’s mostly music, things on or under my skin and some smells, sometimes people lose their heads too (didn’t happen for a while). But I can’t make it disappear, even if I know there is nothing. I kinda like the music, but the first occurrences were scary. It sometimes happens I can’t tell what is common reality and what is not, and of course it’s always fucking scary things.
I had it for delusion too, like I know it is, but it doesn’t matter. I was paranoid for years, it went worse and worse and I knew it was paranoia. I still believed some people could read thought my eyes while I writing, following me, etc.
It protects me for saying it to the wrong person, and it doesn’t take all my life, but it’s annoying. But there are nice things in it, like the music, I’m understanding with weird people, I’m creative for hiding things, I spoke with my tiles one day, I don’t panic easily.
Huh. I had the thing where I saw shadows moving out of the corner of my eye. It always spooks the hell out of me. It usually comes when I am stressed beyond belief. My partner and I clean air bnbs for a living, and some of em are out in the woods. Once, when I was by myself, I swore I heard someone walking around upstairs. This was a big 6 bed room house in the middle of the woods. I have never felt terror like that.
I even had moments of thinking I heard footsteps coming down the hallway as I was in the master bedroom cleaning. It wasn’t like I could see down the hallway either. It was the hallway that led to a huge master bath, and the master bed is around the corner.
This was at like 12 at night. I remember saying, “If someone is there, I’m not a nice person, I will kill you.” Not sound like a badass, I was cornered in a room, and I’m not one to be backed into a corner. When I stepped out and saw nothing, I felt so odd.
Luckily, I have been dealing with my stress better so it’s not as bad as it us to be.
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