Close. Let’s say I’m in the Sahara Desert, and all I see around me is a sandy surface (the ground, in other words), the clear blue sky, and the sun. Instead of a sandy surface, I want to see, for lack of a better example, a surface made from Munchkin bodies. Instead of a blue sky, I want to see maybe a green sky. Instead of a sun, I want to see (once again, for lack of a better example) a flying Bigfoot like creature. More like another world, or a fantasy world.
Full-field-of-view is the experience I’m looking for!
A good four or five hours on LSD playing Road Rash on a Sega Genesis, did that to me in 1992.
I think I probably had the same dream of being on a motorcycle, accelerating to stupid ridiculous 200mph+ speeds, and then crashing horrendously, maybe 100 times in one night.
Grrr missed the 5 minute window…
ETA: of course, I was playing a motorcycle game named Road Rash. If you were tripping and playing a game with green skies and Munchkin bodies, then who knows? I know you said without drugs, but maybe the drugs aren’t the other universe, maybe it’s in the subsequent dreams. So maybe they still count. Heh.
A pair of glasses that impose an artificial rendering over the external world. Mine are configured to insert random glimpses of fantasy creatures. You can download stories to overlay and interact with your reality, like a Heinlein novel. That is a bit freaky though - nearly ran in front of a bus running to escape a demented pixie. Best just skinning the real world without the critters. I like an iridescent sky with light blue clouds, metallic gold roads and concrete with jewel encrusted buildings. These Eyes of the Overworld also use the google goggles app to give a head up display with information about the underworld that you live in.
Computer/video games are a good escape for me. Gritty crime drama (Grand Theft Auto IV), fantasy (Skyrim), other planets (Planetside 2), crazy puzzle worlds (Portal.)
Without resulting to drugs, someone who is well practiced in meditation can have experiences somewhere between waking dreams and hallucinations. In a few cases, when I practiced it regularly, I had some experiences while meditating that were nearly indistinguishable from actual events. Similarly, if you have a well enough practiced imagination, reading, music, other arts or even simple day dreaming may work to some extent.
Other than those, you’ll just have to result with technology, and there are some reasonable 3D types of technology these days and it’s young enough that I’d expect it to improve fairly quickly in the coming years.
You could build a Harmonic Universal Quantum Cosmological Oscillator, which would allow you to create a doorway to travel between the trillions of bubble universes branching off of ours every second.
You’ll need plenty of aluminum foil, PVC tubing, at least eight microwave coils and access to millions of kilowatts of power. Oh, and an egg timer, don’t forget the egg timer…
Some possibilities for you: (varying degrees of usefulness and humor)
Google goggles.
Lucid dreaming. (this might be the best answer, you can actually improve to the point where you can control the dream and KNOW that it’s a dream)
IMAX
A telescope.
A microscope.
SCUBA gear.
Halo 4 and a 70" TV.
One of those racing arcade games with screens all around you.
Your imagination.
A 4-D movie at Disney World.
Yes, actually.
Mental Illness should fit the bill. I imagine certain brain tumors could cause one to hallucinate. Dreams and drugs may be safer, but lots of things produce that effect.
Pleas not that “safer” is a relative term. Something that kills 90% of the people who do it is “safer” than something that kills 99% of the people who do it, but still is probably going to kill you.
“Safer” does not mean safe.
No, we haven’t.
I have been so immersed in the movie that I forgot about the people I was there with, I forgot that there were other people in the theater, but I have never lost track of the fact that I was sitting in a chair, watching a picture on a screen, or that the picture I saw was per-recorded and scripted.
Frankly, it is a rare movie that can get me so immersed that it can hold my attention enough to keep me from checking my watch. I am not only aware I am in a theater, I am actively thinking about what I’ll be doing once the movie is over.
Well if all you want is a cure for boredom, you can live with some pretty weak sauce.
I’d have to go with books. In any of the weak sauce examples you aren’t going to be “experiencing an alternate reality” so much as “consciously fantasizing about what it would be like to experience an alternate reality”, and books present the story at a pace of your choosing, unlike recorded media (movies, audio, etc) where the rate the information flows at is preset, and may be either too fast or too slow, depending upon your mood and other factors.
Plus, the special effects inside your own brain are usually better than the stuff Hollywood uses.
