![]() ![]() Sir Ernest Shackleton mentioned the sensation in his 1919 Antarctic expedition diary, South, saying that "during that long and racking march of 36 hours over the unnamed mountains and glaciers of South Georgia, it seemed to me often that we were four, not three". Grief too has been linked with hallucinations, with people reportedly hearing and even seeing a deceased partner.īut it's also possible for people to hallucinate if exposed to certain bright or flickering lights.Įxactly why we see these illusions is something of a puzzle, but we are now starting to unravel what happens in the mind during visions by comparing drug-, stimulus- and disease-induced hallucinations.įor example, the brilliance of snow might explain why some explorers and mountaineers claim to see strange figures following them during whiteouts. Musical hallucinations have also been reported in association with hearing loss in some people. Certain illnesses like dementia, schizophrenia and some eye diseases can also cause hallucinations – sometimes called altered visual experiences – says Prem Subramanian, a professor of ophthalmology at the University of Colorado. Fevers can also trigger hallucinations – they are a commonly reported symptom in malaria, for example, and were also reported by some patients during the Covid-19 pandemic. Visual auras are a form of visual hallucination that typically accompany migraines. While research into the therapeutic benefits of hallucinogens was largely paused after LSD was criminalised in the late 60s, there has recently been a renewal of interest in using hallucinogens such as ketamine and LSD as therapeutic treatments, with a spate of new studies.īut ingesting substances is not the only pathway to experiencing hallucinations. The US even ran experiments under the names Project MKUltra and Project MKDELTA to see if LSD could be used as a truth drug. In the 1950s and 60s, there was a great deal of interest in psychedelics as a treatment for disorders from depression and alcohol addiction to schizophrenia. Medium to high doses of similar hallucinogens generate lasting feelings of bliss and insightfulness and a sense of profound spiritual enlightenment. Why were these psychedelics used in rituals? Possibly because they elicit in the user a sense of awe and wonder. They believed they could speak to ancestors after taking a very small dose of dried toxin (too much would be fatal). The Olmecs – one of the earliest Mesoamerican civilisations – and Maya people from Mexico are also thought to have used the neurotoxin from cane toads to hallucinate in their rituals. For example, ayahuasca, a hallucinogenic drink made from certain brewed vines or shrubs, has been consumed by indigenous peoples in South America during religious and healing rituals for perhaps as long as 1,000 years. Psychedelics have been used in religious ceremonies, before war and for recreation in the Americas for centuries. ![]() "Although I discovered that I couldn't move, I was able to remain calm when it occurred to me that this was of no consequence because there was no other place that I wanted to be," she writes, noting that she found the experience not in the least scary, but deeply moving. The discs taste "unspeakably bitter-sour" and "revolting" explains Myerhoff, but she adds that she lost her awareness of time, and instead started to skip from one vivid, self-contained dream to another. Peyote contains mescaline – a psychedelic compound that can produce hallucinations similar to the effects of taking magic mushrooms. ![]() A peyote trip starts with a "growing sense of euphoria", followed by a heightened sense of the noises around, before the tipper is plunged into a world of vivid dreams – at least that is how anthropologist Barbara Myerhoff described her experience after taking peyote with members of a Huichol tribe in western Mexico in her book Peyote Hunt. The cactus, called peyote, is cut into discs and chewed raw to release a hallucinogen. They leave our Earthly plane to visit animals and ancestors with the assistance of a small, green cactus. The Huichol tribe from the Sierra Madre Occidental mountains in Mexico can speak to spirits. ![]()
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