Oh Fuck

[citrakayah]

So.

Today I was in Physics 203A. Physics 203A is, I might add, very boring. The instructor does a decent impression of a monotone and is generally the type of person who, while perfectly nice and decent, is also not the type of person you would want to teach a class.

I'm struggling to remain focus. I'm fairly sure I'm succeeding.

Then I suddenly discover that everything has changed and twenty minutes of passed.

I don't know what happened. That scares me, because I. Don't. Understand. Did I fall asleep? It didn't feel like falling asleep; while falling asleep I have perception of time passing. The case manager working with me things it could have been a seizure, but surely something like that... I don't know, it seems unlikely. And afterwards, I felt ill. Standing up was a fight, and my stomach was in rebellion.

Oh, and the same day I lost my wallet for a while and ran headfirst into a glass wall.

Comments

[siliconshaman]

Two possibilities;
1. fugue state.. not a seizure, just your brain got so bored it stopped processing for a bit.
2. Time drift.. the intervening time didn't exist for you because you came unmoored from consensus reality and drifted.

[citrakayah]

1. Don't know how that would work.
2. How? Seems like it would violate physics.

[siliconshaman]

1. wikipedia on fugue states. Stress will do it, stress combined with the inability to do anything will trigger it.

2. Technically, yes this does violate standard physics, however, in certain quantum theories that may or may not be true [since they're still under investigation etc] it can happen. Ok to keep it simple, the notion of 'consciousness' is basically a standing wave of quantum functions, electrons in cellular microtubles, action potentials across synapses.. that kind of thing.. all of which is entangled. As such, the macro-field of 'you' which is your state of mind.. can kind of quantum tunnel. This can take several different forms, depending on what theory you're operating with, and can include essentally skipping segments of time.

Physically, nothing much happens.. at least in one theory [there's also several rather speculative ones that involve actual bodily movement though dimensions other than the usual spacial ones.] but for span of time your body is on auto-pilot while your consciousness is some place else... or nowhere in particular.

[citrakayah]

1. Maybe. Seems awfully short for one.
2. Roger Penrose and Stuart Hameroff made some pretty severe errors in their assumptions on brain physiology.

[scatteredshells]

I'm not sure of the origins for the theory of #2 but it could be used as a sort of description for #1, really. But rather than calling it a fugue state I'd call it dissociation instead. I don't dissociate thanks to a dissociative disorder (though I do sometimes dissociate during extreme anxiety or a bipolar mood episode) but those do exist -- I dissociate from my surroundings frequently thanks to the ADHD. And when I do space out, time seems as though it ceases to exist, at least from my perceptual angle. Or else it seems to move so slowly. Hence the joking phrase: "in ADHD there are two senses of time. Now, and Not Now."