LaizzesFaire

You might be correct that HPPD isn´t temporary. But there is no way knowing there won´t be a cure or that you won´t be able to be happy in the future. Some people are blind their whole lives, some have had DP all their life and others get HPPD. This is a cliche but life simply isn´t fair. Bad things happen to good people and vice versa. I´m not trying to downplay the massive burden that comes with this stuff and would rather lose a leg than deal with this every day. "Man´s search for meaning" by Viktor Frankl is a great book and should provide some perspective if you´re feeling depressed. Again, seek professional help if things spiral out of control.

You need to go to a neuro as psychiatrists usually don´t write scripts for Keppra. Get a referral from your doctor to see one through your insurance. If you´re lucky he´s heard of HPPD, if not hopefully he´s open minded enough to consider a trial as Keppra is usually well tolerated and non-addictive. Bringing some studies would certainly not hurt your case. Good luck!

Suicide is a permanent choice for a temporary problem. If you truly are at rock bottom there is no way but up my friend. There is absolutely no way you can know that your life will always be this bad. I truly believe you will be able to find some content or meaning to life. Depression often make it hard to put things in perspective so even if you feel that life is meaningless and a fallacy this isn´t the case. I would strongly recommend you to seek professional ASAP if you´re not able to handle your current situation and please contact me if you need to talk in the meantime.

There are no scientific or anecdotal evidence supporting your claim. In fact there are tons of reports from members of this forum who overcame their dp/dr issues, some through specific means others saying it "slowly went away". I think targeting anxiety and adjusting to the visuals will go along way for most.

Okay I didn´t wanna involve myself in this mess as I´m still somewhat of a "rookie" on this forum, but you need to chill the fuck out hppd24years. Chris chose to share the message with the community and IMO rightfully so. Jay admitted he lost his temper for a bit, something we all do from time to time, and apologized. Most of your post looks like paranoid rambling to me. I you´re so obsessed with "dealing with differences in private like men" then why don´t you just do so instead of calling out several members of the forum and pissing all over a situation that was as close to being resolved as it probably could be for the time being?! Edit: I did not want to stir things up even more with this post and know that it´s not personal hppd24years. Perhaps this thread should be closed so we can all move on to more pressing matters (getting better would be a nice place to start).

To be honest I struggle with this aspect of HPPD myself. But it´s certainly not easy coming up with excuses every time and based on what you wrote it seems to me that you feel like bottling up things inside have a direct negative impact on you. Therefore I would urge you to tell them exactly how you´re feeling e.g. what you experience when drinking. If they either don´t want or have the ability to empathize with what you´re going through, even though it may be hard to understand for them, you should perhaps reconsider your friends (this goes for me as well). I guess you could always say you´ve acquired some rare form of epilepsy and have to stay sober to avoid further damage. Not trying to be a dick or anything, but it would be nice if you could use some punctuation Good luck!

Same here. After vaguely describing some symptoms "my conclusion" is often something along the lines of: "It´s distracting at times, but after a while it probably goes away or I get used to it. Made me really anxious at first, but at least it´s not like I´m dying or anything hehe B)" But then later alone in bed at night I´m suddenly not so cool about it (although, if I´m not trying to sleep, this is sometimes my favorite time of the day as DP/DR is for some reason often significantly reduced past midnight)

So if I got this right, you´re getting starbursts from the starbursting you have from light sources (don´t know how to put this in any other way lol)? If you only experience this while inside your car it could be related to your windows. I find that when taking e.g the bus ( buses often have thicker or double windows for protection purposes I presume) my ghosting is exacerbated and will often cause triple or quadruple copies of street lights, while in my car I have two and when walking only one. Color confusion is not something I´ve experienced but it´s a recognized symptom of HPPD so there´s certainly someone here who could tell you more about this than me.

Well you might wanna punch my face in for saying this right now, but I do think you have reason to be optimistic. If your reaction to the visuals are neutral even if they´re getting worse (this is the case for me, no idea why they keep getting worse almost two years after onset) you´ll probably be fine once you manage to lower/eliminate DP/DR. As I´m sure you know, this is one aspect of the disorder many people rid themselves of, though it may take some time. Seeking help for obsessive thinking, socializing if possible and focusing of studies have helped IME. It also seems to me, but I have no scientific material to back this observation up with, that most of the recovery stories over at DPSELFHELP are from people who got this mess induced by drugs. Remember that there are parts of you that accepts this world no matter how fake it (or your sense of self) seems Anyways, vent whenever you feel like it and use Jay´s and Big Papa´s inspirational posts for motivation!

It certainly doesn´t hurt to try! I´ve been seeing a therapist for the last 6 months through my college and recently joined an CBT group for anxiety. Although it doesn´t do anything for my visuals, it´s been helpful just to talk to someone (she even researched HPPD a bit when I mentioned it) and managing some of the thought patterns causing me anxiety (going crazy, life is destroyed etc). When anxiety is low, DP/DR is much less of an issue IME and thus quality of life is somewhat better

Ah, I see. Yes the regulations are quite silly as the studies presented by EU´s health comission are highly debatable. (e.g. this one http://ec.europa.eu/health/ph_risk/committees/04_scenihr/docs/scenihr_o_013.pdf). And I agree that smoking a cigarette or two in the company of others and having a chat provides a social aspect to the experience, something that snus cannot provide. But it´s nice to have one in class, at the movies or other areas where smoking is prohibited

Interesting. I find that snus (the swedish version) does not affect my HPPD in any way and it´s quite relaxing. Was actually very surprised when found it in the US as I was sure I´d have to quit when moving from Scandinavia. StateOfRegret: Is snus still being sold in Denmark?

Haha, glad you feel that way as I have the tendency to let my mind, for better or worse, wander off in many directions which may very well impact the original purpose of a thread. But yes, the more conversation, the better. Yes, that´s what I meant and my intent was not to question the healing practices shamanic traditions may or may not provide as I don´t possess the necessary knowledge to do so. With that being said, I don´t think actual "shamans" would regard increased afterimages as helpful in any way and that this inability to differentiate between HPPD and spiritual enlightenment is potentially dangerous for people belonging to the former category. Reminds me (mind wandering off again) of the much discussed study where 500 members of The Native American Church were surveyed and no symptoms of HPPD were reported. This has always baffled me and whole PTSD theory could potentially be applied to explain this (wrong settings and/or overwhelming sensations without necessary tools to integrate/interpret (if possible) these experiences and thus causing trauma etc) Then again some users e.g. StateOfRegret report nothing but pleasant experiences with psychedelics (or at least no "bad trips") and still developed HPPD, indicating that genetic predisposition most likely plays an important role. Trying to make sense of this mindfuck with a fucked mind is quite difficult, but I think we´ll get there someday

A good question indeed and I suppose there is more than way to solve these problems. I gotta subscribe to the approach, in lack of a better word, promoted by e.g. BigPapa (nice reference, wether intentional or not, to the great Biggie Smalls ) as I believe targeting the right areas through a combination of medication/supplements/therapies and healthy living would most likely provide the best results. Acceptance (not defeat) is also important and I guess faith, meditation and what not could be beneficial for some as long as it´s not causing further damage or irresponsible decisions. I can´t speak for others but whenever somebody replies something along the lines of "Shaman vision" to an individual raising concerns over visual disturbances following a trip I get extremely worried. Anyways, keep updating us on your progress BigPapa and feel free to intervene whenever you think we´re going too far off-topic

Thanks taking the time to share all that! And yes I agree that reflecting and/or describing these things might yield therapeutical benefits within a community of people able to relate. One quick, hopefully not too derailing, question: Did you notice ALL the classical symptoms of HPPD over the ensuing week after the event/weekend and they then got worse due to stressful environments? Or would you say some symptoms "randomly" appeared over the course of several months (this is what happened in my experience, after quitting cannabis and over a year removed from experiments I believe lead to HPPD. Like one day I suddenly got starbursting and then ghosting joined along for the ride) This! Visual have written about something like this in other threads, focal and ambient visual processing following e.g. TBI. http://www.thesgassociates.com/Articles/Visual_Dysfunction.pdf (don´t know how to format links like you do on Reddit..) But this is definitely something I experience, although it´s happens pretty randomly, which again makes me think it might be related to hyper-awareness caused by disassociation/anxiety/Pure-O tendencies. Anyways, when it does happen, vision does seem clearer but weirder in an unexplainable way. It´s like "feeling" the eyes working to form a coherent picture and IME this makes the presence of my nose in the visual field very noticeable, probably due to the quick shifting in dominance between the right/left eye (or just hyper-awareness of a normal visual phenomena). Pretty strange, but not that unsettling though as it usually pass when focus (no pun intended) is directed towards something else ( more often than not another visual anomaly or DP/DR realm) Alas, this is perhaps the most frustrating part of panic attacks, DP/DR and anxiety. The inability to liberate oneself of these feelings and thoughts through logic because the intellectual engine of the brain is overridden by (more or less severe) malfunctions in the fight-flight/threat department. Just imagine how much it sucked for the curious dude who ate some funny looking shrooms back in the hunter-gatherer days and got HPPD

Thanks for sharing, I´ll be following this diary and hopefully your road to recovery closely. I gotta admit that Z-Health seems promising. On a side-note, I would actually be rather interested in your personal context. However, I do not wish to impose any pressure on you or if you feel like the thread would be sidetracked by doing so Good luck!

I decided to delete my vote for the sake of the surveys quality as I´m not exactly sure what caused HPPD in my case.

A great initiative I must say Too bad the author of "A life cycle" didn´t mention anything about his HPPD after the paradigm shift, but I suppose in his case it didn´t really matter as he seemed to be content with life. Here´s one of my favorites: http://www.cyberrecovery.net/forums/showthread.php?p=95430 Edit: I´d like to add this one as well as I believe this guy was afflicted with HPPD as he mentions "visual distortions, ghosting, trailing, floaters and frame by frame/non liquid sensation of his surroundings (perhaps the slow frame rate vision I´ve seen mentioned a few times on this board). I do no think these are classic DPD symptoms (feel free to disagree/correct me if I´m wrong). He specifically cites SSRI Discontinuation Syndrome as the cause and I´ve read reports of people experiencing visual symptoms similar to HPPD as a result, but more interestingly I found that in an earlier post he claimed that Ayahuasca was in fact the substance that initially led to his DP/DR. I may be jumping to conclusions, but think it´s worth mentioning nonetheless. http://www.dpselfhelp.com/forum/index.php?/topic/44491-100-recovered-25-years-now-your-turn/

Yes, I agree that the book in some ways resembled more of an extremely lengthy introduction post on this forum and it´s unfortunately not likely to spark any major discussion regarding the disorder or faults within the medical health care system. But still an interesting read for most HPPD sufferers IMO. perhaps it could be beneficiary when trying to explain the situation to family or friends. A documentary or an indie film might garner some more attention. However, the visual aspects of HPPD would probably be a bit expensive to accurately depict in the latter

Just thought this might be of interest to some of you guys. Media attention to this disorder is rather limited, even though I am aware of the fact that it´s seemingly rare. Perhaps HBO´s show True Detective will spark some interest in drug induced visual disorders (Think I saw a thread about it here) but that´s probably wishful thinking http://www.cjnews.com/node/119775 http://starstore.ca/collections/star-dispatches-ereads/products/my-never-ending-acid-trip Haven´t had the chance to read the book myself as of yet, just happened to stumble across it while searching for an old case study involving remission of hppd symptoms after treatment with sertaline(zoloft). Apologies for any grammatical errors on my behalf, English is not my first language. I wish everyone the best! (and I´m painfully aware of the horrible misspelling of my username. Note to self: Don´t try to be fancy because the cognitive impairments from HPPD will bite your ass ) Edit: I´ve read the book now and would certainly recommend it. While the story itself is rather personal and the theorized mechanisms , or lack thereof, that causes HPPD isn´t exactly groundbreaking (not that I expected them to be) I do believe that we all can relate to at least some parts of his experience as we all share this burden. It´s always nice to know you´re not alone and I would like to use this opportunity to thank this community (which he actually refers to in the book) for being here and truly believe I speak for most of us "lurkers" when I say that just reading and browsing this site has been an invaluable source of knowledge and comfort through dark and confusing times. Good luck to you all.