[jijijijij]

What does it feel like when you are tired/relaxed, lying in bed, eyes closed? Do you get visually dreamy, half-awake?

What do you see when you close your eyes? Only ever Eigengrau?

Have you ever done psychedelic drugs? Opiates (medically)? Melatonin, Z substances, ...?

Can you picture memories at all? Can you picture pictures?

As someone with a sometimes annoyingly wild inner scenery, I would really love for a moment of peace closing my eyes, but I am always visually engaged as long as I am awake. There is no pause "seeing". Incidentally, I am very bad at memorizing music/lyrics. And funnily enough, I don't engage my fantasy much when reading, of all things.

[FumblingBear]

>What does it feel like when you are tired/relaxed, lying in bed, eyes closed? Do you get visually dreamy, half-awake?

When I'm tired, my inner dialogue is usually less active than normal, though it's never quite silent. It's more of a difficulty focusing on the streams of consciousness that slowly fades over time until sleep takes me. Sometimes, if I'm fading in and out of consciousness, I will have some imagery, but as far as I can tell, only when actually sleeping.

This can result in moments where something vivid happens in a dream, like a car crash, where I suddenly jolt awake with my heart pounding rapidly. However, I can't continue to imagine the visuals of what happened. I just know that I dreamed I was in a car crash.

>What do you see when you close your eyes? Only ever Eigengrau?

If I'm in total darkness, only Eigengrau (thanks for the new word btw!) but if I'm in light, I see kind of a reddish hue that is from the light passing through my eyelids I assume. There are no visuals associated with the eyes closing in a conventional sense. The whole "counting sheep" method of falling asleep never made any sense to me because I didn't realize that people could literally visualize sheep jumping.

>Have you ever done psychedelic drugs? Opiates (medically)? Melatonin, Z substances, ...?

Unfortunately, no. I'd love to try some, but in my field of work I have to maintain a security clearance so taking drugs could compromise my job security. In the past, I have been on a cocktail of anti-depressants + anti-anxiety medication that caused me to have vivid auditory and visual hallucinations, but those were with my eyes open, so it just seemed real to me. As soon as I mentioned those symptoms to my psychologist, I was immediately taken off the medications they put me on.

>Can you picture memories at all? Can you picture pictures?

I can't picture memories at all, but I can describe things from my memories. The way I process them is very strangely abstract. There is no visual portion to the memories at all. For example, as I mentioned in another comment, I can't picture what my parents look like, despite having had lunch with them yesterday for Easter. I can describe certain details about them, and have very pleasant associations with them, but I simply can't picture them. The descriptions I could offer up would be particular details I've explicitly observed and remembered about them.

I can't picture pictures either. If someone were to ask me to visualize an "apple" no picture appears, even if I spend a decent amount of time and effort trying to construct a visual. However, I can describe elements of what an apple is. It's sort of like the concept of a platonic ideal of a thing. I know attributes that are associated with the platonic ideal of apple, so by extension I can describe an apple. I just can't picture it. There's no visual reference in my processing for any element of internal thought.

Thanks for sharing your experiences with your visualizations! I'm kind of the opposite. My mind is constantly yapping and I find it hard to fall asleep at times due to the persistent monologue in my head. I tend to listen to podcasts or Youtube while I fall asleep because it lets my mind be quiet and get ready for sleep.

[jijijijij]

Thank you very much for the detailed answer!

I find your case especially interesting, since you are somewhat able to generate images in some situation. So, you know the difference, which is important for semantics.

It's honestly crazy to me how vastly different people experience base reality... and yet these things only recently became a wider conversation. Apparently we are still very much able to find agreement through these differences :)

Nevertheless, I really can't imagine (hehe) what it's like for you, especially with the memory business. For example, right now I am thinking about a random photograph of a chair and there is no descriptive narrative going on, it's all visual. My inner monologue really is only there for, well, talking to myself - the way I would do out loud. Our experiences are fundamentally different, it seems. I wonder which one of us would be more prone to false memories, is the less reliable witness.

It's funny, descriptions of close-eye hallucinations, I always think "Well, that's just a lazy Tuesday for me". I never did psychedelics, either, but I am really curious how they would affect me. But also I am a bit worried, if it's wise to add more fuel to my boiling mind soup.

Ha! And it's kinda assuring you still struggle to fall asleep, because of a non-stop talking mind. Guess I am not missing out.

If you don't mind a last question: Have you ever done an MRI? Like, is your brain certified alright? I wonder, because of your medication side effects, and because some maybe related conditions like face blindness (inability to recognize faces at all) have a discernible neuronal cause.

[FumblingBear]

Yeah, I'm very fascinated by the ways that people can all have such different experiences with the way we process the world around us.

My internal monologue is very much like yours, where it's mostly talking to myself the way I would out loud, but there's a deeper layer of abstract... connections?

The analogy of a thought web seems to work well to describe it. It's like a massive web of interconnected thoughts where new patterns and connections are constantly being created to associate relationships between concepts in my head.

I think everyone more or less has that type of underlying mechanism behind consciousness, though that may be a big assumption. What's interesting about mine is that I can often come to conclusions based on lower level abstract reasoning, especially as it relates to visual descriptors, without necessarily being able to articulate how I arrived at those conclusions.

To answer your last question, I don't think I've ever had an MRI done. The reason I was put on so many medications was because in my early 20's I struggled a lot with Major Depressive Disorder and Generalized Anxiety Disorder. They were severe enough that I self-admitted to an in-patient care facility to get treatment. During that 2 week period, I went from 2 medications (Zoloft + Wellbutrin) to 14 medications. During the time, I didn't realize that it wasn't normal or okay to be put on that many drugs at once in such a short period of time because I trusted the medical professionals and was in a particularly bad state of mind. In hindsight, I view what they did as incredibly abusive of the trust and faith I had in them.

Fortunately, I didn't have a mental breakdown or anything—I just notified them of my symptoms and they removed a fair amount of the medications. I left the facility with about 7 medications prescribed, to which my normal psychiatrist immediately discontinued the usage of all but the original stuff I was on (which was clearly the right choice).

All that to say, I do have some mental health issues (though therapy and medication has helped alleviate them all), but I'm unsure of whether or not there's a discernible neuronal cause for the aphantasia in particular. I'm considering an appointment with my Primary Care Provider to discuss the worsening of my memory because I've become more and more concerned that the levels of memory loss I seem to experience seems far greater than normal. Maybe that will provide some more insight?

Appreciate your comments and thoughts! It's nice to hear the perspective from someone on the other side of the spectrum!

[jijijijij]

> I'm considering an appointment with my Primary Care Provider to discuss the worsening of my memory because I've become more and more concerned that the levels of memory loss I seem to experience seems far greater than normal.

Please do. Memory loss is a serious symptom. May be nothing, may be stress, lack of sleep, maybe it's something preventable. Could be as simple as vitamin deficiency, e.g. B12. Also, do you have a potential carbon monoxide emitter around? Like gas boiler for warm water/heating? If so, definitely get a CO-alarm, if you haven't already!

[FumblingBear]

Thanks for the suggestions! I do have a CO alarm and don't have a gas line to the house so I doubt it's that. It may just be nothing, but I'd rather err on the side of caution, so I'll get some blood work done and see if it's something to be concerned with.