When Are Hallucinations Something To Worry About?

Hallucinations tend to come on without warning and go as quickly as they come. When a hallucination is triggered by a medication, or by drinking too much, or by taking hallucinogens, the hallucination will disappear when the body has metabolized the hallucinogen. Other kinds of hallucinations, however, may be more persistent.

Hallucinations Caused by Migraines

Migraine headaches are often accompanied by a prodome, a period of neurological symptoms preceding the onset of migraine pain. Many people who have migraines experience visual hallucinations during this phase.

Some people who get migraines will see something that looks like a crescent of "static" in the center of the visual fields. The visual distortion may spread out across the entire field of vision until everything looks like the image through a kaleidoscope. Some migraine sufferers may see little people, dead people, or objects floating in space.

Neurologists liken this condition to a brain condition called cortical blindness. The inflammatory substances that cause migraine also irritate the visual cortex of the brain. When they stop being produced, vision returns to normal, although this may sometimes take several hours to several days. Hallucinations caused by migraines, however, seldom result in life-altering delusional states.

Hallucinations Caused by Parkinson's Disease

One of the more troubling symptoms of Parkinson's Disease, at least for family members and friends of people who have Parkinson's disease, is hallucinations of living or dead people. When this tendency for hallucination is accompanied by loss of "executive function," or reasoning ability, there is serious reason for concern. A person who has Parkinson's Disease may not only see people who are not there, but interact with them as if they were. Serious disruption to day to day life may result.

Hallucinations of Night Hags

Another common hallucination is the sensation of being visited by a night hag, a being who paralyzes her victims in their sleep, sometimes sitting on their chests so they cannot breathe. Neurologists have a rather straight-forward explanation for this phenomenon, narcolepsy. Sometimes the thinking part of the brain wakes up but the body doesn't wake up with it. The brain interprets this narcoleptic seizure in various ways, sometimes conjuring up an image of a being like a night hag to explain the sensation. 

There is a very simple way to make the night hag go away. Go back to sleep. Your brain will reset itself, and when both brain and body wake up at the same time, the night hag will have disappeared.

Hallucinations Caused by Schizophrenia

Schizophrenia causes hallucinations experienced without insight. Someone who has a different kind of brain disease, for example, may imagine or hallucinate being chased by vampires. Someone who has schizophrenia will look for garlic, silver bullets, and a wooden stake. The critical consideration in whether a hallucination is "schizophrenic" is not whether someone is seeing something that isn't there, but whether the person acts as if it were. Interestingly, nicotine, from smoking cigarettes, helps activate the parts of the brain that helps schizophrenics distinguish delusion from the shared reality.

Hallucinations, especially as we get older, are a very common experience of which most people dare not speak. The simple fact is, however, people who remain in charge of their lives find hallucinations to be an inconvenience rather than a life-altering disability.

If you experience hallucinations, you do have a medical issue requiring a doctor's care. But the doctor you need to see may be a neurologist, not a psychiatrist.