Member-only story
Itching From Unseen Bugs That Aren’t There at All
The sensation of bugs crawling on the skin may be a symptom people don’t want to admit to or avoid discussing.
The man lying in the hospital bed had a look of sheer terror on his face as he attempted to pull himself up from the bottom of the bed. He twitched and pulled the blanket up closer to his face as he pleaded with the nurse. “Make him stop! Make him stop! He’s going to kill me!”
Standing at the foot of the man’s bed, the nurse listened as the man kept yelling, “He’s coming up my blanket, he’s coming up the blanket, he’s…” The man had one last muffled scream and died. Why? Was it the visual hallucination, his long history of alcoholism, his DT’s, or a heart attack from the fear he experienced? The incident was related to me by the nurse who saw him die in his bed that day, and it was upsetting.
One of the most distressing hallucinations, besides auditory and visual ones, is the tactile one resulting from chronic alcohol abuse or some neurologic disorder other than alcoholism. Too many people are unaware that alcohol is a neurotoxin just like formaldehyde, and it poisons the brain and kills brain cells. Formaldehyde, in fact, which was used in many shampoos, is now forbidden to be used because it is absorbed by the scalp and can cause nerve damage.
