Hallucinations can occur for various reasons and in different ways. Drugs, medications and mental illness can all cause delusions. They can be treated by a medical professional once the reason for the illusions is determined. Let’s explore how hallucinations are generated and how to treat them.
What Are Hallucinations?
Hallucinations are experiences created by the mind that seem real but are not. The word hallucination comes from Latin and means “to wander mentally.” These sensory experiences affect all five senses in the body. When a person smells, sees, hears, feels or touches something that isn’t real, they are experiencing a hallucination.
Different hallucinogenic states can also occur. Hypnagogic hallucinations happen when a person falls asleep, while hypnopompic arise while the person is starting to wake up. A hypnagogic state makes the person feel like the hallucination was very real to the point where it can be terrifying. People can even be confused by the situation since they are confident that they have seen or felt something. Drugs, alcohol, insomnia and anxiety are all risk factors that can bring on these hallucinations.
Hypnopompic hallucinations are comparable to hypnagogic the only difference is that the hallucinations occur in the morning as the person is waking up. They will still feel, see or hear things that aren’t real. The brain remains active while a person sleeps, and scientists are unsure why dreams develop. Certain types of hallucinations are more likely to occur in a person with narcolepsy, although people who don’t have the condition can still have these experiences.
What Causes Hallucinations?
It has been theorized that the brain’s frontal lobe and sensory cortex must maintain a good relationship. If something goes wrong, there is a chance that a person can suffer hallucinations. It is found that people with mental health disorders have an overactive auditory or visual cortex. Psychoactive substances could also disturb the relationship that interacts with receptors of neurotransmitters present in the brain.
There could be many different reasons that cause people to hallucinate. Mental illnesses such as epilepsy, Parkinson’s disease and schizophrenia can cause changes in the brain that will create hallucinations. Advanced Alzheimer’s disease and dementia may bring back situations, visions of people or objects from the past. Other times they can have horrifying hallucinations. Some brain tumors and their location in the brain can create hallucinations of smell or taste. Additionally, migraine headaches can cause visual hallucinations, although not everyone that gets a migraine will hallucinate.
What Drugs Make You Hallucinate?
Various psychoactive substances can produce hallucinations and illusions. Those drugs disrupt the brain’s chemical systems and the spinal cord, which then causes altered brain function.
Some of the most common hallucinogenic substances include:
PCP creates an out-of-body type of experience. LSD also produces extremely potent psychedelic effects.
Ketamine is a sedative and is commonly used in veterinary settings but also produces hallucinogenic effects. Mescaline is the active ingredient in Peyote cactus. It is a Schedule I substance because it causes hallucinations, altered perception, and illusions if it is abused. Psilocybin mushrooms can be consumed orally or fermented as tea and can bring confusion, psychosis and hallucinations.
Are there different types of hallucinations?
All five senses can be involved when a person hallucinates: hearing, seeing, feeling, tasting, or smelling. Depending on the experience, only one or all five can be sensed. For that reason, there are five different types of hallucinations. Auditory hallucinations involve hearing voices or sounds that other people cannot hear. Visual is seeing objects, people, colors or shapes that are not there. Olfactory is when a person can smell something nonexistent at that moment. Tactile is a false or abnormal feeling people get when they hallucinate. They can either be exterior or interior sensations. Some tactile hallucinations feel itchy or like the body is burning or as if an organ inside the body has moved. Gustatory is when a person deludes a bad taste in the mouth or loss of flavor.
Aside from hallucinations, some people also develop Pseudohallucinations. Those come from the mind and are very vivid experiences that are not referred to as common hallucinations because they are not external. For instance, a pseudohallucination results in hearing voices inside the head, whereas people think others talk about them during a hallucination.
Hallucinations vs. Delusions
Hallucinations and delusions are often put in the same category when specific medical conditions are discussed, yet they are not the same. Both are similar since they are not real, but hallucinations are sensed through hearing, seeing, feeling, tasting and touching. For instance, people who hallucinate during a migraine headache can see an aura, but they realize it’s not true. In contrast, a delusion revolves around persistent ideas, beliefs or thoughts. The atypical mindset of individuals who experience delusions ensures that these episodes are actual even when presented with evidence that they are not.
How to Hallucinate on Command
The human brain is extraordinary. It is very complex and fragile but also can create many things that some people never imagine. The brain can easily be tricked into seeing, feeling or hearing things that are falsely there. Hallucinogenic substances are not needed as the brain can cause those experiences on its own.
In the 1930s, scientists discovered the ganzfeld effect. It is a way that the brain finds patterns. If sensory deprivation is purposely created through the use of household items, hallucinations can transpire. White noise can be played in the ears with headphones while a person stares at a blank sheet of paper transformed into a mask, making the brain unstable it starts to look for patterns. Brian and Jason from Scam Nation demonstrate how this works and confirmed to have experienced an altered state of mind. The hallucinations tweak a person’s sound and sight.
People have also reported that meditation has caused them to hallucinate. Meditation involves using techniques or centering the mind on a single aspect of life or an object. Meditation can bring many benefits to conditions like anxiety, depression and other psychopathologies. Meditation has become very popular because many people feel stress from the high-pressure societies they live in. The Buddhist tradition is no stranger to some of the hallucinogenic experiences that can come from meditation. Some incidents involve seeing mountains, streams, rivers or ghosts and monsters.
Lucid dreams can induce hallucinations, and people that suffer from certain mental health disorders have increased possibilities of encountering those incidents. Lucid dreams are when a person is aware that they are asleep and dreaming. Some people have control over what will follow during the experience. People that have lucid dreams know that the events they are going through are untrue. Those dreams feel very vivid and accurate, and hallucinations make it hard for people with those disorders to differentiate whether the experience is real or fake.
Depending on the type of hallucination a person has and why can bring many benefits to specific disorders. Scientists have recently discovered that psilocybin, a prevalent psychedelic substance, can have long-term antidepressant effects partly because it increases neuroplasticity in the brain. In some more severe cases, hallucinations produce fear and paranoia and can lead to threatening behaviors. Depending on the symptoms, a doctor can help determine the cause for the hallucinations and offer treatments. The doctor will run a series of tests to find the correct remedy in some cases, medication can be prescribed, and in others, therapy will help. Not all hallucinations will need to be treated by a medical professional. Some hallucinations only happen as a singular event. If you have had any hallucinations, we would like for you to share your experience.
