How did your hallucinations start?

I’m starting to see slight distortions for about a second in my peripheral vision. I’ve never hallucinated or heard voices. It only happens about once a day.

Edit: it may be due to metformin

Visual disturbances have been reported early in treatment and may be related to changes in blood glucose due to temporary alteration in the turgidity and refractive index of the lens.

I just thought it was how things looked. I would state at my carpet and it would move and breath. Other things would breath too. Sometimes they would ask me questions or call my name. Nothing ever really seemed real when it started. Often, ordinary things would take the shape or appearance of things they were not. Like, a clump of towels becomes a woman etc.in the corner of my eyes.

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OK thanks. This just kind of started since I started taking metformin, and it’s nothing like you described.

So at the moment I think I’ll stick my head in the sand and blame metformin.

my first visual hallucinations were when I was four. They were peripheral, but when I turned to look there were dark creatures (I interpreted as bats and spiders) crawling across the wall. Later, the demons began as auditory and only peripheral. Then they appeared right at my feet and on the walls. My guardian angel is and has always been standing at my right shoulder. I can see him peripherally, but I can see all of him, which doesn’t make sense, but that’s how it is… I always see many things peripherally that disappear when I look straight at them. If anyone watched me throughout the day they’d see me doing double-takes and looking quickly this way or that. Are you going to bring this up to your doctor?

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doing double-takes

That’s what I’ve been doing. Yes, I guess I’ll have to mention it to my doctor next time I see them.

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If the medication is causing it, hopefully that’s an easy fix. It’s been years and years for me so it doesn’t bother me. I hope you can get rid of it though :blush:

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If that’s the only side effect of metformin, I’ll probably just put up with it. But it was scary when I realised it was a daily thing.

In my early twenties I used to see skeletons, a headless dog and a headless woman in various houses that I lived in. I spoke to my boyfriend at the time about it and he was dismissive so I never spoke to anybody about it until it started happening again last year.

Last year I saw an entity who followed me around in my twenties called the shadow man. I actually drew him in his form back then. He looked different back then to how he appears now but I knew it was him.

Last year I could feel him enter my body, almost taking me over. It was wonderful because I wasn’t stressed or agitated when he was in me. He took over my thinking.

Unfortunately (and I like the shadow man a lot, he plays me songs on the radio) he brought two other entities with him last year.

The grey/green man in the back yard who has eyes, no legs or at least can’t use them and hides in the bushes watching me when I go outside for a cigarette. One night I made eye contact with him and he knocked on the wall after I went back inside just to let me know he knew I saw him.

The other is the white man. He is viscous looking with no eyes, razor sharp teeth, long straggly white hair and white robes. He is a ghoul. Any time I would imagine my dead nana, he would appear and snatch the image away.

I also see a man in blue and he follows me through the house and into the city where I work.

I see a lot of rats.

I saw a fridge out in the back yard. And wild cats. Like a panther I saw climbing the back fence. It was huge.

When I was staying at my Mum’s place last year I saw a giant goanna lizard with glittery scales and a big black head join me at the table outside. Just sat there at the end of the table looking at me.

I see a lot of things, this is just a short list off the top of my head. I feel a lot of bugs under my skin. I don’t hear voices.

I don’t think everything I see is malicious but it gives me a fright all the same. And the nasty things like the rats can be really quite distressing.

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That sucks turtle. I think you’re a very strong person.

Thanks everhopeful.

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Do you ever draw/paint your shadow people? I related to bits of what you described. Sometimes when I’m agitated at people around me I feel my skin changing and my fingers growing claws and my back grows wings and spikes…basically I feel as if I have become my angel. It sounds like you have that experience? I haven’t seen anyone else on here mention anything like that so I’m interested in your experience. It’s only when I feel threatened by people. When do you feel that way (embodiment)?

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Do you mean when do I feel like shadow man has come into me? It was only last year for a few months.

Everything in life became too overwhelming I think. I think I was very stressed out without realising it. I was doing a job by myself that is meant for two people. My nana had died the november before. There was a particularly mean and nasty person at work who was picking on me.

I went to the GP who thought it was anxiety or depression so gave me a medicine for that. That made everything worse. Then all of a sudden I realised that the shadow man was in me because I wasn’t crying any more, I wasn’t moving restlessly constantly.

I saw him one night before he took me over. But when he did I felt physical agitation for a while, couldn’t stop moving. I guess there was a space between where he was in me, and the outer shell of me and all my nervousness was jiggling about in that tiny cavity.

But then everything stopped. I stopped thinking, I stopped feeling, I stopped talking. The only thing that affected me was everything I was seeing, like I described in my other post. All the other entities and creatures.

I did draw him once as he appeared back in my early to mid twenties. That was ten years ago.

Now he isn’t in me any more. I miss him. He plays some songs on the radio just for me. I have to listed to the golden oldies type radio stations for him to communicate to me. I grieve that he isn’t hanging around more. It’s like losing a friend.

Now when I am stressed, and I don’t acknowledge stress, like I don’t pull up and think ‘gee there’s a lot of stress around me at the moment’, I tend not to really notice it until something happens like I see rats all around me.

Or also the bugs under my skin (they are little worms really but I like saying bugs, I say I’ve got the BUMS -Bugs Under My Skin) start moving around more. I tear at my face to stop the sensation but it doesn’t seem to help.

I’m glad I found this website because it is nice to be able to talk about these things with people like yourself who can relate.

I started hearing voices when I get stoned at home all alone… they’d just go away when I sobered up or got some sleep…

Within a couple weeks from that though my mind started to generate secondary monologues for my employees around me. I was pretty quick on the cold table and didn’t need much help. I had a few good employess on the slicer so I stay up front making sandwoches while they sliced and I would listen in on “their” monologues to pass time.

One day I was at the cold table doing my thing… on of the other female managers had moved to sit on the second cold table that wasn’t in use that shift. I started “listening in” on her… she was watching me and thinking about me… then she hit a pretty funny node. Impulsively I turned and looked at her with a grin because it made me laugh… she was smiling and hopped off the cold table… then as she walked out of the room she said “I’m sorry bryan but I can’t read your mind.” It was more just the words and my delusional state that validated the whole experience… then down the rabbit hole I fell…

I can’t recall that stuff as clearly as I used too, but it was something along those lines.

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I hallucinated very vividly starting as far back as I can remember, so I was 3. I don’t remember the first time it happened but I remember a striking night where I heard two men speaking inside of my fan and “repairing” it. I saw the characters in my paintings move and heard them talking. I saw my stuffed animals swell as if breathing. I went into my closet to sleep because it was too noisy with all the voices and then watched the wood swirls in my door form a movie of a woman going down in an elevator. Crazy stuff. I saw other things of that nature. I also heard music when there was none playing.

Then, strangely, around 8 I stopped hallucinating completely. At 15 my hallucinations began to come back only very mild compared to before, no more auditory, only visual. Lights, swirling floors, melting walls, etc. Then at 16 I began getting horrible tactile hallucinations of sexual abuse. Now I’m 21 and with concern I’ll say my visual hallucinations have gotten worse. I see numerous disturbing things now, everyday objects will look terrifying, I’ll see people out of the corner of my eyes and other strange things, and I see the trippy stuff more frequently. I believe Abilify may be helping though, as I feel lately my hallucination amount has decreased. Tactile hallucinations are much more mild and now only feel like hands tickling me lightly all over. Still no auditory hallucinations.

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Yes, I love this forum.
I haven’t heard anyone else describe their relationship with a hallucination like you did and I relate. My angel is my companion. When he was silent and still for about a week three years ago I mourned and sobbed over the loss of him. He is cruel to me sometimes and he wants me to kill myself, but much of the time he is a protector and makes me feel powerful or just safe in situations that are stressful for me. He’s been quiet lately, though not gone. I don’t want him to leave. We’ve been through a lot together. I really appreciate your sharing so much. :blush: This is Seraton, my angel:

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That’s a great painting. I remembered that your angel was called Seraton. I’ve read something you wrote about him before. And I remember thinking we had similar relationships with “hallucinations.”

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Politically correct term “hallucinations” :blush: Thanks again for sharing, @anon84763962 :heart:

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I rarely had visual hallucinations. What I had were mainly tactile hallucinations and auditory hallucinations. It started very late in my life when I was 36 years old. It was in one afternoon after lunch I just felt someone shoot me with big yet soft bullets on my chest. Very strong feelings though. And then I started to feel someone acupuncturing me with needles when I laid in bed in the evenings. About five years later, I started to have auditory hallucinations but not very often.

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I started seeing colored lights, like stars in the sky, except I was inside, looking at a person I was fixated on at the time.

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