There are as many experiences of being high as there are individuals, and people’s physical differences can mean that they encounter a completely altered version of what another person sees.

For those with partial or total blindness, getting stoned can be a rather different experience than it is for those with full sight. Depending on the circumstances, this might mean no visuals at all or completely heightened ones.

“Even though my parents remember me interacting with the world visually for those first three years, I can’t remember any of it, which means to me things like light and color are purely abstract concepts. The first time I tried cannabis was in 2011 in a high school bathroom, much like any other teenage user, I’d expect. I actually didn’t really like it the first time I tried it, mostly because the people I smoked with weren’t ideal people to be around, so they enjoyed egging on the paranoia that’s already at an all-time high for a first-timer. The next time wasn’t until college with significantly better company, and I had the best time. I remember feeling this incredible sense of euphoria, of finding the funny in everything and feeling incredibly positive,” says Delgadillo.

For Delgadillo, the sensation of getting high is entirely physical:

“Sadly I’ve never gotten any sort of visual hallucinations, and that extends to my trying mushrooms and LSD also. My highs are purely bodily. […] I feel a kind of weightlessness from my chest down, like I’m almost floating. […] My muscles, which are usually pretty tense, relax and I feel looser.”

Using the psychedelics and hallucinogens, Delgadillo mentioned elicited a similar response,

“I feel a pretty extreme lightness [when stoned], but with these [drugs] the euphoria is even more intense. Everything suddenly seems to have equal urgency, and everything’s important and amazing and fantastic. I remember once taking a few tabs and then going to the grocery store and being so impressed by every aisle.”

Even without the visual effects, Delgadillo experienced a core element of taking psychedelics and hallucinogens—something that, while not necessarily ego death itself, plays with the borders of the sense of self. “Instead of hallucinations,” he says, “I guess my mind just opens up.”

Though not being able to see seems to turn Delgadillo’s focus inwards, it’s not necessarily always a positive experience:

“One of the pitfalls of doing drugs and not being able to see [is that] the paranoia gets exacerbated by the fact that you can’t see what’s going on around you. This [one] time [during a mushroom trip], for instance, I thought everyone at the pool party I was at was planning on drowning me.”