# Sanity check needed:  smelling smoke or hallucinating?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sanity-check-needed-smelling-smoke-or-hallucinating/724410>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [July 6, 2015, 7:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sanity-check-needed-smelling-smoke-or-hallucinating/724410 "2015-07-06T19:18:13Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![IaMoDiNaRy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/cc9497/32.png) [@IaMoDiNaRy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/IaMoDiNaRy)\
**Post date:** [July 12, 2015, 3:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sanity-check-needed-smelling-smoke-or-hallucinating/724410/21 "2015-07-12T03:13:50Z")

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Last winter I started smelling weird things that weren’t there. This went on for several months and was very irritating! Smoke was the main smell but sometimes it was just a nauseating unidentifiable smell. I started researching a bit on the internet and discovered I definitely wasn’t alone and I kind of figured my sinuses were involved.

I read on several medical web sites that not drinking enough water daily could cause the sinuses to dry out thus the weird smells in the nose. I definitely wasn’t drinking very much water at the time since it was the middle of winter. I increased my water intake by quite a bit and in a couple of days all of the phantom smells disappeared, thank goodness!

I haven’t experienced the problem again since I’ve made a point to drink plenty of water daily even if I don’t really want it. You never know, this could be the cause of your problem, also.

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