Can Hemp Cause Hallucinations?

[Ivan Seeking]

Wolrams story reminded me of one from the National UFO reporting center:

http://www.nwlink.com/~ufocntr/

First, this is nothing like Wolram's story in that Wolram's is interesting; this one is kind of funny and sad. I'm not sure when this took place; I read this a few years ago somewhere in the NRC archieves. The story is told approximately as follows and in the first person. This guy was driving his motorcycle on a winding road; I think in the foothills north of Los Angeles. It is just getting dark when he sees a mysterious light coming straight at him. He swerves to miss whatever it was and runs off of the road. He crashes his bike and is injured, but apparently he remained conscious. After climbing back up the hill and while gathering his wits, he sees an other light coming at him again! The next thing he knows, about dawn I think, he is wakes up in the weeds back down on the side of the hill again. He was quite injured, but he eventually got a ride and made it home. In the end, he mentions that he had been drinking.

After carefully reading his report several times, I realized the most likely version of the missing information:

He was drunk. He first swerved off of the road to avoid hitting another car. The other driver may have never realized this due to the curve. He climbed back up the hill, dazed and drunk, and he then stood in the road where he was hit by another car. From something that he said I deduced that he was probably hit by the passenger mirror of a passing truck.

He concluded that he had been abducted by aliens. In fact, he sounded somewhat desperate.

 

[motai]

Sounds like an unlucky person. Swerving off the road only to get hit by a car again. Ouch.

 

[Jonathan]

Sounds like an idiot to me. Up until your interpretation, I thought maybe it was a hemp induced halluncination. How many times do they have to say not to drink and drive?

 

[selfAdjoint]

In the 1970s, driving on a winding freeway at around 4AM, not drunk but hazy after being waked up to solve a computer problem at work I saw tow lights like headlights coming right at me. I slowed and pulled to the side of the road, but the lights didn't move. Then I noticed that one of the lights was redder than the other, and realized I was looking at the planets Venus and Mars, in conjuction as I had read that they would be.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

When I was in high school, I was fooled one night by Venus and the autokinetic reaction of the eye. This is where a single point of light against a black sky can appear to wander; but it is really just unintended motion of the eye that causes the appearance of motion in the sky. I could have sworn that Venus was wandering all around in little circles. It took at least a few minutes to realize that it was only Venus.

 

[wasteofo2]

Originally posted by Jonathan
Sounds like an idiot to me. Up until your interpretation, I thought maybe it was a hemp induced halluncination. How many times do they have to say not to drink and drive?

You can't actually get high off hemp, it has like a .02% thc concentration and has some other drug in it which inhibits thc acting as it does in marijuana. And if you meant marijuana, it doesn't give you visual hallucinations or cause you to fabricate parts of your memory, all it can do like that is make you forgetful and cause your senses to seem somewhat exagerated (good food will taste better, pleasure will be more pleasurable, things will seem funnier etc.)

 

[Jonathan]

Yes, I meant marijuana, I just didn't want to type that word, it's hard to spell. I think mistaking headlights as UFOs is somewhat exaggerated, don't you?

 

[JackRaven]

UFOs and headlights you say, ah yes that would be drink. Now if you had said UFOs and a peacefull conversation in your mind, well that would be marijuana. Sounds like strong stuff ;)

 

[Jonathan]

I didn't understand that post, but I guess I don't understand what hallucinations marijuana causes either.

 

[radagast]

Originally posted by wasteofo2
You can't actually get high off hemp, it has like a .02% thc concentration and has some other drug in it which inhibits thc acting as it does in marijuana. And if you meant marijuana...

Hemp, among other meanings, is defined as Cannabis aka marijuana. Both via dictionary and colloquial usage.

hemp
PRONUNCIATION: AUDIO: hmp KEY
NOUN: 1. Cannabis.
2. The tough, coarse fiber of the cannabis plant, used to make cordage.
3a. Any of various plants similar to cannabis, especially one yielding a similar fiber. b. The fiber of such a plant.
ETYMOLOGY: Middle English, from Old English hænep


With regards to hallucinations, I know of no one that's experienced them, but in my readings of Hashish usage back at the turn of the century (1900s), at least one writer writes of vivid hallucinations after ingesting several ounces of Hashish. I did not read his accounts (only of them) so I do not know for certain if they were full frontal hallucinations (as vivid would imply) or the auditory and peripheral hallucinations typical of sleep deprivation.