So a week ago, I posted that I was suffering with parosmia. Parosmia is the receptors in the brain growing back but in a different way from before so that you forget what stuff smells like. Stuff like bacon, beef, pork etc. smells like swamp. So. I bought a bunch of essential oils and started huffing that shit. "Sir, you're going to have to leave my store" is such an annoying phrase! Anyway, I got about 20 bottles of clinky clanky juice and take that crap to my house. I start out opening each bottle and inhaling. I feel like I could speed this up somehow. I fill a spray bottle with some stank ass rubbing alcohol (the worst smell of them all!) and a capfull of essential oil. I start spritzing the mixture on my shirt so that the fumes can waft up in tendrils up to my nostrils. Swamp, mixed with rose petals, cool.
I do this every 30 or so minutes for a couple days, concentrating on rose petals. Son of a monkey, it worked! I no longer smell swamp when I smell alcohol! And get this; My roommate just popped up some popcorn. How do I know besides the distinctive sound? From the distinctive smell of course!!!! Oh my GOD it smells amazing!! Not swampy at all!
I'm just thinking, rose is one of the common scents in our lives that we have all smelled many times in many variations. Maybe a trigger for you? I did try rose oil on a friend but it didn't register. Or my hallucination was triggered by smelling "something" which could really have been "rotten pecan leaves," and this time a scent got through to my brain which dug around and came up with "rose." It would be great to know more about how to restore sense of smell.
I think rose was a luck of the draw thing. I have never physically smelled a good smelling rose even pre-covid. Living in south Florida, the rose varieties tend to have a bland fragrance. I know what rose is supposed to smell like through smell memory if that makes sense. You could tell me that rose is supposed to smell like Chanel no.5 and I'd be like, okay.
I'm trying to be scientific about this whole process, and also I want to help as many of you suffering from this as possible. These are the trials and tribulations that I went through, maybe other people's journeys will be different.