taste and smell

[lucid scream]

anyone else here get taste hallucinations? or smell things that arent there?
when i'm getting depressed, among the first things i notice is that food and drink will begin to taste funny, usually something disgusting, like today i swore someone was playing a joke on me because my water tasted like what a urinal cake smells like. last time it was dishsoap in everything i ate. my family and i eat thesame meals and noone else notices it.
also i will smell usually bad scents like feces or rotting flesh, but sometimes its good like jasmine or the ocean, both of which are impossible in northern ohio.

 

[Apotheosis]

anyone else here get taste hallucinations? or smell things that arent there?

also i will smell usually bad scents like feces or rotting flesh, but sometimes its good like jasmine or the ocean, both of which are impossible in northern ohio.

Yes I get the same thing - food can taste very odd sometimes.

With the smells I have often got a smell like I am in a horses stable, especially when ill, I also get random very perfumed & sweet smells.

 

[Fedup]

I sometimes get a leady taste and often say can you smell burning.

 

[Aahbut]

No bad smells, I get fresh mown grass and what smells like lily of the valley talcum that my granny used to use.

 

[Dollit]

I get an extremely heightened sense of smell when I'm under stress and can even smell the inside of my nose and mouth - which is foul. I can follow people through a supermarket by their odour trails. It's considered a neurotic response apparently. I also smell burning a lot and sometimes petrol both of which just increase the stress. I don't know that I get taste hallucinations but I can't stand the texture of certain stuff either when I'm like that which isn't good as it's practically everything I eat. Glad it's not just me.

 

[Fedup]

I get an extremely heightened sense of smell when I'm under stress and can even smell the inside of my nose and mouth - which is foul. I can follow people through a supermarket by their odour trails. It's considered a neurotic response apparently. I also smell burning a lot and sometimes petrol both of which just increase the stress. I don't know that I get taste hallucinations but I can't stand the texture of certain stuff either when I'm like that which isn't good as it's practically everything I eat. Glad it's not just me.

Intresting that you smell burning also Dollit. Like i said above i do . I drive my OH nuts ,keep asking him whats burning.

 

[Dollit]

I often get up and have a look round the flat or outside to see where the fire is. But that is (according to the consultant) a typical stress response.

 

[daffy]

I too get smell, usually very floral like old lady perfume. Occasionaly i get a pungent smell but mostly its very floral.

My psych sent me for an eeg as it can be a sign of epilepsy, but that came back negative and i was advised to be aware that when the smell came to write it down so my moods could be monitered.

 

[Isca]

Smelly pants!

Seriously, I think from an anthropological/ evolutionary point of view we and like folk (ADHD, Schizophrenia etc.) would have a purpose in 'the cave' in more primitive times. Imagine being able to smell, taste, feel and see things before anyone else?! We would be good at staying awake for hours on end to guard 'the tribe'; or 'smell' danger; 'see' danger. When depressed, we would stay home and guard 'the cave' from inside...why, because we wouldn't want to leave!!..for ages.

There must be a purpose for the genetic endowment to have continued for so long. I don't believe that Bi-P or other status is new to human kind, just diagnosed in our time. It's just a theory, but one I am wanting to study nevertheless (my back ground is psychology researcher and clinical psychologist trainee).

I smell things no one else can and have excellent night vision. Perhaps our mental health status is so apparent because we don't get to 'use it up' in more natural circumstances. Just a thought.

 

[Apotheosis]

Seriously, I think from an anthropological/ evolutionary point of view we and like folk (ADHD, Schizophrenia etc.) would have a purpose in 'the cave' in more primitive times.

http://www.ebiologynews.com/2859.html

Psychiatric studies have suggested that people with schizophrenia could be more creative or imaginative than the general population, which raises the likelihood that schizophrenia genes helped carriers to solve survival problems or attract a mate.

The ideas that evolution has chosen "mental illness" for some purpose, usually in connection to creativity is debated. There does appear however to be a very strong link especially between Schizophrenia & Shamanism.
Within indigenous cultures there was/is a framework for the role of those experiencing ASC's (Altered States of Consciousness). In fact such people were/are revered.

http://www.jungcircle.com/roberts2.html

http://spiritualemergency.blogspot.com/2006/01/shamanism-schizophrenia.html

Shamanism & Schizophrenia

What we call schizophrenic is, as Joseph Campbell has discussed, called (positively) visionary or mystical in shamanic cultures, hence is valued, not feared or sedated with chemicals. As he clarifies in the well-known [1988] TV series, "The Power of Myth", 'The shaman is the person, male or female, who ... has an overwhelming psychological experience that turns him totally inward. It's a kind of schizophrenic crack-up. The whole unconscious opens up, and the shaman falls into it. This shaman experience has been described many, many times. It occurs all the way from Siberia right through the Americas down to Tierra del Fuego.'

Hence working with sufferers of schizophrenia from a shamanic angle can be helpful, since the shaman has in all likelihood experienced similar experiences to those of the schizophrenic. Mainstream reductionist psychiatrists, on the other hand, by and large presume that if an experience (such as chronic depression) is unpleasant, it must be stopped or band-aided, but because an experience is painful or difficult, it doesn't necessarily follow that's it's not valuable, or therapeutically worthwhile as a 'wound which heals'.

 

[sweet insanity]

Mind playing tricks?

Hi...
I sometime smells blood...an iron like smell....This is when I get afraid...I know it stems from when my mom tried to comit suicide when I was 5, I stood behind her while she slid her wrists....
And sometimes water tastes like wet dog hair and smells like it too...
For the longest time I couldn´t taste salt in food...

I don´t know if u can use these experiences to anything...
But here they are...

 

[Colin76]

I get the smell of burnt toast quit a lot when high.