Extreme deja vu

[psychedelaholic]

SWIM has asked me to post this for him as he really wants to know if other people are experiencing what he is:

"A few months ago I was at a party up in London at a mates flat. I'd eaten 4 pills or so and was doing laughing gas and K all night. I started getting the weirdest effects I had ever had on drugs. I had a massive sense of deja vous that would come and go but when it was there it was like everything in a 15minute period had already happened.

I had never been to my mates flat before and hardly knew anyone there but I recognised the flat and it was as if I had met every single person there before. That doesn't seem to strange since a lot of people get deja vous but what made this different was that when I started conversations I knew where they were going to go and quite often stoped talking to people cos whatever I said I knew I was going to say. Even if I tried to trick myself by doing something random or saying something stupid it was still as if that was what I was going to do all along.

Even wierder was that all the people that it seemed like I had already met were very different to how I thought in my head they were going to be. For example there was this guy Nick who I seemed to have memories of being a complete dick and wanting to fight people. But when it came round to him doing what I had kind of for-seen in my head it played out the same, as in same things were said and done, but it was as if before I had misinterpreted what he was saying and doing. And it turned out he was a quality guy. But I was sure he was going to he a dick because it was like I had already seen him doing these things but with a malicious tone ot his voice or whatever.

Its so hard to explain lol. An even stranger thing is I seem to have memories of seeing this events that had not happened whilst I had been tripping or rolling months before hand. Infact I thought I could pinpoint some of the 'visions' to particular days where I had been on E or K. For example a few months back I had been doing a lot of K and went to bed still tripping. I got a very vivid image of a huge underground room with pillars and saw a a man and woman walk past and look at me. At the first squat rave I went to a little while after that the main room was underground with load of pillars. I turned to my mate and was like holy shit thats that two people I saw as they walked past me. Freaked me out, he had no idea what I was going on about.

Another time I went up to leeds and again did a load of pills and K, when we went back to a mates mates afterwards I again got this extreme deja vous. I was sure I had had memories in the past of seeing what was playing out infront of me. This time I actually pinpointed these 'memories' to a few months back when I took a huge dose of DXM. I meant to take 500mg but ended up taking 900mg cos of dodgy scales and having only done DXM a few times before that dose was far too big. During the trip I seem to remember dissociating and seeing people I had never met before.

I get this everytime I do pills and K now, I'll walk into a club I've never been too and will be like wtf?!? I've seen this before.

Actually the worst time I ever got it was after a 7 hour rave where I had taken 12.5pills and gotten through a gram or so of K. We went back to some guys house and I instantly recognised it. Then practically every single conversation or thing that happened I 'knew' was going to happen. I was talking for ages with this girl who I had only met at the start of the night before but her face was so so familiar. And I really think I have seen her face before when I've been tripping on whatever.

I think I get these visions when on disociates like K, DXM and laughing gas. Well that is when my brain on drugs thinks I do. I have read high dose of MDMA lead to this weird deja vous psychosis type thing but I havenever read about people thinking they have memories of seeing this stuff happen before it does. But not only that but seeing it differently to how it pans out. Thats probably the hardest bit to explain.

I'll try give another example to explain that bit better. I was at a friends and there was this guy I didn't know that well and I had this deja vous going on. A conversation that I recognised started and I thought it was going to end with him getting angry and doing something stupid. But it didn't but I could see how if you weren't listening to the conversation properly you might think something like that was going to happen. Like when you only here half of whatis going on and get the wrong end of the stick.

Well that is pretty badly explained lol but I just wanted to share that with you guys and see if anyone has ever experienced anything similar"

Reputation Comments on this post:

Welcome to the twilight zone of psychedelics

[psychedelaholic]

SWIM wanted me to add this:
"I've just remembered a few more examples of how screwed up this deja vous is I'm getting.

A little while ago I went up to London for a chick I knows b'day in a limo. Never been in a limo before in my life. However when I sat in the feeling of familarity crept over me. I suddenly noticed several rows of champagne flutes and remembered a few weeks ago seeing a load of champagne flutes up really closed whilst I was tripping out (I think it may have been on pills and laughing gas). And I remember thinking what the hell are these glasses I am seeing, thinking it was a really wierd CEV.

Another time when I was at the squat rave that had all the pillars, I lost my bag of pills. I was pissed off since there was still 6 left in it. I found it later under my mates arse when he stood up having crushed half of them. I held the baggie up to my face and tried counting them. I was pretty fucked at that point on 6 pills or so. Then I get that feeling again and remember another CEV I got a little while back of a close up of a bag of pills and remember trying to count them.

The thing is I have memories of seeing these things before they happen because I can remember the CEVs and thinking what the hell is this meant to be.

When I'm on ketamine and start to K-hole I get the feeling like I'm being repositioned and whatever I'm sitting on is changing into something else. Quite often I'll be lieing in bed or sitting on the floor or something and next thing I know it's as if I'm sitting upright in a sofa or something. When I proper K-hole and leave the room behind and move to somewhere completely different with different people, I think it's then that I see these things.

Well I'm pretty certain I cannot predict the future I just love how my brain can trick me like that."

[Benga]

hum. just wanted to point out that it's actually "deja vu" as in "already seen", and not "deja vous" as in "you already".

[psychedelaholic]

Ah sorry should brush up on my french, haven't done it for years

[Nagognog2]

That is a common effect of a toxic reaction to MDMA. Seeing it again and time warps. It says that your monkey took too much.

It's well known and symptomatic of an overdose. Chill your lab-monkey's dosage and use. It can become amnesia and black-outs at higher levels or continued usage. Monkey needs to slow down.

[bewilderment]

Swim has experienced many episodes of deja vu while on drugs, but they didn't seem to be as intense as Swiy's. Deja vu is thought by many to be a trick of memory where things which should be processed into short-term memory go straight to long-term memory. Since drugs often do weird things to the memory I would think this would be related somehow. Also, dissociatives are said to cause some seizure-like activity in the brain and it's been noted that people with temporal lobe epilepsy experience deja vu quite frequently, especially directly before a seizure. So, really, I can see why you would have these experiences while on K, it sort of makes sense.

[-k4ge]

Hm. This reminds me a story about a monkey.
One day this monkey desided to try a gravity bong. At this time, said monkey wasn't the best pot smoker on earth, and had way too large of a bottle. After taking the hit, and puking for a few hours, the monkey complained about extreame Deja Vu for months, Deja vu, at least 20 times a day, every day.

[-k4ge]

Because of my innability to edit my posts, I was unable to add that, after about 6 months the deja vu subsided.

[boredINbuffalo]

SWIM frequently gets rather extreme Deja Vu, right down to the clothing he wears and the things in his pockets. He finds it unsettling, particularly because it is a sense of repetition.

Eg, "This is the fourth time this has happened... exactly like this."

As far as DXM and Nitrous goes, SWIM reports no such experiences... SWIM is usually unable to remember the particulars of DXM or Nitrous.

SWIM has not tried Ketamine, so he cannot comment on that.

[Voices]

Originally Posted by boredINbuffalo

SWIM frequently gets rather extreme Deja Vu, right down to the clothing he wears and the things in his pockets. He finds it unsettling, particularly because it is a sense of repetition.

Swim has also had this sort of experience for as long as he can remember. I will be in certain areas and have to literally stop and let the 'awe' feeling flow through me, because I'm certain that I've been here or dreamed of this place before.

Swim also told me that oral DMT produced this phenomenon, to the extreme. Oral DMT produced a Deja Vu experience that was so acute it was unnerving and quite scary, because I couldn't shake it and it kept growing or expanding to keep itself relivant as I tried to rationalize it to death. Swim said that it almost reduces his ability to function to nihil when it hits.

[boredINbuffalo]

Originally Posted by Voices

Swim has also had this sort of experience for as long as he can remember. I will be in certain areas and have to literally stop and let the 'awe' feeling flow through me, because I'm certain that I've been here or dreamed of this place before.

That's precisely the feeling SWIM istalking about. Often SWIM will find himself feeling almost as if he is under the effect of some sort of enthogen at a low dose, as if his eyes were dilating at that very moment, but other times, it strikes him as a sense of annoyance, when he is not able to remember that one more detail that would spook people out if he could only remember it. Kind of irrational, but it's just how it works out for him sometimes.

I have to wonder if it has anything to do with how you can mimic a drug by thinking about it, forcing your brain to release similar chemicals... I'm just prattling at nothing, though, so I'm welcome to any ideas here.

[Voices]

Originally Posted by boredINbuffalo

I have to wonder if it has anything to do with how you can mimic a drug by thinking about it, forcing your brain to release similar chemicals... I'm just prattling at nothing, though, so I'm welcome to any ideas here.

Intuition tells Swim that it is related to brain chemistry somehow, but aside from uneducated guesswork, I could only offer simple fictions.
Do you (boredinbuffalo) also have night terrors (extremely vivid and horrible dreams)? Or just extremely vivid dreams?

[boredINbuffalo]

SWIM has extremely vivid, but usually, extremely boring dreams, almost to the point of interfering with his waking life, usually stupid things like "Take out the garbage!" when SWIM remembers having dreamt about doing it already, so it doesn't need to be done again, of course.

On occasion, he has extremely vivid, extremely bizzare dreams. These are the ones he tends to remember best.

[Richard_smoker]

Dissociatives like Ketamine and Nitrous will cause deja vu.

In the case of taking these drugs, the mechanism is via temporal lobe seizures.

I'm not gonna get all preachy-like, because SWIM has 'talked to God' himself before and had deja vu and thought that he was dead and 'everything made perfect sense'--(delusional as fuck)--but I would refrain from the K, the Nitrous, and the DXM if you're prone to temporal lobe seizures. I guess the only way to actually KNOW that you're prone to them is if you start having them while under the influence, or worse yet, when you're no longer under the influence...

[Alfa]

Just curious: how do you explain deja vu of people who have never taken drugs before. Isn't it so that almost everyone has this at least once?

[Lunar Loops]

Originally Posted by Alfa

Just curious: how do you explain deja vu of people who have never taken drugs before. Isn't it so that almost everyone has this at least once?

Yeah, I'm pretty sure that SWIS had many experiences of deja vu before SWIS ever started taking drugs (legal or otherwise). Mind you SWIS's memory isn't always all it should be either.

[Richard_smoker]

Yeah, it doesn't mean that drugs are required to trigger off the abberent nerve firing (that we call a "seizure")...

If you think about it, the only seizure that we really NOTICE in other people are the tonic-clonic (aka grand mal seizures) where someone is flipping around like a nut.

There are many more types of seizures than just this one type. They are really not THAT much different than a simple migraine headache, or a muscle twitching around your eye or in your forearm, or a run of abnormal heart rhythm.

It's the specific location of the temporal lobe seizure that induces the "HERE IS GOD" type feeling. The dejas vu and jamais vu experience.

Also, just because these seizures have been proven to CAUSE deja vu, does NOT mean that there aren't OTHER causes as well... does that make sense??

It's just one way that is known to cause deja vu. and both temporal lobe seizures AND deja vu/"talking to god" occur frequently with nitrous, K, and DXM.

[Voices]

Originally Posted by Richard_smoker

Yeah, it doesn't mean that drugs are required to trigger off the abberent nerve firing (that we call a "seizure")...

That reminds me of an episode of something or other on Nova I saw about Brain Damage and all its subtle glory.

They had a young man that was in a car wreck and suffered minor brain damage. One of the symptoms of his injuries was a mental state that sounded like one brought on by paychedelic drugs: everything would be infinitely beautiful. It was sort of funny to hear this kid talk about his altered states because he could tell he was not an acid head. He also had no control over when this state of mind would overtake him, so it really was messing up his life.

Just in case you're wondering, I was thinking that this kid was having a seizure, which fits if Richard Smokers theory were a working model.

[Voices]

Originally Posted by boredINbuffalo

SWIM has extremely vivid, but usually, extremely boring dreams, almost to the point of interfering with his waking life, usually stupid things like "Take out the garbage!" when SWIM remembers having dreamt about doing it already, so it doesn't need to be done again, of course.

On occasion, he has extremely vivid, extremely bizzare dreams. These are the ones he tends to remember best.

I asked the question about dreams because we both share the intense Deja Vu thing; I thought maybe another person similarly might have some other symptom (that may not be the right choice of word here).

Any ol way, along with having intense deja vu experiences for as long as I can remember, I've also had very vivid, very intense dreams for as long as I can remember. Some of them (dreams) were so powerful that they retreated into my subconscious shortly after waking.

When I was 7 my parents woke me up because I was wimpering in my sleep. They say that when they woke me I tried to attack them physically. They said it was like I wasn't there, ie like I wasn't home on the inside. All I can remember is being really sick the next day and having fever hallucinations (infinitely huge squares being swarmed by infinitely small squares- all over everything). A dream I had repeatedly after this was that I was stuck in a Tobor suit (tobor was a toy robot that was sold in the late 70's), I was in this suit in space and I knew it. I wanted to wake up and go home but could not. I would eventually start to panic and kick and thrash and scream and nothing worked. In the dream state this event took years and years to play out. When I woke from this dream I would be paniced and completely exausted.

I also have tempted the thought that maybe they or one of their friends dosed me with something but I've had to write that off because that is the most evil thing anyone, especially a parent, could do to a child.

[bewilderment]

Originally Posted by Voices

That reminds me of an episode of something or other on Nova I saw about Brain Damage and all its subtle glory.

They had a young man that was in a car wreck and suffered minor brain damage. One of the symptoms of his injuries was a mental state that sounded like one brought on by paychedelic drugs: everything would be infinitely beautiful. It was sort of funny to hear this kid talk about his altered states because he could tell he was not an acid head. He also had no control over when this state of mind would overtake him, so it really was messing up his life.

This reminds me of a similar case I've heard of about brain damage a guy suffered after a bicycle accident. Here's part of the article (this is about after the accident after the damage had taken place):

Friday, Feb. 17, 10:03 a.m., I am gliding along New Bern Avenue. It was the kinesthesia, the speed and the sensations of this machine reacting to the surface of the road that really got the squirrels racing around the attic. Just a ride in a pretty nice Saab, but it's the first ride since I'd pranged my gourd off a cold asphalt surface and awakened at Wake Med three weeks ago. After a mile it was becoming a bit much. Each 30th of a second existence/reality packet was laden full of information to the point of rupture and disintegration. The task of sorting through the seconds of experience was complicated by low, late winter sunlight exploding on the roadway, the naked trees gesturing in a light breeze.

I got this breathless feeling like I was heading into an old-school freak-out. "Easy, big fella" I whispered to myself. "Remember the '70s. You have so been to the zoo and have seen the elephants. You know the drill: Take a deep breath. It's just another experience, OK?"

There is the same disassociation, shredding of time, elevated sensory perception and the strong sense of an unbroken connection between people, earth and universe in this deeply familiar sonorous purr--the song of the universe. I reflected that it had been missing from my life. There was no way to hide from it now. That 30th of a second was still the interval of the present, the clock speed of existence/reality, but there was this new, enhanced awareness of the wondrous contents within each interval. Existence was crunching with detail--I couldn't stop; existence became a wonder to drink of. In the first days out of WakeMed, I fell ass over teakettle in love with the world again.

Successive days, all perfect, brought no slowing of the rocket sled. Some events, like when I dropped a pen, for example, evoked giggles elicited via the simple physicality--the trajectory of a plastic pen arcing and striking a wooden floor, the bounce tracked by the sensory equipment. After three days, I made myself sit for an hour to analyze this new neurological state and its reactions to this nutty, newly minted world I'd been spit out into. I kept pulling a three-letter mental slot machine to find out what this stuff I was making in my head was. Finally, cherries popped up: DMT. My state was very like a 10th-strength version of this particularly potent and profound entheogenic (shamanistic chemical compounds derived from plants). Dimethyltryptamine, produced also in the human brain upon death, is short-acting (20 minutes or so), heavy, heavy stuff, impossible to obtain and only to be done under careful supervision of a "watcher" experienced with DMT.

I did some experimentation last millennium and the report from the edge is that DMT is definitely not a party drug. It seems to be some sort of a transporter to the essence of this universe and, by extension, this dimension. The sound of external reality is a lot like that of ripping canvas. For the user, although it is a safe compound, DMT often evokes extreme internal spiritual events wrapped up in a brain-based, non-injurious near death experience (www.lycaeum.org). Some thorough university research on DMT is covered in Dr. Rick Strassman's groundbreaking work DMT: The Spirit Molecule.

The visions I had during the period when I was being trepanned (the millennia-old practice of drilling into the live brain, and the jury is out on this topic: 8ww.trepanationguide.com/trepanation_across_cultures.htm) never left me. They couldn't go away for they had been absorbed. It was almost like my DNA had been altered, enabling me to engage in this world made newly rich and imbued with the purest reward of clarity. I am not a different person. All of the memories that affect my reaction to the present, that make me me, are there. But my perception of the present is really ramped up, like all the sensory-gathering capability has been enhanced beyond the five senses, the input receivers tuned to a higher frequency or level of resolution.

If I have to traffic in some lame-ass analogy, here goes: Peter Eichenberger Operating System, release 13.7. This experimental OS release required hardware changes after Traumatic Brain Injury experts and literature taught me that some members of my new TBI tribe from time to time exhibit inappropriate behavior. That was the last thing Mr. Eichenberger needed to hear, like a license to kill.

So I called a meeting with my Swedish genes. Swedes are sensible but fun; still it took some convincing and cajoling to get them to agree with the upgrades. I won, and Sven, Ake and Per set to work installing pop-ups, a twin-magneto ignition, direct mechanical nitromethanol fuel injection, and a positive displacement Roots-type supercharger.

"As long as dah universal joint don't break and you can keeppa tire on de back of it, it should run in dah uppa mid-sevens and anna 170-plus in the quarter mile," Sven said, shaking his head.

The rest of the article is here: http://indyweek.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A28416

There's also more details in this article: http://indyweek.gyrobase.com/gyrobas...id=oid%3A28380

From what I've read. It doesn't seem like he minds the damage much.

[bewilderment]

Also, isn't there usually some memory loss involved in a temporal lobe seizure. The description given by the original poster doesn't mention any memory loss. It does sound like the events preceding an actual seizure, but doesn't sound like a seizure.

Temporal lobe seizures frequently are preceded by an aura, which is caused by an electrical discharge. Auras can consist of:

* A sudden sense of unprovoked fear
* A deja vu experience
* The sudden occurrence of a strange odor or taste
* A rising sensation in the abdomen

The aura is actually a small seizure itself. If the electrical discharge spreads to other regions of the brain, rhythmic muscle contractions or jerking and a loss of consciousness can occur.

Temporal lobe seizures are characterized by one- to two-minute episodes of loss of awareness or contact with your surroundings. During a temporal lobe seizure, you may smack your lips, swallow repeatedly or pick at things with your fingers. Such activities are called automatisms. After a temporal lobe seizure, you may be confused for a few minutes and may have difficulty speaking. Many people have no memory of the events that occurred during their temporal lobe seizure.

Your behavior during a temporal lobe seizure may appear to be deliberate to onlookers. People having these types of seizures have been mistaken for being drunk, taking drugs or having a mental illness.

I do not mean to say that it absolutely was not a seizure. It could've been. But, like I said before in an above post: dissociatives do cause seizure like activity. And, of course, they can also cause seizures, but it seems like there should have been memory-loss. And, of course, it does say that auras can be considered a seizure in and of themselves, but if this was an actual aura, wouldn't one then have the actual full-blown seizure?

I once had a seizure of a different kind (the grand mal seizure) and I didn't remember anything that happened at least an hour and a half beforehand. When I woke up, I didn't even know where I was. I thought I had fallen asleep somewhere and my mother was waking me up, that is until I saw the paramedics coming in at which point I was extremely confused. Never had one again...

The situation described in the original post sounds like many experiences people have on high doses of dissociatives.

Hmmm...wait. I just noticed this part:

Quite often I'll be lieing in bed or sitting on the floor or something and next thing I know it's as if I'm sitting upright in a sofa or something.

I wonder what behavior the people around psychedelaholic noticed. This would give more of a clue as to whether these were actual seizures.

[Voices]

That was a great article, and you're right: he didn't seem to mind his new condition at all. I have had several of the "aura" experiences you listed, but never thought I had a seizure. I was under the impression that they were all very damaging ie very apparent. So a question: are these 'under the radar' sort of seizures damaging? Or are they symptomatic of a deeper illness or dis-ease?

Not to change the subject here, but, have you ever read The Man Thought His Wife was a Hat? It's a book about neurological damage in humans who experience the process as a disintigration. The man who inspired the title had his brain stem eroding and actually recognized his wife's head as his hat.

I mention this because I used to work with autistic folks and I always got the feeling that what was going on deep inside of their minds was something that would resemble a psychedelic state to us normals.

In fact, if you're ever head deep into a raging bad trip, stemming really does help calm the mind: stemming being a term used to describe the movements and verbalizations autistic folks use, ie twitching a finger in front of the eye, humming, wiggling string, rocking, swinging.

[bewilderment]

I've read that auras are actually simple partial seizures. The information regarding brain damage caused by seizures seems mixed, but I've read on many sites that usually permanent brain damage does not occur with seizures unless the seizure is prolonged or if there is a series of seizures. I don't know what the underlying cause is although I do know that at times the condition can escalate to where the person has what is more commonly known as a seizure. I just got all of this information from a websearch so if you're worried then you can do more in-depth research (inform us what you're findings are if you feel so inclined). And, if you're really concerned or if they ever get worse then you'll probably want to go in to get an EEG.

Yes, I love Oliver Sacks. I've read The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and I've also read An Anthropologist on Mars. They're great reads. Also, if you're interested interested in psychology books of this sort then "Opening Skinner's Box" by Lauren Slater is also a good read. It discusses many very interesting psychological experiments (the most controversial ones it seems). Good stuff.

I'll keep that information in mind next time I have a bad trip (my trips are usually very good, but every so often, well...not so good). So thanks for the tip!

[kingkenny]

Originally Posted by Voices

Swim also told me that oral DMT produced this phenomenon, to the extreme. Oral DMT produced a Deja Vu experience that was so acute it was unnerving and quite scary, because I couldn't shake it and it kept growing or expanding to keep itself relivant as I tried to rationalize it to death. Swim said that it almost reduces his ability to function to nihil when it hits.

Swim has experienced something a lot like that when he first took mushrooms, the feeling that hed done everything he did that evening before, every conversation, song listened to etc, it was pretty disturbing and frustrating, cos it was so convincing. It reoccurs frequently but hes ready for it now, so just ignores it as much as possible when it arrises. Swims never done K though, or had anything long term like at the start of this thread.

[bewilderment]

Yeah, swim has also experienced extreme deja vu on mushrooms, DXM, Salvia...come to think of it also experienced it on 2c-E. This is why I think these experiences also have something to do with memory, experiences bypassing the short-term memory and going straight to long-term.