This question is a lot more common than you'd think
I've gotten it all over the place and the questions is
"what does a blind person experience on psychedelics?"
[sparkle, flapping wings] Woah! Oh, sorry. [laughs]
[music plays]
I really have gotten this question a bunch. People are curious about
can blind people have hallucinations or maybe
could blind people even see on psychedelic drugs. See, here's the thing
I'm blind since birth, right, so I've never seen
therefore my mind doesn't know how to see
my brain doesn't know how to see
so a drug wouldn't be able to make me see.
I mean, if it could don't you think I'd take it every day.
[laughs]
People talk about different things that they see when they take
these kinds of drugs. You know, they see different sort of hallucinations.
They see the walls breathe perhaps.
Or they see trails coming off of things.
None of those things would work for me. Right, it just wouldn't work.
It's sort of like dreaming. Right?
I don't know how to see, so therefore I couldn't dream
that I could see. Right, because again my brain doesn't know
how to do that. However, I think that you
could experience audible hallucinations. In other words,
if you heard a soda machine for example or maybe a refrigerator
or something like this with a kind of a constant whir
that might sound to somebody like a crowd of people
or who knows? Your mind could play all sorts of tricks on you.
[people talking] [music plays]
Sometimes if you stay up for a really long period of time
like all night or even longer. You know, they say people begin to hallucinate
and they start to see things and hear things and like that.
I've never really even had that. You know,
I've like stayed up for a good long time. Many times in my life.
And I've never really had any of that kind of thing. I just get tired, you know what I mean.
And tired and silly. I just get real punchy
and just start saying crazy things and just being a general nut.
I've even heard that people like when they're driving
they start to see things on the road and stuff.
Or driving for a really long time. Your mind starts to play tricks
on you. I think if you do anything for a really long time
your mind is going to start to play tricks on you. See that's the coolest thing
about sight. I mean, there's a lot of cool things about sight
where you can see all kinds of things around you, but it blows
my mind that you see things that don't exist.
You know. I wish I could hear things that didn't exist.
[chuckles] I do.
Like that! Did you hear that?
Nah, me neither. I got you! See I tricked you.
[music plays]
I'm not sure if I've ever seen a movie
that really showed me what this feeling was like.
I supposed The Big Lebowski. Right? There's parts of that where you sort of
going into a different place while they're playing that Kenny Rodgers song.
Like a lot of times when people are taking drugs in movies,
they'll put a little bit of a reverb behind it or maybe some echo and they'll add
some other voices in both channels.
They really don't focus on the audio hallucinations in motion pictures
they're more concerned with the visual ones.
[music continues]
So there have been recordings, for example,
Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, is an incredible,
incredible piece of music. It really is. And it's so well produced.
[heart beating] And there's all sorts of little effects in it. There's heart beats in.
[clocks ticking] There's the bit right before "Time"
with all the clocks and stuff and it gets real quiet and all you can hear is the ticking clocks.
And that one first [clock alarms ringing]
and all the clocks are going off at once. And "The Wall" is really good for that too
from Pink Floyd. Those guys are into that. They're into creating these
like audio illusions
I suppose it's not really an audio illusion.
They're more into putting you in a particular place. You know, having the music
really come alive. So...
maybe listen to The Wall from Pink Floyd. I don't know.
Don't take stuff.
Listen, you take that [beep] you go blind. [laughs]
[credits music]
You know, I guess if you hallucinate, that's one better than halucin-seven.
Yeah, yeah!
Far out, man. Mathematical, man.
Wow. [chuckles]
Later we'll have 'pi' for desert. [laughs]