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
  • I've been wondering if there's any link between epilepsy and the types of symptoms you've described*. I experience some of those, as it happens. Both my aunt and I had head injuries caused by serious accidents, when young; she ended up with full-blown epilepsy whereas I didn't.

    *Though, admittedly, there seems so much overlap between various conditions that mine is a mere guess - even a recent burnout included some of the symptoms.

  • I don't think I ever properly considered that possibility, because my own father had epilepsy from a head injury. I have witnessed some of the weird altered states of consciousness that resulted, but...  have never heard him report any of the funny visual anomalies. Then again, maybe he just doesn't talk about it. 

    At the very least, it's a new line of investigation. Thanks for the suggestion. 

Reply
  • I don't think I ever properly considered that possibility, because my own father had epilepsy from a head injury. I have witnessed some of the weird altered states of consciousness that resulted, but...  have never heard him report any of the funny visual anomalies. Then again, maybe he just doesn't talk about it. 

    At the very least, it's a new line of investigation. Thanks for the suggestion. 

Children
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