Alyssum

I know what it's like to have visuals continuously for over six month, and multiple severe panic attacks during every day of it. I used to have visuals constantly that were largely deliriant- and psychedelic-based, I couldn't stare at anything for more than a couple seconds without seeing some faces form, especially in my peripheral vision. There was never a time when all the walls in my house weren't running, or being covered in huge kaleidoscopes, or turning 3-dimensional and making me think I was having a heart attack or a stroke or a seizure or some other terrible thing. I didn't have it for 10+ years, but my symptoms were not mild. People are born with schizophrenia, but you get HPPD. And people who get schizophrenic symptoms through drug use (like chronic meth abuse) can get better. Not everyone will get over their HPPD, but some people do, and this optomism and advice works for me. I see no need for any further reason than that to justify this thread.

I used to have it, before even HPPD actually. I was depressed for pretty much my entire life until recently and always had a good deal of it, but when I got my HPPD it got a lot worse. I had stronger derealization than depersonalization though, but it was definitely there. For me, it's completely disappeared. Obviously I can't guarantee that the same will happen for everyone, but when I was first able to start finally ignoring my visuals and started working on my anxiety and depression, those symptoms started disappearing right along with them. I had my HPPD for about a year before I ever had any anxiety from it and that was also about as long as I had it before those things got worse, so I know they're connected. Anxiety, depression, and DP/DR are all cyclical and connected, they sustain themselves and each other. Anxiety sustains itself by letting you misinterpret sensations and then making you focus on them which makes them more intense, often understandably (like feeling numb limbs, suffocation, and a heavy chest, all of which can happen from not breathing correctly which you do when you're anxious). In this way, it works exactly like a nightmare, but like a nightmare, it's entirely in your head. Depression sustains itself by letting you dwell on the negative aspects of your life until you've focused on them so much that they seem worse than they are. The more you pick at these things, the more significant they will seem because you become obsessed and only think about them. Keep in mind, as well, that anxiety, depression, and OCD have all been linked to low serotonin, so these obsessive behaviors make sense. The same can be said of DP/DR. The more you focus on how strange something is, the more unreal it'll feel. I can demonstrate this even just be repeating a strange word out loud over and over until it sounds made up. These are all obsessive disorders and as a result their obsessions can fuel each other as well. Do you think about your depersonalization a lot? And do you still get anxious or depressed about it? I'm guessing at least the latter, based on your wording (how it's eating your soul away). I think it can be easy to think of anxiety as the more significant side effect of HPPD and feel like you're done improving once you're over it, but the depression plays at least as important of a role. If you're letting yourself be depressed about your depersonalization, it's not going to go away. You have to remember that this isn't something just naturally within you, it's an outcome of something you did and your brain can recover from it. The brain is FAR more sturdy than most people seem to think. I believe that if you remember that your symptoms can fade away if you just give them a chance, then you really can move past them. I know it can be hard to convince yourself of in the moment, but just think.... Are you really getting anything out of focusing on it? I mean, it's either it fades away or it doesn't... so you either get better, or you have to learn to accept it. Those are your only two options. In other words, you can either hope for a brighter tomorrow, or you can just up all hope for the rest of your life right now. Doesn't the first one sound a bit more appealing? I do like the color changes everyone now and then. X) And yeah, that's pretty much what I was thining. A positive attitude has helped me far more than anything else so far. I can appreciate that, but start off with that then.... I understand what you're getting at, but that doesn't change my resolve to stay positive. It's the idea of staying positive through literally any situation that keeps me going, no matter how crappy it is. I can also admit, however, to having something of a leg up in this situation. I'm transgender, and I spent the first two decades of my life constantly contemplating suicide and feeling that my life was over before it even started because since I wasn't living "my own" life it was all just totally meaningless. I'm now a pretty happy-go-lucky person and the only reason is because I was able to keep my head held high and eventually see that there can be a better future. I feel for you, I really do, but what am I supposed to say aside from what I said above? It's still the most appropriate advice in my opinion. Like I've said, the only two things you can do are be optomistic or dwell on your current situation, and I can't ever imagine a situation where the latter sounds preferable. Life is difficult, I'm definitely not denying that (in fact I've outrighted stated it), and some of us have it harder than others, but that doesn't change the ways it can be made better. I get feeling down, but I still feel that you should let some positivity have a chance to grow before you immediately shoot it down. If you were in a position to read this advice and start to recover from it, wouldn't you want to know it?

Yes, because my age somehow invalidates my experience. I came to this forum hoping to find and support a positive attitude about dealing with this condition, not just whine about how much it sucks. I see absolutely no point in being negative when all I'm trying to do is help people with advice that I know works for me.

I'm making this thread half as self-assurance and half just to relate some of the stuff I've learned in case anyone else might find it useful. If you've found positive aspects of your HPPD and want to further ingrain them into your own mind or others, feel free to join in. I'm going to do this by sections. Section 1: Life is a bitch, but don't let it get to you. Everyone has to go through some kind of tough and/or humbling situation in life, at least once. The people who don't go through these situations generally grow up to be stupid assholes. If you have HPPD and you've reached the point of anxiety and depression, you're probably feeling pretty low. Why did this happen to you? Why can't you just keep partying like your friends? Why does life suck so much for you? Well, I've got news for you: life is unfair. It will never stop trying to throw crap at you, or anyone else. What REALLY matters is how you react to having crap thrown at you. Yes, you've got anxiety and depression and your friends don't. You're also most likely fairly young. Most young people do not have anxiety and depression, so of course this counts you out of the group, but like I said, everyone has to go through tough times. You're just getting yours out of the way early. I used to just despair all day long, but now I know that the tools I've gained to fight my symptoms have taught me far more than most people my age know. When you've been able to get your symptoms under control, suddenly life seems so much "easier". When the day comes that your friends are lost and alone, you can be the one that says "Hey, life ain't so bad." and lends a helping hand. When your friends are freaking out and don't know what to do, you can be the one that steps in and tells them to calm down, control their breathing, get some fresh air, and etc. Your friends will be extremely grateful for you helping them in these darker aspects of life, and suddenly you'll be the one who's already been through it all and has a tighter grip on themselves than anyone else. Trust me, I've seen this happen. You just have to remember that YOU ARE NOT ALONE. Everyone goes through dark times. Everyone. All getting HPPD does is give you a chance to put yourself at the head of the game. Don't pass up your chance. Section 2: Tripping is not about visuals. Chances are, you've heard this before, possibly even repeated many times yourself. Tripping is not about visuals, it's about mindsets. The visuals are merely reflective of a decreased boundary between your mind and your reality. Many people seem to think that HPPD is nothing but the sensory distortions left by hallucinogens, but this view is WRONG. When you have HPPD, it means that the aforementioned boundary is still weakened. This is why anxiety and depression when you have HPPD can be so intense. When you have HPPD, your thoughts are no longer isolated to within. Your thoughts and emotions will permeate your entire reality, whether you pay attention to the visuals or not. It seems like hallucinogens are only leaving behind visuals and not the rest of their effects because their respective effects on things like stimulation/depression and etc. are based in a different part of the brain, and only the part controlling the visuals seems to be effected. However, that part is not ONLY controlling the visuals, and so even if it seems like the mental mark left on your psyche is much less than the sensory one at first, I promise you the longer you have it the more you can see the changes in your reality. I mentioned anxiety and depression. When you let yourself believe that HPPD is visual only, you are actually enabling yourself to feel even worse. If you keep thinking to yourself that it's just a sensory thing but yet you keep noticing more and more than your mentality seems to be effected as well, the more you're going to start thinking that you've seriously damaged some part of yourself. This will make you anxious and depressed, and that will spread to your whole perception of reality, and then you'll just completely feel wrong and broken. Anything you let yourself imagine has happened to you will push itself into your perceptions. And the more you let yourself use the visuals as a sign of something being wrong, the more apparent they're going to be when you're feeling at your crappiest. However, what you need to remember is that this applies to EVERYTHING. Those negative symptoms will be amplified and can make it hard to feel very positive, but if you can break through to those truly optimistic states of mind, they will be enhanced in the same way! Your happy glow will cover your reality, your sexual fantasies will push you into ecstatic states of mind as they trickle over your world, and when you start getting those wonderful moments again where you really realize you're alive, those moments you thought you lost forever when drugs stopped working the same way, they will be far more beautiful and encompassing than anything you could have appreciated before you ever went through this. I can admit to being guilty of having said many times before that I wanted to trip forever, like many before me I'm sure. Well, now I am. I've learned to completely ignore my visuals, they don't ever come out unless I want them to. This, by the way, has helped tremendously with controlling other addictive behaviors in my life as well, including many of my old OCD tendencies. And now that I know that there's nothing wrong with me I've saved this bad trip and I live every day watching the world become as bright and positive as I feel. Do I ever get anxious or depressed still? Sure, but only very rarely, and I have it far more under control than I used to. It's more out of habit than anything now. Like I said, life's a bitch, but don't let it get to you. Section 3: Hallucinations are a good thing! This is my favorite part about bridging the gap between you and your mind. So some of you may be thinking "Alright, well HPPD connects you to your mind and lets your thoughts become reality, and it can be used positively. Well that's just dandy, but you're still not SUPPOSED to be able to connect your conscious and subconscious mind like that! We're all still fried!" Well I call bullshit! If you've ever looked into lucid dreaming before (and if you haven't you totally should like right now) then you may have stumbled across something called a Wake-Induced Lucid Dream, or a WILD, before. The idea is that you wait until a time right before you're about to begin a REM phase (you can use some methods to find out when these times are, but it's generally not after you've already had some sleep that you do it) and then you get yourself extremely relaxed and enter a hypnagogic state. This means that you start hallucinating, like legitimately hallucinating, not just HPPD patterns and stuff, and if you're able to hold on to it you'll enter a completely-formed dream where you'll already be lucid from the start. In addition, there are people who practice causing natural out-of-body experiences or astral projection (not going to debate the legitimacy of them, just refering to the subjective experiences) which are brought about in a way similar to WILD, and this actually does cause the whole rising-out-of-your-body effect and time travelling and flying through all these strange and abstract worlds. These things be done by people who have NEVER done drugs. In other words, it is perfectly natural for your conscious and subconscious minds to bridge, and you shouldn't be afraid of letting it happen every now and then. Ever since I started meditating and working on my visualization and lucid dreaming skills, my HPPD has proven repeatedly to be able to push me to the point of reaching dream scenes far more easily than the average person. The best part? Once the scenes begin, there are NO TRACES of the HPPD. They're just like any other dream scene. This heavily reinstates my belief that HPPD is not some kind of scar on my mind but just more direct link to my inner reality. I honestly highly recommend looking into these things to anyone here, the potential is unbelievable. In addition to the benefits it's had on my psyche in relation to HPPD, it's also like... hallucinating for free, without any risk of increasing your visuals, or any risk at all truthfully. It's amazing! Conclusion Yes, HPPD can be sucky, but don't let it drag you down. A lot of good can come out of it as well, and it can teach you quite a lot about your mind and how to keep yourself under control. Plus, when you don't let it freak you out anymore, it really does become less and less significant, but the positive lessons you've learned stay with you. Right now, I don't know if I'll ever be without my HPPD. I honestly don't think it would bug me that much if it never happens because I'm already more positive about my life than I've ever been. And if it does disappear one day, then I'll just give it time to fully integrate like you should with any trip, and then move on with my life. So that's pretty much where I am. I hope someone sees this and feels a bit better about their situation. Like I said, if you guys have anything to share as well, feel free to!

That sounds pretty cool. I wonder if tramadol increases visual effects after a while because of it's NMDA and muscarinic antagonist effects? Or maybe even serotonin release, or... I don't know, lots of things lol. I think I would be cautious of taking tramadol myself just because it's a dirty drug. (Dirty as in hits a wide range of receptors, not as in its effects.) But I'm glad to hear you've been able to take it without it really causing problems. Pentazocine is fairly pure in effects so if you can take things like kratom and tramadol without issue then that gives me a good amount of confidence.... The only thing that really stands out about it I think is that it hits kappa-opioid receptors strongly as well and so it's said to have some dissociating effects at higher doses, however I smoked salvia recently with no negative reprocussions whatsoever (anxiety OR visuals), so I'm not really too worried about that. Thanks for the response! It certainly gives me some hope. I'd love to know that there's still a new type of recreational drug I can still do without having to worry about the HPPD-related drawbacks, even if it's just occasionally. I'm already in that kind of situation with weed where it seems like rarely it's okay but I'll still need to mostly avoid it, so that doesn't bother me too much.

Wow, that's a tiny dose! I would have to take a little more than that.... Don't worry, I'm still following your advice, I just have to scale it up for my natural tolerance. Supposedly extreme opioid tolerance is a trait that runs in my dad's side of the family, he's claimed before that IV heroin was the only thing that ever got him off, and that hospitals have been baffled when they needed to use several times a regular dose of morphine on him for a normal effect (and not because of heroin tolerance, this was decades later lol). And the same kind of stories with that last part for my grandpa, too. Personally, I've only taken them a few times in my life, but 60 mg of OxyContin (first time ever) and 45 mg of Vicodin both failed to do anything to me aside from causing some mildly uplifting sedation, like a regular dose of a benzo. The main thing that interests me right now is pentazocine (just made a thread about it a couple hours ago, actually) because I've recently come into a small quantity of them, and the one time I took it before one pill was enough to get me to the same level of sedation as those aforementioned attempts, so I would like to try a higher dose as long as it wouldn't be harmful to my HPPD progress. Anyway, I definitely won't do anything until I feel I can make an educated decision. Thanks for the well wishes!

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That's the kind of experience I always wanted out of it. I've hallucinated really hard from it but nothing really noteworthy like that. It is pretty terrible though, only "fun" in the sense that it gets you really, really far away from your real world problems. I definitely agree with the smoking while tripping thing. I'm pretty sure adding weed to the mix makes it much more likely that you'll get some form of HPPD, on pretty much anything visual. And I've basically been high for three years as well so I definitely do need a break... the short break I took before showed me that being sobriety can be fun as well, but the problem is that I tried smoking again and found that it was again fun. That's wearing off now though, so I think I can probably quit again easily enough. Though I do "want" to drink, I'm thinking about quitting that for good too, even just down the road.... I already have a mild GABAergic dependence and it just gets worse each time. At this point the visuals don't even really bug me, I've learned to totally ignore them. They don't even come out unless I look for them, it's the anxiety and physical sensations that really get to me... and GABA drugs make that sooo much worse. So far really the only recreational drugs I've tried that don't seem to make it worse are opiates/opioids (though it may have been that I just didn't really read into it much, and I've only used them a few times since getting my HPPD), and salvia (which sounds ridiculous, but it does actually work through opioid receptors, so... hmmm...). Anyway, thanks for the advice. It's much appreciated.

I started getting sleep paralysis shortly after I got HPPD, and to my knowledge I'd never had it before. Every time it used to happen I thought I was on DXM or diphenhydramine or something until I finally fully woke up, and that made me sad. That still happens occasionally, but most of the time it doesn't really concern me now. I'm fairly practiced at lucid dreaming now so that probably contributes to my passiveness about it, it was really freaky at first and could get uncomfortable but now I usually know what's happening or just go along with it.

I know! A few other people I know have taken diphenhydramine as well (much less than I did though) and also had a lot of anxiety for a good stretch of time. I can't believe how deep it digs into your mind.... Thanks for the advice. I actually woke up today feeling a lot better so it's a good start, last night I got really panicky after smoking so I think I am officially quitting today. (Hoping it actually sticks....) I never really thought about trying to stay hydrated, I really should do that more... especially considering that the only drug prescribed to me is a diuretic lol. (And thankfully not psychoactive.) I'll try to stay calm and look around. Thanks again. I want to say I did it no more than 15 times (that number makes me cringe), and I'm hoping it was closer to 10, and my highest dose was 1000 mg. I'm naturally kind of resistent to it though so that was really the only time I experienced true delirium, and even then I didn't really lose control and throw stuff everywhere, run into the streets, yell nonsense at my parents, or any of that crazy stuff all the trip reports have. I know that there are people who do it literally ALL the time so I'm probably overreacting, but it still worries me. I got HPPD my second time using it, the first time I smoked weed with it. Strangely, the HPPD wasn't like a deliriant at all at first... it was really psychedelic. Fractals and patterns and stuff that were all totally unlike any drug I'd done, I think if I'd just quit everything but weed after that day and just got those visuals with no side effects like it was at the time I really wouldn't have minded so much, but now it's just a jumbled anxious mess.... I really do need to stay sober, that's probably going to be the biggest thing for me. I'm trying though, I really am.

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