8 ms·

Exploding head syndrome

67 points by Hooke 3y ago

bardan 3y ago
I think I get this sometimes, lying on my back falling to sleep. What feels like an "electric shock" hitting me between the eyes and jolting me awake.
pjerem 3y ago
It happened to me once. I was falling asleep and suddenly I heard a huge explosion. I was certain that something like a lithium battery somewhere in the house just exploded. It was very loud. But my wife was reading a book and heard absolutely nothing. Of course, I checked the house and nothing. I heard about this syndrome after that and apparently it’s pretty common. Rare in a lifetime but happens to a lot a people at least once.
- Messier43 3y ago
  I had the inverse experience once: A lithium battery exploded and I didn't wake. After my partner woke me, I found the kitchen in smoke and an exploded battery & charger.
  - derbOac 3y ago
    Just out of curiosity, what kind of battery?
    - jacquesm 3y ago
      And what kind of charger?
    - Messier43 3y ago
      LS1400 non rechargeable LiIon batteries in NiteCore NC i2 Version 2014 Intellicharge
- dcminter 3y ago
  I've had something that seems to be the same a handful of times. Disconcerting. Though I once had something like this while I was lying awake in the early hours of the morning, which was weird. It turned out that it was the Buncefield oil storage depot exploding about 40 miles away.
- Chilinot 3y ago
  I think this article, and your comment have helped me understand something that happened to me a year ago. Just as i was falling asleep i heard the loudest bang i've ever heard. And was sure someone just bombed the neighbor or someone else down the street. But after having stayed awake for an hour checking the news, and no police or fire department arriving. I went back to sleep. In the morning i tried to talk about this with my family, but no one had any idea what i was talking about.
- cassepipe 3y ago
  I had never heard of it but it also happened to me once but waking up. I was dreaming when I heard an increasingly loud sound that culminated in me being awake all at once
easyThrowaway 3y ago
God, It happens to me at least once or twice a month. As the wiki says, it's not painful but I swear it's so annoying.
jl6 3y ago
Spoiler: the head does not actually explode. It’s an auditory hallucination.
- Karellen 3y ago
  Awww, I was looking forward to the replies from people who didn't read the fine article, and were deeply confused by comments like "I get this!" or "This happens to me every few months" or "God, It happens to me at least once or twice a month." Spoilsport :-)
carom 3y ago
This happens to me fairly regularly. Best way to describe it is a mashup between those step-off-the-curb dreams in light sleep where you jolt awake and a gunshot being stuck in your head like a song.
255 3y ago
Only slightly related, I have a lot of dreams with really bright light, imagine more intense than magnesium fire I always wondered if you could damage your senses with an imaginary light / sound
- ddmf 3y ago
  I have quite vicious migraines, and have regular painless aura migraines that feels like I have a huge number of paparazzi behind me with random flashes, wonder if you're experiencing something similar?
onetoo 3y ago
This happens to me about once every few months. As the article states, just learning about it and feeling reassured that nothing is wrong turned the experience from terrifying to just slightly annoying. In my case, getting my sleep apnea treated with a CPAP machine coincidentally greatly reduced the frequency of these episodes. Your mileage may vary. It last happened about a week ago: I could swear I was woken up by a cluster of firework explosions going off in the distance, some 100m away. A sudden burst of sounds along with a lot of gentle but noticable shockwaves.
- jwestbury 3y ago
  > In my case, getting my sleep apnea treated with a CPAP machine coincidentally greatly reduced the frequency of these episodes. Orthogonal to the post here, but I just want to encourage anybody reading this who snores, or has a partner who says you snore or stop breathing occasionally, to go get a sleep study. I didn't have any of the hallmark symptoms, just descriptions from my wife, and my doctor seemed doubtful that I had sleep apnea based on my descriptions of my symptoms. But, he said, "I know better than to argue with your wife." Turns out, I have severe obstructive sleep apnea (AHI >50), it's just that most of my apneas are what are known as hypopneas -- my blood oxygen drops, but I don't entirely stop breathing, I just have a partially obstructed airway. My sleep architecture is fine, which is probably why I never noticed extreme daytime sleepiness. But the dropping blood oxygen is still a serious health risk, and associated with a huge number of other conditions, from the obvious like heart conditions to the unexpected like fatty liver disease. tl;dr, get a sleep study if you have any reason to think you have sleep apnea.
- wheelerof4te 3y ago
  This usually happens to me when I wake up, then try to sleep shortly after. I hear a loud cracking noise, like something snapped in the back of head. Then I suddenly rise up and wait a bit in order to calm down.
halgir 3y ago
What a coincidence, I experienced this for the first time when falling asleep a week ago. It was clearly inside my head, so first I suspected it was somatic and was quite worried. Some quick googling and I found the hilariously named "exploding head syndrome". Possibly related, I occasionally get "brain zaps", spontaneous sensations of an electric shock inside my head, also when on the verge of falling asleep. These are almost exclusively described as a symptom of SSRI withdrawal, but that is interestingly not the case for me.
Pikamander2 3y ago
This happened to me once as a kid right as I was falling asleep. It sounded like a car had just crashed into my bedroom. I spent the next half hour trying to figure out what had just happened. It's only happened once or twice since then but was a lot less scary because I knew what EHS was by that point.
ajuc 3y ago
I know it can't be this but can't help wondering if it's the same problem digital audio systems have when you stopped playing something without returning the speakers to amplitude 0 :) The next time you play sth there's a loud bang because you return to 0 instantly :)
- ddmf 3y ago
  Or perhaps your brain listens and doesn't quite catch the header, so audio is played mid-stream and you get the digital noise playing like you're trying to listen to a tape loaded game.
jwestbury 3y ago
When I was young, and experiencing the occasional ringing in the ears that's known as "transient ear noise" or "transient tinnitus" -- as far as I know, the causes are not well-understood. But, as a 7-year-old, or whatever age I was, I asked my parents why this was happening. I vividly remember telling me that it might be exploding head syndrome, which would eventually cause my head to explode. Obviously, I was terrified. They quickly allayed my concerns, and it's never bothered me since (though, of course, I still get these transient episodes). Anyway, I've always wondered: Did they actually know about exploding head syndrome, or did they just make it up? Obviously, the real thing doesn't cause your head to explode, but it would be a heck of a coincidence to just make up a real syndrome!
- NoPicklez 3y ago
  Someone else here just said the same account, very interesting
imdsm 3y ago
How apt. This happened a few months ago. I thought there was a lightning strike outside that woke me up, I remember a flash and a crack, and woke up. But there wasn't a storm. I checked radar, satellite, nothing. No strikes. Went back to sleep. At last, the mental thread has been closed. Thank you Hooke.
ddmf 3y ago
I've had this a couple of times - first time was terrifying as I was a young teenager. Second time was quite recently, almost 35 years later. No idea what's caused it at all - sounds like someone has suddenly opened a pressurised pipe near my head/ear.
ben_w 3y ago
This is a good a place as any to ask about weird sensory experiences at night. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night, and while my eyes are open there is an instantaneous change in my vision equivalent to wearing coloured fillers or monochrome LED lighting. Usually red. No other symptoms. Transition was instant so that rules out retinal bleeding etc. I asked my doctor about this, she didn't know either.
- hurryer 3y ago
  Are you absolutely sure this is not a dream? One trick a psychologist mentioned is having a notepad near the bed and writing in it when it happens.
  - ben_w 3y ago
    Moderately confident, but not 100% certain. I believe my dreams are normally longer than these experiences, and that my dreams have not involved my actual environment since I was in pre-school.
- tokai 3y ago
  Sounds like chromatopsia. Think its called erythropsia when one is seeing red.
  - ben_w 3y ago
    Thanks for giving me some search terms I didn't know :)
- pyinstallwoes 3y ago
  The only thing I have in terms of waking up in middle of the night is that I seem to see hexagon honeycomb patterns of RGB lights..... not kidding. They're like phasing in and out. Really makes me think of a visual screen, lol. If I push on my eyes they move.
  - ben_w 3y ago
hobo_mark 3y ago
Wow, I just had this for the first time yesterday morning. I woke up too early for some reason and heard a loud "screech" for a second or so just as I was falling asleep again.
dkarras 3y ago
I experienced this twice in my life but it was not an explosion type sound. Just a very loud sound with a sawtooth waveform, fast attack, ~1 second release.
- frogulis 3y ago
  Hmm, interesting. I've had the exact same sensation/"sound". Though not always that sound, I experience something like this moderately frequently when just about to fall asleep, so maybe it's likely that it would at least sometimes line up well with what others experience.
  - ehakan 3y ago
    +1 here. It feels like an electrical pulse, shooting from my head to my body, but the sound is the same.
- a_cardboard_box 3y ago
  I've had the same sawtooth sound, in addition to a door slamming. It was while I was quitting caffeine, and made it difficult to sleep when I needed it most.
hliyan 3y ago
I occasionally hear a sound like a thin metallic tank rupturing due to air pressure, while trying to fall asleep. Not very loud, and I can kind of tell it's not real.
ghusto 3y ago
Now imagine not having the internet, and getting a few times a year. Everyone I spoke to thought I was insane (including doctors!), and I was beginning to think so myself. It tapered off and I hadn't had it for years when I accidentally read about it somewhere. Until then it was on my ever growing list of "shit that only happens to me, apparently". Makes me wonder how many people got misdiagnosed with mental disorders, because the world was just smaller back then.
- ycombinete 3y ago
  I just found out now that I get some of this. Occasionally I get a very bright flash as I’m driving off. As if an old camera flash has gone off in the room. No sounds, but the myclonic jerk and fright is there for sure. Felt a bit giddy reading this annd recognising it! I also get a lot of headaches.
- ddalex 3y ago
  I'm amazed - I get this so often when I fell asleep that it's a trigger for my lucid dreaming; boom! and now I know I sleep. I silently assumed that this is true for everybody, I'm amazed to find out it's rare, at least in your experience !
- NikkiA 3y ago
  Even with the internet I was unable to explain to my GP back in 2006 what this was. All I could present was 'I dunno, maybe it's epilepsy, it's like an electrical zap sound deep in my head at times', I was told it was nonsense and sent away without any further knowledge. Sometimes I wonder if it's remotely related to the other obscure 'unable to name until post-2010 internet knowledge' syndrome that I suffer - Alice in Wonderland syndrome. Although I do know that the cause for that was operations on/or my amblyopic strabismus 40+ years ago. Certainly it appeared first while I was convalescing. edit: to add a little bit of clarification here, sometime around 2010 I learnt what they were both called due to one of those clickbaity buzzfeed-style '50 bizarre medical issues you won't believe' style pieces.
- ainiriand 3y ago
  It also happens to me, but unfortunately I was unable to engage any lucid dreaming. I would love to learn more about that. I had one episode once when very relaxed but awake, though.
stefs 3y ago
this happened to me regularly for a period of several months. i blamed being very stressed at the time. it later went away on its own.
guntherhermann 3y ago
Wow, I get this! I never knew it was something other people experienced, usually it sounds like doors being slammed or big bangs. It's really odd
nprateem 3y ago
> 10% of people also experience visual disturbances like perceiving visual static, lightning, or flashes of light. Some people may also experience heat, strange feelings in their torso, or a feeling of electrical tinglings that ascends to the head before the auditory hallucinations occur Such phenomena are well known amongst advanced yogis. Sleep scientists would do well to investigate there.
dusted 3y ago
I've always been aware of many neurological curiosities, and I've never been able to determine whether most people truly don't have them or are simply not aware of them (or whether there's a difference, but my pet theory is that with appropriate training, others can become aware of, and experience them, because they're a result of us being analogue beings and not perfect computers). I'm aware of the visual noise, and the multiple layers of auditory effects (from the mild tinnitus I have, to the sound of my blood pumping through my veins, and the "general brain noise" that leaks into my auditory processing). I've found the auditory events when falling asleep somewhat disturbing, they often come after especially stressed days and are accompanied by a particular "feeling in my brain" which feels analogues to a mild muscle twitch. To me, it's not as much a boom as, the creaking sound like that made by an old-fashioned magnesium flashlight right after being fired. Often I experience flashes of light on those same nights as the explosions, I think both are related to some kind of seizure-like event, but very mild. I don't have epilepsy.
wruza 3y ago
I don’t have explosions, but in this pre-dream mind wandering, some events/phrases may become very loud. They don’t mean anything (unless you’re into deep meaning, then everything does), just parts of speech and sounds. It happens often, so I’m used to it. But a few times, especially when it only started, it amplified something you don’t want to hear… 8) Also after waking up and trying to sleep more there is a periodic (but unpredictable) slap sound as if a thin wooden plank hit against a table. It only happens when I sleep more than needed. Something cares about my schedule I guess. A therapist said it is a disorder, but not in the same class as schizo-… things, so relax.
AltruisticGapHN 3y ago
I've had mild symptoms described in the article: - hearing a sudden banging sound like my head is hitting something - feelign like I stopped breathing In my case it seems obvious it is related to PTSD, developmental trauma - or simplified "stress". Sometimes I wondered if there was actually a sound, because I have earplugs - but it's happened enough times that I can tell when it's "imaginary". It's really simply, can we find someone who experiences these symptons that has NO developmental trauma, pretty good family and childhood, no PTSD, no shock trauma in adulthood ( car crashes, violence, and whatnot)? I'm 99% sure it is due to the nervous system.
keiferski 3y ago
Off-topic, but the title made me think of that scene from Cronenberg's Scanners [1], which has a pretty interesting backstory: The head itself was made using a number of different materials. First, a plaster head was used, but it looked more like an exploding statue. Then, they tried making a head out of wax, but it wasn't pliable enough and did not provide the desired effect. Eventually, the team settled on an internal skull structure formed with plaster, with outside skin and facial features rendered using gelatin. From there, the team packed the skull with just about whatever they could find. They used wax and latex scraps, along with various stringy bits and anything they had lying around the studio that they thought would fly through the air a little better. They even used bits of leftover burgers from lunch that day. From there, the plan was to blow the head up with explosives. The problem, the team found, was that any kind of explosive they used revealed sparks to the camera, which they didn't want. To portray a real sense of internal mental pressure resulting in the head exploding outward, they needed a different method. As the shoot wore on and nothing seemed to be working, special effects supervisor Gary Zeller told everyone to keep their cameras rolling, to get into their cars, and roll the windows up. He then lay down underneath the head with a shotgun, pointed it up beneath the back of it, and fired. The result is the exploding head scene in Scanners. https://screenrant.com/david-cronenberg-scanners-movie-exploding-head-effect-explained/ https://screenrant.com/david-cronenberg-scanners-movie-explo... 1. Probably don't watch this at work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YI3NoBeNwfk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YI3NoBeNwfk
darrenf 3y ago
I had this for a long time, and increasingly frequently during one particularly stressful part of my life. Haven't had it for years now though.
fluentbyfire 3y ago
For me, it's a loud knocking on the door. It's as if impatient cops were knocking. It's not a pounding sound, it's knuckles to wood. I immediately awaken to check if someone is there, but no one ever is. Happens once every few months. I've learned to check the response of my cat's. If they aren't looking at the door, it's in my head.
- DonHopkins 3y ago
  Like the East German Cold War Stasi Era version of my Washington DC Reagan Era Nuking World Syndrome. Great idea about the cats, I'll try that! I'm still quite often woken up suddenly by Starving Cat Syndrome.
  - dghughes 3y ago
    Just don't get a white cat with blue eyes (they're deaf).
- Euphorbium 3y ago
  Same happened to me a few times, I also heard knocking on window, while on the 5’th floor.
- voiceblue 3y ago
  Happens to me as well. Now I just ignore a knock on the door (or rather, most any sound) if it happens just once as I'm waking up. It has been a hallucination every time. Bonus: If someone is at my door at some ungodly hour, they might leave me alone. It's pretty remarkable how real it sounds though, complete with being in the distance - just enough to make you think it came from somewhere else in the house (usually the front door) - it definitely takes a deliberate act of will to totally ignore it. Since another commenter has mentioned a knock on a window (distinctly different sound), I wonder whether our brains just contextualize this to whatever is plausible.
drcongo 3y ago
I've had this my whole life, though this popping up on here has made me realise that it hasn't happened in about 6 months. I also get ice pick headaches [0], would be interested to hear if anyone else here gets both. [0] https://denveruppercervical.com/ophthalmodynia-periodica/ https://denveruppercervical.com/ophthalmodynia-periodica/
- viraptor 3y ago
  Yeah, I get an explosion maybe once a year or so. And I get the sudden / short headache (which seems to match the description) very rarely, but almost always on winter mornings while driving up to the snow for skiing.
DonHopkins 3y ago
Growing up near Washington DC during the Reagan years, I might have described it as Nuking World Syndrome. Waking up suddenly from an explosion and immediately perceiving the light outside the window as a flash and being afraid that it was the flash from a nuclear explosion. Still happens occasionally. More visual but occasional auditory. Criminals blow up ATMs in the Netherlands occasionally, but I usually sleep right through that. But they're a few blocks away and I'm not unlucky enough to live in an apartment right above them.
emmanueloga_ 3y ago
This has happened to me a few times. Reminds me of sleep paralysis, in that people across time and cultures have identified this kind of strange experience as a paranormal event of some sort: "Culture may be a major factor in shaping sleep paralysis. When sleep paralysis is interpreted through a particular cultural filter, it may take on greater salience. For example, if sleep paralysis is feared in a certain culture, this fear could lead to conditioned fear, and thus worsen the experience, in turn leading to higher rates." [1]. Finding a wikipedia article about the thing should have, I hope, the reverse effect :-). -- 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_paralysis#Cultural_significance_and_priming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_paralysis#Cultural_signi...
peteradio 3y ago
One time I heard a huge boom that woke me up but it was actually a gallon glass container blowing the cabinet doors off the hinges in the kitchen. My college roommate was trying to make "pumpkin wine".
wavewrangler 3y ago
This can be induced. This is 90-95% the rule for those who practice what’s known as “astral projection,” as compared to the articles figure of ten percent of the population, for those who have this “syndrome”. Granted, the name sounds gimmicky, but it’s a very real phenomenon in which the mind remains awake, while the body goes to sleep. It carries with it very distinct, consistent sensations. While different from a lucid dream, lucid dreams are often used as a segue to this state of consciousness. Typically, meditation and trance induction techniques are used to reach this state, while many also have no control over it, and they go much, if not all of their lives, assuming it’s like that for everyone. Interestingly, I’d venture an experienced guess and say this occurs in roughly five to ten percent of the population, which is also the number of people who reportedly have this issue in its “syndrome” form. I wonder if there’s a connection? Obviously, the same area of the brain is being activated (or deactivated). I also wonder if this group of individuals (most of the commenters here) are naturally predisposed to experiencing astral projection on command. It typically takes significant dedication and practice to overcome your mind falling asleep along with your body. After 25 years of practice, the sounds remain the same for me; a coin, wobbling on the counter getting ready to come to a stop— although much louder. Low frequency noises such as that of an idling ship, and the sound that air makes, swooshing and sucking about, as it escapes from a vacuum. All of these are very typically accompanied by various crackling, popping, and banging. Additionally, the flashing of lights, sparks, or “energy”, sometimes colorful, sometimes not, is extremely common, if not a requirement, to reaching this state, and this is usually accompanied by a vibrating sensation, which can be intense, but also is harmless. It seems that whatever this syndrome is, it affects the region/s of the brain responsible for regulating the transition between various states of consciousness. At this point, classic astral projection would have (or be very close) progressed to feelings of separation or detachment from your body, levitation, and ethereal, hyper-realistic, yet dreamlike, imagery. It would be interesting to know if researchers have looked at the studies performed on astral projection over the years to see if any of it can be borrowed to assist with determining the cause, if any, of this. For anyone who experiences noises while falling asleep-do any of the other sensations I mentioned sound familiar to you? Personally, if I didn’t already know better, I would be keen on studying AP to determine if I was naturally inclined for it.
- 3y ago
Kirby64 3y ago
I wonder if this is related to hypnic jerk? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnic_jerk https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnic_jerk Similar outcome: you awake quickly in a panic, just the difference is hypnic jerk feels like something interior and you know it wasn’t a noise or something. I get these occasionally, and they’re easy to ignore because I just “know” it was dream-like falling feelings. Annoying in the moment but I drift back off to sleep quite quickly afterwards.
- garganzol 3y ago
  I am sure that hypnic jerk is related. Distortions of sleep/awake transitions have quite a universal pathology mechanics caused by brain stem / nerve damages. Either physical or metabolic. POTS is also a related condition. All those pathologies belong to a more broad pathological condition called dysautonomia.
- NikkiA 3y ago
  They're related, but I've had 'explosions' that were NOT part of the near-sleep experience, so they're not purely a part of hypnagogic jerk.
mickelsen 3y ago
I had this while tapering off Bupropion in 2020, tinnitus started shortly after that.
throw310822 3y ago
As a kid, something similar happened to me sort of regularly (maybe a few times a year?). As I was falling asleep, some noises that initially might have been normal ambient noises started looping, acquiring some rhythmic pattern and becoming progressively louder, until suddenly there was a loud bang followed by a sense of complete void and silence. After a while I learned to notice the "looping sound" pattern and just raise my head from the pillow to interrupt it. Then, at some point, it never returned again.
- torotonnato 3y ago
  Same as me, read my other comment
- LoganDark 3y ago
  This also happens for me when I use psychedelics (like LSD). It's very fascinating when it happens. I'm autistic, maybe that has something to do with it.
torotonnato 3y ago
I read "Out of body experiences" by Robert A. Monroe a long time ago, a time of gullibility and innocence. If I remember correctly he used a technique to induce that effect and I made it mine. Sometimes it worked, here is the recipe: lay on your bed with eyes closed, try to avoid any disturbances. Concentrate you attention to your inner ears and you'll hear a high frequency hiss (similar to tinnitus). Don't sleep and keep focused! After some time (I think as you are falling asleep) the volume hits a dramatic crescendo and, in my case, culminates in a devastating powerful dry explosion without a discernible source. It lasts a moment but can be really scary. If you can keep calm without awakening, you'll be on the "other side". There is no transition. In my case, the "other side" is just me, in my bed as if I'm awake. I tried some experiments, but I felt too weak to do anything really interesting. I moved a couple of pillows, for instance, and when I woke up they were in the original position, untouched. A really bizarre experience, I stopped trying when I finally got close to full-replication-mode on three consecutive nights. I felt very weird as if I was starting to mess with the boundary between dream and reality. If you know more about this phenomenon let's keep in touch!
- pyinstallwoes 3y ago
  I have read something similar, like there is a vibrating sensation and the loud sound is breaking a boundary condition. How can we stay in touch?
- tripdout 3y ago
  [flagged]
- Aerbil313 3y ago
  I‘m a lucid dreamer. You are describing the WILD (Wake-Induced Lucid Dreaming) technique. It’s basically entering sleep without losing consciousness by staying focused on some thing (usually your breath but anything works). It’s not an out of body experience. You were dreaming. Hearing sounds (exploding head syndrome or other sounds), the feeling of spinning, seeing shapes etc. are symptoms of the hypnagogia (transition from wakefulness to sleep) stage. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnagogia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnagogia LD is a learnable skill. I can recommend resources if anyone wants.
davesque 3y ago
Used to get this when I was younger. It's been a while since I've experienced it. To me, it was more like I was hearing the percussionist in an orchestra build to a loud crescendo with felt mallets on a gong.
zoklet-enjoyer 3y ago
This happens to me sometimes, usually if I'm not getting enough sleep because of stress. It sounds kind of like a garbage truck when it sets down a dumpster. Always accompanied by a flash of white light. When I was a kid I thought it was aliens because I would fall asleep listening to Coast to Coast AM.
pyinstallwoes 3y ago
I had this frequently in my early 20's. It is no longer frequent; the last time I got it was about 8 months ago. Prior to that I can't recall. It's weird.
thunderrabbit 3y ago
https://astralhq.com/astral-projection-buzzing-noise/ https://astralhq.com/astral-projection-buzzing-noise/
Obscurity4340 3y ago
Anyone also experience this when vaping cannabis (oil) like randomly?
gpas 3y ago
Is this phenomenon similar to brain zaps? I've experienced something similar but without the pain described on the wiki page about antidepressant discontinuation syndrome. Also I've never taken antidepressants, but those zaps occured always after taking too much chemicals at parties.
- wutwutwat 3y ago
  Stimulants, or rather the come down from them, are known to cause brain zaps. That's because CNS stims tend to mess with serotonin levels, which is what most antidepressants and anxiety meds are acting on as well, if they are SSRI or the newer SNRI types anyway. Brain zaps are hard to explain, but you know them when you feel them. A lightning storm in your brain that lasts a fraction of a second and by the time you feel it, it's already gone. Weirdest feeling ever.
dysoco 3y ago
I don't think I've ever experienced these loud noises, sounds frightening specially if you are not aware of the syndrome. Sometimes I do experience whilst falling asleep like if I'm in a wind tunnel, it's both a physical sensation of the wind going against me (like freefalling) and also the noise, it's not unpleasant. I've tried several times to stay still and focus on the sensation to induce a lucid dream, however either I end up being slightly frightened, moving and waking up or just falling to normal sleep. Everything dream-related is pretty mind blowing to think about, both how many of us experience such different experiences and sensations, but also how many of us sometimes have almost the same experiences, like the exploding head syndrome, sleep paralysis and it's hallucinations (which in many occasions seem to be around the same for everyone).

67 points by Hooke 3y ago

I think I get this sometimes, lying on my back falling to sleep. What feels like an "electric shock" hitting me between the eyes and jolting me awake.

pjerem 3y ago

It happened to me once. I was falling asleep and suddenly I heard a huge explosion. I was certain that something like a lithium battery somewhere in the house just exploded. It was very loud. But my wife was reading a book and heard absolutely nothing. Of course, I checked the house and nothing. I heard about this syndrome after that and apparently it’s pretty common. Rare in a lifetime but happens to a lot a people at least once.

Messier43 3y ago
I had the inverse experience once: A lithium battery exploded and I didn't wake. After my partner woke me, I found the kitchen in smoke and an exploded battery & charger.
- derbOac 3y ago
  Just out of curiosity, what kind of battery?
  - jacquesm 3y ago
    And what kind of charger?
  - Messier43 3y ago
    LS1400 non rechargeable LiIon batteries in NiteCore NC i2 Version 2014 Intellicharge
dcminter 3y ago
I've had something that seems to be the same a handful of times. Disconcerting. Though I once had something like this while I was lying awake in the early hours of the morning, which was weird. It turned out that it was the Buncefield oil storage depot exploding about 40 miles away.
Chilinot 3y ago
I think this article, and your comment have helped me understand something that happened to me a year ago. Just as i was falling asleep i heard the loudest bang i've ever heard. And was sure someone just bombed the neighbor or someone else down the street. But after having stayed awake for an hour checking the news, and no police or fire department arriving. I went back to sleep. In the morning i tried to talk about this with my family, but no one had any idea what i was talking about.
cassepipe 3y ago
I had never heard of it but it also happened to me once but waking up. I was dreaming when I heard an increasingly loud sound that culminated in me being awake all at once

easyThrowaway 3y ago

God, It happens to me at least once or twice a month. As the wiki says, it's not painful but I swear it's so annoying.

jl6 3y ago

Spoiler: the head does not actually explode. It’s an auditory hallucination.

Karellen 3y ago
Awww, I was looking forward to the replies from people who didn't read the fine article, and were deeply confused by comments like "I get this!" or "This happens to me every few months" or "God, It happens to me at least once or twice a month." Spoilsport :-)

carom 3y ago

This happens to me fairly regularly. Best way to describe it is a mashup between those step-off-the-curb dreams in light sleep where you jolt awake and a gunshot being stuck in your head like a song.

255 3y ago

Only slightly related, I have a lot of dreams with really bright light, imagine more intense than magnesium fire I always wondered if you could damage your senses with an imaginary light / sound

ddmf 3y ago
I have quite vicious migraines, and have regular painless aura migraines that feels like I have a huge number of paparazzi behind me with random flashes, wonder if you're experiencing something similar?

onetoo 3y ago

This happens to me about once every few months. As the article states, just learning about it and feeling reassured that nothing is wrong turned the experience from terrifying to just slightly annoying. In my case, getting my sleep apnea treated with a CPAP machine coincidentally greatly reduced the frequency of these episodes. Your mileage may vary. It last happened about a week ago: I could swear I was woken up by a cluster of firework explosions going off in the distance, some 100m away. A sudden burst of sounds along with a lot of gentle but noticable shockwaves.

jwestbury 3y ago
> In my case, getting my sleep apnea treated with a CPAP machine coincidentally greatly reduced the frequency of these episodes. Orthogonal to the post here, but I just want to encourage anybody reading this who snores, or has a partner who says you snore or stop breathing occasionally, to go get a sleep study. I didn't have any of the hallmark symptoms, just descriptions from my wife, and my doctor seemed doubtful that I had sleep apnea based on my descriptions of my symptoms. But, he said, "I know better than to argue with your wife." Turns out, I have severe obstructive sleep apnea (AHI >50), it's just that most of my apneas are what are known as hypopneas -- my blood oxygen drops, but I don't entirely stop breathing, I just have a partially obstructed airway. My sleep architecture is fine, which is probably why I never noticed extreme daytime sleepiness. But the dropping blood oxygen is still a serious health risk, and associated with a huge number of other conditions, from the obvious like heart conditions to the unexpected like fatty liver disease. tl;dr, get a sleep study if you have any reason to think you have sleep apnea.
wheelerof4te 3y ago
This usually happens to me when I wake up, then try to sleep shortly after. I hear a loud cracking noise, like something snapped in the back of head. Then I suddenly rise up and wait a bit in order to calm down.

halgir 3y ago

What a coincidence, I experienced this for the first time when falling asleep a week ago. It was clearly inside my head, so first I suspected it was somatic and was quite worried. Some quick googling and I found the hilariously named "exploding head syndrome". Possibly related, I occasionally get "brain zaps", spontaneous sensations of an electric shock inside my head, also when on the verge of falling asleep. These are almost exclusively described as a symptom of SSRI withdrawal, but that is interestingly not the case for me.

Pikamander2 3y ago

This happened to me once as a kid right as I was falling asleep. It sounded like a car had just crashed into my bedroom. I spent the next half hour trying to figure out what had just happened. It's only happened once or twice since then but was a lot less scary because I knew what EHS was by that point.

ajuc 3y ago

I know it can't be this but can't help wondering if it's the same problem digital audio systems have when you stopped playing something without returning the speakers to amplitude 0 :) The next time you play sth there's a loud bang because you return to 0 instantly :)

ddmf 3y ago
Or perhaps your brain listens and doesn't quite catch the header, so audio is played mid-stream and you get the digital noise playing like you're trying to listen to a tape loaded game.

jwestbury 3y ago

When I was young, and experiencing the occasional ringing in the ears that's known as "transient ear noise" or "transient tinnitus" -- as far as I know, the causes are not well-understood. But, as a 7-year-old, or whatever age I was, I asked my parents why this was happening. I vividly remember telling me that it might be exploding head syndrome, which would eventually cause my head to explode. Obviously, I was terrified. They quickly allayed my concerns, and it's never bothered me since (though, of course, I still get these transient episodes). Anyway, I've always wondered: Did they actually know about exploding head syndrome, or did they just make it up? Obviously, the real thing doesn't cause your head to explode, but it would be a heck of a coincidence to just make up a real syndrome!

NoPicklez 3y ago
Someone else here just said the same account, very interesting

imdsm 3y ago

How apt. This happened a few months ago. I thought there was a lightning strike outside that woke me up, I remember a flash and a crack, and woke up. But there wasn't a storm. I checked radar, satellite, nothing. No strikes. Went back to sleep. At last, the mental thread has been closed. Thank you Hooke.

ddmf 3y ago

I've had this a couple of times - first time was terrifying as I was a young teenager. Second time was quite recently, almost 35 years later. No idea what's caused it at all - sounds like someone has suddenly opened a pressurised pipe near my head/ear.

ben_w 3y ago

This is a good a place as any to ask about weird sensory experiences at night. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night, and while my eyes are open there is an instantaneous change in my vision equivalent to wearing coloured fillers or monochrome LED lighting. Usually red. No other symptoms. Transition was instant so that rules out retinal bleeding etc. I asked my doctor about this, she didn't know either.

hurryer 3y ago
Are you absolutely sure this is not a dream? One trick a psychologist mentioned is having a notepad near the bed and writing in it when it happens.
- ben_w 3y ago
  Moderately confident, but not 100% certain. I believe my dreams are normally longer than these experiences, and that my dreams have not involved my actual environment since I was in pre-school.
tokai 3y ago
Sounds like chromatopsia. Think its called erythropsia when one is seeing red.
- ben_w 3y ago
  Thanks for giving me some search terms I didn't know :)
pyinstallwoes 3y ago
The only thing I have in terms of waking up in middle of the night is that I seem to see hexagon honeycomb patterns of RGB lights..... not kidding. They're like phasing in and out. Really makes me think of a visual screen, lol. If I push on my eyes they move.
- ben_w 3y ago

hobo_mark 3y ago

Wow, I just had this for the first time yesterday morning. I woke up too early for some reason and heard a loud "screech" for a second or so just as I was falling asleep again.

dkarras 3y ago

I experienced this twice in my life but it was not an explosion type sound. Just a very loud sound with a sawtooth waveform, fast attack, ~1 second release.

frogulis 3y ago
Hmm, interesting. I've had the exact same sensation/"sound". Though not always that sound, I experience something like this moderately frequently when just about to fall asleep, so maybe it's likely that it would at least sometimes line up well with what others experience.
- ehakan 3y ago
  +1 here. It feels like an electrical pulse, shooting from my head to my body, but the sound is the same.
a_cardboard_box 3y ago
I've had the same sawtooth sound, in addition to a door slamming. It was while I was quitting caffeine, and made it difficult to sleep when I needed it most.

hliyan 3y ago

I occasionally hear a sound like a thin metallic tank rupturing due to air pressure, while trying to fall asleep. Not very loud, and I can kind of tell it's not real.

ghusto 3y ago

Now imagine not having the internet, and getting a few times a year. Everyone I spoke to thought I was insane (including doctors!), and I was beginning to think so myself. It tapered off and I hadn't had it for years when I accidentally read about it somewhere. Until then it was on my ever growing list of "shit that only happens to me, apparently". Makes me wonder how many people got misdiagnosed with mental disorders, because the world was just smaller back then.

ycombinete 3y ago
I just found out now that I get some of this. Occasionally I get a very bright flash as I’m driving off. As if an old camera flash has gone off in the room. No sounds, but the myclonic jerk and fright is there for sure. Felt a bit giddy reading this annd recognising it! I also get a lot of headaches.
ddalex 3y ago
I'm amazed - I get this so often when I fell asleep that it's a trigger for my lucid dreaming; boom! and now I know I sleep. I silently assumed that this is true for everybody, I'm amazed to find out it's rare, at least in your experience !
NikkiA 3y ago
Even with the internet I was unable to explain to my GP back in 2006 what this was. All I could present was 'I dunno, maybe it's epilepsy, it's like an electrical zap sound deep in my head at times', I was told it was nonsense and sent away without any further knowledge. Sometimes I wonder if it's remotely related to the other obscure 'unable to name until post-2010 internet knowledge' syndrome that I suffer - Alice in Wonderland syndrome. Although I do know that the cause for that was operations on/or my amblyopic strabismus 40+ years ago. Certainly it appeared first while I was convalescing. edit: to add a little bit of clarification here, sometime around 2010 I learnt what they were both called due to one of those clickbaity buzzfeed-style '50 bizarre medical issues you won't believe' style pieces.
ainiriand 3y ago
It also happens to me, but unfortunately I was unable to engage any lucid dreaming. I would love to learn more about that. I had one episode once when very relaxed but awake, though.

stefs 3y ago

this happened to me regularly for a period of several months. i blamed being very stressed at the time. it later went away on its own.

guntherhermann 3y ago

Wow, I get this! I never knew it was something other people experienced, usually it sounds like doors being slammed or big bangs. It's really odd

nprateem 3y ago

> 10% of people also experience visual disturbances like perceiving visual static, lightning, or flashes of light. Some people may also experience heat, strange feelings in their torso, or a feeling of electrical tinglings that ascends to the head before the auditory hallucinations occur Such phenomena are well known amongst advanced yogis. Sleep scientists would do well to investigate there.

dusted 3y ago

I've always been aware of many neurological curiosities, and I've never been able to determine whether most people truly don't have them or are simply not aware of them (or whether there's a difference, but my pet theory is that with appropriate training, others can become aware of, and experience them, because they're a result of us being analogue beings and not perfect computers). I'm aware of the visual noise, and the multiple layers of auditory effects (from the mild tinnitus I have, to the sound of my blood pumping through my veins, and the "general brain noise" that leaks into my auditory processing). I've found the auditory events when falling asleep somewhat disturbing, they often come after especially stressed days and are accompanied by a particular "feeling in my brain" which feels analogues to a mild muscle twitch. To me, it's not as much a boom as, the creaking sound like that made by an old-fashioned magnesium flashlight right after being fired. Often I experience flashes of light on those same nights as the explosions, I think both are related to some kind of seizure-like event, but very mild. I don't have epilepsy.

wruza 3y ago

I don’t have explosions, but in this pre-dream mind wandering, some events/phrases may become very loud. They don’t mean anything (unless you’re into deep meaning, then everything does), just parts of speech and sounds. It happens often, so I’m used to it. But a few times, especially when it only started, it amplified something you don’t want to hear… 8) Also after waking up and trying to sleep more there is a periodic (but unpredictable) slap sound as if a thin wooden plank hit against a table. It only happens when I sleep more than needed. Something cares about my schedule I guess. A therapist said it is a disorder, but not in the same class as schizo-… things, so relax.

AltruisticGapHN 3y ago

I've had mild symptoms described in the article: - hearing a sudden banging sound like my head is hitting something - feelign like I stopped breathing In my case it seems obvious it is related to PTSD, developmental trauma - or simplified "stress". Sometimes I wondered if there was actually a sound, because I have earplugs - but it's happened enough times that I can tell when it's "imaginary". It's really simply, can we find someone who experiences these symptons that has NO developmental trauma, pretty good family and childhood, no PTSD, no shock trauma in adulthood ( car crashes, violence, and whatnot)? I'm 99% sure it is due to the nervous system.

keiferski 3y ago

Off-topic, but the title made me think of that scene from Cronenberg's Scanners [1], which has a pretty interesting backstory: The head itself was made using a number of different materials. First, a plaster head was used, but it looked more like an exploding statue. Then, they tried making a head out of wax, but it wasn't pliable enough and did not provide the desired effect. Eventually, the team settled on an internal skull structure formed with plaster, with outside skin and facial features rendered using gelatin. From there, the team packed the skull with just about whatever they could find. They used wax and latex scraps, along with various stringy bits and anything they had lying around the studio that they thought would fly through the air a little better. They even used bits of leftover burgers from lunch that day. From there, the plan was to blow the head up with explosives. The problem, the team found, was that any kind of explosive they used revealed sparks to the camera, which they didn't want. To portray a real sense of internal mental pressure resulting in the head exploding outward, they needed a different method. As the shoot wore on and nothing seemed to be working, special effects supervisor Gary Zeller told everyone to keep their cameras rolling, to get into their cars, and roll the windows up. He then lay down underneath the head with a shotgun, pointed it up beneath the back of it, and fired. The result is the exploding head scene in Scanners. https://screenrant.com/david-cronenberg-scanners-movie-exploding-head-effect-explained/ https://screenrant.com/david-cronenberg-scanners-movie-explo... 1. Probably don't watch this at work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YI3NoBeNwfk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YI3NoBeNwfk

darrenf 3y ago

I had this for a long time, and increasingly frequently during one particularly stressful part of my life. Haven't had it for years now though.

fluentbyfire 3y ago

For me, it's a loud knocking on the door. It's as if impatient cops were knocking. It's not a pounding sound, it's knuckles to wood. I immediately awaken to check if someone is there, but no one ever is. Happens once every few months. I've learned to check the response of my cat's. If they aren't looking at the door, it's in my head.

DonHopkins 3y ago
Like the East German Cold War Stasi Era version of my Washington DC Reagan Era Nuking World Syndrome. Great idea about the cats, I'll try that! I'm still quite often woken up suddenly by Starving Cat Syndrome.
- dghughes 3y ago
  Just don't get a white cat with blue eyes (they're deaf).
Euphorbium 3y ago
Same happened to me a few times, I also heard knocking on window, while on the 5’th floor.
voiceblue 3y ago
Happens to me as well. Now I just ignore a knock on the door (or rather, most any sound) if it happens just once as I'm waking up. It has been a hallucination every time. Bonus: If someone is at my door at some ungodly hour, they might leave me alone. It's pretty remarkable how real it sounds though, complete with being in the distance - just enough to make you think it came from somewhere else in the house (usually the front door) - it definitely takes a deliberate act of will to totally ignore it. Since another commenter has mentioned a knock on a window (distinctly different sound), I wonder whether our brains just contextualize this to whatever is plausible.

drcongo 3y ago

I've had this my whole life, though this popping up on here has made me realise that it hasn't happened in about 6 months. I also get ice pick headaches [0], would be interested to hear if anyone else here gets both. [0] https://denveruppercervical.com/ophthalmodynia-periodica/ https://denveruppercervical.com/ophthalmodynia-periodica/

viraptor 3y ago
Yeah, I get an explosion maybe once a year or so. And I get the sudden / short headache (which seems to match the description) very rarely, but almost always on winter mornings while driving up to the snow for skiing.

DonHopkins 3y ago

Growing up near Washington DC during the Reagan years, I might have described it as Nuking World Syndrome. Waking up suddenly from an explosion and immediately perceiving the light outside the window as a flash and being afraid that it was the flash from a nuclear explosion. Still happens occasionally. More visual but occasional auditory. Criminals blow up ATMs in the Netherlands occasionally, but I usually sleep right through that. But they're a few blocks away and I'm not unlucky enough to live in an apartment right above them.

emmanueloga_ 3y ago

This has happened to me a few times. Reminds me of sleep paralysis, in that people across time and cultures have identified this kind of strange experience as a paranormal event of some sort: "Culture may be a major factor in shaping sleep paralysis. When sleep paralysis is interpreted through a particular cultural filter, it may take on greater salience. For example, if sleep paralysis is feared in a certain culture, this fear could lead to conditioned fear, and thus worsen the experience, in turn leading to higher rates." [1]. Finding a wikipedia article about the thing should have, I hope, the reverse effect :-). -- 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_paralysis#Cultural_significance_and_priming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_paralysis#Cultural_signi...

peteradio 3y ago

One time I heard a huge boom that woke me up but it was actually a gallon glass container blowing the cabinet doors off the hinges in the kitchen. My college roommate was trying to make "pumpkin wine".

wavewrangler 3y ago

This can be induced. This is 90-95% the rule for those who practice what’s known as “astral projection,” as compared to the articles figure of ten percent of the population, for those who have this “syndrome”. Granted, the name sounds gimmicky, but it’s a very real phenomenon in which the mind remains awake, while the body goes to sleep. It carries with it very distinct, consistent sensations. While different from a lucid dream, lucid dreams are often used as a segue to this state of consciousness. Typically, meditation and trance induction techniques are used to reach this state, while many also have no control over it, and they go much, if not all of their lives, assuming it’s like that for everyone. Interestingly, I’d venture an experienced guess and say this occurs in roughly five to ten percent of the population, which is also the number of people who reportedly have this issue in its “syndrome” form. I wonder if there’s a connection? Obviously, the same area of the brain is being activated (or deactivated). I also wonder if this group of individuals (most of the commenters here) are naturally predisposed to experiencing astral projection on command. It typically takes significant dedication and practice to overcome your mind falling asleep along with your body. After 25 years of practice, the sounds remain the same for me; a coin, wobbling on the counter getting ready to come to a stop— although much louder. Low frequency noises such as that of an idling ship, and the sound that air makes, swooshing and sucking about, as it escapes from a vacuum. All of these are very typically accompanied by various crackling, popping, and banging. Additionally, the flashing of lights, sparks, or “energy”, sometimes colorful, sometimes not, is extremely common, if not a requirement, to reaching this state, and this is usually accompanied by a vibrating sensation, which can be intense, but also is harmless. It seems that whatever this syndrome is, it affects the region/s of the brain responsible for regulating the transition between various states of consciousness. At this point, classic astral projection would have (or be very close) progressed to feelings of separation or detachment from your body, levitation, and ethereal, hyper-realistic, yet dreamlike, imagery. It would be interesting to know if researchers have looked at the studies performed on astral projection over the years to see if any of it can be borrowed to assist with determining the cause, if any, of this. For anyone who experiences noises while falling asleep-do any of the other sensations I mentioned sound familiar to you? Personally, if I didn’t already know better, I would be keen on studying AP to determine if I was naturally inclined for it.

3y ago

Kirby64 3y ago

I wonder if this is related to hypnic jerk? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnic_jerk https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnic_jerk Similar outcome: you awake quickly in a panic, just the difference is hypnic jerk feels like something interior and you know it wasn’t a noise or something. I get these occasionally, and they’re easy to ignore because I just “know” it was dream-like falling feelings. Annoying in the moment but I drift back off to sleep quite quickly afterwards.

garganzol 3y ago
I am sure that hypnic jerk is related. Distortions of sleep/awake transitions have quite a universal pathology mechanics caused by brain stem / nerve damages. Either physical or metabolic. POTS is also a related condition. All those pathologies belong to a more broad pathological condition called dysautonomia.
NikkiA 3y ago
They're related, but I've had 'explosions' that were NOT part of the near-sleep experience, so they're not purely a part of hypnagogic jerk.

mickelsen 3y ago

I had this while tapering off Bupropion in 2020, tinnitus started shortly after that.

throw310822 3y ago

As a kid, something similar happened to me sort of regularly (maybe a few times a year?). As I was falling asleep, some noises that initially might have been normal ambient noises started looping, acquiring some rhythmic pattern and becoming progressively louder, until suddenly there was a loud bang followed by a sense of complete void and silence. After a while I learned to notice the "looping sound" pattern and just raise my head from the pillow to interrupt it. Then, at some point, it never returned again.

torotonnato 3y ago
Same as me, read my other comment
LoganDark 3y ago
This also happens for me when I use psychedelics (like LSD). It's very fascinating when it happens. I'm autistic, maybe that has something to do with it.

torotonnato 3y ago

I read "Out of body experiences" by Robert A. Monroe a long time ago, a time of gullibility and innocence. If I remember correctly he used a technique to induce that effect and I made it mine. Sometimes it worked, here is the recipe: lay on your bed with eyes closed, try to avoid any disturbances. Concentrate you attention to your inner ears and you'll hear a high frequency hiss (similar to tinnitus). Don't sleep and keep focused! After some time (I think as you are falling asleep) the volume hits a dramatic crescendo and, in my case, culminates in a devastating powerful dry explosion without a discernible source. It lasts a moment but can be really scary. If you can keep calm without awakening, you'll be on the "other side". There is no transition. In my case, the "other side" is just me, in my bed as if I'm awake. I tried some experiments, but I felt too weak to do anything really interesting. I moved a couple of pillows, for instance, and when I woke up they were in the original position, untouched. A really bizarre experience, I stopped trying when I finally got close to full-replication-mode on three consecutive nights. I felt very weird as if I was starting to mess with the boundary between dream and reality. If you know more about this phenomenon let's keep in touch!

pyinstallwoes 3y ago
I have read something similar, like there is a vibrating sensation and the loud sound is breaking a boundary condition. How can we stay in touch?
tripdout 3y ago
[flagged]
Aerbil313 3y ago
I‘m a lucid dreamer. You are describing the WILD (Wake-Induced Lucid Dreaming) technique. It’s basically entering sleep without losing consciousness by staying focused on some thing (usually your breath but anything works). It’s not an out of body experience. You were dreaming. Hearing sounds (exploding head syndrome or other sounds), the feeling of spinning, seeing shapes etc. are symptoms of the hypnagogia (transition from wakefulness to sleep) stage. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnagogia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnagogia LD is a learnable skill. I can recommend resources if anyone wants.

davesque 3y ago

Used to get this when I was younger. It's been a while since I've experienced it. To me, it was more like I was hearing the percussionist in an orchestra build to a loud crescendo with felt mallets on a gong.

zoklet-enjoyer 3y ago

This happens to me sometimes, usually if I'm not getting enough sleep because of stress. It sounds kind of like a garbage truck when it sets down a dumpster. Always accompanied by a flash of white light. When I was a kid I thought it was aliens because I would fall asleep listening to Coast to Coast AM.

pyinstallwoes 3y ago

I had this frequently in my early 20's. It is no longer frequent; the last time I got it was about 8 months ago. Prior to that I can't recall. It's weird.

thunderrabbit 3y ago

https://astralhq.com/astral-projection-buzzing-noise/ https://astralhq.com/astral-projection-buzzing-noise/

Obscurity4340 3y ago

Anyone also experience this when vaping cannabis (oil) like randomly?

gpas 3y ago

Is this phenomenon similar to brain zaps? I've experienced something similar but without the pain described on the wiki page about antidepressant discontinuation syndrome. Also I've never taken antidepressants, but those zaps occured always after taking too much chemicals at parties.

wutwutwat 3y ago
Stimulants, or rather the come down from them, are known to cause brain zaps. That's because CNS stims tend to mess with serotonin levels, which is what most antidepressants and anxiety meds are acting on as well, if they are SSRI or the newer SNRI types anyway. Brain zaps are hard to explain, but you know them when you feel them. A lightning storm in your brain that lasts a fraction of a second and by the time you feel it, it's already gone. Weirdest feeling ever.

dysoco 3y ago

I don't think I've ever experienced these loud noises, sounds frightening specially if you are not aware of the syndrome. Sometimes I do experience whilst falling asleep like if I'm in a wind tunnel, it's both a physical sensation of the wind going against me (like freefalling) and also the noise, it's not unpleasant. I've tried several times to stay still and focus on the sensation to induce a lucid dream, however either I end up being slightly frightened, moving and waking up or just falling to normal sleep. Everything dream-related is pretty mind blowing to think about, both how many of us experience such different experiences and sensations, but also how many of us sometimes have almost the same experiences, like the exploding head syndrome, sleep paralysis and it's hallucinations (which in many occasions seem to be around the same for everyone).