Alice In Wonderland Syndrome

AKA Micropsia.

It's a nuerological disorder that I've just discovered I had as a child.
I didn't know which section of the forum to post this in but I'll post here.

I just wanted to share with someone, I've finally found a name and an explanation for something I had as a child that no one could explain.

'Alice in Wonderland syndrome is a disorienting neurological condition which affects human perception. Sufferers may experience size distortion of other sensory modalities. A temporary condition, it is often associated with migraines, brain tumors, and the use of psychoactive drugs. It can also present as the initial sign of the Epstein-Barr Virus (see infectious mononucleosis). Anecdotal reports suggests that the symptoms of AIWS are fairly common in childhood, with many people growing out of them in their teens. It appears that AIWS is also a common experience at sleep onset.

Signs and symptoms
Eye components are entirely normal. The AIW syndrome is a result of change in perception as opposed to the eyes themselves malfunctioning. The hallmark sign of AIWS is a migraine, and may in part be caused by the symptom itself. AIWS affects the sufferer's sense of visual, sensation, touch, hearing as well as one's own body image.

The most prominent and often most disturbing symptom is that of altered body image: the sufferer will find that they are confused as to the size and shape of parts of (or all of) their body.

The eyes themselves are normal, but the sufferer 'sees' objects with the wrong size or shape and/or finds that perspective is incorrect. This can mean that people, cars, buildings, etc. look smaller or larger than they should be, or that distances look incorrect; for example a corridor may appear to be very long, or the ground may appear too close.

In addition, some people may experience more intense and overt hallucinations, seeing things that are not there and misinterpreting events and situations in conjunction with a high fever.'


I only discovered it by accident just now, when someone on another forum posted a topic about the "10 werides diseases". I saw this one and thought wow, I'm sure I had something like that.

So I looked it up some more and all the symptons, the age range, the experience, it all fits.

I now know I'm not just mad, (Or am I? It is of course a brain disorder ) when I was younger no one could tell me what it was and it was put down to tiredness and nightmares. Now I know it wasn't that at all.


it just makes you think. It just kinda changes everything. Knowing what I had and what it was. It actualy makes a big difference to my life, like I can close that chapter now. Because it's been at the back of my mind all my life, wanting to know what it was.

Hmmmm. I had never heard of that.

Any information or ideas about the cause?

Or what made it clear up?

I don't know. All they know is that is usually clears up around the time you hit teens. It did for me.

But some people have it their whole life.

And no idea what causes it... They it can happen if you get a migrane, but I've neve rbeen a migrane sufferer. But my mum has. She suffers with very sevre migranes and she doesn't know why. She's even seen the top doctors in the country and they can't work it out either. But I don't thing she ever suffered with AIWS...

And I'd never heard of it untill today either. I had experienced it but I always put it down to nightmares, I mean I was very young when it happened so, I didn't know how else to explain it.

Do you have a link for AIWS?

I just found all that on Wikipedia

I think I saw an episode of House with that disorder. Very interesting.

I have noticed for a couple of years now..that when I see people off at a distance...maybe a block or so...They look huge...then when I get up close to
them...they look normal..wonder what that is?..ya know..they look really fat
from a distance..but they aren't..or maybe they are and when they get close
they just look smaller?...

I still see thigns differently now, but it's almost subconcious. ~It's like, I'll look at an object, then a few secs later or a minute or so or whatever, I look back and think "Wow that seemed alot bigger or alot smaller a second ago"

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Yeah I'd like to check ou the forum thanks.

And it's really fucked up to dsicover you had a brain disorder of some sort when you were younger, and everyone used to tell you that you were imagining it :/

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Thankyou for the link It's interesting to read that alot of people across the world suffer from this, and it's becomming more widely known. Young children are now being diagnosed with it. I'm fortunate that this pretty much stopped when I hit my teens.

My son was just diagnosed with this. It is very interesting to hear how he describes how things look to him. I been searching for a online support group the focuses just on AIWS but didn't find any. Mostly forums like this one that just has topics. I created my own today hopefully it will take off and will provide help to many.