My mother and I were discussing my new found hobby of fragrances and the subject of hallucinated smells came up.
I've never experienced it but my mother had. It was only for a short time. She was on a couple of medications (I asked her permission to list them): lithium, Effexor and a even a third anti-depressant that she can't remember. Yes, all three at once. She believe it was this combination of drugs that she had experienced phantosmia or hallucinated smells as psychiatric drugs can be tricky.
These odoriferous phantoms weren't unpleasant and I read that they usually are "stinky". In fact, she remembers these smells specifically from her youth. Like the smell of her old dolls (plastic) or the scent of her mother's cooking. Though these were pleasantly memorable smells, they still drove her crazy. She would desperately try to find the source of the smell and never could. Towards the ends of her episodes, she would smell natural gas and become genuinely frightened the house would blow up. I would never smell the natural gas but she'd swear there was a leak.
Her phantosmia only happened a few years ago and never happened again since she's been off the medications I previously stated.
She told her psychologist about it. In his own words, repeated by my mother to me, "I've never heard of such a thing." Well, yeah, it could be hard to believe but weirder things have happened. People openly talk about hearing things, seeing things and to an extent feeling things that aren't really there. Phantosmia is a very rare disorder because it's rarely believed or even reported. There's so little data on the subject.
Here's a short article on the subject.
I've never experienced such a thing but I do notice smells that not everyone else smells. Like the smell of the rain on pavement or the crisp smell of a dry winter day or what I'd like to call the smell of fall (which usually is rotting leaves in wet dirt but it smells good to me). But that is a different olfactory topic altogether.
I felt like sharing this little tidbit of olfactory curiosity. Hope someone finds it useful.
I've never experienced it but my mother had. It was only for a short time. She was on a couple of medications (I asked her permission to list them): lithium, Effexor and a even a third anti-depressant that she can't remember. Yes, all three at once. She believe it was this combination of drugs that she had experienced phantosmia or hallucinated smells as psychiatric drugs can be tricky.
These odoriferous phantoms weren't unpleasant and I read that they usually are "stinky". In fact, she remembers these smells specifically from her youth. Like the smell of her old dolls (plastic) or the scent of her mother's cooking. Though these were pleasantly memorable smells, they still drove her crazy. She would desperately try to find the source of the smell and never could. Towards the ends of her episodes, she would smell natural gas and become genuinely frightened the house would blow up. I would never smell the natural gas but she'd swear there was a leak.
Her phantosmia only happened a few years ago and never happened again since she's been off the medications I previously stated.
She told her psychologist about it. In his own words, repeated by my mother to me, "I've never heard of such a thing." Well, yeah, it could be hard to believe but weirder things have happened. People openly talk about hearing things, seeing things and to an extent feeling things that aren't really there. Phantosmia is a very rare disorder because it's rarely believed or even reported. There's so little data on the subject.
Here's a short article on the subject.
I've never experienced such a thing but I do notice smells that not everyone else smells. Like the smell of the rain on pavement or the crisp smell of a dry winter day or what I'd like to call the smell of fall (which usually is rotting leaves in wet dirt but it smells good to me). But that is a different olfactory topic altogether.
I felt like sharing this little tidbit of olfactory curiosity. Hope someone finds it useful.
