A very accessible short film by SciShow offering a brief description of the variety of experiences that might get called “hallucination”.

It starts with understanding perception – how we all experience the world differently, and as a result we all hold within us our own unique model of what some call  “reality”.

Sometimes, in some situations that can go a bit wonky- which can perhaps be worrying but can also offer insights we’d otherwise be without.

Explanations vary of how people “hallucinate”- meaning how we can see things, smell things, see things feel things that others don’t.
But, then how do we really know because we make this stuff difficiult to talk about, eh?

Everyone can [and does] “hallucinate”.

Rather than regard every “hallucination” as a fault of brain or biology, or as some character flaw,  maybe we’d be better off recognizing that we all can -and likely do – experience what some call “hallucination”.

Instead of asking  “why do some people hallucinate”; it would be more useful to ask:
“Why do some people not recognize that they do too?”

Related

• Choose your Hallucination – V.S. Ramachandran https://recoverynetworktoronto.wordpress.com/2013/10/02/choose-your-hallucination/
• Seeing things hearing things? many of us do https://recoverynetworktoronto.wordpress.com/2014/01/31/seeing-things-hearing-things-many-of-us-do-oliver-saks/
• How isolation warps the mind https://recoverynetworktoronto.wordpress.com/2014/05/16/how-isolation-warps-the-mind/
• Music – Brian Keenan https://recoverynetworktoronto.wordpress.com/2014/05/22/brian-keenan-music/