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Oliver Sacks – Hallucinations

In 2008, Tom C .. came to my office for a consultation. He had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease and put on medication………

His first misperceptions occurred when he was in a nightclub; the skin of the other dancers, even their faces, seemed to be covered with tattoos.

At first he thought the tattoos were real, but they started to glow and then to pulse and writhe; at that point he realised they must be hallucinatory. As an artist and a psychologist, he was intrigued by this experience - but frightened, too, that it might be the beginning of uncontrollable hallucinations of all sorts.

Once, while sitting at his desk, he was surprised to see a picture of the Taj Mahal on his computer monitor. As he gazed, the picture became richer in colour, three-dimensional, vividly real. He heard a vague chanting, of the sort he thought might be associated with an Indian temple.

Another day, while he was lying on the floor, frozen by his parkinsonism, the reflections on a fluorescent ceiling lamp started to change into old photographs, mostly in black and white. These seemed to be photographs from earlier days, mostly of family, with some of strangers.

"I had nothing else to do" in this immobilized state, he said, so he happily indulged this mild hallucinatory pleasure.