We have all (I would hope) had fairly unique states of minds from time-to-time. Perhaps from drug use, perhaps from a disability, or perhaps just from a lucid dream.

The most unique mental state in which I have ever been happened under none of these conditions.

Some people have seizures and need to have their left and right brains disconnected, or damage one half of their brains in accidents. This leaves them unable to identify objects even though they can see their colors etc. In the case of separating the brains, if a person looks at an apple with his or her right eye he or she can tell it is red but not an apple, and with the left eye he or she can tell it is an apple but not what color.

When we look at people in these documentaries we can’t help but say, “How can you not see it is an apple?? Just look at the friggin’ shape!”. It is hard for us to understand how they can’t identify an apple, even though prior to their surgery they easily could have. They have known for their whole lives what an apple is.

I was able for a short time appreciate their situation first-hand, and finally understand how it really feels to suddenly be able to not identify anything you see.

One day while staying at a friend’s house I awakened on his couch.

I looked around the room confused. I could not recognize where I was, nor even that this was a room. I believe I did not even have true depth-perception, though I was too focused on figuring out where I was to be sure.

I could see “shapes” such as the straight lines that made the edges of walls and his computer desk and I could see all the colors, but no shape had any meaning as an object.

I continued scanning down the hall, then along the wall back my way with all the computers on a desk attached to it.

Suddenly I noticed movement!

I glanced quickly back down the hall. Yes, something there was moving. I had completely glanced over it the first time, just being another object like all the others.

I studied it as it moved for a while. It was mostly round and a smaller thing moving to the left. What was it?

Finally the right side of my brain “awakened”.

Suddenly I recognized everything, including that moving object. It was the friend at whom’s place I was staying. The first movement that caught my eye was when he leaned back in his chair and I saw his head move. His hand went back and forth from the mouse and keyboard a few times, explaining the other movements I saw.

Not only could I not recognize it was my friend, I could not even recognize it was a human. Until he moved I couldn’t separate him from any other colored figure around me.

This has only happened once and is not caused by any underlying conditions; just a very very rare delay in waking activity on one side of the brain, but it gave me insight into how some people with damaged right hemispheres have to live their lives. Like the man who can’t recognize faces and can’t find his own wife at the grocery store if they separate or those who can’t say it’s an apple by looking with just one eye.

When you live your whole life with 2 hemispheres that are always in full communication it is hard to understand these types of conditions, and I am glad for the insight and that it was only temporary in my case.

In what was the strangest mental state you have been?

L. Spiro

I have a rarely occurring state of mind where I feel like everything I'm doing is automatic, and I can just "sit back" and watch myself take care of things automatically. It's not like an out-of-body experience. My viewpoint and awareness is unchanged. I'm not tired and haven't used any drugs (ever) other than caffeine. It happens in the middle of the day after I've been awake for several hours.

This happens mostly at work when I'm in very technical conversations about games we're making. It feels like I'm watching an automation tool I created have my conversation for me, and I can just relax and let it take care of the work with the occasional check to make sure it's not screwing up somehow. Except it really IS me having the conversation. And then I'm overwhelmed by how weird the disconnected/autopilot feeling is. I never get the feeling that there's another person inside my head or anything, either.

It's like noticing yourself subconsciously performing an action like scratching an itch, except it doesn't interrupt the action, and the action is MUCH more complex than a reflex.

It only happens for about 15 seconds at a time, once every few months or so.

I've had similar experiences that Nypyren relates. Quite exact to be honest.

Sometimes this happens even while coding, I start coding and suddenly I woke up to see a lot of well written code I have no idea of (but I remember myself typing me as in a third perspective); as if someone else had written it.

The closest thing I've found so far to what I experience is called: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depersonalization

My experience differs slightly from what the Wikipedia entry describes, but it's very close. I never feel like I'm dreaming or waking up when it happens. Nothing is vague or hazy. I'm always amazed how weird it feels when it happens, but I don't feel any need to panic. I don't feel like I've lost control.

It's as if I begin the conversation voluntarily, then think "maybe I don't need to make any conscious effort in order to continue", so I stop making the conscious effort to see what happens, and I actually continue talking properly! That's when I suddenly notice that it's happening. It's literally like half-jokingly pressing an "autopilot" button that you're sure is fake and being surprised when it works.

The weirdest state of mind i had was probably when i took 3 dose of lsd as a teenager, no kidding. All i can remember is that it was the night, and at some point i felt into a some hole in the ground about my height, in the mud, because the town was doing something there, dunno what. Hopefully, i managed to get out pretty easily, but i had mud all over one of my leg... It could have ended way worst when i think about it. Then, not wanting to get home so f***ed up, i slept in grass for like what seem like an eternity, probably an hour or so, before i got bored and got home anyway. I just got into my room quickly, changed up, and listened to music, my mom came see asking some question i dont remember, but never noticed a thing, lol.

God the music was "beautiful" that night.

I swore to myself ill never do that again after this, that trip was insane... It's soo mentaly exausting, and then, you're tired, and you want to sleep but you can't, your eyes refuse to close, the slightest noise or light is too stimulating to let you sleep. Haven't done that since that time i think, except magic mushroom once or twice, but that's like comparing light beer and vodka. Now that i've grown up i of course giving up that shit, only smoking the occasional weed, that's much more relaxing hehe. Still, i dont regret it, it was a fun experience, and damn metallica never sounded so good!

One day while staying at...

Wow, that sounds very interesting. Does this experience have a name to it?

The closest thing I've found so far to what I experience is called: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depersonalization

My experience differs slightly from what the Wikipedia entry describes, but it's very close. I never feel like I'm dreaming or waking up when it happens. Nothing is vague or hazy. I'm always amazed how weird it feels when it happens, but I don't feel any need to panic. I don't feel like I've lost control.

It's as if I begin the conversation voluntarily, then think "maybe I don't need to make any conscious effort in order to continue", so I stop making the conscious effort to see what happens, and I actually continue talking properly! That's when I suddenly notice that it's happening. It's literally like half-jokingly pressing an "autopilot" button that you're sure is fake and being surprised when it works.

Wow. That's cool.
If it was a magical movie, i'ld call it astral projection.

In what was the strangest mental state you have been?

I've had some great ones. Great as in "really big", not as in wonderful.

First, I've got classic bipolar disorder so everything is fun and exciting, even on medications. For about 3 weeks I get manic. The simple description feels inadequate. Undrugged, manic means I can do anything. It is an incredible high. I am invulnerable. Consequences don't exist. Spending money is easy. Skipping work is easy, just leave the house and go elsewhere. Fun times. The depressed side also has an inadequate description. Everyone has days where they feel blue or grumpy. Most people have a few weeks or months as a teenager where they reach a level of clinical depression. Baby blues, having a "complex" grief (a serious type of depression rather than normal grief) after someone dies, and a small number of other conditions reach this level. You cannot do anything. You don't care about doing anything. You never cared about doing anything and you will never care about doing anything ever again. It is far worse than the seemingly mild teenage depression most people go through; it is completely overwhelming and incapacitating to the point where tasks like eating and simple hygiene are neglected because you just can't bring yourself to care enough that you haven't eaten for two days, but a drink of water might be nice. And then eventually you get out of the depression, and realize that you are going to go through that again, several times each year, for the rest of your life... Fortunately we have drugs for that, so I can be stable enough to have three very productive weeks followed by three less productive weeks where all of my extra energy is spent on maintenance.

So yeah, that is fun.

But the strangest was about at age 20, when I was under a very severe physical and emotional set of traumas. Everything went bad. Couple it with bipolar and things got worse than bad. It got worse and worse until I shut down. The name is "derealization", although the Wikipedia page has nothing on what it feels like. It is similar to depersonalization, only much stronger and directed outward instead of inward. Basically you are a person who exists, but you aren't that person. Everything around you is fake. There are no people, no trees, no anything, just things that do things. Everything is just a thing. There are things everywhere. Plants are things. Cats are things. Cars are things. Beds are things. Most things are really annoying and they don't go away. A few things are nice and comforting (such as pillows and blankets and dark rooms), but most things are painful; things are painfully bright, things are noisy, things are emotionally grating, things are painful to touch. Things have color, but it isn't interesting enough to care about. Time isn't a thing. Time is just how many things have bothered you. You exist near yourself, like a disinterested intelligence that has merged with a body but isn't really that body. When people say to eat, you make the body eat. When people say to go to bed, you make the body lie down. When people say to bathe, you make the body bathe. High level functioning is completely gone, but according to people around me I was able to do things like read and write when told to, but more like a recitation than comprehension. I spent the time thinking about myself and the things around me, thinking about everything but not actually doing anything. People would talk to me and I would think about responses along the lines of "That person would say blah blah", and then sometimes the words would come out of that person's mouth. My wife described the behavior as a panicked zombie, but not in a funny way. According to my wife, my family, and doctors who were called in when I quite literally shut down I was gone for about six weeks. It felt like I was gone for over a year. Eventually enough of the stress was gone and my wife and family was able to talk me out of that bizarre place.

I've read about the effects of various psychedelic drugs, and their descriptions have NOTHING on what I experienced.

That was by far the strangest mental state I have ever been in. Sometimes I really miss it.

The strangest thing that has happened to me is when I wake up and can't remember how to use my muscles for a few minutes.

This thread reminded me (I had completely forgotten all of this, until now!) that occasionally when I was a kid, through to my early 20's, becoming more and more rare over that period, I used to have weird, short experiences that I would describe as "everything sounds angry". These would happen maybe once a year.

I've never actually looked this up before, so I just googled that phrase and found the first few links there's a lot of other people describing my exact experiences, but no one knows a name for it. The first one has multiple people reporting the same thing, but the other two links don't seem to find any responses from people who understand.
http://www.medhelp.org/posts/Neurology/Surroundings-becoming-weird-and-fast-intense-loud/show/1097402?page=1
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080528045810AAxwGKs
http://forums.psychcentral.com/other-mental-health-discussion/114941-everything-i-hear-sounds-angry.html

i just had my most intense episode about 10 minutes ago when i was shaving, shaving is usually relaxing for me, but rather than just a light shave it was more like an intense, angry rain forest massacre with metal music and the crazy screaming of mundane things in my head like..."HMMM BETTER TAKE A BIT OFF THE MOUSTACHE.......I"LL DO MY SIDEBURNS TOMORROWW!!!...."

It's like how part of our brain is really good at seeing faces, so we see them in all sorts of patterns easily -- I guess in the same way, we must have a part of the brain that's really good at guessing the emotional state of someone who's speaking to us (i.e. empathising with the speaker).

In these experiences, that part of the brain seems to go into overdrive, and it starts empathising with everything, and informing oneself that the object that is causing the sound is angry/agitated/frustrated. The object doesn't have to be a person -- no matter what it is, it becomes anthropimophized as being angry.
At the same time, everything is louder and faster, and the sense of hearing is heightened. It's like the world is in fast-forward, while actually being the same speed.
However, the actual perception of sound is unchanged. I objectively know that the sounds are exactly the same as normal... but they're simultaneously louder and faster (I know that doesn't make sense... words fail!).

Footsteps sound normal, but my brain says "those footsteps are frustrated". Someone talking to me will sound completely normal, and I know they're not upset, but at the same time, it sounds like they're yelling... My thoughts or inner voice is in all caps. I'm aware of the sound of my own breathing, or heartbeat, and I know that they're calm breaths, but they sound like the calm breaths are angry --- not the calm breaths of an angry person, but that the inner emotional state of the breaths themselves is anger.

Initially I was confused and probably frightened (I can't remember how young I was when this first happened) and I used to try and make it go away as soon as possible. I realised that if you just distracted yourself, it would go back to normal, like forgetting about a mosquito bite. Or if I spoke to someone, it would go away pretty quickly
However, they were so rare and I was so inquisitive that very quickly these episodes became a great curiosity. Instead of making the experience stop, I would focus on the sounds and try and make it last as long as possible to study it, because it was so... eldritch, otherworldly. I always tried to find a pattern behind the cause of these, but couldn't find anything common, besides maybe being tired, and I was always alone (or if with others, in silence, e.g. reading) when it came on.