Hallucinations

I would like to know if any of you have experienced hallucinations. Mine are becoming more frequent and I'm becoming concerned. I have reached out to my doc and should hear from him soon.

First, the obvious things. I am currently hypomanic. I'm rapid cycling Bipolar II. I have no alcohol in my system, no illegal drugs, and I've reduced my meds to just Lithium. I am not sleep deprived. Anxiety is high, but it always is. I experience these hallucinations alone and with others.

I have visual and tactile hallucinations almost daily. I feel bugs crawling across my skin, but when I attempt to remove them, nothing is there. I see dark shadows in my peripheral vision. When they appear I am immediately frightened beyond description. It is not as though I look at them and then feel fear. When I sense their presence I feel a horrific sensation of dread, loathing, and panic. I also see "ghosts," white people walking across the room, but no one else can see them.

I know these things are not real because my mind is reacting to them too quickly and with extreme emotions. My mind is anticipating them some how, yet I'm always horribly surprised when they appear. Maybe this is not bipolar but something else.

I'd just like to hear from some of you. Do you have hallucinations that you attribute to bipolar?

I know that if you see things in your peripheral vision, it does not qualify as a hallucination- everyone has this. It's when you see things right in your face- that is a hallucination.

That being said, I have had a couple. Once when I was a teen I saw gold dust (like glitter) falling from the ceiling in my math class. I was just getting out of the shower and when I looked in the mirror, I saw a man with a white t-shirt standing behind me. I turned around, and there was nobody there. I opened my garage door and right in front of me on the other side was a tall man with black hair and a plaid shirt. I screamed and he disappeared. (these last 2 happened some 4 years ago). Who knows, maybe I saw ghosts (though I do not believe in these things). All I know is it was very real. And scary.

Yes, I've had hallucinations in the past when extremely high in mood as part of psychosis, in either pure manic episodes or mixed ones. They've been very disturbing and frightening at times, but luckily have been treated successfully with the addition or increase in an antipsychotic, such as the Zyprexa I'm still on now. My pdocs have always considered them as part of the bipolar and there's never been any suggestion that they've had another cause or illness that was behind them.

*TW* begins

Some examples of the types of hallucinations I've had over the years, at the peak of major highs are:

-'Hearing' abuse being shouted at me from outside, behind my closed curtains
-'Smelling' blood wherever I went
-'Seeing' old TV programmes being aired, yet when I checked with family members, they couldn't see them
-The eyes of people around me all appearing as black holes, accompanied by an extremely unsettling and ominous feeling

*TW* ends

I sincerely hope you're able to have the hallucinations treated effectively- I know how scary and difficult to deal with they can be. I've found that as I came down from the high/psychosis, thanks to meds, the hallucinations naturally went away in tandem. Hopefully it will be the same for you, TheGodAmongMen. Hugs, if wanted.

I have hallucinations. My current crop seem to centre round grass. I see it growing up the sides of televisions and also up chair legs and into peoples food - I then try to warn them about it!
All very real and I try to check if they Are real or not before I involve other people but....
I also have a Grass Man I speak to who hovers around the place from time to time. I also had a hallucination once which sucked in the entire senior medical staff and central alarm system of a major hospital. Hmmm. Not very popular I can assure you!
I don't know if these are hallucinations but I also produce complete TV programmes as well - entirely in my head - and then they are projected onto whatever thing I am looking at, ceiling or wall etc.. My most prolific is 'Chester' - an American lunchtime chat show - of which episodes my head creates in extreme and glorious detail.
By the By you say you experience bugs on your hands - you may be interested to know thats quite a common one. I let them run - in the main they are harmless even though I could do without them. Anyway, Hey Ho; thats my contrib!

robbi wrote:My current crop seem to centre round grass. I see it growing up the sides of televisions and also up chair legs and into peoples food - I then try to warn them about it!
All very real and I try to check if they Are real or not before I involve other people but....
I also have a Grass Man I speak to who hovers around the place from time to time.

This reminds me of the Creepshow movie Only, I hope that you wouldn't have the same end. Stay safe!!

Thanks for sharing and the support. It's comforting to know I'm not alone.

I also have super powers like telekinesis, which I know is fake, but it appears so real. I can lift things with my mind and I see them actually move. Of course, no one else can verify what I see.

I'm not the same diagnosis as you, but I had very similar hallucinations. Mine were at work most of the time, and I would see silhouettes of people walking around. Generally they were black with a silver outline. I saw them in plain sight, right in front of me, running at me. The scariest one, I remember, was one that charged towards me and jumped at me. I remember falling to the ground and curling up out of fear, but there was no force that knocked me down.

I also saw animals. I saw a rabbit, a goat, and a wolf. I saw the first two while I was at work. I saw the wolf while I was standing on my front porch and looking out to see if the mailman had come.

I used to get petrified when I saw these things. I had trouble sleeping because of them, and ended up going to work tired, which my doctor told me later, that only made it worse.

I know what you're going through is tough, I went through it too. The best thing to do is to be honest with your psychiatrist (if you're not already) and continue your prescribed medication.

Hope this helps. Stay strong.

Jelly- I was just going to say the same thing to Robbi. Creepshow.

I had psychosis twice. First one was more severe. The hallucinations disappear when I come down from mania.

I generally hallucinate at night. It happens more frequently in periods. I was ten first time I had a hallucination. I woke up and saw myself walking away from my bed. Well, I thought it was my sister. When she turned around I saw it was me. Over the past 15 or so years it happens every once in a while. I can see all sorts of things. I am usually in the room where I am. The rook can look distorted in some way. For example, walls are torn down and planks standing around as if it is some construction site. Once I woke up and the room had no windows and no doors. I was trapped.

I have seen people in the room sometimes - People that i know and people that I don't know. When I got married me and my husband had decided that we want to have our friends and family with us. We were about 50 people renting a hotel on a Greek island. I was stressed about everybody's wellbeing and was the super-host of all times.

Every night I woke up and saw my friends sitting in the room on the floor along the walls. They were all dressed in their swimwear and had floaters and balls and beach-rackets with them. They looked disappointed or angry. This was going on for two weeks. Every night I had to tell my husband to cover himself up. "They are all staring at us!!" Even when they left and me and my husband went off to some other island they were still there. Every night. I was never alone.

I have gotten used to these types of hallucinations. Most of the timeI understand immediately that that I am hallucinating and i just need to stay put until it fades away.

I have hallucinations at night but generally not during the day. I'm not asleep but I usually am lying in bed. They tend to come in cycles where there will be several days in a row where I'm hallucinating every night. I see a lot of animals and pretty colors. Sometimes I'll see a person's shadow. Once I saw (and felt) a spider crawling across the bed and across my arm. Usually the animal hallucinations don't scare me - I'll see a cat or dog - and the pretty colors are kind of nice to look at. But seeing the shadow really scares me. I usually jump out of bed and turn the lights on.

I've actually never talked to my doctor about this, but I'm pretty sure it's caused by the bipolar disorder. This never happened to me until after the bipolar symptoms started.

Also, I did once have an auditory hallucination during the day.