TheGourdLord said:

People who don't have aphantasia aren't actually seeing things like it's through their eyes. At least for me, when I visualize something it's completely separate from what my eyes see and it does not make a difference if my eyes are open or not.

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Are my trips unusual? Or are trips like this just not talked about very much because they are not as glamorous. I would love to know more about this and if others experience this and might have some input.

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I'm in a similar age bracket, and I think you've done a good job of capturing some of the essence of tripping in your description. The elements of the trip you are talking about are quite hard to describe coherently, or can be difficult to remember in detail from a strong trip, and often get glossed over with a phrase like "and it was really crazy." It can be easier to talk about specific visuals to give a flavour of the trip, which might make it sound like the experience is primarily visual. To get a good description of a trip which focuses on the non-visual elements is interesting.

I find that my visuals on mushrooms are more prominent in the period leading up to the peak of the trip, after which the experience has more of an inward character. It feels like there is some underlying theme, story, or message to the trip. I've referred to this in the past as the difference between visuals and visions. Closed-eye visuals are the classic "TV set behind my eyelids" type of visuals. In my experience, these CEV are much more vibrant than typical "mind's eye" imagery.

When I see comments from people with aphantasia along the lines of "it must be nice to be able to visualize things like you're watching HD TV" it seems like the idea they have of the "mind's eye" is actually closer to a closed-eye-visual. CEV can be like the classic 3D animated psychedelic imagery you find on YouTube, but it can sometimes be a bit like a TV where you can't choose the channel. I've got notes in my trip journals referring to oddly specific visuals like faded 1970s toothpaste commercials... or sometimes I get what appear to be credits scrolling. Some scenes have a feeling of significance or foreboding, or seem very alien, other scenes in my CEV can be completely random or pointless (like a tellytubby floating inside a room, surrounded by silver balls).



What I mean by "visionary" imagery is closer to my normal "mind's eye" when I'm sober, except that I have much less control over what I'm seeing. It's less visually spectacular and vibrant than typical "visuals" but can convey a much greater sense of meaning and significance, like I'm watching a story unfold that's taking place in a different reality.

Your phrase "memories of a different life" fits in with this kind of dreamlike visionary imagery. It's sometimes like watching scenes from a film, but they feel like something that exists in a different reality... this is kind of what the idea of a "trip" is about. You can be very clearly sat in your room, the visuals have mostly faded away, but you're in a kind of trance where you're deep inside the trip, as if it's a whole other reality taking place in some parallel existence.

Then you add the more overtly spiritual or mystical experiences on top... it's not surprising if it tires you out. I don't feel depressed after my trips, but a heavy dose can sometimes feel like I've been on an epic Lord-of-the-Rings style quest (but with aliens) to get back to where I started, with the trip making less and less sense as I sober up. The "body load" from higher doses can be quite unpleasant during the most intense part of the trip - it might seem logical for a psychedelic drug to be "all in your head" but it can feel very physical, like the trip is "coming in sideways" like a tsunami, or pressing down on you from above.

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My aphantasia, I literally can't see anything with my eyes close while trying to imagine something. If I have my eyes closed and you say, imagine a horse. It's just blackness for me. Like trying to view a picture of a horse on google images, but your monitor is turned off. All you will ever see is just a black screen.

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I'm wondering if you can recall the dreamlike imagery from the trips itself, like the large tube or the scenes from your other life? Or do you just remember them like a verbal report of what the images were about? In my mind's eye imagery, an image I saw or a dream I had is a lot less vivid compared to seeing it directly. To get an idea of my typical "mind's eye" imagery, I would describe it as a bit like watching a YouTube video on your monitor that takes up maybe two thirds of the screen, but while you watch it you have to focus your eyes on a point about an inch to the right of where the picture ends. You can still see it, but you don't get the sharpness of being able to actually focus on it like you would a real image. Imagining a naked girl is not quite the same as watching porn, even with years of practice

I find that on lighter doses (or when I have tolerance) the closed-eye-visuals sometimes feel like they are there, but I can't quite see them, if that makes sense (OK maybe it doesn't). In some of these trips I can sort of "de-focus" from the typical place I would expect to see closed-eye-visuals - the TV screen on the back of my eyelids - and instead the visuals appear more in my mind's eye. If you can get dreamlike visual imagery on shrooms, I wonder if you might be able to get some visuals bleeding in like this, depending on the dose. It's a slightly odd feeling because it's like having visuals within a "visual field" that I can't quite place. If I had to place my "mind's eye" in relation to my normal visual field, I would say it's a kind of "up and to the right" experience, similar to the example of watching a YouTube video I can't fully focus on, but it's something that isn't literally "seen" in front of me and works the same way with eyes open or closed.

Even without taking aphantasia into account, I think there's a spectrum of vividness that people experience with mental imagery, and the same also applies to the kind of visuals that people get on mushrooms. It also varies with the dose and from trip to trip... sometimes I feel like mushrooms visuals (especially open-eye visuals) are kind of subtle, and then on my next trip the whole room is rearranging itself before my eyes - with the craziness of the visuals often being greater in my peripheral vision than when I look at things directly.

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I'm starting to believe it might be real.

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This is one of the facinating things about tripping; the moment when the experience shifts from being "I took a drug and it's all in my head" and slides into what feels like a parallel reality or something supernatural. I've had a lot of trips with a kind of alien theme. When I'm talking about it now, it just seems like something fun and kind of cool, like inhabiting a sci-fi movie during my trip. But if I take a large dose, that feeling can quickly shift to an ominous sense that MY TRIPS WERE REAL ALL ALONG and that the psychedelics have erased a boundary separating me from Lovecraftian horrors that can get to me through the trip. That's a paranoid delusion... after the peak of a large dose this can switch into a grandiose delusion. I am on a mission to save the world. I have special powers. I am God. The insanity is only limited by the dose and my febrile imagination. So I try not to go overboard with the dosing, and adopt a kind of "what happens in the trip, stays in the trip" attitude - I don't dismiss everything out of hand, but over time the "noise" of specific revelations of this or that trip contradict each other and cancel out to some extent, leaving behind the core of the mystical experience itself.

I didn't intend my post to get this long, but it's interesting to talk about some of the weird details of the psychedelic experience...

Belome said:

normally when my eyes are open this is how it works for me, but when they are closed, or if they are open and i am straight up tranced the fuck out, it can be as vivid as if they are open.

during hypnagogia my mind rapid fires vivid imagery at me straight from the subconscious and its like cards appearing in front of my face. its another well of creativity for me. even though i know it all came from within me, it feels external to the point where i feel like im plagiarizing myself.

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OldManMushroom said:

Now that you said something. I CAN visualize the images that I saw while tripping. Like the tube with the scenes on it. It's obviously not as vivid as when tripping, but I can still "see" it when I think about it. I can see all the other images and scenes that I have had while tripping too. It's like remembering a dream that I just had, just much stronger. These are basically the only things that I can remember and visualize in my head. It kind of weirds me out.

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OldManMushroom said:

After one trip I also felt like I went on an "epic Lord-of-the-Rings style quest" too. I said, it felt like I just acted out 3 full movies and they were EPIC. I didn't know how to describe it. But I couldn't remember any of it. I just know it happened. It was wild.

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Soothfast said:

OldManMushroom said:

Now that you said something. I CAN visualize the images that I saw while tripping. Like the tube with the scenes on it. It's obviously not as vivid as when tripping, but I can still "see" it when I think about it. I can see all the other images and scenes that I have had while tripping too. It's like remembering a dream that I just had, just much stronger. These are basically the only things that I can remember and visualize in my head. It kind of weirds me out.

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I had a lengthy discussion with my wife about her aphantasia last night. I asked her how she is able to remember and describe the details of a bird she saw a day ago, or some scene from her childhood. So as it turns out, she can call up a mental image of an object or event stored in memory (including dream imagery); she just can't imagine (i.e. fantasize) a fictional image. And yet she has a perfectly active imagination!

She also didn't know that how her mind works was "unusual" until last year, when she first heard of aphantasia (a term coined less than two decades ago). She always thought, since childhood, that when someone spoke of picturing something in their mind, like a pink elephant, it was meant in some metaphorical sense, and not literally. Nonetheless, if you were to ask her to draw a pink elephant, she would do so with no problem.

So somehow those with aphantasia are "doing imagination" in a different way. I suspect they have some specialized ability that substitutes for mental visualization which those without aphantasia lack.

As for what shrooms do, I think they weaken or dissolve dissociative barriers in the mind, allowing one to gain access to parts of themselves or the external world that they otherwise don't have.

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