Ok guys. Tumblr just cured my friend of hallucinations, and my therapist said that this was potentially AN ACTUAL BREAKTHROUGH for treating moderate psychosis, especially difficult-to-treat cases where the patient is convinced that their hallucinations are more "real" than reality.
You remember that thread about Magenta? How it isn't real??
We used that shit to cure someone's hallucinations.
First, a bit of background:
I'm mentally ill (anxiety, Bipolar II, depression, PTSD-- all held in check by medications and therapy), and I've been helping this kid for a while, let's call him K, who also suffers from mental illnesses (anxiety, drug addiction, and some other things) in sort of a Big Sister capacity.
K has been struggling with extremely realistic hallucinations ever since doing DMT, aka, the drug that apparently gives you lasting lifelike hallucinations long after you stop taking it?
K was specifically seeing demons. Straight up devils clawing at him. Probably because he was raised Evangelical and is LGBTQ, and his parents bombard him with that shit 24/7.
He described what he was undergoing as "spiritual psychosis" and was adamant that what he was seeing was reality pulled back to reveal the truth of what was going on: That demons were coming for him. Going to a church and getting blessed would make them disappear for a little bit, but then they'd come back stronger than before.
There was no way to convince K that hallucinations this real could be anything but the absolute, objective truth.
So I'd seen that thing about Magenta come across my dash, did an edible, watched a Nicholas Cage movie, and I had an idea.
I introduced K to the concept that Magenta does not exist outside of the human mind. He was confused at first, but after explaining that (basically) that the color magenta does not exist outside of the human mind, it made him FINALLY understand that what we perceive is NOT objective reality.
So that's Step 1: Use Magenta to understand that no matter how irrefutable your senses tell you your hallucinations are, they are a trick of the mind. Everyone in the whole goddamn world walks around thinking that Magenta is a totally real color that actually exists in the world. That's why you can't trust your hallucinations.
But that left the next problem: If he wasn't experiencing a "spiritual psychosis", that meant that he was experiencing hallucinations, and everyone knows that hallucinations are the product of a diseased mind and honestly isn't it better to have demons that you can chase away with holy water than having a diseased brain that's having hallucinations???
Every time he said the word 'hallucinations' he got visibly agitated.
So I suggested we stop calling them Hallucinations. That's a loaded word with so much baggage it isn't helpful anymore.
We're calling them "Magentas" now.
Wait, why "Magentas"?
Maybe-- MAYBE-- your mind IS perceiving SOMETHING that the rest of us aren't seeing. Maybe it's a shift in electromagnetism. Maybe it's a stray neutrino whizzing past. Maybe it's a shift in temperature that's so subtle the rest of us can't detect it, but to your DMT-opened mind, you're seeing it as, well, like the rest of us see magenta when there is (say it with me now) objectively no magenta outside of the human mind.
Because, just like Magenta, your brain meat is being ticked by SOMETHING, but what you're seeing isn't what's actually there.
But, also yes, I can see the scary face in the wallpaper design if I squint, so he's not crazy for your newly-opened mind to see some pareidolia-- Let's just avoid looking at things that look like scary faces, ok?
So that's Step 2: Take the power out of the word "Hallucinations" by calling them something powerless. In this case, Magenta. (Also, stop staring at the wallpaper if it scares you.)
Yes, haha, clever fae trick. Steal a thing's true name and it no longer holds power over you, I guess?
Step 3 is trickier because you just have to be there for the person and reassure them that while yes, it was a crazy experience, they are not crazy for seeing things after doing DMT and yes they can cancel the upcoming re-baptism and when his parents get cranky at you because they LIKED that their son was suddenly so desperate for church and they hate that your solution does NOT involve getting blessed several times a week or getting re-baptized, you have to NOT scream at them that their fucked up religiosity was the entire reason their son thought his soul was being devoured by demons from hell.
(Even though you'd be entirely right for doing so, because it's 100% their fucking fault their kid has deep-seated guilt that's manifesting as hallucinations from the drugs he took to escape his parents profound disappointment that he doesn't want to fuck who they want him to fuck.)
K is now doing better.
It's been a month, and not only has the severity of his.... Magentas..... Lessened, but the frequency and duration have also dwindled to levels that are manageable and he's confident that eventually they'll vanish entirely.
All because Tumblr did a science on us.
Now.... If anyone can drop some science that I can spin into an analogy that gets rid of night terrors, K would be grateful.
I'd also be delighted to know if this works for anyone else. Please reblog and maybe someone with a grant budget can do a clinical test and will be forced to cite Tumblr as a source.
