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Was this sleep paralysis?

robotnut

New Blood
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When I was a boy, I was able to induce a state that I found rather enjoyable. It's hard to describe how I did i-- I just remember doing it in bed at night, in the dark. I remember being able to make sounds sound louder in my head (that is terribly inadequate, but it is what I remember).

On doing that, my blankets felt 3 feet thick. It felt like I had shrunk, ,and the room was enormous around me. I didn't move-- I could move, but I knew that if I did move I would snap out of whatever was happening to me.

Like I say, I enjoyed it. The state usually oinly lasted a few minutes each time, and then the blankets and the room became normal again.

The first couple of times it happened I was scared, but when I realized I could control it, it was fun.

The closest thing I can think of for this is sleep paralysis. Does anyone have any other ideas?
 
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I sometimes get into a state that sounds like that when I'm falling asleep, although I hate it rather than enjoy it. I think sleep paralysis usually happens when you're waking up and your body hasn't caught up with your mind yet, but I think this is very similar - kind of going into the state rather than coming out of it. I've had the "very small - shrinking" feeling as well, it's weird.
 
I get in a funny state while half-asleep, where I'm conscious like being awake, but am seeing dreams with my eyes closed. I struggle to not wake up, and can often tell when I'm slipping into full consciousness (pictures start to fade away and my body starts shifting my "sight" to whatever my retinas are actually seeing) so I try even more.

I can't really control things, but I like watching the crazy stuff that comes up.

As for sleep paralysis, that's when you wake up but your body's mechanism severing muscle activity while dreaming is still active.
 
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Sleep paralysis just means you can't move. What you're describing is mild hypnogogic hallucinations. Can be fun if you accept it for what it is but nightmarish if you struggle against it.

I've not that the 'feeling small' thing you describe but I do remember when I was young, if I had a fever I'd often have what I called the "big / small thing", which thinking about it was an apt description. Difficult to describe but it was like all there was in the entire universe was something that was both incomparably big and incomparably small. It had a texture which was rough and smooth at the same time and once you thought of it you couldn't think of anything else - you didn't even have a sense of self, just this huge / tiny, rough / smooth thing. It was nothing to do with sleep paralysis but it was strange.
 
robotnut said:
When I was a boy, I was able to induce a state that I found rather enjoyable. It's hard to describe how I did i-- I just remember doing it in bed at night, in the dark. I remember being able to make sounds sound louder in my head (that is terribly inadequate, but it is what I remember).

On doing that, my blankets felt 3 feet thick. It felt like I had shrunk, ,and the room was enormous around me. I didn't move-- I could move, but I knew that if I did move I would snap out of whatever was happening to me.

Like I say, I enjoyed it. The state usually oinly lasted a few minutes each time, and then the blankets and the room became normal again.

The first couple of times it happened I was scared, but when I realized I could control it, it was fun.
The closest thing I can think of for this is sleep paralysis. Does anyone have any other ideas?
Click to expand...



Masturbation?
 
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robotnut said:
When I was a boy, I was able to induce a state that I found rather enjoyable. It's hard to describe how I did i-- I just remember doing it in bed at night, in the dark. I remember being able to make sounds sound louder in my head (that is terribly inadequate, but it is what I remember).

On doing that, my blankets felt 3 feet thick. It felt like I had shrunk, ,and the room was enormous around me.
Click to expand...

I had that a LOT as a child, and still occasionally experience it as an adult, but to a lesser intensity.

I remember one night being in that "zone" and waking up standing on my top bunk with my arms spread out. I got up, walked to the living area, sat in front of the fire and started going to the same headspace.

Kind of pleasant... strange, but somehow nice.

I can't put into words how disproportionate everything felt. Visually, in my head, I was standing in a vast blackness, surrounded by floating coloured spheres.

Sleep paralysis, which I had trouble with as an adult, is almost completely different, but sometimes I'd get that out-of-proportion sensation during the onset of the paralysis - accompanied by an overwhelming screeching sound.
 
baron said:
Sleep paralysis just means you can't move. What you're describing is mild hypnogogic hallucinations. Can be fun if you accept it for what it is but nightmarish if you struggle against it.
Click to expand...

Sleep paralysis and hypnogogic hallucinations often go hand-in-hand. This is why one of the most common hallucinations is that of something heavy sitting on your chest -- the brain's way of "explaining" the paralysis.
 
aggle-rithm said:
Sleep paralysis and hypnogogic hallucinations often go hand-in-hand. This is why one of the most common hallucinations is that of something heavy sitting on your chest -- the brain's way of "explaining" the paralysis.
Click to expand...

Sure, I didn't mean they were separate, just the sleep paralysis on its own is being unable to move, often with a loud buzzing or ringing in the ears. I get it every time I fall asleep on my back. Having said that, recently I've had a few hynopompic hallucinations without paralysis. Quite odd, really; I was reading a book on DMT and the geometric patterns it produces and I wondered if we had enough naturally occurring DMT to provoke the same experience. That night I woke up and sort of focused on the inside of my eyelids and a most incredible 2D display of shapes started up, composed of thousands of perfect squares, all in movement, with a sort of searchlight panning across them. I was fully awake and able to move but as soon as I opened my eyes the shapes disappeared and didn't come back. The next night I tried it again and got a sort of 2D wallpaper of animated cartoons (not of the prophet), like goofy Disney characters each doing their own thing. And last night I got spirals and perfect circles. You have to do it as soon as you wake up and actually focus on the darkness, but so far it occurs every time I remember to try.
 
baron said:
The next night I tried it again and got a sort of 2D wallpaper of animated cartoons (not of the prophet), like goofy Disney characters each doing their own thing.
Click to expand...

My mother had very similar hallucinations in the hospital after hip replacement surgery, brought on by too much oxycontin. The staff there wouldn't believe us when we said she was exhibiting altered personality, because she always seemed so lucid whenever they talked to her. Then, when a nurse was in the room, my sister said, "Tell her about the holograms," and my mother went into a detailed description of dancing hippos and other wonders that had visited her in the room the previous night.

They finally cut back on the narcotics.
 
aggle-rithm said:
My mother had very similar hallucinations in the hospital after hip replacement surgery, brought on by too much oxycontin. The staff there wouldn't believe us when we said she was exhibiting altered personality, because she always seemed so lucid whenever they talked to her. Then, when a nurse was in the room, my sister said, "Tell her about the holograms," and my mother went into a detailed description of dancing hippos and other wonders that had visited her in the room the previous night.

They finally cut back on the narcotics.
Click to expand...

My brain's naturally weird, my most vivid memories are actually of dreams and not of real events. Dancing hippos are normal to me.
 
Doesn't seem to fit the definition of sleep paralysis as no paralysis was involved and you knew you could move if you wanted to.

I agree probably some type of sleep-onset related sensory hallucination. They are very common. Yours just seems unique in that you could deliberately trigger it and it was so specific.

I have heard of seizures involving a sense of size disproportion, like the sensation of growing 20 feet tall or having the room shrink. Not that I think it was in any way seizure related, but it just strikes me that the brain produces sensations like this and somehow or other you figured out a way to trigger it.
 
A couple of years ago I think I had an instance of sleep paralysis (if it wasn't really a dream). I was laying on my side and I could see my nightstand, and I my thoughts were something like:

OH MY GOD I CAN'T MOVE!...Wait - is this sleep paralysis? Cool! Let me try to move...nope, that didn't work...this is neat!

Could have been a dream, tho.
 
I too remember this, it is very rare now and was uncommon in my youth. While I don't recall physical sensations like the "blankets being three feet thick" or spatial ones, I definitely note sounds seeming both louder, and yet somehow muffled/distorted. It's not something I deliberately recall inducing though. It seems to have happened as I was falling asleep -- indeed I may actually have fallen asleep and then woken back up incompletely in response to some stimuli like the sounds. I specifically recall having this state occur while listening to Vivaldi as a kid and "seeing" the music as an moving sequence of gears and armatures. Never could recapture that though.
 
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