Hearing Informed

Mind altering substances of many kinds may have something to teach us but they’ve been mostly dismissed, demonized, and cast into broad legal categories that aren’t meaningful.

I had a curious experience a number years ago with one of these schedule 1 substances that led to a bit of an epiphany. No, I didn’t discover the meaning of everything; nor did I experience some radical realization that I needed to join Scientology to save my thetan. My discovery was far more pragmatical and relevant.

I was with several friends at the time (in Spain) and hanging out talking away about everything and anything. We had just ingested a small amount of Psilocybin because Nancy Reagan had told us not to. Several of the people I was with were Spanish speakers and were going in and out of English and Spanish. With my hearing aids and limited Spanish skills I was able to communicate with them in both languages (English being far easier of course).

As the “drug” kicked in I rapidly lost my ability to communicate in Spanish and eventually English too. I had the sense that my ears were taking in the sounds rather undistorted but all the abilities I had before ,to make up for my hearing loss and understand people, were gone..vanished. I couldn’t readily make sense of the syncopations and rhythms that make up everyday speech. I also couldn’t lip read nearly as well. So I was suddenly left with my ears, as they were, and no backup.

Before this experience I understood that I had a lot of unconscious habits that made up for a hearing loss but I didn’t really appreciate the extent to which they helped me talk with others. The way someone stood, the accents placed on words and sounds, the lips, and all the little expressions that a person gives were crucial to my understanding of language. Now that my mind was overwhelmed with unfiltered sensory experience- like the floodgates were simply opened- I lost most of these skills. It was rather disconcerting to experience the first time- confusion and panic were present. People were saying things to me and I really wasn’t “hearing” anything. At this point everybody was able to communicate with each other fairly well except for me. I was left with sound but no communication abilities. Its worth noting that everyone could reach this state eventually- I just reached it far sooner. It took me a good amount of time to accept the situation as it was and just give up communication for the while. As a side note: it would have been interesting to see if the same thing would have happened with sign language. Would I have kept communicating with my hands far longer than I could deal with speech? My guess is: yes.

The experience showed me that “hearing” is far more than just my ears with their eardrum and inner ear parts. Hearing and communicating are truly complex experiences that combine cognitive functioning, sound, and even sight. I think most hearing impaired people know that they have to use it all- one thing that isn’t there just leaves the brain with extra space to do something else

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