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I've had a similar experience, but only once, and only induced as an accidental side effect by months of mental and physical preparation. About ten years ago, I

I've had a similar experience, but only once, and only induced as an accidental side effect by months of mental and physical preparation. About ten years ago, I spent three months where I almost singularly (outside of my software job) thought about and prepared for a powerlifting competition (amateur, not crazy strong). This would be my second competition (and at the same location), and every night before falling asleep, I would visualize the entire day, from waking up, to driving to the location, weighing in, sitting in the stands, walking up to the platform, and completing the lifts. What I would be wearing, what I would eat, what books I would bring. What lifts I would attempt, and how I would warm up. During the competition, while I was on the platform, I felt like my consciousness was ten feet above my head, and all my actions happened autonomously, without any conscious direction. I can hear, on the video someone recorded, my father yelling my name from the stands, but in the moment I had no conception of that. I bumped into the spotter while resetting my stance on one of the squats, and didn't even really register or respond to his presence. It felt incredibly powerful, but that's probably because of all the purposeful preparation that led up to it. I can't imagine how terrifying that would be to have happen at random without any warning. Do you lose muscle control? I imagine you'd still be walking around the grocery store, just without a sense of agency of which steps you take, right? Somewhat unrelatedly, I've recently been toying with a philosophical idea: what is the inverse of solipsism? Solipsism is the belief that the Self is the only real thing, since it's the only thing that can think. Everything else, and everyone else, may all be false perceptions. So I am real, and everyone else is a figment of my imagination. The inverse of that would be that everyone else is real, and I their collective mass hallucination. Who am I to say that I exist? The best way to exist is to not believe in one's existence. I wouldn't say I exactly subscribe to it, but I do enjoy thinking about it.

ryanSrich 4y ago
> Do you lose muscle control? I imagine you'd still be walking around the grocery store, just without a sense of agency of which steps you take, right? No I maintain full muscle control, physical feeling, etc. It's much harder to explain because of this. It's more or less sudden onset ego death, which is why it's so frightening when it happens. You can only get so used to it, and even now as an adult my heart still races although I don't panic. One physical way to think about it is that my movements feel like they precede my thoughts about that movement, but I'm still thinking and bringing those movements into existence. Time gets jumbled during these episodes much like what happens the moment before you're knocked unconscious, but the unconscious part never comes. The only time I've been able to replicate even a small part of these episodes was when I was very very high. I was probably 16 or 17 at the time and I hadn't had an episode in a long while. I smoked a ton of weed with one of my friends and parts of that high felt like these episodes, though much more subtle. So I would say if you've ever been so high that you have a hard time keeping track of time, and you often get stuck in these mini loops of saying or doing the same thing, it's kinda sorta like that, but not really.

ryanSrich 4y ago

> Do you lose muscle control? I imagine you'd still be walking around the grocery store, just without a sense of agency of which steps you take, right? No I maintain full muscle control, physical feeling, etc. It's much harder to explain because of this. It's more or less sudden onset ego death, which is why it's so frightening when it happens. You can only get so used to it, and even now as an adult my heart still races although I don't panic. One physical way to think about it is that my movements feel like they precede my thoughts about that movement, but I'm still thinking and bringing those movements into existence. Time gets jumbled during these episodes much like what happens the moment before you're knocked unconscious, but the unconscious part never comes. The only time I've been able to replicate even a small part of these episodes was when I was very very high. I was probably 16 or 17 at the time and I hadn't had an episode in a long while. I smoked a ton of weed with one of my friends and parts of that high felt like these episodes, though much more subtle. So I would say if you've ever been so high that you have a hard time keeping track of time, and you often get stuck in these mini loops of saying or doing the same thing, it's kinda sorta like that, but not really.