Category: Visual Hallucinations

Bicycle Day

Chemistry, Counter Culture, Drug Culture, Visual Hallucinations

Happy Bicycle Day, which doesn’t celebrate bicycles but the effects of LSD:

On April 19, 1943, Albert Hofmann, a researcher at Sandoz Laboratories in Basel, Switzerland, purposely ingested .25 milligrams (250 micrograms) of LSD at his lab. He thought this would be the threshold dose—the lowest amount taken where there are still effects—when in reality the threshold dose for LSD is only 20 micrograms. But what does a bicycle have to do with the day?

Within an hour, Hofmann began to notice changes in his perception and senses. He decided that he should go home, so he hopped on his bicycle and began riding. Because the drug was already greatly affecting him, he had his laboratory assistant help guide him to his house. At times during his bicycle ride, he thought he was going insane, thought his neighbor was a witch and thought the LSD had poisoned him.

He later wrote in LSD: My Problem Child, “On the way home, my condition began to assume threatening forms. Everything in my field of vision wavered and was distorted as if seen in a curved mirror. I also had the sensation of being unable to move from the spot. Nevertheless, my assistant later told me that we had traveled very rapidly.”

Needless to say, his bicycle ride was quite a trip.

Light at the End of the Tunnel

Physics, Science, Visual Hallucinations

Out of body experiences and seeing the light at the end of the tunnel (Heaven)??

“The “light at the end of a tunnel” can be duplicated by putting pilots in an ultracentrifuge. As blood drains from their head, the outer rim of their retina loses blood, so you only see the center of the retina, so you see a light at the end of the tunnel. The “light at the end of the tunnel,” caused by a drop in blood pressure, can also happen in an accident, so therefore people think they have died and seen heaven.

“Out of body experiences” can also be duplicated by electrically stimulating certain regions of the brain. By stimulating the boundary between two areas of the brain, it gets confused. To make sense of these contradictory signals, the brain interprets this as being outside the body. This effect can simply be created by an electrical probe to the brain.”
~ Dr. Michio Kaku, Theoretical Physicist

#MichioKaku #TheoreticalPhysics #Science #OutOfBodyExperiences #LightAtTheEndOfTheTunnel

Age 16, 1988

Auditory Hallucinations, My Schiz Life, Poetry, Psychosis, Sexual Assault, Stigma, Violence, Visual Hallucinations

Age 16, 1988

For me my mental illness came crashing into my life in full force when I was sixteen.

That was the year I first started hearing voices,

started to believe people could read my mind and insert thoughts into my head,

was the first time I was truly suicidal,

was the year I started to self harm,

dragging a razor blade across my left arm and watching my blood flow,

the first time I was dissociative,

when the world became vague, dreamlike, less real,

as I observed events as if from outside my body like a movie in slow motion,

the year the panic attacks began.

This was also the year I suffered as a survivor of sexual assault,

the most difficult event of my life as a biker held a knife to my throat and raped me,

beating me severely.

From then on I carried a knife in case I am in a similar situation,

not so I could defend myself, but so I could slit my wrists.

To this day the sound of a Harley Davidson makes me physically cringe.

That was when the night terrors began reliving my trauma every time I closed my eyes.

That was the year the negative coping mechanisms developed: cutting, isolating, alcohol, drugs.

That was when the abyss of depression swallowed me up whole,

and I wanted to die or crawl in a hole forever,

because I was worthless, pathetic, weak, and most importantly,

I was to blame for being raped,

I should have been able to stop it as a sixteen year old boy.

This is not how it should be at sixteen.

Do I Dare Ask

Delusions, Mental Health, My Schiz Life, Visual Hallucinations

Do I Dare Ask

Do I dare ask what we already know,

There shall indeed me time to answer,

Do I presuppose in the depths of a binge,

To burn through our ignorance into truth.

We stand by a forest in the cold of night,

We question what is to befall us,

Searching past the promises we must keep,

Only contemplating our forest of the night.

You have forged this cross along your journey,

You are preparing your self-crucifixion,

Tears trace over you,

Where blood desires to follow.

Two paths diverged in your souls journey,

One leaving you upon the cross to wither and blow away,

The second burns past this existence,

We slip into the void between them.

Crawling across the wasteland of dark sky,

A new birth opens before my eyes,

One not filled with the continuance of life,

One filled with peril of your immediate break from existence.

The question has come to a close,

The funeral procession wanders to the grave,

The coffin left open only for you,

We all stare deep at your face in the grave.