I get questions all the time about what hearing voices is like. The experience of hearing voices is extremely difficult to describe. I often tell people it is like experiencing a dream, in some ways. People do not actually see or hear things in a dream, but may remember what they saw, heard and experienced, as though it were real. Though nightmares are not real, they are terrible to experience.

Having hallucinations in general is also like seeing a mirage. A driver may really see a puddle of water on the road in front of the car, though the water actually is not there. The puddle is an optical illusion.

Fortunately, last summer, I found this remarkable link on CNN called “Exercise in Empathy: Hearing Voices.” A journalist named Anderson Cooper spent a day wearing headphones that served as a schizophrenia simulator. It is here:

https://www.cnn.com/videos/us/2014/06/09/ac-dnt-schizophrenia-simulator.cnn

From my own experience, I can confirm that the schizophrenia simulator is remarkably true to real life. My voices were as irritating as they are in this video, and sometimes even worse. Cooper notices that the voices can be whispering, aggressive, or even comforting. The schizophrenia simulator created a chorus of voices that were watching Cooper and commenting on what he was doing, all the time, which is true to my own experience. For me, the longer I went untreated, the more characters I heard in my mind, and the more evil the characters became.

I am very grateful for medications available today that can take away voices. Personally, now, I never hear them anymore.

When I really remember how horrible hearing voices was, I believe that I could best compare the experience to suffering with pain. After seeing Cooper suffer from simulated schizophrenia, it’s obvious that a moderate level of pain may be easier to tolerate than the experience of continually hearing voices.