Auditory hallucinations, or hearing voices

I understand Auditory hallucinations, or hearing voices, are relatively common.
Has anybody had to deal with or been able to solve this situation please?
I have a person who nobody believes with this problem.
thanks in as=dvance

I quite frequently hear things that don't exist right as I'm drifting off to sleep, but not in general. I'm assuming the problem you're facing is more intrusive on life than that.

I grew up with two family members who experienced schizophrenia, it's hard to tease apart what they were really experiencing and whether we're even able to discuss it meaningfully, but it sometimes seemed like they had auditory (and visual) hallucinations. I think coping with this goes well beyond what's possible on Permies.

Reading about bicameral mentality might be useful or at least interesting.

Hi John,

It is difficult to address the problem at this distance..through a third person…and cross culture. Of course, the person should see a doctor. Sometimes problems can be addressed with something as simple as a hearing aid. For example, if my wife removes her hearing aids, she hears dogs barking in the distance.

 That said,  the first step I suggest, after the doctor, would be thought checking. It is not intrusive and pretty common sense.It is exactly what it sounds like:  The voices, sounds, etc are real for the individual  if the person is hearing them.  Nevertheless they need to ask themselves grounding questions such as,  “If there is no one else in the room with me, how much should I pay attention to the voices, sounds, etc?”  Or, if there are others in the room, “ can I assign this voice to anyone else in the room?”  Or, the might simply ask themselves , “Does this make sense?” People can sometimes learn to filter out voices and sounds that “don’t belong.”  

In terms of the filtering,  we do it all the time.  Maybe there is a refrigerator with a loud compressor.  We don’t notice it until we buy a new refrigerator. Then we comment how quiet the new refrigerator  is …and not how loud the old one was.

I had auditory hallucinations when I was suffering from severe sleep deprivation nursing my uncle around the clock. Unfortunately I would 'hear' him calling me, and after several sessions of getting up in the middle of the night only to find him fast asleep (bear in mind most nights I would be up tending to him three times a night, so it was quite normal to hear him) I learned to wait and listen carefully for a second call before moving.

I also had both visual and auditory hallucinations when I suffered from migraines. One time I remember a big bird flying up to the window and beating his wings against the glass trying to get in, but my other half assured me there was nothing there.

More recently I've been having olfactory hallucinations, I think related to the very high CO2 levels I was experiencing as a side-effect of the H pylori infection. Sometimes I could smell smoke, or something cooking, or the most annoying one is the smell of gas because there is no way I'm going to ignore a gas leak! They seem to have gone away since taking the antibiotics.

Not sure I should mention the two cheeky goblins who emerged out of a hay-bale and poked fun at me at the end of an exceptionally hard day haymaking once, daring me to attempt to pick up just one more bale. Or the psychedelic Pied Piper of Hamlyn who kept sneering at me when the doctor gave me a medication that didn't agree with me. He took me off it straight away!

There have been a couple of others too, so I guess I'm a little prone to such things. Maybe linked to an over-active imagination. And one of the reasons I never touch drugs and only take alcohol once or twice a year.

Unfortunate, this is a sign of Schizophrenia.  Or this could mean the person has a tumor or a drug problem.

This person would be advised to seek medical attention.

Years ago, my neighbor was trying to help her brother.

We had to call the sheriff when he was out of control in front of our house and having conversations with unknown parties.

I helped a friend of mine through a severe psychotic episode a few years ago. No drugs helped her and I persuaded her to continue her studies and find drug free ways to control it, then share them.

She is now a researcher and author.

Here is a book she co-authored about drug-free treatments for psychosis.



amazon.com link

i've also experienced it when exhausted or when taking certain medications. and like Christopher I've got a sibling who hears them as part of a larger psychological backdrop and... it's complicated (what an understatement).
I think it's important that any medical problem that could be contributing gets ruled out- it could be an easy solution (I'm thinking of when my mother was dehydrated and hallucinating people in the corners) or also trigger treatment for serious problems.

My take, in no particular order, on what has been said:
Yes,  I have had them BAD, sinus infections started it, but then an antibiotic made them MUCH worse. Rule out sinus/inner ear problems, and they are harder to rule out than you think.

Something I have noticed lately that is triggering audio effects is using headphones, it seems to do something weird to my inner ear issues, leaves them ringing (?) for hours.

Chiropractic treatment on the neck sometimes helps, impinged nerves send random signals to the brain. Human brains have  a strong tendency to hear the patterns of language in chaotic sounds or random nerve noise.

Fish oil has helped a lot of people, even schizophrenics, it contains nutrients your body needs to fix problems in the brain.

Reality checking helps you cope, I had a cat that I'd ask "did you hear that?" she was the kind of cat who always reacted to sounds, so if she didn't hear it, I could safely ignore it.

Olfactory hallucinations are horrible, I had them bad as a side effect of a med, and lesser ones all the time due to structural damage to my sinuses leaving weird nerve issues. I keep excess smoke alarms, so I don't ignore smoke smell that's real, and get other people to tell me if they smell something, if so where is it? It's horrifying when they say "no, I don't smell anything" and I'm trying not to throw up from the stench.

Not being believed about any kind of hallucination, or being told you are just crazy when it turns out to be a medical issue doesn't help anyone. I had a very hard time telling a doctor yes when he asked me about it, as I feared being labeled crazy (and I was, but not by him. Took me years to get out of that mess. Turns out I wasn't crazy, just eccentric and having medical issues.)

And oh my... my empathy for all the people who have responded yes to this question, it's sad to see so many of us have problems. And good wishes to the person whose problems started this...

Personally, I like the least invasive investigations first.  We had a family member in our care with this issue and this is the path I wish we took.

A good auditory test can show up physical problems like tinnitus which can manifest as voices.  ENT would be another good starting place.  Both combined are even better.

Some old dental work, implants, and hearing aids can pick up signals.  It's not common these days, but doctors we talked to when my family member was hearing voices and music, said there is a case every other year.  (It turned out his hearing aids were picking up am radio as the manufacturer didn't do a thing.)

If it's only active at a certain time of day, a sleep lab is another path to try.

Having a family doctor to coordinate these tests can help show other issues (migraine, etc) that might be causing it.

From here, the next question is how responsive are the voices.  

If they ignore direct conversation or environment, neurologist.

If they appear to respond to the environment or engage in dialogue, psychiatrist. (This may not result in a psych diagnosis as with my family member above, it was this dr who suggested testing the hearing aids)

Both are pretty invasive in my expierence, so ruling out the physical causes first migt be best.

And of course, if they are urging one to do bad things, a trip to the emergency room is a really good idea.

To add to r’s comment, in the USA a full auditory exam is normally done by an audiologist. Sometimes it might be done by an Ear Nose and Throat specialist.  It is not done by hearing aid salesperson.  My experience is that most hearing aid sales people will try to sell the customer a hearing aid … I have encountered a few impressive exceptions.  I had a very bad experience with an employee who I gave the above advice to.  He went with the hearing aid salesperson anyway and got two very expensive hearing aids.  He ended up dead from a tumor.

Along those same lines, in my experience, a Psychiatrist is likely to want to fix problems with a pill. A Psychologist is more likely to look at a broader scope of options.  I don’t see pills as necessarily bad, but they would not be my first choice.

Keep in mind that hearing non-consensus reality things when one is almost asleep or just waking up is part of the spectrum of common human experiences and is not indicative of a problem, same with hearing things when one is sleep deprived, its your brain's way of saying go the fuck to sleep.  But yes, if someone is hearing sounds and/or voices when one is fully awake that others aren't hearing then something is going on which may need to be addressed..

Hi John,

I thought I'd share a bit from my perspective.
I have had a number of head injuries and have found that concussion and post concussion symptoms can cause this. After one I had i experience hyperacusis. Sensitivity to sounds and this made day to life very hard to process. During this time my brain also processed some sounds as a voice or animal sound a d also would repeat sounds long after they were gone. Apparently the brain can do this when in sensory overload and also not getting sleep for multiple days in a row can also cause this.
Has the person you mentioned by chance had a head injury?
I also believe we have guides and beings that are around us and can communicate us when we are open to it. Are the voices this person is experiencing paranoid or alarming?
Just the other day, while making bread in the kitchen, I heard a voice yell Hey!! In a tone to get my attention, like something was up.  I looked around for who said that, started looking out the windows and found my favourite hen on the wrong side of the fence and my puppy heading her way, with I'm sure mischief in mind. I was able to stop disaster and am convinced if I hadn't heard that Hey, she would have been dog food.  
Some voices are helpful.
Some definitely are not. But they usually are there for an important reason

John C Daly,

I am reading over this thread and I can’t believe that I didn’t see it before.  This is where the psychology teacher (BUT, to be clear, NOT a diagnostician.  My wife makes me say these things!) just has chime in.

But first two questions that were not clear to me from the IP.  


1.  Are these Auditory Hallucinations happening more or less at all times of the day?  As in not at night or other times when exhausted, under extreme mental stress?  At times when the Frontal Lobe might be too busy working on other things?

2. Does the fried not think it important to see a Dr. or similar?  Or do this friend’s think it is not important.



Here is my reasoning:  this sounds like the textbook examples of schizophrenia.  Probably the most “textbook” of symptoms of schizophrenia are “voices in one’s head.”  Alternatively, these might not be voices that are heard, but thoughts that seem alien and somehow imposed from outside.  Turns out that the voices are our own internal monologue that we fail to recognize as our own—and therefore it is odd, scary, alien, etc.  And despite the foreign/alien feeling, when said person is either challenged by any authority about the validity of the voices or even if someone offers help in order to turn the voices off, the poor soul with schizophrenia will tend to resist help.

In an extremely simplistic format, schizophrenia is caused when specific parts of the brain are overly sensitive to otherwise normal levels of dopamine.  In fact, dopamine agonists (agonists=drug that works likes neurotransmitter) can actually induce powerful if temporary symptoms of schizophrenia.  

Schizophrenia is incurable but highly treatable.  Think about something like diabetes.  If a person can get stabilized on antipsychotic medications, then they can return to a normal life easily.

But because the goal of antipsychotic medication is to block dopamine (that is, to become a dopamine antagonist), then your brain ends up deprived of dopamine.  And it is dopamine that gives you the feeling to get-up-and-go!  Without, life is pretty rough until you get the initial tolerance.  The first generation of antipsychotic drugs took a whopping three weeks of slow, groggy, almost depressive misery before the schizophrenic symptoms went away.  Today that figure is closer to one week. At my peak insomnia, my sleep doc decided to go really aggressive on my insomnia and prescribed seraquel.  I asked if it was another anti depressant (a common go-to for insomnia), and I was told sternly, directly No.  it was an antipsychotic.  I took one pill and the next morning it was all I could do to just not crawl in hole and never come out.  I had biochemically eliminated my ability to be happy!  It took a couple of days for this to wear off.  That script was 30 pills for 30 days, filled in 2014.  29 pills still sit in my medicine cabinet!  I really feel for those who have to get over the first week to month!

Final note:  schizophrenia is one of the most misunderstood disorders of all psychiatric disorders.  People CONSTANTLY confuse schizophrenia with multiple personality disorder even though they have nothing in common.  They are caused by entirely different reasons, their treatment is completely different, schizophrenia is fairly common (approximately 1% general population) and MPD is incredibly rare.  And this misconception seems to be the worse in people who have learned just enough about either disorder to recognize the terminology but have no understanding of how and why the disorder exists.  I once had an administrator who taught a freshman level psychology course and in conversation demonstrated that she considered the two disorders to be one.  She always tried to impress me with her knowledge and typically I would let it go, but on this one I had to put her in her place.  She left humbled, just as an administrator should.



Eric

Something I have read about antipsychotics is that they decrease the brain volume of rats…sounds rather unattractive…

How useful are the voices—do they tell the truth or do they lie? Say useful things or detrimental? Do they say anything at all?

There is the tale of two wolves, one good and one evil, who are fighting—as the tale goes—which one will win? It is the one that you feed. The same is true with our mind—we feed the voices that are useful to us and not the ones that lead to bad places. It takes judgement and discernment and most of all comparison with experience.

The only true hallucinations I have are olfactory, and they are rare and almost always pleasant. Yesterday someone mentioned white cedar and that is what I smelled, very vividly. (No cedars nearby.) Others include tulsi and yarrow.

However I do believe in telepathy and extrasensory perception from experience, and other beings including plants and animals being able to talk to us. For me this is almost never confusable with actual voices, seeing, etc. I wrote in a post yesterday about how that may have saved my life by telling me the herbs I needed to heal from a dreadful sickness, neither of which have any recorded medicinal uses. Humans are so often so absorbed in our own imaginary worlds that we are not able to make these perceptions, though sometimes people cannot block them out, especially if they already have awareness or are in a cultural context where these things are accepted as real. As I mentioned earlier some of these voices are liars, others are harmful, furthermore some will save your life or be very beneficial.

Some time recently I was hiking with a friend and wandered off to check out a beautiful brook; my friend stayed along the trail. I walked up, wondering where my friend was when I saw a flash of a hallucination through the hillside of exactly where they were. So I went up and, yes, exactly where I saw.

I've experienced plenty of auditory and olfactory ones. My general rule is to tune in ones that are helpful and tune out ones that aren't. If it's frequent, it can really help to have a trusted person or a good dog around to check if they experience it too.

If they're repeatedly urging you to do awful things, or if your dog is telling you it's the devil? It's time to get some help. Becoming unmoored from reality is dangerous to you and yours.

If they're telling you the gate's unlocked, or the chickens are loose, and it's right? Helpful.

Fevers, headaches, sustained pain, poor sleep for long periods, dehydration, ear ringing, droning background sounds, long periods of silence - there's lots of situations that can induce them or make them more common. And that's before you get into the rare stuff like tumors or oddball infections or tooth fillings picking up radio signals.

I wanted to make a note about antipsychotic medication and brain mass loss.

It is true that some brain mass loss has been observed with people who take antipsychotic medication.  But this information alone can’t tell us much and certainly not precisely the reason for Brain Mass Loss (BML).  

Schizophrenia itself causes BML.  This confounds attempts to identify the exact reason for BML.  Could it be a problem with cellular metabolism?  Does it interfere with protein production?  Something about altering the way the brain excretes waste?  These are all hypotheses right now with none having a distinct lead.

And while there have been studies, there have been no experimental studies on humans (as far as I know).  The reason has to do with ethics and difficulties in doing a truly randomized study.  In a true experiment, subjects (people) would have to be randomly assigned to either be in the experimental group or the control group (w/meds).  And to isolate these effects from the disease schizophrenia, they would have to be given to healthy people.  You just can’t do that type of experiment—it’s highly unethical.  And this lay at the heart of many studies.

I once had a student who had juvenile schizophrenia.  He developed it by age five.  Typically schizophrenia attacks people in the age range 15-25.  This poor kid was absolutely devastated by the disease.  By the time I had him he was mostly recovered.  I say mostly recovered recovered he still heard voices but he told me that they are much more quiet and they don’t seem as real or pressing.  He then told me that the voices don’t like me (as in me, Mr. Hanson).  But he immediately told me not to worry because he didn’t believe them and he knew that they were full of bullshit—true story.

Where I am going with this is that his use of anti psychotic medication VASTLY improved his health.  He could think clearly and hold down basic social interaction.  I genuinely liked this student, and his colorful stories added so much to the daily conversation.  This kid definitely thought of anti psychotics as a good thing.  At one point I saw him looking punch-drunk.  He had to increase his dose and was having a helluva rough week—but it was a week and then he was back to normal.


ALSO:  most rumored stories about antipsychotics turning people into zombies lack context.  For all antipsychotic drugs, there is an early period where one gets used to the drug—actually gets a partial tolerance.  After that early period, those people start feeling better.  And there is a steady stream of new antipsychotic drugs coming onto the market.  Actually the new ones are not better than the older ones, but they have much, much fewer side effects.  


Some food for thought,

Eric

Reminds me of A Beautiful Mind.  John Nash was attached to his hallucinations until he became aware that they were hallucinations.  Then he learned how to ignore them.