#550 axelnight

"Can anyone controls any aspects of snow/static? This was the question I was pondering in bed last night, enough so that I decided to look it up. Though, the question was 'what do other people draw in the static' not 'can they'. I stumbled upon the Visual Snow Wikipedia page, and as you can probably guess, came to the realization that normal people don't draw in the static, or even see it for that matter.

Since I was little, I used to amuse myself by drawing rainbowy lines on the ceiling. Straight lines are easy, and I can usually keep 3 or 4 going at once. Usually just shy of enough to make a full star. Curves, circles, and the like are a bit more difficult. I can usually shape and direct the static as a whole (though not make it go away) to flow in general directions or make a tunnel effect. Or, I can draw in it with my finger, though that doesn't last very long.

One I'm sure most people can do with falling floaters (not the crazy moving ones) is if you go out when it's sunny, stare at the sky so they're good and visible, then flick your eyes up quickly. You can juggle them and make them dance.

It's good to know that I'm not completely nutters in the noggin for doing this all my life."

(axelnight [subject #550], Yuku forum Visual snow or static - General discussions - Can anyone controls any aspects of snow/static?, March 30, 2008)

"1. Name or screen name (optional): Axel Night, to people of the Internet.

2. Email (optional):

3. Location (optional): Northern North California (as in not San Francisco)

4. Age: 26

5. Sex: Male

6. Nationality and Race (optional): USA, Half-Swede

7. Do you have classic migraine (migraine with aura) or common migraine (migraine without aura)? When did it begin?

I'm told I have headaches more than a normal person, though I never quite considered them a migraine. They're usually not severe, though tend more towards annoying. Given between the two choices, I'd have to say classic. They go back pretty far, so I can't give a date. It's always just been that way.

8. What do you take for your classic or common migraine and does it help?

Nothing, usually. At their worst, I've taken various over the counter pain medications, but none have ever really worked, for the headaches or anything else, so I've mostly given up on them.

9. Have you been diagnosed with persistent aura (prolonged migraine aura status)?

Nope. I've never had it looked at, though.

10. What is your visual problem and how long does it last?

I never paused to consider it a 'problem'until a few days ago, when I discovered on the web that everyone else wasn't seeing it. I have snow/static, equally over just about everything all of the time. Darker surfaces are more noticeable, but it's visible anywhere. There are also the 'firefly' style lights that buzz around in bright lights, and slowly falling floaters that slowly drift downward. The latter are usually simple specks, but sometimes they're more complicated, like bits of string or knots. I think there are mild after-images, but it's hard to say. As I mentioned in my first post, I can easily imagine rainbowish shapes and blurs in the static and they take shape, and so by looking for after-images, I could very well be forcing them more than they are already there. This has been a lifetime situation, so it's difficult to say what is just a case of normal imagination.

11. Any other problems that you think might be related?

I'm somewhat colorblind, though that's common enough on its own. A psychology graduate told me I show strong symptoms of depersonalization, which my own research seems to heavily back, but I've never seen a doctor to have that officially diagnosed. It's also something that dates back pretty far, so I haven't felt the need to venture against it. I also get pretty bad night blindness, because the static becomes too pronounced in the dark to make out any other features. There's also very mild tinnitus, which isn't really a problem with all of the time I spend working around electronics that make similar buzzes and whines.

12. What do you take or do for your vision problem and does it help?

Nothing. I can see how it might be bothersome to someone who transitioned into it, like a TV channel that never quite comes in right, but I find it pretty easy to ignore. Maybe that's why I don't bother paying for cable. No wait, that's because I'm cheap.

13. Have you found a trigger for your vision problem?

No, it's persistent.

14. What tests have you had and the results?

Nothing outside of traditional vision tests, which I normally score well enough to avoid needing visual aids. I did have glasses for farsightedness when I was eight, but they did little more than give me a headache and they took them away a year later.

15. Drug history (pre VS):

I honestly can't remember pre VS. I had an allergic reaction to Amoxicillin at a young age, but I can't remember that far back.

16. Drug history (post VS - effect on VS - negative, positive, not at all):

Very little. I suppose it's obvious at this point I haven't had a very vast medical history, and I don't see doctors very often (both for personal and financial reasons). Most over-the-counter medications have very little effect on me, so I don't tend to use them either. I had one encounter with a hallucinogen, with very little effect. Many of the things that were described to me that I should have been experiencing raised a few questions, since they were normal, daily experiences for me (both in a visual and depersonalization sense). The VS holds steadfast through it all. I drink some, but only started in the past few years (I got a late start). No noticeable effect on VS there either.

17. Do you have a positive family history for migraine? If yes, who is affected?

I believe my mother, and possibly, to a lesser degree, her mother. I can't say for certain, though.

18. Other information you want to provide?

I believe that about covers it, unless you have further questions."

(axelnight [subject #550], Yuku forum Visual snow or static - General discussions - axelnight, March 31, 2008)

ipdonkey, Numb Trailer - Depersonalization Disorder, 2008 (see here)

"I've been waiting on this movie [ipdonkey, Numb Trailer - Depersonalization Disorder, 2008 (see here)] for a while. It premiered at some film festival, then seemed to have disappeared from the face of the earth. Now, I hear it's being released on DVD in May of this year. Happy times!

Edit: Here we go, this is it at Amazon. They say the release date is May 13th, 2008.

While I've seen lots of cross-over between VS and DP, they still seem to be very separate conditions. I've seen snow for as long as I can remember. I can vaguely remember looking at the 'snow' while playing in the snow at the age of two. I've never had reason to believe it was out of the ordinary until I was told otherwise. While I felt similar about my depersonalization-like symptoms, I always had a gut feeling something wasn't right there. I can also pinpoint their beginnings several years later into my childhood.

I've got Feeling Unreal somewhere around here. It's not a bad book, though far more detailed than I could handle. If you're curious, it's not cheap, being a hardback, but it's very thorough and more up to date than many resources.

Some people who feel they have depersonalization talk about 'seeing the air', which seems to sync well with the descriptions of visual snow. Both tend to get the medical cold shoulder for being what some consider to be inaccurate, out of date, or non-existent in most primary medical resources. I experience (not so much 'suffer from', aside from an unstable mood and occasional anxiety) what seems to be both as a day to day matter. I don't really consider the snow a factor in my depersonalization-symptoms. I have other visual cues that only show when those seem to flare excessively, such as a foggy, white haze that can be seen in certain conditions that it otherwise wouldn't."

(axelnight [subject #550], Yuku forum Visual snow or static - General discussions - Movie about depersonalization/derealization, March 31, 2008)

"If I had to pinpoint that depersonalization 'breaking point', when everything seems to turn upside down one morning, I was 12, so it was a long while back. That puts it in 1993. I was pretty young, so it's really just become a factor of life by this point.

The tinnitus is very mild, both ears. It's also something that's always just been there, and I thought it was normal.

The after-images are almost not worth mentioning. If I get or notice them, they're negative, but they don't really stand out.

Generally, yes, I only see the haze when the depersonalization symptoms feel more pronounced. It is as if everything is in a faint fog, and slightly brighter. It seems to show in florecent lights most often, but not exclusively.

I'll try to do a few pictures here. I'm not a graphical expert, but here goes.

This is the normal picture I started with. Note that it is clean and has proper furniture. That's most definitely not my room.

Here, I try to add the snow. It's not totally accurate, but it gives a decent impression. It's fairly colorful static, like someone blew up a rainbow. I'm not sure I got the intensity right, but it does seem to vary.

This is an attempt to draw the depersonalization haze. I don't ever pay attention to it and the snow at the same time. I'm not overly fond of this picture either. Basically, it should look like there's a light fog in the room, like someone was burning something on the stove, and there's sunlight coming through the window to illuminate the smoke.

And lastly, this is the shapes. I grossly over-exaggerated the static and size of the shape because it was the only way I could make something reasonably visible in my image editor. Basically, the static is already fairly colorful, but scattered. When I warp the static, it can create slightly more solid lines of rainbows, similar to what I did in the image editor to make the shape in the top right. The lines would be much much thinner on a real-life scale, but that wouldn't be visible on a small image like this. The colors also tend to have that curve or a pointed cresent shape within the lines, moving along like an arrow. I never really used to give them much thought. As a kid, when I would lay in bed, not wanting to get up, I would stare at the ceiling and playfully draw the lines around like they were lasers, or connect the holes and marks like I was playing connect the dots."

(axelnight [subject #550], Yuku forum Visual snow or static - General discussions - axelnight, April 3, 2008)

"Using my finger to draw lines probably wasn't the best example. It works, but generally just relaxing, staring at a mostly solid surface (like a wall, ceiling, or especially darkness), and imagining what I want gets the best results. The triangle in the last picture is the closest I've been able to reproduce so far in an image. Generally, any shape I make is really just a few lines intersecting. I can't make solid shapes.

How I go about it, I can't say for certain. It's really a subconscious process. I think I'm basically pushing and distorting snow together into a line, like two fronts meeting, rather than actually creating new artifacts in my vision. I can't really say for certain, though. I'll continue trying to get a reasonable illustration together, but for now, nothing is coming out right.

The one hallucinogen would be about two years ago, so 2006. It was a fungus of some kind."

(axelnight [subject #550], Yuku forum Visual snow or static - General discussions - axelnight, April 4, 2008)

"I have to think of the individual lines that make up the triangle."

(axelnight [subject #550], Yuku forum Visual snow or static - General discussions - axelnight, April 4, 2008)

top