Hitchhiking. Contact Highs

[_caesar_]

In the glossary of PIHKAL, Shulgin gives a brief detail of this term.

"Sometimes an innocent, drug-free person will find himself strangely disturbed or uncomfortable in the presence of an experimental subject who is, unknown to him, experiencing the effects of a psychedelic drug; for instance in the checkout line at the supermarket. The unconscious awareness (or contact high) can produce a feeling of irritation, or even overt hostility, in the inadvertent hitchhiker, and his or her distress is all the worse for having no apparent reason or understandable cause"

SWIMs experienced this on more then one occasion and finds it fascinating. I'd like to here any of your experiences or opinions on this peculiarity.

[The_Great_Sage]

I have not experienced this with the other people feeling angry or upset or anything, but i have had on many occasions had people get this sense of pity. im not sure if it because of their morals that look down on drugs and they can see that I am intoxicated or if it is that I appear to be in a pitiful state. Even with my mother not knowing that I was on drugs, she was oddly overly sympathetic and sort of like she is trying to comfort a child waking from a nightmare. I to think that it is very interesting also.

[SPWIM]

Yep. SWIM had this on many occasions. I think it boils down to people not being able to empathise and therefore not knowing how to act or react around the influenced individual. Not wanting to make a mistake or judge the person wrongly they simply act uncomfortably and quietly. Sometimes they make guesses or assumptions that are wrong that lead them to be quiet. You're either in the zone or you're not and if you've never been in the zone, then you simply won't know how to behave around those that are.

[dip]

kind of off-topic but just an interesting perception;

If someone was in the presence of an autistic person, and had no idea of it, they too would feel uncomfortable, annoyed, and hostile, hehe..
An aspie can be defined as being naturally high, so it's basically the same scenario.