In a related issue, what if you have long and involved daydreams, not hallucinations, but extended complex fantasies which occasionally lead you places you hadn’t expected. I’ve had daydreams that wouldn’t stop, like annoying earworms or endlessly mulling over problems. (The difference between a hallucination and a daydream is that you know the latter is not real. but you’re not quite sure about the former.)

I’ve only had two genuine hallucinations in my life, one auditory and the other olfactory (and neither was drug-related). The first occurred under extreme fatigue, monotony, and self-hypnosis. The second occurred immediately AFTER waking up from a sound sleep. They are extremely profound experiences, you’re not quite the same afterwards. They remind you how tenuous is the distinction between reality and perception.

Dreams, daydreams, hallucinations, memories (both true and false) apparently the mind is capable of many altered states, both natural and those induced by fatigue, drugs, and perhaps other mental conditions and events. Do they serve some useful biological purpose, such as dreams? Or are some merely the result of dysfunction? Or perhaps they are a by-product of normal brain function, or serve some kind of maintenance role, like a defrag or file compaction or indexing.

Perhaps they are the mind’s way of reminding us that the evidence of our senses should not be taken too seriously–or at least, without additional corroboration. Or maybe they are a mechanism by which we rehearse our reactions to potential emergencies.

The Two Towers

One of my favorite quotes. Which I plan to use more and more in the coming decades.