Is it normal to hallucinate being bipolar?

I get audio hallucinations, sometimes visual, and was wondering if this is normal for people with bipolar to hallucinate?

Also, marijuana worsens these symptoms greatly and causes panic attacks, does marijuana do this to anyone as well?

Hello there.

You've started to see the first pointers that you need to slow your cannabis consumption down. I quit cannabis about a year and a half ago now. While I smoked it sensibly, it had a calming effect. Eventually it got to the point of spending £200 (approx $334) per week on cannabis, and that's where things got tricky.

Anyway. The answer to your question is "Yes" BUT it depends on the type of Bipolar Disorder you have. Typically if you're diagnosed with Bipolar I, you've had some sort of psychosis at some point during your illness. Auditory and visual hallucinations actually occur as a symptom of the mood, rather than Bipolar itself. To put that simply: hallucinations in people with Bipolar due to psychosis are MOST common during manic episode, though psychosis can also occur with depressive episodes also.

Cannabis by itself doesn't necessarily cause psychosis. However, there is SOME evidence to suggest that cannabis may worsen psychiatric illness (especially those that involve psychosis, such as schizophrenia). The panic attacks are most likely traceable to the cannabis use, too. Though once again it's hard to tell: it could simply be worsening an already-present anxiety or panic illness/disorder.

Hope that helps a tad.

I do hallucinate a little when I'm not on antipsychotics, but cannabis does not seem to affect this. If you hallucinate on weed you should maybe consider smoking less or stopping completely. I would think cannabis abuse is bad for your health no matter who you are and what your diagnoses are, but I've also seen studies that show moderate cannabis use has an antidepressant effect, and that cannabis use preceding the onset of schizophrenia lessens the severity of the cognitive impairments that come with the illness.

I've had delusions and hallucinations during depressed and mixed episodes, so yes, this does happen. I also can't smoke mj because it makes me extremely paranoid (though I'm kind of paranoid in general).

Hallucinations can be a symptom of a severe episode (I have mild hallucinations when manic). However, if you are experiencing hallucinations outside of mood episodes it could be something more like schizoaffective disorder. It might be beneficial for you to chart your moods and hallucinations and see if they intersect if you don't already know.

Yes as one diagnosed with Bipolar one I too have had several visual and so far no audio hallucinations

I have mild halucinations pretty much all the time. Plus I get these weird time/space loop experience and flashvisions.

Smoke weed very occasionally and doesn't really seem to have effects on the intensity of my experience.

I read somewhere that it was quite common for adolescents with bipolar disorder, especially men, to hallucinate outside of episodes. Unfortunately I can't find that research article now... But it basically said that experiencing hallucinations when you are not in an episode doesn't have to mean that you fit better in the schizoaffective category. I think DSM disagrees with that notion though.

Edit: I think I was partly wrong. That is if I understood this correctly.

Quote:
"Q
Observation of a mood-incongruent delusion or hallucination often leads to a diagnosis of schizophrenia, particularly in adolescents. What are your views on mood-incongruent psychotic symptoms in bipolar patients?

A
DSM-III, -IIIR and -IV classification systems all allow for mood-incongruent psychotic symptoms in bipolar disorder. A key consideration is that mania is an acute illness, so that a person who is well and then suddenly gets sick in their teenage years is more likely to be manic than schizophrenic. In contrast, the onset of schizophrenia is usually more insidious: patients initially have some anxious or depressive symptoms, then they begin behaving in a peculiar way, and later you can elicit evidence of strange ideas."
First International Conference on Bipolar Disorder

Really not sure about this so I'd appreciate if someone more knowledgeable could share some information with me. I have hallucinations outside of episodes when not on antipsychotics but they don't last for longer than a few seconds.

Yes, I'm just saying in general. I don't think there's any clear categories lol. All of them overlap!

Pretty normal from what I've read here.

I hallucinate badly when depressed, its always these *****y argumentative voices screaming profanities at me. Sometimes I scream back! Lmao

Then I also have milder ones that don't really bug me but does have me questioning my surroundings...
The auditory is usually conversations, music or children singing, visual is almost always smoke or bugs, and the olfactory is always warm rotting flesh (GROSS!!!) These usually present themselves when I'm really stressed and an episode may or may not be looming, but sometimes its random as hell.

I've only ever had a tactile hallucination during a mixed episode, it felt like bugs were crawling all over me, and then under my skin too. Yugh still makes me shudder!

On the subject of MJ, I was a dedicated smoker as a teen up until the age of 19. I just outgrew it I guess?

Then I randomly tried some (read 3 puffs) 3 years ago, got paranoid and upchucked.

Tried it again a year ago ( a different strand) to sleep, I upchucked.

Tried 3 puffs of yet again something different a month ago, guess what? I upchucked.

The general consensus among my peers is that I'm somehow now allergic to cannabis, because clearly my body rejects it at every turn, so I give up trying to smoke the stuff

Like Venus, I have mild hallucinations all the time; seeing people or animals, hearing mumbling, grunting or music, smelling everything from chocolate cake to feces. Every now and then, they get more severe, and I hear a clear voice speaking. This has been happening more lately.

My diagnosis is either bipolar I with psychosis or schizoaffective disorder, bipolar type, according to my therapist.

About a a year ago when I had wicked hypergraphia, I was seeing writing and certain characters all over the place on certain textures. I also see very vivid faces in wrinkled clothing under certain conditions.

These aren't hallucinations though, they're called illusions. I just have very peculiar perceptions of things I'm actually seeing. I wish I could trace or outline them. The images no one else could see were much better than what I can draw

I do the same thing.....see faces, writing, animals etc. in floor tile patterns and even terry-cloth towels. It happens more often when I'm manic because my imagination goes wild, but even when i'm not, I can still conjure up images if I look hard enough.

As for hallucinations, I've had both auditory and visual ones, but only a couple of times and only when I'm severely manic---never in depression. That was how I got bumped up to BP 1 from NOS. The scariest happened in October of last year. I don't normally hear classical music that's never been composed, nor do I lie in bed at night watching lava creep down the bedroom walls. I was afraid to call my pdoc because I was paranoid about going to the hospital; what he actually did was keep me OUT by increasing meds and tossing in a second AP. Luckily the gambit worked, and I came down within a couple of days.

So no, hallucinating is NOT normal, period, but it's certainly not unheard of in bipolar.

That happened to me with tobacco cigarettes! Used to smoke 30 a day, then I stopped for a few months. Got tempted to smoke again so lit one up and yeah I vomited.

Haven't touched one since.
P.S. Cigarettes taste like crap when you're not addicted to Nicotine. Yucky! Don't touch those, kids.

To your question, DrSkipper, if pot worsens your symptoms greatly and causes panic attacks, I hope I'm not having to overstate the obvious in saying you need to not be smoking it then(!)

Some people it does, other people it doesn't.

I like BPN's answer to hallucinating. Not "normal", but certainly not unheard of in BP.
I'd also say it'd be wise not to be inducing it! If you haven't already, you need to stop smoking the weed before you can even know if it you'd otherwise even be having this symptom. Before getting dx'd, people are supposed to get cleared out of drugs they are taking, because a lot of what appear to be BP symptoms can be the drug's effect, not BP. It muddies the waters and makes it impossible to determine what is causing a symptom.

I do this all the time, don't have to be manic-y or even put much effort into looking. IMO, it's cool. And I enjoy it. (And I'll repeat Happy Camper: this phenomenon is NOT hallucinating.)

Yea! Good for you! I was wondering how that endeavor was going.

I've been doing this since childhood, I too am sure its called imagination and not hallucination, but I agree that when hypo I don't have to look hard at all, they're just super clear then.

Everytime I go to the bathroom for instance, I can point out a sheep, a demon, a storm trooper, a rastafarian, and some flowers.

During my 2nd manic episode I heard footsteps walking around our house, I heard a creature with claws walking up the wall, and I awoke once to see a dark figure standing over me that vanished immediately.