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Alcohol and Fortean Occurrences: Am I Missing Something?

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DeeDeeTee

Gone But Not Forgotten
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It seems to me, reading a lot of accounts and news about strange occurences that the fall back position of many of the members of public that see wierdness is that they were sober or had barely touched a drop of alcohol, hence they are sure that what they saw was real.

From my experience, alcohol is probably the most effective drug at blocking any Fortean mindset* - whether it happens in your mind, or if you fail to notice something interesting happening in your locale. True, the day after, a heavy intake can scramble your narrative on what happened the night before - but to come up with fantastical imaginings??

Does this mean that when these types of people are on a bender that they see all sorts of strange stuff - i.e. "I was out with Trace on Saturday night and saw eight Sasquatch doing a sprint race up the main street - but I'd had 8 bacardi breezers by then, so I ignored them". So is there anyone here that can induce real weirdness by drinking?


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*I do realise that the psychosomatic properties of this tiny little molecule on the human brain are indeed fascinating in their own right - for example that it seems that the effect of alcohol on a persons seems to be heavily dependent on that persons own expectations of what it will do - although the normal stated responses to alcohol, such as aggressiveness, sociability or tiredness seems in my eyes to be explained by the general lack of inhibition that alcohol causes.
 
We have another thread on this subject, though I'm damned if I can find it.

It is an interesting question. I guess it's more to prove that the experiencer was 'of sound mind' during the experience than to do with any specific visionary qualities alcohol might have.

Doesn't acute alcohol withdrawal produce hallucinations? I've not been there yet so I can't tell, first hand ;)
 
IIRC alcohol doesn't usually have any hallucinatory qualities, although you can get hallucinations during withdrawal. However, if you're absolutely steaming, your eyes aren't focussing properly, your brain isn't processing the input properly, you're confused, plus you may be hovering on the edge of unconciousness,

In this state it's possible to totally misintepret something mundane, a fat man bearded man in a jacket with a fur collar becomes a yeti, a police helicopter or even a street lamp becomes a UFO...
 
....or it becomes your best mate.

I luv yer.....no...really......I do. Hic.


I think the association with alcohol might stem from the shedding of inhibitions afrter a few snifters, or maybe the confusion the morning after a skinful.
I'd be less inclined to take seriously claims of Fortean experiences from those who smoke dope than those who have had a drink.

Acute withdrawal from alcohol if dependent does produce serious side-effects. Whilst visiting a mate in rehab for his smack habit, he told me of the fellow patients who would wake the wards up screaming blue murder and literally seeing the mythical pink elephants. Apparently a de-toxing alcoholic is a very dangerous person, will be violent and have horrific hallucinations, they only would take 2 at a time in this particular rehab because of the potential danger to other patients (drug addicts and anorexics) and all hands rushed to restrain and sedate them when they were kicking off, whereas the smackheads were left to climb the walls alone when going through their agonies, they simply suffer whereas winos lash out violently with super ferocity (I was going to say Super Strength, but that's the reason they were in there..)
 
I would guess that the withdrawal symptoms from a dependent state may be the original source of the idea that we now have that being a little tipsy causes hallucinations.

It would seem that pre-20th Century, certainly for Britain, alcohol consumption was considerably higher than now. Hence it seem probable to suggest that there would have been a lot more serious cases than we see now. Doing a quick calculation seems to suggest that at the height of the Gin craze in 1730 London, the consumption of alcohol (just Gin) was at least 40 litres/year per head! Compare that with now (but all forms of alcoholic drink). a mere 8-9 litres/year per head.

As for my own personal experiences with the sauce, the world gets warmer, darker and a little fuzzier and I talk a lot more rubbish. Plus a 1 in 5 chance that I'll wake up with the taste of a Kebab in my mouth.
 
DeeDeeTee said:
I would guess that the withdrawal symptoms from a dependent state may be the original source of the idea that we now have that being a little tipsy causes hallucinations.
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I would have to agree with this. I've always associated alcohol with misperception, but never with hallucination.
And I think other people regard the association of alcohol and fortean phenomena because of the misperceptions, but over the years (even centuries), the after effects of alcohol have been mixed in with and confused with the effects and that might be why there is a lingering association of hallucination with alcohol.
 
How about people who drink themselves into a stupour? Its not totally uncommon to see someone whos had so much to drink they talk or rant seemingly to themselves or appear to imagine all sorts of strange goings on that apparently arent.

I used to have a friend / house mate years ago who had a real problem like this. She couldnt stop drinking if she started, and it would do strange things to her mind within a few hours. I dont think there was anything fortean about it though, I guess it was some underlying mental illness.
She was child sized - not even 5ft and very skinny, yet she could out drink anyone else we knew hands down. She just wouldnt pass out until tiredness took a hold 2 or 3 days later. She didnt use drugs at the time I knew her either, legal or illegal.
She was hell to be around when she had been drinkking because shed imagine all sorts of crazy going on that didnt happen at all. Usually it involved being attacked or people treating her badly. She would insist that she could hear people saying bad things about her too, though of course they werent. She would run around screaming and yelling for help, or screaming and smashing things as if in a fight.
I once returned home to find all of the tea towels high in the trees surrounding the house. My clothes & rent money missing - never to be seen again and some of our plates and cuttlery in a phone box down the road. I never got an explanation for what she thought had been going on. Our neighbour said shed ran around and around the outside of the house many times for hours just screaming. She had drunk over 4 litres of cheap wine and 3 litres of Nikov (pre mixed NZs cheapest vodka & passionfruit pre-mixed.) and some beers.
 
She sounds like my type of gal! :D

Do you have a contact number for her? ;)
 
MsQkxyz:

Eek don't know where to start with that! On one hand, once in a blue moon, instead of mellowing out I can get hyper-aggressive, hyper-sad or hyper-paranoid (and if I have more than a bottle of Chardannoy I am about 50/50 on the verge of a kill-rampage - it's my alcoholic achilles throat so to speak, adult tartrazine). But it does seem that your friend has some serious underlying issues if this always happens.

And that's a serious amount of stuff she's putting away - I'm 6 foot and built like a bear. A bear that's just finished eating for the summer and is about to hibernate :) However seven litres+ of stuff is a real 'proper' bender for me. (I will probably fall asleep after 5 litres of Wifebeater)

As for getting an explanation either she doesn't really know what was happening (which is worrying) or embarrassment is clamming up up (it can be an extremely strong inhibitor in communication). Although I may be overstating this, as I come from the UK, where embarrassment thrives and a whole national character has developed acceptiing this fact. Hell, us Calvinist Scots took it one stage further and frowning upon celebration so much, we now get embarrassed when something good happens to us.
 
I used to run a pub and one night (well, OK, most nights) we had a lock-in.
This was a bit different to our normal staybacks, there was only staff present, so no-one was pissed up to begin with. One of the lads had been away and produced a sealed bottle of Tequila, or possibly Mezcal, and a slammer contest ensued. I, being a responsible boss, did not participate.

Within 15 minutes everyone who had been hitting the tequila was hitting other people, seriously. Fists, chairs, drip trays etc were flying, they just went mental. No provocation, none of the usual clues that someone is about to kick off, just half a dozen guys beating the crap out of each other and anyone who intervened. And intervene we did, it wasn't a little tiff that was going to simmer down, it was full on war.
I grabbed my brother and ended up having to clatter him in self defence because he simply wouldn't pack it in, he was frothing at the mouth, raging, even when I pinned him against the wall to ask WTF was going on, why was he brawling in my boozer. It's the one and only time I've given him a straight punch to the face, after which he sat down in silence.

When order was restored, by booting the last brawlers out, the evening drink was obviously over. Next morning my brother couldn't remember fighting, let alone what was said or done to kick it off, nor could anyone else involved. None of them had hangovers either. Nothing ever happened like that again, even though we continued to have lock-ins. Despite being told that it's not possible, I firmly believe there was something in the tequila which made everyone flip.

I've never had proper Absinthe, anyone here tried it, any truth to the stories associated with it?

Also, thinking about hallucinations and alcohol, or perhaps altered perceptions, I've many times gone to bed with Abi Titmus and woken up with Dot Cotton. Now that's scary.
 
danny_cogdon said:
She sounds like my type of gal! :D

Do you have a contact number for her? ;)
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:lol:
A lot of years have passed since then.
You probably would have liked another of my of friends. Just add alcohol & this one would strip naked and run around the streets. My first introduction to her was when she had ran naked for about 5 ks at 7 in the morning along a busy highway to a neighbour friends house. They woke me and asked me to help keep an eye on her. She was on their front stairs starkers, not even shoes, jumping up and down singing, dancing and hollering at the traffic, pointing to and showing off her newly shaved landing strip and waving her arse etc.

Its funny how alcohol effects people differently. I've only ever been able to drink beer, cider, vodka or in moderation white wine as a general rule and feel good. Other things put my mind in an odd place or bring out a side of me that I dont like. perhaps in some people it does open the doors of perception, who knows...
 
MsQkxyz said:
danny_cogdon said:
She sounds like my type of gal! :D

Do you have a contact number for her? ;)
Click to expand...

:lol:
A lot of years have passed since then.
You probably would have liked another of my of friends. Just add alcohol & this one would strip naked and run around the streets. My first introduction to her was when she had ran naked for about 5 ks at 7 in the morning along a busy highway to a neighbour friends house. They woke me and asked me to help keep an eye on her. She was on their front stairs starkers, not even shoes, jumping up and down singing, dancing and hollering at the traffic, pointing to and showing off her newly shaved landing strip and waving her arse etc.

Its funny how alcohol effects people differently. I've only ever been able to drink beer, cider, vodka or in moderation white wine as a general rule and feel good. Other things put my mind in an odd place or bring out a side of me that I dont like. perhaps in some people it does open the doors of perception, who knows...
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Why do I never meet women like this? :evil:
 
LordRsmacker said:
I've never had proper Absinthe, anyone here tried it, any truth to the stories associated with it?
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Yes.
And no.

There's a load of hooey (and a decent article at the end of the thread) about it here

By freaky coincidence I got outrageously drunk yesterday on a quantity of alcohol that would normally only make me mildly merry - I'd say I'm currently a borderline alcoholic and have a fairly standard routine, from which I did not deviate in any significant respect. I'm really hoping I've not suddenly hit 'reverse tolerance'.

At my level of dependence withdrawal does cause mild hallucinations, in my case usually being bothered by non-existant flies and seeing black shapes flitting past in peripheral vision, but that tends to be the least of my worries. A true alcoholic withdrawing without monitoring and drug therapy has about a 35% chance of just dropping dead. Pretty much anyone who tells you they have DTs hasn't.

Being constantly drunk for an extended period also does do strange things to the brain/mind, above and beyond the usual effects of alcohol, but I would call them delusions rather than hallucinations.
 
I have a friend who claims to have had a huge absinthe induced hallucination/spiritual experience in Prague. Whether I believe him is neither here nor there. I can't remember it totally but I think it went something like this:
a)3 day bender
b)argument with girlfriend
c)conversation with huge disembodied face of the virgin mary, coming out of the sky and floating above the city.
 
He may have been telling the truth as real absinthe contains a derivative of Wormwood which is an halucinogen.
 
Similarly, whenever someone shows a bit of creative spark, some imagination, boring people say they must have been ”smoking” or ”taking drugs”.
 
I believe most of the fuss over absinthe's hallucinogenic properties (green fairy sightings and such) is due large in part to the fact that during the height of consumption laudanum was added to the drink to sweeten it. Sadly, the drink was banned for quite awhile because people associated the drink and not the opium additive to be causing the hallucinations. Wormwood is toxic in large amounts and can cause hallucinations but usually only if you've consumed enough to outright poison yourself...something impossible when drinking absinthe since the high alcohol content would do you in first. I've never been given a straight answer as to whether or not it could build up in your system and so I've cut back on drinking it.

I don't doubt that the drinker in Prague saw something. I know from personal experience that opium and just about every other drug you could possible imagine happens to be readily available in that country. Not that I seek these things out but I have friends in "low" places. One of whom I once bummed a cig off of only to light up and find it the most interesting chocolate flavored cig I'd ever tasted. In between drags I asked where he'd bought such marvelous cigs and was promptly told, "Oops, that's the one I emptied and repacked with opium".
 
Opium is not sweet, and is nothing like chocolate - it is quite disgustingly bitter to the taste. When smoked it has a sickly floral sort of flavour. It reminds me of something from childhood in the garden, but I can't quite remember what, a pungent, bitter, crushed plant kind of smell ..... which makes sense, of course.

(Will I be 'reported to the authorities' for this too, I wonder)
 
_Lizard23_ said:
Opium is not sweet, and is nothing like chocolate - it is quite disgustingly bitter to the taste. When smoked it has a sickly floral sort of flavour. It reminds me of something from childhood in the garden, but I can't quite remember what, a pungent, bitter, crushed plant kind of smell ..... which makes sense, of course.

(Will I be 'reported to the authorities' for this too, I wonder)
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No, for being another thing.

You're really making an impression on here.
 
Enough of the ad hominae now, thank you.

Debate the idea and opinion all you wish, but leave the poster alone.
 
Stuneville, at the risk of a banning can I just point out that I was making an, admitably, barbed point about someone who, on another thread, openly admitted to being a benefit fraud and seemed quite proud about it.

Now, I didn't use swear words and I didn't threaten to report him for the victimless crime of illegal drug use (God knows I've done enough in my youth!) so could you take a step back please?

Hopefully you'll note that it was the poster himself ("Will I be 'reported to the authorities' for this too, I wonder") who prompted my reference to his character.

Are you going to chastise him for dragging a dispute from one thread to another? He raised this issue in this thread, not me. I merely responded to him.

Have a think about it.
 
irishfilmgirl said:
One of whom I once bummed a cig off of only to light up and find it the most interesting chocolate flavored cig
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Sorry, but the 10 yr old kid inside of me forced me to point this out. :lol:
 
James_H2 said:
a)3 day bender
b)argument with girlfriend
c)conversation with huge disembodied face of the virgin mary, coming out of the sky and floating above the city.
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a)been there
b)done that
c)WTF!

I must say that I've had only 3 experiences that I would consider even mildly fortean and none of those have involved alcohol. And over the years I've drunk a lot! OR cannabis (and I used to smoke that a bit too). In fact I think being sober probably made these experiences much more harrowing!
 
danny_cogdon said:
Now, I didn't use swear words and I didn't threaten to report him for the victimless crime of illegal drug use (God knows I've done enough in my youth!) so could you take a step back please?
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Some might regard your so-called "victimless" crimes of your youth to be far worse than benefit fraud so perhaps it is you who should take a step back and think for a minute.

Then maybe we can all be friends again ;)
 
Can we get back to the important issue at hand please? So, this bummed, chocolate flavoured fag, snigger! :p
 
A small sideways step - but fun: http://www.bumwine.com/
Anyone have experience with that? I can only imagine headache and indigestion as the result ...

Never heard about alcohol causing hallucinations except during withdrawal and in final stages of Korsakov syndrome.

And aren't dreams the cheapest and safest way to experience something like hallucinations? A pity that they're so hard to remember ...

Some great books by Ronald K. Siegel:
Intoxication: The Universal Drive for Mind-Altering Substances (2005, 1989)
Whispers: The Voices of Paranoia (1994)
Fire in the Brain: Clinical Tales of Hallucination (1992)
Hallucinations: Behavior, Experience, and Theory (with L.J. West) (1975)

The third book is really weird!
 
I actually DO have a slightly Fortean/Bum Wine related story.

Well, not so fortean, really. It was hallowe'en, and I went to a party, where I drank a bottle of MD 20/20, and turned into someone quite not myself. I can't really describe it without sounding really silly, but I certainly felt very hallowe'enish. And all that sugar and colourings and flavourings - I'm sure they add up to a funny kind of drunk.
 
Funny you should mention Mad Dog, once upon a time, we had to physically restrain someone who flipped after drinking a skinful of that stuff. He was trying to get out of the bus on the M1 to do some waterskiing. At 70mph.
It took 6 grown men to hold him down, he was determined no to miss his turn (Turn? Was anyone else waterskiing behind the bus? Erm, noooo)

So, who was this Wildman of Rock? The Animal-like drummer? The show-off lead singer? Nope, it was the photographer, the previous existence of whom, most of us were blissfuly unaware. I don't think he said another word the rest of the time he was with us!
 
Coming at it from another angle.


US man 'tried to revive dead opossum' in Pennsylvania
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8591303.stm

A dead opossum on a road (image from Wikipedia Commons)
The opossum is generally about the size of a pet cat

Pennsylvania police have charged a man with public drunkenness after reports that he tried to resuscitate a long-dead opossum on a highway.

State police said several witnesses had seen Donald Wolfe, 55, tending to the roadkill about 65 miles (105 km) north-east of the city of Pittsburgh.

One reported seeing Mr Wolfe kneeling before the animal and gesturing as though he were conducting a seance.

Another reported seeing him give mouth to mouth resuscitation to the carcass.

State police Trooper Jamie Levier said the animal had been dead a while, the Associated Press news agency reports.

The opossum, colloquially known as a possum, is about the size of a domestic cat.

Such animals are known to feign death when threatened, giving rise to the phrase "playing possum".
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