I get a world tilting thing maybe once a year. Usually while falling asleep. I also sometimes get this weird perceptual thing where objects look huge, again, normally while in a dark room. I've also had odd sensations that accompany these perceptual changes.

All of these occur very rarely. Like I said, maybe twice a year, but closer to once per year. I can't find it now, but I had learned about seizure activity and how you can experience one without really knowing it, things just might get wonky like your perception, feelings, smells, etc.

>I get a world tilting thing maybe once a year. Usually while falling asleep.

I think this is very common and occasionally experienced by most people, including myself. Typically when you're on the border between being awake and falling asleep.

>I also sometimes get this weird perceptual thing where objects look huge, again, normally while in a dark room.

Haven't experienced this one, but perceptual distortions in a dark environment shouldn't be a concern, I think. I definitely get thrown off sometimes. It's natural, since your brain is constantly trying to predict what should be there, and ambiguous signals due to limited light can throw a wrench into that, especially if you're not habituated to the light conditions.

>I've also had odd sensations that accompany these perceptual changes.

Could there be a nocebo effect? After learning about seizure auras, it's possible that when these things happen, you might enter a brief positive feedback loop where aura-like things could psychogenically manifest. Was this also the case before you learned about such things?

The name for what you're talking about is Hypnic Jerk https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnic_jerk

Also a great name for a person who wakes you up just as you're trying to fall asleep. "You, you hypnic jerk!"

I was going to mention that, but I'm actually not 100% sure if it's the same thing. Maybe it is? Either way, I definitely occasionally experience hypnic jerks and sudden vertigo-ish feelings when I'm right on the edge of falling asleep.

> I also sometimes get this weird perceptual thing where objects look huge, again, normally while in a dark room.

Does this happen in total black ? I sometimes (really rarely, like once or twice a year) have a strange « feeling » at night while in my bed without any source of light : I can distinctively see the objects around me.

The twist is : I’m heavily myopic and even with my glasses (which I don’t wear at night) I can’t see anything in the darkness. So there is no way I could distinctly see things with their contours in the darkness.

It only happened in places I know, so I can’t know if my brain is making my bedroom up or if I really see something, or if it’s a combination.

I've had an object appear huge once (right after an LSD trip), so might as well share my anecdote.

For me it was in a dark environment (bedroom), but I was looking at my phone, without glasses, and holding it pretty close to my eyes (I'm also heavily myopic) so that it occupied maybe ~60% of my field of vision.

The "picture" I had in my field of vision never changed, the "pixels" (though I don't think there is such a thing) did not change. But suddenly my phone was this giant monolith just above my head.

Consciously I could clearly tell this was a hallucination, but the dissonance of having this seemingly suddenly huge object held right above my head was really unsettling to me, a bit scary even.

I'm so used to not questioning how my sense of scale pretty much always matches what I see, it never occurred to me my instinct could be fooled by this wide a margin while consciously seeing that everything was normal.

But on the other hand, I can't say I've really ever had an unusually distinctive awareness of objects like you describe.

Won't happen in total darkness. Also, it's happened in full daylight. Like all the sudden someones head just looks absolutely massive, like I've lost the ability to perceive size. I find the effect pleasurable so I kinda zone out and let it happen. Otherwise I can snap myself out of it pretty quickly.

Sounds like vertigo maybe? Does it feel like someone tilted the floor and there's no "up"? Followed by sweating and vomiting and 48 hours of headaches? (Source: I get it a few times a year.)

None of that, it just looks like the floor is tilted forward. It doesn't feel like it though. It's a very odd visual distortion.

I noticed while at the eye doctor when testing different lenses I guess he could recreate the feeling by using incorrect magnification on one eye? Making my brain thing the room is tilted left or right.

Unrelated, anybody ever feel like they lost consciousness for 250ms? Super rare, but I get the feeling that I feel asleep and all my muscles went limp in that moment. It's like when you are falling asleep and you sometimes jerk yourself back awake.

See another comment on this post about Hypnic Jerk.

FWIW the objects looking large is talked about quite a bit by epileptics and can be a ‘focal awareness seizure’. I got these as a kid and my family has a history of epilepsy but I’ve never had an adverse affect.

https://epilepsysociety.org.uk/about-epilepsy/epileptic-seiz...

Back when I smoked cigarettes I could tell I had smoked to much because I would get Alice in Wonderland Syndrome. I would feel like my bed was rotating in the world, my head would feel like it was too big for the room or that my feet would be dozens of meters away from me.

I thought I was going crazy for a while until I found out what it was.

Migraine. You needn’t have a headache either.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2289227/

The distortions while falling asleep is sleep paralysis. There's nothing weird about this.

Every once in a while, i'll have this and there's an entity in my room. Once, everything in my room flew and the world 'cracked'. It's just a waking dream. Wiggle your toes, and things will go back to normal. Toes still work when the delusion sets in because it takes time for the hormone that causes bodily paralysis to get to your toes, and when the brain notices you moving your body, it wakes back up.

>I also sometimes get this weird perceptual thing where objects look huge, again, normally while in a dark room

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_in_Wonderland_syndrome

They seem to be lumping things together pretty widely which is a disservice to people like you.

A bit of hallucinating here and there is quite common especially as you age and isn't a big deal (though if it happens suddenly go see a doctor, it can be a symptom of something happening), being unable to determine what is and is not real can be quite a problem.

Can you elaborate a bit? I don't remember hallucinating when growing up[1], so I'm interested what this would look like. I don't doubt that it may still be common without everyone experiencing it.

[1] Or ever, really, unless fever dreams when being really sick count. Though, without any reference point to compare to, they really seemed more like intense dreams.

I consider myself to be a very mentally-stable person, but I have encountered occasional hallucination-like experiences. They're very brief, and my brain seems to correct itself retroactively, which makes them somewhat difficult to notice. For example, a soft noise could be vividly interpreted as someone calling my name, but when it becomes apparent that this didn't happen, my brain files the experience as "probably misheard something", and my attention is immediately diverted. Supposedly smell hallucinations are pretty common too. These are hard to recall because they're so unremarkable. It's difficult to tell these things from common daily "mistakes", but is there really a difference except in effect size?

A classic one that many experience is thinking you see someone or something notable or scary in the dark, that turns out to be whatever ordinary thing is actually there.

Is that really a hallucination? Or is it your brain’s pattern recognizer making an incorrect guess and then quickly course-correcting when more data is present?

The surface boundary of what does or doesn't count as a hallucination isn't necessarily clear or well agreed upon.

> is it your brain’s pattern recognizer making an incorrect guess

This part is more or less an accurate explanation of a lot of hallucinations. Input misinterpreted and incorrectly "output" into consciousness.

I've had events in deep meditation where I hear things as though they were actually audible and not just a memory of sound or see things as though my eyes were seeing them and not visually remembering them.

They always scared me even though the audible events would be something simple like a "Hello!" or like, a bottle cap opening or a bit of music and the visual events would be like, a match striking or a bit of fire.

I am not sure what causes this transition of perception. Some people say its your brain releasing DMT, some say it's activation of your parasympatheic nervous system. I don't know for sure, but I don't think it is anything to be afraid of.

Yes, these are quite common. I believe persistent, full-on visual hallucinations tend to be rare among the general population, assuming you're sober and not sleep deprived or in a half-asleep state or in the process of waking up.

This, and similarly Déjà vu, both happen to me too, very occasionally. I definitely also see a correlation with times I'm significantly fatigued, for example after being awake for 20 hours during a multi-day fast.

The parent poster mentioned having taken LSD and later experiencing HPPD (hallucinogen-persisting perception disorder). Visual disturbances and distortions are often associated with both. In rare cases it can last for months or years, if the HPPD is severe.

Yeah, although I may have been too aware of my body's normal distortions, it was fairly typical HPPD from what I hear. Walls breathing, tile floors becoming 3d, constant visual snow layered on my vision. I'd say my thinking became somewhat more disorganized after the experience as well. I used to be a fairly fast reader and afterwards I had to slow down and also start re-reading more. I also had a fair amount of panic attacks, even ending up in the ER once when I was 18.

HPPD would definitely be a major confounder, here. I really wouldn't be worried. If it's been many years since it happened and you haven't ever experienced anything that seems like it could be psychosis, then it very likely isn't something to be concerned about, I think.

One single dose of LSD can cause permanent psychosis, so this is not surprising. This is why drugs like LSD need to be absolutely banned. They can turn functioning people into permanently non-functioning ones. It is an incredibly dangerous drug.

This is not true, or partially true at best. As far as I'm aware, current consensus is that psychedelics are not a causative agent in psychosis or schizophrenia in the absence of predisposing risk factors. 0.5-1% of the population will develop schizophrenia, and for these susceptible individuals, a psychedelic trip can be the event that triggers the full-blown disorder. But so can any other significant psychological stressor, like the death of a family member or friend, or going off to college alone. But in general, psychedelic use is not correlated with mental disorders, in fact there are some studies that suggest that psychedelic users may have lower rates of depression, anxiety, and increased empathy and openness.

oh, here's an interesting one I hadn't seen before: https://akjournals.com/view/journals/2054/aop/article-10.155... "Lifetime use of psychedelics is associated with better mental health indicators during the COVID-19 pandemic"

But even if psychedelics were a causative risk in some mental disorders, shouldn't we as a society entrust adults to determine their own risk tolerance? We don't ban alcohol because a certain percentage of drinkers will develop alcoholism. We don't ban smoking even though it is a (or even THE?) leading cause of preventable death in the US. Why should other drugs be any different?

My depersonalisation disorder started after an LSD trip. Was it really that drug that did it to me or was it always going to happen? I don't know but even so I've never gotten any of the benefits that psychedelics advocates talk about. For me it was just fun and that's it. I still absolutely hate what the drug did to me and I wish I had never taken it but comments like yours convinced me. I feel like the constant advocating and laying out the benefits like they are a guarantee is really dangerous for a chemical this powerful.

Exactly... We're expecting those affected negatively by the drug to come out in force to combat the LSD advocates. How can this be possible? Those given psychoses by these drugs end up in mental institutions, at best, on the streets at worst. They are in no position to advocate for themselves.

The truth is the drug is a mixed bag. Some people take it and may only report benefits. However, some people take it and develop intense psychological disorders they may not have ever developed otherwise. Simply saying 'oh they were pre-disposed' is hardly an excuse. Maybe they were pre-disposed, but not enough to develop it without an intense trigger event, like an LSD trip.

Here's a similar situation. Auto-immune disease runs in my family. My older cousin has vitiligo. My brother didn't have it, but then one day he suffered a severe burn. A few weeks later, he started developing vitiligo. Burns and other severe events are known to trigger vitiligo. Had he simply avoided it, he would likely never have developed vitiligo. But alas he did.

My uncle has schizophrenia. I see how it can affect him and the family negatively. You can't put me within 10 feet of LSD. Sorry, I'm just not interested. The risk of me developing actual schizophrenia is simply not one I'd be willing to take, but most LSD advocates would not even mention this, instead mentioning the silly pleasure it brings them. Sorry, no amount of poetic creativity, artistic brilliance, or musical talent is going to convince me that a non-zero risk of beginning to hear random voices is good.

The negative symptoms are so bad, that the positive ones, which are basically momentary pleasure, are simply not worth it being tolerated as a self-medicated drug. Even the supposed medical benefits deserve intense scrutiny given how dangerous the drug can be.

> But even if psychedelics were a causative risk in some mental disorders, shouldn't we as a society entrust adults to determine their own risk tolerance

No, because such allowances are made with the assumption that people act reasonably. GK Chesterton said we should tolerate all thoughts except for the thought that stops thought. We can tolerate all kinds of insane thoughts. The only thought we cannot tolerate is the thought (the will to take LSD for 'fun') that has the potential to stop all thought. LSD, and other psychedelics, cause the breakdown of rationality that is the very reason we allow adults to make their own decisions. It is completely incoherent to allow LSD while also using adult cognitive skills as the basis of adult freedom.

What an absolute bullshit.

Seriously, you propose to deny adults freedom of thought because there are "wrong" thoughts, defined by "reasonability ", which isn't and can't be defined?

In this line of thought your thoughts about banning thinking should be banned.

See where this leads?

> In this line of thought your thoughts about banning thinking should be banned.

No, because acknowledging the existence of such a thought does not imply thinking it.

The flaw with your claims is the underlying belief that human thought tends -- if left untouched by others -- tends towards freedom.

There is little reason to believe this. Throughout history, many civilizations have independently arisen that have fully embraced the thought that stops all other thought. You see this is in various cultural degradations, human atrocities, etc that have occurred over and over again.

In reality, human thought is not totally 'free'. There are some thoughts that you can think that make you less free, and should be discouraged.

Here's a more poignant example, would you allow adults to drive a metal spike into their brain to allow 'freedom'? Why or why not? If you do allow them, how can you possibly claim to desire 'freedom' for others, since -- by definition -- doing such a thing to your body is going to put you at the mercy of others for many years to come (and if they can't help you, then to the mercy of nature). If you don't allow them, why? If encouraging every liberty is not the goal of this exercise of freedom, then exactly what are you arguing about?

no, it's not. best estimates (admittedly poor) put the incidence around 1/50,000 for frequent users.

considering the potential mental health uses and the extremely low toxicity (i'm not sure anybody has ever overdosed on lsd) banning psychedelics would be a huge mistake.

and > They can turn functioning people into permanently non-functioning ones. It is an incredibly dangerous drug. applies to legal drugs too. alcohol for example. or painkillers or benzos.

One drink of alcohol is unlikely to lead you to become unstable. I don't know about the others.

I didn't call for a blanket ban. LSD may have therapeutic uses (other debilitating drugs like paracetamol do), but the self-dosing that people do 'for fun' shouldn't be tolerated.

You called for a blanket ban.

Sorry, I figured doctor prescriptions were not included. My view is that they should be a controlled substance, the way they are now. You'd have to show amazing cognitive effects for an illness to legalize it for prescription. I don't know the science here though.

By 'absolute ban' I mean they should be controlled, and classified as an illegal drug. This is not something people should self-medicate. Those using without a prescription or worse, distributing, should be jailed.