Colin Domnauer examines hallucinatory experience without drugs through perception, expectation, and the mind's tendency to generate vivid altered states

Hallucinatory experience can arise without psychedelic drugs when perception, expectation, memory, and suggestion interact to produce vivid alterations in consciousness. Colin Domnauer centers the idea that the mind can generate compelling visions or unusual sensory realities even when no external hallucinogen is present. This perspective connects non-drug altered states to broader questions about what counts as a hallucination and how consciousness constructs reality. Attention, belief, context, and interpretation shape whether an experience feels spiritual, pathological, or revelatory, blurring boundaries between ordinary perception and states often associated with psychedelics. The wider implication is that psychedelia is not only a pharmacological domain but also a lens for examining imagination, meaning-making, and the instability of perceived reality.