Jay1

1 hour ago, Hall89 said:

I'm curious! Has it affected your memory or cognition overall? You don't get sleepy at 1 mg? Do you split it and take 0.5 mg in the morning and 0.5 later in the day?

If i'm focused... Working or socialising, I'm good, not tired and don't notice any memory issues (at 2mg+ i do)... If I am watching tv, i will probably sleep though, even at 1mg... I've tried splitting the dose, but 2 x 0.5mg does nothing for me.

1 hour ago, Spartan said:

Hi Jay 1 that is super helpful and insightful.. thankyou 

I have been using for approx over 1 year now. 

I had some extremely traumatic and stressful situations take place and due to this increased my dose and started using on a day-to-day basis to get through... 

Im.currently on 2.5mgs daily.. reduced from 3 with some withdrawals tho pretty much all ok now. 

II know I will  get down to 2mgs when the time is right.. and Likley continue to taper from there.

Tho will just keep on keeping on for now. 

I remember you sharing your great regime with me some time ago now though I slipped...

Anthony that's just how is is for now. 

Many thanks again!!! 

Best regards 

 

 

No probs! I'm glad there was a med there for you, when it was really needed.

It's one of those cosmic jokes that we have found a med that actually works for HPPD, but comes with it's own set of problems!

I've used it long term, but not every day... 

I tend to do something like:

Thu 1mg

Fri 1mg

Sat 1mg

Sun 1mg (occasionally, if needed for a social event)

3-4 days off

Then have 2 weeks off every 3 months to fully clean the system. 

If needed, I sometimes up the dose to 1.5mg for really anxiety inducing events. Likewise, I sometimes take 0.75mg is I need something, but know it will be easy enough to get through... 0.5mg doesn't really do anything and 2mg+ shows no significant improvements either (and just makes me sleep).

One thing that took me a while to get my head around is it's best used it to treat anxiety, not the visuals and dpdr... When I first got my script, I would take 2mg as that was the dose that would really help my visuals (while also helping anxiety and dpdr)... After a while, I figured out that if I decrease the anxiety using 1mg, I didn't really care as much about the visuals, that were a little bit reduced, but not like the 2mg dose. This really helped to stay away from tolerance, imho.

This approach has worked for me for about 15 years now, with little to no sign of tolerance or withdrawal (I had 6 weeks off during lockdown and didn't notice any issues other than my standard hppd/anxiety). I can't really begin to say how much this med has improved my life.... social events, work events etc have become so much easier and just knowing that I have the med on hand, if needed, actually reduces my anxiety. It just needs to be treated with a lot of respect.

I seem to stay just a few inches away from the edge of insanity... I can imagine that it wouldn't take very much to push me over that level, but so far, so good. Being able to work from home has really helped, as has having Clonazepam on hand for events that would really trip me out. Good, patient friends and family too. 

Keep on fighting.

Zopiclone is an odd one, in terms of visuals... I have very strong hppd visuals and zopiclone changes them... The visual snow and strobing stop almost completely , but the geometric patterns become more like spider webs, which is quite strange at first. So they do have potential to make you see things while on them. I've never had any prolonged visual changes though. 

The safer alternative (visually) would be a traditional benzo. They are also amazing for sleep (I have slept for 16 hours on a 2mg dose on klono!). If you treat them with full respect and only use them to try to break the cycle, I don't see any issue with them (as long as your doctor agrees, of course!).

If you need something for occasional relief, there's nothing better than clonazepam, for me. If you are confident you can stick to only taking them as and when, then i'd chat to your doctor about it.

Hi, have you tried melatonin yet, that seems to work pretty well for me (5-10mg), i get a slight hangover feeling the next morning, but a small price to pay for getting my sleep cycle sorted. I take it for about 2-3 weeks and it tends to get me back on track. If that doesn't work, Zlopiclone almost certainly will. Again, make sure to just take them for a week or two and see if it helps you get into a natural sleep cycle. 

A technique that helps me a bit (and this is one i somehow made up myself) ... When i'm in bed and wide awake, I count as fast as I can in my head... As i start counting into double figures, it becomes a real struggle to keep the speed of the counting up.. keep cycling repeatedly between 1-20 as fast as i can until it's a real struggle to count.. For whatever reason, it seems to overload my brain enough to clear out my thoughts and help me get back to sleep. Strange, but worth a try!

The safest option is obviously none, but if you do want to smoke again... Then yea, take a prolonged break and then reintroduce yourself with low THC level weed.

For me, once I had hppd, the weed question became moot, as even the slightest amount would make me trip and give me insane anxiety, so the choice was made by my body/mind before I could have a say! 

You might find the same... If you feel like weed hits different now, then it's probably a sign to think about quitting. 

I'm not really comfortable with this conversation on here... Please reach out if you need help to get your life back, there's always a way.

Stay strong, Jay

I refer to what you have now as pre-hppd, you pretty much have to force yourself to see the visuals, but they are there if you look hard enough. 

To me, this is a huge red flag for what might come if you keep experimenting with drugs. I'm sure a lot of us long termers on here had this and kept pushing on with drugs until we got full blown hppd.

Personally, i'd quit the shrooms and be thankful that I had the experience and came out fairly unscathed... If you do that, you might well be able to carry on smoking some weed (though that is still a risk, right now).

By definition, if you don't have visuals, you don't have hppd.

But my view is that hppd is a collection of issues anyway. Visuals, dpdr, anxiety, depression etc that have been brought on by drug use. So even if the hppd definition is not strictly correct for you, I am sure all the info you find on here will be of use.

Good to hear you are recovering. Sleep, or lack of it, can cause spikes in symptoms, no doubt about it. Hopefully your sleep pattern improves more each week too. 

11 hours ago, SomebodySomewhere said:

Hey Jay, I hope this isn't too personal, but I know you've been here for many years now.

What HPPD symptoms, if any, have gone away for you?

What HPPD symptoms occur at your baseline?

From worst to tolerable, how would you rank your tolerance for your current HPPD symptoms?

Have any HPPD symptoms simple gone away over the years?

No probs...

The only thing that went away was depression. It was horrendous for the first few years and by far my worst symptom, but thankfully eased in year three and is now completely gone. Why it went away, i'll never know (no meds at the time). Depression isn't really a hppd symptom, in my mind, but was very likely linked to the drug use. 

My baseline is strong visuals (VS, after images, geometric patterns, CEV, strobing/flashing of the entire visual field), strong anxiety and dp/dr. I have always equated my symptoms as like being trapped in the last few hours of a strong trip... Back in reality, but still with quite strong trippy vision, trippy thought processes and all the fun and learning has long passed. 

I'd rank those into:

dp/dr - The worst of them, get rid of that and I could breeze through life.

anxiety - It's bad, but I have learnt some coping mechanisms and have the occasional clonazepam to get through the worst of it.

visuals - while bad, i could easily live with them if they didn't feed into the dpdr and anxiety. I'd seriously take on everyone's visual issues on here if it meant getting rid of the dpdr and anxiety. 

My baseline is pretty stable now and the feeling is constant, but predictable. A few things can change that for me.. 1) Lack of sleep or broken sleep 2) Stress 3) Meds/Drugs (inc alcohol).

I think getting natural waves/spikes is actually a good sign and indicates your brain is trying to work out and fix the problem. 

I can only speak anecdotally, but yes.. Most people who arrive here and PM me about weed induced hppd get better, i'd say a big majority.

Hopefully it is just a spike, they can last months sometimes (for me, at least).

I got my first aura migraine last year and it scared the hell out of me... I thought i was going into the matrix! Looked like a rip in my whole reality, with green digital visuals showing in that rip. 

I wouldn't be too quick to jump on a strong med like Lamictal. If you can cope with it, just try and take a month with no drugs, meds, supplements etc... Find your baseline and learn to understand it... Only then can you truly know what meds, stress, relaxation etc are actually doing to your baseline. Anecdotally, the vast, vast majority of people who PM me in their first week or two see massive, often full recovery over the course of the first month or two.  If you were on a med, you'd think the med did it, but it would likely be coincidence. 

All the best, Jay

Thanks for the post, very similar story to mine. Acceptance and time does make things a bit easier. 

If you are still consuming drugs, expect to see changes in symptoms. The simplest advice is to go sober.

There are no decent stats about HPPD, but anecdotally from my time on here... It seems to be possible, but not very common. Logically, it seems more likely that you would have a better chance of recovery after one time than dozens or hundreds... But again, that is just based on logic and anecdotal evidence, not any hard data.

If used cautiously, benzos can really help this condition. It's quite frustrating that the one thing that seems to help most of us is also highly addictive and tolerance building.

I treat it as the silver bullet it is... I use it when i need some relief, but know that it can hurt me very badly, so use caution. 

20 hours ago, help123 said:

I noticed a slight exacerbation of symptoms after i began working out and didn't have a good sleep for a few days,is that normal?

Yea, that happens to me too. Working out seems to only affect my visuals, and only for a short time. But lack of sleep really messes with everything... visuals, anxiety, dpdr

I've just ordered some of these, i think it could help with light sensitivity better than standard sunglasses.

https://www.migralens.com/

Yea, i've had several spikes... Some caused by stress, some from drug use, some from med use and some seemingly random (but probably also some underlying stress). They have all gone away again, with these exception of one caused by Ketamine use. 

Try to stay as calm as you can and distract yourself. Worst case, use the Xanax, as and when needed (it's amazing what a psychological boost just having the benzo in your pocket can bring!).

Great post Nick!