Olfactory Hallucinations

I've written about olfactory hallucinations a time or two. This also could be called smell illusions, smell deceptions, sensory trickery, odor fantasies. They've been coming and going for me.

It started popping back up -- I'm no good with time -- like a week and a half, two weeks ago. Then it comes and goes, where it's not so bad. Today, right now it's somewhat worse. But nothing is as bad as it was last September and into October. If that ever happens again, I trust I will recognize it as such; in those months I thought it was objectively bacteria in the area.

There are weird smells that I'm smelling, and when I run them by my significant other she says she doesn't smell them. Like my hand, right between my thumb and first finger. It's a bad smell, which is hard to describe. I tried to see if she could discern anything and she said no. Later I said it smells like "a fart filtered through a metal comb," whatever that would smell like. You figure, though, the metal comb would give more of a metallic edge to whatever it comes in contact with. But it's still not descriptive, because who really knows -- there has to be a range of smells that would qualify.

I've been wearing a jacket quite a bit. I've noticed it smelling funky. So I took it and washed and dried it. It smells better, which tells me something. There is something objectively there. And my sense of smell is picking up on it. The tricky part is whether my brain is discerning it in any normal way, such as what the average healthy person would discern. I think that's where the difference is.

This is a subject I'm now interested in. I've read that one of the possible causes for this is brain tumor. Which sounds scary. But doesn't it seem like there'd be other indicators? I'm also wondering if the amount of sleep you get has anything to do with the intensity of the odors. Nothing's charted out. It's all anecdotal. So to speculate at this point would be just to be guessing with not much to go on.

Smell Hallucinations

I wrote about this subject in December, concerning an episode in September (and into October):

I wanted to make note of something, which I imagined once as a lengthy post, that is, when I was in the terrible thick of it. I was in a real quandary with bacteria, at least in my imagination. It's hard now to believe I went through it, but there was so much smelly bacteria surrounding me, in my chairs, my walls, my desk, my floors, my clothing, that I was doing daily battle with it. My weapons to fight back included Oust and hydrogen peroxide. I abandoned two chairs. I Oust-bombed my rooms a few times. It was a difficult time.

Then the other day as well:

My nose might be going through some things. I seem to be going through these periods of smelling things in a more pronounced way than usual. It's like a super sense, except I don't know if everything around me is smelling more or it's just a malfunctioning nose or brain.

Right now is one of those times. There are foul smells everywhere. The last major incidence of this was last September, and it finally had me spraying Oust, wiping things off with hydrogen peroxide, and every kind of disinfectant we happened to have. Then everything went away. But now I'm starting to notice things again. If spring would get here I could open the windows. Till then, I'm staying on guard.

But when I was investigating this back in September, I was searching for things on bacteria, and not on "smell hallucinations." I didn't even know there was such a thing, which is weird because I thought I was doing some extensive searching.

Now I've discovered the phrase, "smell hallucinations," just in time to think I'm having them. It's still not as terrible as it was in September. I even smelled other people in a weird way, terrible stuff. I didn't think I was having hallucinations but I was disbelieving when I asked this other person if she smelled anything and she said she didn't. I just chalked it up to whatever, I didn't know.

Looking up the phrase, though, you see it's an actual thing. And the scary thing about it is that is can be related to a brain tumor or schizophrenia, mental defects, depression, I don't know what all. Maybe I've shut out what it can be related to. I actually seem like someone in picture perfect health, but I guess I'm made of flesh and blood like everyone else.

Right now I can put my hands to my nose and smell like about 10 shades of something mildly putrid, even though I've washed at least a dozen times today, before eating, after going to the bathroom, after taking the dog out, etc. Every once in a while I catch a strange whiff from out of nowhere. And generally, up to a few days ago, I had about 6-9 candles in my office, setting around, lighting one maybe once a day in the morning. But with the latest round of this "smell hallucination" trouble, the scent of all the scented ones has been overwhelming, even sickening. I have them all in a plastic tote, sealed. The candle wax that had dripped and was in my waste basket -- which wasn't bothering me a bit -- I had to get rid of. And the waste basket is gone, because even it was smelling so terrible.

If this means anything, it's interesting, that food smells and tastes exactly the same for me that it always has. So it's not like normal things with normal smells are being accentuated or corrupted. It's just all these additional smells and odors coming from hands, my desk where the candles used to be, etc., that are adding to the mix. Just like in September, sometimes it's mildly pleasurable, but it gets sickening. It's definitely not as sickening now, though, as it was back then. I haven't used any cleaning supplies this time, so far.

That's about it. It's giving me something to think about. I might be the first guy in my family to die from something called "smell hallucinations," if it turns out to be a tumor. Or I might end up in a mental institution, my pet fetish being to carry a dry bucket and be pretend-scrubbing the floors and walls all day.