If you'd like to experience the effects of drugs without actually taking any pesky drugs, here's a little experiment that might be right up your alley. These things called Ganzfeld hallucinations are available to you without any shady alleyway dealing; all you need is a pair of headphones and a ping pong ball cut in half. You simply place the ping pong ball halves over your eyes, so you only see diffuse white light, then listen to white noise through the headphones. What happens? Don't take my word for it, let's hear some customer testimonials:
"a clearing in a forest [Lichtung], a place bathed in bright sun-shine, and the trunks of trees around. A feeling of a tranquile summer afternoon in a forest, so quiet, so peaceful. And then, suddenly, a young woman passed by on a bicycle, very fast, she crossed the visual field from the right to the left, with her blond long hair waving in the air. The image of the entire scene was very clear, with many details, and yes, the colours were very vivid." "I can see his face, still, it's very expressive… [I could see] only the horse that comes as if out of clouds. A white horse that jumped over me." "A friend of mine and I, we were inside a cave. We made a fire. There was a creek flowing under our feet, and we were on a stone. She had fallen into the creek, and she had to wait to have her things dried. Then she said to me: ‘Hey, move on, we should go now'." "It was like running a bob sleigh on an uneven runway right down… [There] was snow or maybe water running down… I could hear music, there was music coming from the left side below." "In the right side of the visual field, a manikin suddenly appeared. He was all in black, had a long narrow head, fairly broad shoulders, very long arms and a relatively small trunk…. He approached me, stretching out his hands, very long, very big, like a bowl, and he stayed so for a while, and then he went back to where he came from, slowly."
Whoa, dude. Someone try this out and let's hear how it works. Come on, I know a lot of you don't have anything better to do right now. Do this for science. [Mind Hacks]