LaizzesFaire

Yes, it was after stumbling upon that study I decided to give it a go. No remission at this point unfortunately. Perhaps I should try an increased dosage after all, just to see if something happens.

I´ve been taking Sertraline (Zoloft 50mg/day) for about a month and a half now. Anxiety, depression, DP/Dr, OCD tendencies significantly reduced. Had an increase in visuals (mainly afterimages, ghosting and movement of objects/text) for the first 4-5 days but after that it stabilized at this "new level". For me the tradeoff has been worth it because its easier to ignore when anxiety is low. Don´t really want to increase the dose tho. Good luck

Hi and thank you for coming back! I´ve stumbled upon your profound experience with Keppra several times while diggin in the crates of this forum. An update on your general life situation, medication, symptoms and current relationship with recreational drugs ( do you drink, smoke weed etc) would be greatly appreciated!

Sorry to hear that dude. A lot of your story resonates with me tho. Noticed static after a shroom trip, but didnt really bother me. After a year or so, with frequent weed smoking and drinking, I noticed some floaters as well. Decided to look it up, got very stressed out when I found HPPD, found new symptoms as I became hyperaware of everything in my visual field. The floaters are normal tho, both as a symptom of HPPD and in normal people. I also get them while on my computer and on very bright light sources. Lowering the brightness of the screen, wearing sunglasses outside etc usually helps. F.Lux is a nice little program which adjusts the screen to the room your in and time of the day ( https://justgetflux.com ) All the best, Laiz

If you´d like to go to college you should. I still space out once in a while in class, but it gets better and you´ll be so used to it after a while you won´t even be bothered by it. Now it´s more of an annoyance, whereas before I´d get all worked up about it. Hang in there buddy

Go for it. Come on guys this could possibly be a big breakthrough for the whole community and helping all the people out there that has no idea what in the world is happening to them. I really hope you´re able to pitch this Alex, good luck and all the best

It flares up when working out, sometimes in class and when going more than 20 hours without sleep. I also get episodes of dizziness out of nowhere, usually lasting for a day or two. This has gotten much better tho, happens very rarely now. Might be related to anxiety or someting

The snow seems to be reduced somewhat even in complete darkness. At least its more stable. Found some 10 hour versions with the same tv noise effect, after a couple of minutes things generally seemed to be more stable than usual and reading text was way easier (could be placebo). As for Syntheso´s question about DP/DR, it´s really really hard to tell if its actually reduced a bit or just me getting so excited about this

I´ve watched the video several times now and black is definitely black for about 30+ seconds every time. I´d completely forgotten how pure clean black looked like! IIRC there have been posts here and there with people claiming not to experience any visual snow, but I think it´s pretty rare though. As for the DP it´s hard to tell, the alleviation of vs is too short to notice any correlation for me. I´ll try watching the video outside tonight as DP usually is stronger when outdoors (for me at least) and report back. VS and tinnitus are pretty much the only symptoms that constantly changes for me (e.g when playing basketball outside at night VS flares up for an hour or so) Edit: Yes, I also see the green/purple visuals. However, it seemed to happen at exactly the same time when re-watching it so I think they´re in the video.

Holy shit, completely removed my VS and BFEP for about 20-30 seconds. Maybe somebody could make a visual snow/tv static app for Google Glass

Dang, thats a tough one. I had more noticeable floaters, a bit BFEP and slight visual snow in the dark for about a year. Decided to google it one night I couldn´t sleep, found the HPPD article on wiki, BAM, panic attack followed by DP/DR and all kinds of visual stuff presented themselves during the following months. Was smoking and drinking with pretty much no problems before this, though weed made me a bit more anxious right before this fateful night, but that could´ve easily been due to stress (moving to another continent etc). Haven´t touched weed since so I´m not sure how it would effect me, but thats too much of a risk right now. The PTSD/hyperawareness theory resonates strongly with me and bugs the living crap out of me wondering if I would´ve gotten HPPD anyway. Well, I guess there´s no point in doing so, what´s done is done and all that jazz.

So this is an aspect of the disorder that interests me quite a bit. Often while reading a wall of text for class I see a lot of broken patterns all over the place, wether intentional or not. Now it was first after reading about it here I started noticing it and now it´s like an optical illusion I can´t "unsee". Just asked my roomie about this and had him look on a particular page. Interestingly enough he saw the exact same "patterns" as me, even to an larger extent. Of course he´s now going to forget about it in five minutes and probably never give it a second thought. This is one of the reasons I regret ever looking up anything about HPPD as I feel some of the things are psychosomatic rather than actual symptoms such as e.g. visual snow, floaters etc. IMO this might be caused by hyperawareness, which most of us likely suffer from (perhaps due to practice from DP/DR realm lol), rather than a brain malfunctioning in the pattern-forming area. I could of course be wrong, but I´m interested in what you guys´ thoughts on this are. Maybe the title should be "hyperawareness" because I´d like to mention another similar thing that happened to me, in regards to hyper-awareness, when I suddenly wasn´t able to NOT notice every time they cut a scene in a movie. This frustrated me greatly until recently when I stopped caring and now it´s not an issue anymore. Guess it could be some weird form of OCD and the key is learning to redirect focus and not give it too much thought. Third thing is what I call nose-filtering problem. After reading about this particular symptom somewhere I had again trouble "unseeing" my nose for some time which made me anxious. Of course it´s very noticeable again when writing about it but I´ll forget about it in a bit. And finally, I think this could explain my inability to rid myself completely of DP/DR. Often these sensations are induced from a panic attack, at least that´s what happened in my case (caused by reading about HPPD after noticing visual snow almost a year after last trip). Got super freaked out because I tried constantly to "snap out of it" which further exacerbated it. Thinking of it, I experienced weird sensations of unreality and whatnot a couple of times growing up but they disappeared as I got occupied by something else (like securing Pokemon cards from being stolen by the ruthless thieves of elementary school ). Could all this simply be caused by hyperawareness or some malfunctioning in the fight or flight response? Sorry if this thread is just a incoherent mess, but it´s hard to wrap my head around this stuff as neither psychology, neurology or any of the fields useful in explaining this are my expertise (political science major..). Any response would be greatly appreciated, thanks! Edit: Changed title, elaborated on personal experiences and provided amateurish theories

Sorry to hear that man. My palinopsia has also increased steadily for about a year now. Well, actually it´s been pretty stable ever since I started taking Zoloft. The first 4-5 days it got a bit worse, but I decided to just stick with it anyways and now it´s actually slightly reduced. Like yesterday was the first time in about a year I´ve been able to watch a movie in a completely dark room without being distracted by crazy negative afterimages. No idea if it´s due to the Zoloft or just a coincidence, but that´s my point; There is no way of knowing whether the palinopsia will increase forever, if a certain medication is gonna reduce it, if you´re better off just waiting it out etc. So you just gotta weigh your options, make a decision and be content with the consequences it might yield, both positive and negative. That being said, I´d probably try to get referral to a neurologist/neuro-psychiatrist. Keppra and Lamictal are the ones I´ve seen popping up the most in cases where people have reduced palinopsia. Somebody with a more profound understanding of the mechanisms of various medications should chime in. Good luck

Thanks dude! Sure wish I did take drivers ed if it makes the insurance any cheaper. My old man taught me how to drive back home and I just took the permit and driving test after moving to the US.

Thanks man, happy to inspire in any way. Yeah, something along those lines happened to me as well, so I procrastinated the whole thing for way too long (I´m 20 years old haha..). Go for it dude! I find it relaxing after a while, just driving and listening to some music while focusing on nothing but the road keeps me a bit grounded. Floaters annoy the hell out of me during the day tho, but driving at night is fine. Good luck!

Hey all Got my license today, just wanted to share that. Was pretty anxious about the driving test but I learned to drive after I got HPPD so it wasn´t that hard or anything. All the best, Laiz

MikeZero: Just out of curiosity, how is drinking for you now? I´ve seen some of your older posts mentioning that weed was somewhat fine, but drinking would usually lead to some DP/DR stuff for a couple of days afterwards.

http://i.imgur.com/s41Uv.gif

Just wanted to post some vids that inspires me when times are tough. (Possible cringe-alert lol)

been bumping some old school stuff lately, one of my all-time favorites

Suppose the PTSD-like theory is somehow correct, this could be very interesting down the line . Although simulating a trip would be a lot more difficult than e.g war zones.

Thank you for coming back and sharing your story! I must say your post was genuinely inspiring. As for the self loathing, which I can certainly relate to, I believe this is one of the most important features of this disorders to address. My disassociation started at the same time I became extremely concerned about the fuzziness in the visual field which didn´t bother me for almost a year. With the help of therapy I´ve also been able to take some of the weight off of this mess. So, even though the visuals are still present, my ability to function somewhat normally and engaging in life is far better now. Hopefully I´ll reach your point through time and acceptance.

But whatever dude, let´s just bury the hatchet and agree to disagree on this topic as this discussion won´t yield anything useful. Feel free to respond to my second post in public if you feel like I got something wrong. But after that please contact me via PM if you´ve got something to say to me about this (or anything else for that matter)

I have some trouble understanding your style of writing but it seems to me that you´re quite a contradictory fella. First, you´re suggesting I take in all the evidence before expressing myself because you assume I haven´t read all the posts. As a matter of fact I have read every single word on this forum (mind you this isn´t something I consider an achievement) so how about you don´t make assumptions and rather base your argumentation on "evidence". Secondly, you ask me to "carry my flammable spark somewhere else". The only reason I chose to voice my opinion was because YOU brought the whole thing back up after the situation, and I´ll quote myself here if you don´t mind, "was as closed to being solved as it possibly could for the time being". It would also be great if you could drop the coalition thing because I sincerely don´t think anyone here is "out to get" certain individuals.

The whole enduring vs living thing largely depends on outlook. For some life is about endurance, others are lucky enough to "live". Some find solace in faith etc, but even if you don´t subscribe to higher powers, life can be quite enjoyable. Existence of any form of intelligent life on a rotating ball of stardust some random place in outer space is so ridiculously random that it probably shouldn´t be taken too seriously IMO.