Today, I got the first pair of glasses in a few years. Usually I wear contact lenses all the time, and that’s been my way of life for 13 years or so. I thought it would be a good idea to have a pair of glasses on hand though, and I’ll be taking a long flight next week where I’ll want to nap, so glasses are optimal.
Anyways, I put them on a few minutes ago and my vision is…weird. My field of vision is like all concave and funhouse mirror-like. And things seem smaller than they should be. I’m wondering if I need to adjust to having glasses instead of contacts or something. These glasses are small and rectangular so there is a frame of vision not covered by the lens around the outside. Is this what is making everything curvy? Or did the optician fuck up?
They aren’t making me feel sick or anything, things just look funky.
Any change of lenses or prescriptions is necessarily going to make your vision a little wonky until your eyes adjust. I don’t know for sure but switching from contacts to glasses is probably exacerbating the sensation.
It’s completely normal. The greater your correction is, the more exaggerated the distortion will be. Your brain will eventually compensate for it, but I suspect that if you only wear your glasses occasionally, you will experience the same phenomena.
Same thing happened to me when I got glasses after years of wearing only contacts. Since I had a pretty strong prescription, it was enough to make me feel somewhat motion sick. I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to wear them at all, but the doctor assured me that it would pass. But for a while there, it didn’t pay to turn my head too quickly!
Has your prescription changed? Because the more your prescription has changed, the more switching glasses will upset your equilibrium.
Try putting the glasses on first thing in the morning after a good night’s sleep. If things still seem all funky and funhouse mirror-y, take yourself and your glasses back to the optician and get them checked. But if things aren’t so funky and funhouse mirror-y, or at least are less so, then you are ok.
At least, that’s my experience–although when I hied myself to the glasses place within 24 hours of getting the glasses, it’s because the frame didn’t fit right because a charming idiot had assisted me while chatting with too many other people. And I’ve never worn contacts. But glasses which are a different shape, have different amounts of space which isn’t covered, and most importantly, different prescriptions can be disorienting and take some getting used to.
I just had the exam last week and my prescription didn’t change at all. In fact I’ve been wearing the same Rx for around 3 years now. The only change is an astigmatism that developed a few years ago. It’s so minor that it isn’t even worth correcting - I just have slightly less sharp vision in my right eye.
I’m glad to see that others have experienced this. The distortion seems to be going away a little bit. I’ll try them first thing in the AM with fresh eyes also, thanks for that suggestion Eureka.
(One drawback: I diced two onions a little while ago. Seems the contacts were providing a nice barrier against it, 'cause I just cried like I never have chopping onions.)
Agreeing with the posters above, yes, this is normal. Of course, if it continues for more than a day or so, you may want to go in and have the lenses looked at. I wear glasses all the time, and get a little bit of that feeling whenever I get a new prescription. My mom and sister both wear contacts primarily, and cite what you are talking about as the reason they wear their glasses rarely, as it takes some time for the eyes to adjust and gives either a headache or makes them feel a little wonky.
It seems odd to me. I’ve been wearing contacts since I was 15 years old. I’m 27 now, and I have astigmatism too. I can switch from contacts to glasses with ease. No blurring, no funhouse effect. No difference, really. I’ve gotten new prescriptions over the years and it’s never happened. YMMV.
Yeah, the “new glasses effect”, I call it. Hopefully they were better today. If not, I’d check back with the optometrist.
I get it whenever I get a new pair of glasses, even when I’m not wearing contacts. When I was a kid, I thought it was great fun. (Then I discovered drugs. ;))
I don’t generally get it switching between contacts and glasses. I do occasionally get a very short, very mild version if it’s been a really long day or few in contacts.
FWIW, I have a very high prescription for both myopia and astigmatism. I think my friends that don’t need as much correction don’t have as many problems with NGE.
It could be both. When I got new glasses a few years ago I switched to a narrow lens style. They didn’t feel right so I went back to the eye doctor and it turned out the center point for the lens was not the same as the center point of my eye. Once that was fixed there was still a fairly odd adjustment period since the are of corrected vision was so much smaller than I was used to. I did manage to adjust and they felt fine afterwards.
Whenever I get new glasses, I feel a little taller than I actually am for a few hours. I have tripped over some curbs and other things because of it. And things do look a little smaller. So I guess I would say it is normal too. But you adjust pretty quickly.
I had a change in Rx a couple of years ago, and things were so wonky and especially curvy, that I couldn’t wear them at all. I have an astigmatism, and when they correct the astigmatism in the lenses, they’re not required (by law) to get it perfect; they only have to get it close. (There’s a fancy term for it, but I forget what it is.) Most people are fine with this. Anyway, I need the correction spot-on perfect or it doesn’t work.