Hallucinations of insects are quite prevalent as both visual and tactile hallucinations. It’s actually a
very common hallucination while coming off drugs and alcohol, which I’d believe stems from
entomophobia, a subconscious fear of bugs in relation to picking and scratching at skin from drug
users in a state of psychosis.
During my stages of psychosis I’d have hallucinations and paranoid thoughts around insects which
were flies and cockroaches. Flies were more common and I’d would hear them in my room and
around my head while sitting in bed attempting to sleep, standing up and walking over to turn the
light on, just to find not a single fly in my room yet, the most realistic tactile and auditory
hallucinations of them being around and on me.
These hallucinations weren’t as persistent as other’s due to no foundation for delusions to build on;
compared to for example believing cars following me, where the mind lingers on this process and
builds until there’s a core belief as deep as any other. Yet they could sometimes be the most
disturbing as all when you feel these insects crawling on you and buzzing around your ears, just to
find out that you can’t see any, but there must’ve been one? Then you’re up all night attempting to
find this insect, until your medication puts you to sleep, regardless of a conclusion.
There were two very prominent hallucinations of flies during my psychotic episodes, one being at
home and the other at the psychiatric ward.
While at home attempting to sleep I felt and heard a lot of flies around my head and some crawling
on my skin, standing up really disturbed I went over to the light switch and saw nothing, yet was
convinced, so I tore up my bed to find nothing. These auditory and tactile hallucinations feel so real
it blends with reality making it a mission to find these insects. As I realised I couldn’t find them, I
went back to sleep to be put in the same situation. I pulled out some fly spray from the laundry and
sprayed my room, laid down and it happened again. As I felt confused I went upstairs and asked my
dad to help me find the insects; wanting to sleep he said there was nothing. I wound up sleeping on
the couch because I was terrified of these flies, and the hallucinations stopped.
My stay during the psychiatric ward was long overdue as I descended into a psychotic mess believing
my dad was out to kill me and if I follow what my mind was telling me “they’d” find me, I also had
delusions which were explained in other articles, particularly the martyr article.
When I arrived at the psychiatric ward they were running blood tests and titrating me up on
clozapine as they ran the tests. During this period the clozapine hadn’t quite kicked in yet so I was
still hallucinating and delusional.
On a particular night I was in my room with the lights on and looked over to my suitcase and saw a
lot of flies moving around similar to swarming on a dead carcass, I ran out of the room to the nurses
desk and told them what was happening and that I can’t sleep in my room; they gave me more
medication in hopes it’d stop but the anxiety and fear stopped me from going into my room. I
attempted to sleep on the floor of the nurse’s station and they tried to calm me down. The nurses
went into my room and tried to explain nothing was there, and although I couldn’t see them
anymore I still believed they were there and if I tried to sleep in that room they’d come back and I’d
feel, see and hear them.
I must’ve been up for hours until the sedatives finally forced me to sleep, no matter how wired,
delusional or psychotic, enough antipsychotics and you will be forced into an artificial sleep which
feels far from natural.
The subconscious and its links to psychosis are eerie
