ColForbin

There's no reason to not try and find an explanation. It just sounds like you're so caught up in trying to find an answer that you are forgetting the most important things. Finding an answer right now wont help you. It's best to just get healthy at the moment and get your life back together.

hmm, I've never felt like I had multiple personalities, I just felt like I had no personality.

Seeking for an explanation does nothing to help you in the short term and probably just makes you more anxious. We've all wondered what's going on, and we all wish we knew exactly so that doctors could find some kind of reversal/cure. It just doesn't work like that, you need to try and move on. This is done by being healthy and trying to keep positive. I don't know why, but I feel like we might be very similar people - I had the same exact thoughts as you had. At this exact moment, I've gone from 5 days of continuously going to be between 5 and 8am (due to gigs and recording sessions) to waking up at 7:30am today to get my classwork done and go to class. I feel tired, dizzy, there's tension in my chest, my visuals are a bit worse, and my dp is worse than usual (and I haven't even mentioned the weed I've been smoking). Now, in the throes of my hppd, I would have been freaking out right now, feeling totally helpless, thinking I was having a heart attack, and I'd probably be calling an ambulance. But you know what, I'm sitting here continuing to do my homework because I now have the coping skills to deal with this shit and not have it affect my life. After this, I'm gonna call up this girl I've been seeing, we're gonna get some dinner, then we're probably gonna bang, and then I'm going to pass out earlyish so that I can wake up for my 10:30 midterm tomorrow. My point in all of this is that life goes on, and it will for you too. Just keep perspective and stop looking for answers because there aren't any. It's the worst part, but you need to accept it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%BCbler-Ross_model I always thought this scale was bullshit, but it actually kinda makes sense. You're in a mixture of anger and depression, the goal is acceptance, and once that comes, you feel 1000 times better (remember it takes time to get to 1000)

yeah dude, try and hear me as rationally as you can. If you are only a couple months in, this is the WORST PART OF HPPD. IT WILL START TO GET BETTER. But it happens slowly. You can't give up hope, read what we say and try to realize when you keep asking the same questions. You probably feel unstable and, frankly, untrusting of what we say just because what you're experiencing right now is so intense and shitty. You'd do anything for a quick fix, but that just isn't how it works. Anxiety and depression runs in my family, and I have no doubt it made coping with my hppd more difficult. One thing I did to help (this was before I knew I even had hppd) was see a psychologist. They can't cure the hppd, but they can help you to recognize when you are anxious and how to deal with it. You'd think this would be obvious, but its not. Anxiety has physical manifestations, and that makes everything worse when you don't realize it. EDIT: I was also able to confront and deal with shitty things from my childhood, things that still affect you to this day unless dealt with. As hard as it is to hear this, I'm gonna say what everyone else has said. You need to chill out, breath, and ride this through. Look at your previous posts. Besides the fact that you seem to ignore most of what people say to you (they are speaking the truth), your posts are otherwise totally coherent. You can still function, you are not crazy, you are still the same person. This is a rough patch that you need to get through, and that no medication will heal. If you find a med that helps you out a bit, fine, but to truly cure yourself to the highest potential is a mental exercise. I have faith that you will. Don't expect it, try and forget about it. Also, remember your worst days, and compare your current one to the worst one. If its better, you're on the right track.

The biggest advantage for me is the ability to now empathize with people who are crazy or who just are stressin out. I've realized that sanity is a matter of degree, and not a black and white distinctions. At my worst, I felt that if something didn't break soon, I would snap and have to be institutionalized. I suddenly understood why that kid shot up virginia tech. I don't condone what he did in any way, but I understood that he was backed into a corner and probably just needed some help - someone to talk to who understood.

Dude, was this post from before we talked in that other thread? There is hope! You sound depressed as shit here. Always remember, this is how depression works. It fucking sucks, but hang in there and it will get better!

I would definitely try wellbutrin if you are looking for a non-drastic medication to take. The only side effects I had was head pressure, and that went away after two weeks. With my HPPD, I got really depressed. Now I don't know whether that was a symptom of the HPPD or if it was just caused by me feeling like shit all day every day. I literally had no emotions - I felt empty inside. It was a strange experience because I would see something pretty, a nice sunset for example, I would realize that it was very beautiful, but I wouldn't feel any kind of emotion. I would think about the emotion I would have used to have felt and then get even more depressed that I wasn't feeling it. After a couple months on welbutrin, I was walking home from school one day watching the sunset, and I felt something. It start small, like a seed in the pit of my stomach, and slowly grew. It was a feeling of utter joy and happiness at the beauty of everything around me. Mind you, it didn't get that big, it was just barely there, but I could feel it. As I walked, I straight up started to tear up just because I was so happy to fucking feel something for once piercing through the depression and DP. Now again, I can't say whether it was the wellbutrin or whether it was just my new lifestyle taking effect, but as far as I'm concerned, there is no downside to wellbutrin. As far as the lifestyle itself, here was the timeline: June 2009 - October 2009: No weed, no alcohol, I didn't exercise, and I smoked probably around 6 cigs a day. eating like shit more or less. October - January 2010: no weed, but I started drinking again lightly, still no exercise, with welbutrin I probably smoked between 0 and 3 cigs a day. January - April 2010: Smoked weed occasionally, drank normally (which for me is usually two times a week - 6 beers or so each time), same cig situation April - September 2010: occasional weed, less drinking (cause it was summer and no one was around). I stopped smoking cigs and ran every day or every other day up the mountain. I took a multi vitamin for a bit, but I really just tried to buy fresh veggies from the super market instead of the canned shit. By the end of the summer, I felt the best I had felt since hppd started. I was in a very good place mentally, in extremely high spirits. As if anyone needs any convincing, here is my current situation. Due to these high spirits, I've been tending to party more. Although I will never touch heavy hallucinogenics again, I smoke a fair amount of weed. Also, playing music and being in multiple bands gigging many times a month has lead to cigarettes again. I got up to 10 a day at one point and am now hovering around 5. I still feel fairly great, but I am definitely worse than I was at the end of the summer. The weed does make my visuals a bit worse, but I'm not bothered by it that much because I'm happy emotionally (weird how that works huh?). There's some mild dp the next day usually, but its not too bad. I generally don't feel that healthy though - it just goes to show how much a healthy lifestyle can affect you. I can't wait to begin running again this summer, as I'm too busy at the moment. I still eat very healthy as much as I can. As far as proteins and supplements, I haven't touched any, but only because I'm busy/not knowledgeable/trying to get all nutrients I need from the food I eat. I'll send you a pm with my email windscar, feel free to hit me up any time

Glad to answer any and all questions. I wish someone had been there for me when I was really in the shit - ANYTHING I can do to help a fellow hppd'er feel better I will do. "Why after everything you said you still doubt if your visuals got better?" I don't really doubt anything - they have gotten much better, although they haven't gone away. The only reason I used the word 'doubt' was because it's hard to pinpoint how much they have really gone away vs how much I just don't notice them anymore because I'm in good spirits. When I was in rough shape, I felt like many of you all, wondering how can I heal the visuals. It seemed unfathomable that I could continue life if the visuals were going to be a part of it. This is an example of where perspective becomes everything. When I was thinking those thoughts, I was depressed and had full-on panic disorder. Now, I have gotten my life under control, gotten healthy, and in this mind set, the visuals just don't bother me that much, plain and simple. And they've objectively gotten better. Things that used to give me afterimages (like my keyboard) don't any more. "Also, how you got HPPD? " I got HPPD from a solitary shrooms trip, my only time. Bad tripped for a bit during the trip due to stomach ache. It wasn't a get-naked-and-climb-trees bad trip, but more of a sit in a chair while extremely uncomfortable bad trip. Friends tell me the shrooms were very strong, and I ate an 8th. "And it's interesting you started to get better just after you realized what you had. Any relation? Did you use any remedy?" This is long, I answer your questions in short form at the end. I think I need to give a better explanation for this. In my original post, I wrote "my hppd started when I couldn't sleep etc..," but the truth is, I noticed that something was weird way before then. I took the shrooms in early february of 2009. I initially felt fine afterwards, despite the bad trip. Two weeks later, I had a huge panic attack related to my heart, and went to the hospital only to be told I was fine. I kept having panic attacks, and generally being uneasy/not trusting the doctors who told me I was fine. I FELT different, but I couldn't quite place what it was, and suspected it was a problem with my heart (which was really just chest anxiety). By late april, I began noticing that when I smoked weed, I felt really high, much more so than normal. Smoking weed became no fun anymore, so I stopped doing it, figured I had grown out of it. I moved into my new apartment early that summer, and that was when I really started to feel 'different.' Something was definitely wrong, this was when the DP definitely hit me. The visuals started shortly thereafter. It was a stressful time because I knew something was wrong but didn't know what it was. I didn't suspect the shrooms at all because it was so long after the trip, and I didn't know anything remotely like hppd even existed (I always just thought you handled your drugs or you didn't. Now I know that there are degrees of sanity). I was stressing about my heart a lot, but every time I went to the doctor, they said I was fine. I suspected maybe it was just a sleep problem, which lead to the visuals and DP. I tried sleep medication (lunesta), but it made me feel like shit and short of breath. That summer became a weird time where I was convincing myself, despite every single one of my instincts, that I was ok. As soon as I stopped stressing about my heart, it seemed as if the visuals started. In my DP state, I tried so hard to convince myself that the visuals were due to lack of sleep/I was just imagining them. I hit rock bottom when I went home for a week in late summer 2009. I woke up early one morning and noticed that my window, which had the shade drawn, was rippling. I blinked, and it was still rippling. At that point, I couldn't ignore that there was something going on with my eyes/brain. I contemplated how I was slowly going crazy, how I would end up in a mental institution, how I would be shitting my pants, all my dreams dead on the floor, my friends abandoning me, etc... It was the worst day of my life when I truly questioned my own sanity, and its an experience I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. My mom somehow convinced me to take a walk with her that afternoon and told me something I will never forget. She said, as if it was obvious, "forbin, if you were really going crazy, you wouldn't realize you were going crazy." I realized she was right. This was the beginning of my uphill battle, as far as spirits go. I still didn't know what hppd was, but I was determined that I wasn't going crazy. From here on out, I started exercising and eating very well, and slowly started to feel better. It was definitely rough for a long while though. Near the end of the first semester of school that following year, I still suffered from panic attacks and the visuals, but compared to where I was at that one summer day, I was much better. At parties, I would just bring a gallon of apple juice and sip on it. My friends began to meet the new me, a sleepier, slightly more anxious version of myself. Around this time, I stumbled somehow on the original hppd forum ran by david kozin, and it was at this point when I started to piece things together. I was already on the way to recovery, but the knowledge of this condition did miracles in giving me peace of mind. I have never been 'diagnosed' with hppd, despite seeing multiple psychologists and psychiatrists, but the pieces just fit too well together for this not to be what I was suffering from. So to answer your questions, I was already in the process of getting better when I learned about hppd. Also at this time, I found a girl who I dated, and also began to just feel better. Feeling like myself, getting back to normal things, being with my girlfriend and friends were all factors that helped to allow me to move beyond hppd psychologically. Their support, along with my family's, was invaluable to me. As far as remedies go, I tried lunesta for a couple nights, as I said before. Also, I was prescribed and used Welbutrin XR 150mg from mid summer 2009 to april 2010. I like to think it helped, but I'm not really sure to be honest. It definitely didn't hurt. As a plus, it allowed me to quit smoking cigarettes (its also marketed as a smoking cessation aid). I hope this helps you all. Sorry its so long, I just hope someone reading this will be able to draw parallels to their own life, and hopefully they won't reach the levels or darkness and despair that I did.

Well, when it first started, I was hit with massive depersonalization and 2d vision. Then the visuals. I first noticed it when I was trying to go to bed. The whole room was static to my eyes. When I closed my eyes, I would see these white swirling patterns that were so bright I literally couldn't sleep. I had the most vivid dreams as well. The combination of these three things ensured that I woke up any number between 20-30 times a night. During the day, I then began to notice afterimages that seemed as if they were burned into my eyes. It wasn't an issue of even looking at bright things - the reflection of the sun or course would give me bad ones. Even 'loud' colors started to give me them. If I saw a red car, I would have the image of a blue car burned onto by eyes for the next 10 minutes or so. Even worse, I would get afterimages of things almost no contrast. For example, looking at my mac keyboard: just the contrast between the grey tops of the keys and shadow making the sides of the keys slightly darker grey would leave the squares of the keyboards burned onto my eyes, both eyes open and closed. I couldn't read, words seemed to move all over the page. I had to drop a course in school just because I couldn't do all the reading. Color flashes in my peripheral vision, as well as metallic stars poking into my vision at a rate of 1 every couple of minutes. Floaters also dominated my vision. If I stared at something and zoned out, my whole range of vision would change color. Everything usually started to turn bluish-purple. Taking an exam on little sleep, I zoned out looking at the test, and no joke, my arms were lime green in my peripheral vision. So these are pretty much the visual things that happened to me, not to mention the host of psychological shit that went down as a result of hppd and, even more importantly, not knowing even that hppd existed (I found out about it almost 8 months after symptoms started). Now the good news: As of a year and 8 months (I first noticed improvement 10 months after I 'realized' there was something wrong with me), everything has significantly gone down. Sleeping is not an issue anymore. The closed eye visuals are much less bright and distracting, I don't notice them most of the time. Dreams still vivid, but that doesn't bother me. (One interesting side note is my dreams, which are so real, are AWESOME. They are either good dreams, or nightmares where I never feel glued down or helpless. I usually end up kicking ass and 'winning' the nightmare. I've written many of them down.) Afterimages also almost gone. I wont get ones from things like my keyboard anymore. Now its mostly relegated to lights. My eyes also feel super sensitive, so reflections on the road get me in a way they might not get others (from what I've experienced with my friends). Reading is completely normal again. Color flashes mostly gone. I still occasionally notice floaters, but its no big deal. The metallic stars are probably the most pervasive symptom, but even then, now it just happens a couple times a day. At the end of the day, I can't say whether feeling better emotionally has allowed me to ignore the visuals, or if they've actually gotten better. I suspect its a combination of both. Regardless, the best times lie ahead! And remember, this is after I had the experience of honestly and legitimately questioning my own sanity - hands down the most traumatizing thing to ever happen to me. Hope this helps

I don't know any full cases of recorvery, but I can speak for myself. The best cure for for HPPD is to be in good spirits. I've had HPPD for about a year and 7 months. At this point, I feel great. Of course I have my ups and downs, but I can live the life I want to lead, smoke weed occasionally (I DO NOT RECOMMEND THIS FOR EVERYONE, BE CAREFUL), and generally be happy. My life was a living hell for a solid 8 months, during which time I thought I was going crazy, suffered panic attack after panic attack. Now, I know that my condition isn't a case of psychosis, but rather of signals going from my eyes to my brain being goofed (simply put). After realizing this, finally believing it, not drinking or smoking for almost year, eating right, exercising, etc.. 70% of my anxiety, depression, and DP went away. At this point I feel almost completely normal again. The visual aspect of HPPD has died down too, but hasn't gone away. Regardless, when you're in good spirits, the visual stuff doesn't bother you. Weed definitely makes afterimages worse for me, usually lasting throughout the next day. However, given my current mental state, it doesn't bother me because I finally feel human again (not because of the weed). Not everyone reacts like this though, so I'd be careful. Good luck man, your best days are ahead! btw, I'm almost 22, my hppd started when I was 20

my jaw clicks, but thats from a fight I got in. I also have tinnitus and occasionally the static in my ears. I always associate the static sound with panic attacks though, and interpret it more as my thoughts racing.

Hey everyone. I was wondering if there was any correlation between minoxidil use and trouble concentrating (brain fog) and possibly anxiety? Yes, I'm going bald and it sucks. Here's my situation. I started using Minoxidil when I was 19.5 because I was noticing shedding. I had no symptoms, and its questionable whether its ever really done anything for me. I continue to use it just for the sake of it, hoping that its stopping shedding for than not using it would. Just before I turned 20, I got hppd from a bad shrooms trip. I have seen people and for the most part been able to deal with it. The last year of my life has been relatively normal, and the whole time, I have been using minox. The past couple months, I wake up, take a shower, apply minox and for the next couple hours, I feel very brain foggish, which makes me anxious. I never even thought to associate this to minox cause I've never had problems before. The past two days, I didn't use it and felt pretty great. This morning, used it again (5% minox from walgreens) and bam, the same thing happened again. I just felt out of it for a solid two hours. Now I could just be anxious/smoking too much weed/not exercising enough - all things that make hppd worse. At the same time, it seems like the correlation between the two events is to coincidental to overlook. If there are any other bald hppd'ers, let me know if you had any similar experience EDIT: I'm now 21.5

Interesting. My story is I had one bad shrooms trip (only trip Ive ever had). Afterwards, I was fine, kept smoking weed as usual. Then, a couple months later, I noticed that when I smoked weed, I felt like I would be higher than usual and much more anxious. A month after that, full on hppd meltdown. Of course, I stopped all drinking and smoking after this for about 8 months. At this current point, shit is fairly manageable - I smoke sometimes, no real problems, definitely more cloudy and anxious the next day. But if it was really that bad, I would stop. I guess we don't know if people in positions like mine or yours have had another crazy hppd regression from weed use. Also, exercising makes things so much better. If there were people who had a weed related regression, I would wonder whether they were exercising at this time too.

Have these people had a particularly bad trip when smoking that caused the flare up? Or has it been seemingly fine and then it just happens?

I'd like to hear from some people who smoked weed for a while post-hppd diagnosis with no effects and then suddenly got severe hppd. I have hppd from one bad shrooms trip, I took for myself almost a year to get healthy, exercise, and cut out all drinking and smoking (of weed). Now, I will drink on the weekends and smoke weed occasionally, and although I sometimes feel dumb the next day, it really isn't that bad. I've taken it to mean that I can enjoy weed, just don't over-do it. If I'm correct, it sonds like some some on here were doing what I was doing and then have had a sudden worsening of symptoms. I don't understand how this would happen, does it really just come on like that? Are there other variables? Are you sure it was the weed?

melatonin is good, just make sure you get a brand that is pure. the unpure/no name brands sometimes make you feel a little sick

Yeah I have this (I got hppd from shrooms). It's all lights though, anything with contrast really. It's gotten much better over time for me, sometimes flares up though after smoking weed/drinking.

Yeah I tried that stuff when I wasn't sleeping do to intense closed eye blobs and static. It fucked me up. The biggest problems I had were grogginess and headaches the next day and more anxiety/shortness of breath. I stopped after 3 days of it. I don't personally recommend it, but good luck dude.