Sensory Disturbances, Hallucinations, and Psychedelics

Hi. 

Started a logon here because a long and frustrating search of the internet yielded...  so much nothing. 

My apologies if this has already been addressed here, and I simply have not found the discussion. If that has happened, could someone point me to the relevant thread? 

Is there a connection between sensory disturbances/hallucinations/psychedelia and autism?

I ask because I experience quite a lot of them-- I would not categorize most as "hallucinations" as I know perfectly well they aren't "real", but rather (mostly)visual disturbances: Shiny gnats, rippling floors, halos around objects, persistent afterimages, sound-->visual synaesthesia, geometrics that sort of leap out of the random distribution of things like leaves and sand, "motion" in stationary objects, visual snow, that sort of thing. All the time, since childhood. I am a prodigious reader, but slower than average at it, because the words will not hold still on the page, text tends to shimmer a bit, and there's always a bit of flash and color going on amongst the words. 

I've always felt it was part and parcel of the autism, but have failed to find anything in the literature about it, other than some brief studies noting that migraine and synaesthesia are more common in autism than in the general population, and that our senses tend to be abnormally calibrated-- poor sensory filtering, over- and under-sensitivity.  But never any specific descriptions that resemble what I'm seeing. Watching the floor ripple gently is specific and memorable enough you'd think someone would have mentioned it. My husband, also autistic, doesn't experience anything like it. The only place I can find anything remotely accurately descriptive is in the drug literature-- people describing their LSD and psilocybin trips. I have never tried any illicit drugs, so this is irritating beyond belief. I would like to be able to compare notes with people who experience similar phenomena, mostly from the practical standpoint of...  like, have other people found ways to get to a *less* psychedelic state, so as to be more functional in the physical world? I feel like if I had some control over it, I could be a safer driver, pay better attention to conversations, and be generally less overwhelmed by sensory input. Talking to self-proclaimed psychonauts about this is not helpful, obviously, since they are chasing that experience, rather than looking for ways to muffle it. They are also prone to finding meaning in the experience, whereas for me it is generally a sensory-only thing. I don't find it meaningful any more than most people would find listening to radio static meaningful. It's just noise, it's mostly unwelcome, and it's an obstacle I have to work around to do ordinary things. Like read. 

So. I have some questions about that. 

1) Do other people with autism experience this kind of sensory disturbance? It'd be useful to know, either way. If it goes with the autism, I'd know where to ask about it. And if it's a completely separate thing, I'll know to keep looking :)

2) If yes, are there any ways to make it...  less intrusive? Is there any way to turn the volume down?

Parents
  • There's an incredible amount under researched with Autism. As you pointed out, it appears NT individuals can take psychedelics to experience nuances we might find normal. 

    I'm not a neurologist, but some things can be related to tiny and sometimes harmless seizers, so it could be worth getting checked out. Some could be migraines, but others could simply be crossed "wires" or even a wild imagination. from everything I've read, it seems we do use different resigns and areas of the brain to reason and perceive life. I might use the occipital lobe to visualise something while a NT friend thinks with a dialogue to internally talk through the same thing. 

    I have found nootropics helped with a sort of stabilising or clarity and focus. Could be worth just getting the visual snow and halos checked for a bit of ease. But we tend to not filter out incoming information the same, or dull our senses the same. A different salience network is one of the main theories around autistic being.

Reply
  • There's an incredible amount under researched with Autism. As you pointed out, it appears NT individuals can take psychedelics to experience nuances we might find normal. 

    I'm not a neurologist, but some things can be related to tiny and sometimes harmless seizers, so it could be worth getting checked out. Some could be migraines, but others could simply be crossed "wires" or even a wild imagination. from everything I've read, it seems we do use different resigns and areas of the brain to reason and perceive life. I might use the occipital lobe to visualise something while a NT friend thinks with a dialogue to internally talk through the same thing. 

    I have found nootropics helped with a sort of stabilising or clarity and focus. Could be worth just getting the visual snow and halos checked for a bit of ease. But we tend to not filter out incoming information the same, or dull our senses the same. A different salience network is one of the main theories around autistic being.

Children
  • Yeah, "under-researched" is, IMO, an under-statement. 

    I do get fairly frequent migraines, and the psychedelia do get more pronounced before, during, and after a migraine episode. But I've never been able to say, definitively, that it's a migraine phenomenon. I mean, I do once in a while get a classic migraine aura-- the whole scintillating scotoma thingy with the flashy crystal zigzag whatsits creeping around toward the center of my vision. That always seemed to be completely separate from the other stuff-- very well-defined timeframe of being not-there, and then there, and then gone again. Whereas the other stuff is there all the time. 

    Migraine and seizure are somewhat related phenomena, so that might be a productive line of enquiry. I'll poke at it and see if I find anything. 

    Care to elaborate about nootropics? That's not a topic I'm familiar with. Are there any primer-level resources you'd recommend for learning more?