Jay1

It sounds like your symptoms are clearing up nicely..... I think you should be all good in a few months. You should be able to drink (but go easy... tough advice for a scot ) and maybe smoke a few mild joints, here and there. If that is the case.... Be very, very thankful. I'd kill to be able to kick back and smoke a nice joint without being whipped up into an lsd trip. good luck fella

There is a fair chance that he didn't have SS though. From what I can remember, there is no way to scientifically diagnose SS... So it would be just guess work, on his part. Although saying that... most of us on here are using guesswork to say we have hppd. I think you can overdo it on mdma and have a crazy time of it for weeks.. without it being SS though.

Got an appointment with my doc tomorrow... Will chat to him about this and maybe have a go... Side effects look mellow, so could be worth a go

I'm still lookin too mate. I think it is in our brit DNA to get smashed every weekend. I'm in a band, so makes it even harder... free booze and everyone up for the party. I stick to bottled beer and try my best to stay away from the shots... For the most part, that minimizes the hangover. I have a benzo on a Sunday to make sure i'm not caught up in the anxiety. I used to drink alot more.. pretty much weds, thurs, fri, saturday... then I found a great cure for that... getting married

Speed is an awful drug... The anxiety and paranoia is severve when taking it with hppd. I'd honestly rather do lsd than speed... if a gun were held to my head. If you really have to do drugs... I'd probably go with very small lines of coke throughout the rave and maybe a few beers to relax. Not the best advice i'll ever give on here.... But it seems like the one party drug that doesn't affect too many hppders.

I blame MDMA for 90% of my problems.... Very, very tough drug on the mind, in my opinion. After the main pyschedlics, this is the one to avoid.

I can't remember your back story.... But even if you only have mild hppd and are fully cured by the summer.... you are still playing russian roullete. If I had all this info at my finger tips (back in my drug days), I wouldn't risk my sanity for the rest of my life, just to trip again. Back in 1996, when I did my last trip... I didn't know anything about this condition and made myself much worse.... You have a chance not to make such a mistake. My advice... be thankful for the times you had and forget about pychedelics... Don't end up like 95% of us on this site who were gifted a warning sign, but ignored it and are now in a world of pain.

I'll do the occasional line of coke.... It's never affected my hppd in the slightest... Maybe if i'm at a concert or something though. I get wasted on booze every weekend.... I love it, can't help myself. I don't think it does me any good... but I just can't settle for sitting in on a saturday night watching tv.

Yea, the microdot I had (back in 1995) was about the level of 5 tabs.... sounds like it is still much the same.... Crazy stuff. Listen to your body and mind, mate.... Everytime you do drugs, it's making your vision a little worse. Then you will start noticing all the other shite that we are stuck with until you have full on hppd. It's not pretty and not worth risking.. just for a night on the mdma or another trip. Give it a rest for 6 months, see where you're at.... you might get lucky and will still be able to enjoy the occasional night on the powder or a few spliffs here and there.

i have incontinence of the brain

I think if I weren't at a festival... I would have stopped after that night and maybe never done drugs again.... just bad timing. I don't fully remember how the visuals started.... I was so up and down, off my head nearly everyday (and weed every minute) that I think they were there long before I stopped the drugs, probably before that trip at glasto... but I just couldn't wrap my head around it, as I was always high..... I was borderline alcoholic too, which probably masked alot of stuff. The very very heavy 2 years 1994-1996 are such a blur, it is just hard to pinpoint anything I naivly thought that once I stopped drugs, I would stopped seeing shit and feeling trippy.

I remember having mild hppd when I was still at school... I can specifically remember sitting at the bus stop and seeing the road waving and breathing and thinking "cool, free trip".. haha, wish we had the internet back then! (although I doubt it would count for much). That night at glasto, I defintaly went from being a bit fucked up to full blown hppd though... I broke my brain that night, no doubt about it. That microdot was so strong... I remember hallucinating that Keith from the prodigy cut off the black dude's head and then tell the crowd to cut off the head of the person stood next to them.... safe to safe I freaked out a bit. I still had a great night though.... but the next day was a big change... felt like my mind was floating 10ft above my body and was still tripping like mad. Being a twat... I dropped 2 Es... had another great night... same again the Sunday.... Got home and just carried on my drug life... for a year, I tripped and did so many pills that I never really came down enough to know how fucked I was.... But I think that night at glasto changed everything. I did one big trip in June 96 after England got knocked out of the Euros by Germany (great mood settter) had a vicious, paranoid trip and swore off drugs...... the next few months revealed the full extent of the damage done... Proper crazy. Moved down south to stay with my brother (a true hero to take me on in that state... crying and losing it... when he was supposed to be living it up at University) I got my head down, away from my drug mates, worked my shit out and things got a bit better. Ended up living there for 8 years, went to Uni and met my wife there, so every cloud.

This might not be strictly true... They might just be covering it up or have different issues. Some of my drug friends who seemed 100% normal later told me they were relieved when I stopped doing drugs and was vocal about my problems... as they got a chance to get out of the scene too and had problems of there own going on.

Yea mate, a few times.... 1st before they were big in a dive in birmingham... then the big one at knebworth and then a couple of years back in lisbon. All class... knebworth was rockin... off my tits on pills and whiskey... gettin in to all sorts of mischief. Chanting for Blur to come on, the whole place was on my back... wankers haha. Prodigy showed Oasis up though, now that was madness. Fell asleep through manic street preachers, even on two E's... boring as shite. Good video... glatsonbury was the business..... 1995 was my 1st and pure bliss... sunshine all the way... amazing madness. Again, Progidy rocked it (the choice was progidy or oasis on the friday night). Co-incidently the night I think I really got hppd, from a microdot. Song on now:

I had no bother with 5HTP.... in fact, I think I got a bit of a boost from it (no improvements on hppd symptoms though) like everything else with this disorder, it helps some and hinders others

Did it ever emerge what the medication was? Can't remember (I bet I have even tried it and forgot)

That's it.... that part where you feel a bit trippy, a bit distant, still plenty of visuals going on... but you generally feel tired, anxious and uncomfortable as you wait to return to normal.... still waiting!

disclaimer - if you quit your job, leave town and dump all your friends after reading this, i'm not to blame if it doesn't work out

I thought i'd start a topic where we can all contribute ways we have made our lives a little better (non medicinal). Get healthy and sober This is the obvious one... quitting drugs, stimulants like coffee, smoking etc.... Then eating healthily and working out really do help alot. Forget the past It is easy to get caught up in a spiral of guilt, anger and jealousy about your current situation. Why did I do drugs? Why did I get hppd? Why are my friends ok? Like all the mistakes and regrets in life... learn from it and move on (not easy, I know). These emotions will just feed the anxiety and hppd. Change your life hppd is at it's worst when we are stressed. It is impossible to avoid all stress, but do what you can to change your lifestyle for the better. If you hate your job, try and change it.... If you hate the city, move out. If your friends don't seem to support you, move on (the real friends will let you back in, when you're ready). These are big, life changing decisions... but hppd doesn't have to stop you making them. Grab your life back hppd can strip you of your ability to do the simplest tasks in life. Retrain yourself to do these tasks. If making eye contact is tripping you out, just slowly do it a little more each day... The more you do it, the more normal it will become. Same goes for all sorts of things... making small talk, going out and about, chatting to someone you are hot for. Your life isn't over This is a key thing to remember. The 1st months and years can be very, very tough... But life goes on. There are numerous people on here that have gone on to have successful educations, careers, relationships and families. hppd is not the end of your life, your dreams or your happiness.

yea, FAC51, man my memory is so shot! I only went a couple of times and it was starting to get well dodgy by then... my older mates say it was class in the early 90s

The old hppd forum used to be full of debate about whether you could get hppd from weed. My view has always been yes, especially with the crazy weed you get in the UK.. (not sure what it is like where you are?). "Skunk" as it's know is just like taking a mini trip every time you smoke... Some of my mates are paranoid zombies, fuck knows why they carry on. If you are worried about this, chances are you already suffer from anxiety and maybe hypercondria (I don't mean any offence, just saying it how it is). Without your full story, it is hard to say....

I think mdma causes so many problems that people don't know what to name it all as. I've chatted to about a dozen of us that used to do alot of pills and everyone had some lingering problem or other... 3 had what I would call pre-hppd plus anxiety/depression... 1 had a full nervous breakdown, 2 had servere depression and several just said they feel different now. Generation X is a mess, god help generation K.

yea, makes sense that it is a nicer experience, the amount of people that love it.... I kept hearing about the K-hole and it sounded like salvia.... but seems not. Salvia is not of this planet ........ I researched Datura as part of a film script idea I once had, sounds like pure and simple madness. No one, not one single person said anything good about the experience.

I really think it is the first step to recovery.... and It is a hard step, i've guilted myself out many times.... but it's of no help. The way I try and rationalise it is with the saying "everything happens for a reason". Maybe getting hppd stopped me from getting addicted to heroin (like some of my friends and family)..... Or maybe as a "normal" person, I would have been a right twat, doing more harm than good but feeling ok about it. hppd (or the previous drug use) has soften me... i'm not arrogant, I care for people, animals, the planet etc.... Perhaps if I hadn't got hppd, i'd be some corporate banker, cheating on his wife, neglecting his kids etc. My point is.... when we look back with regret, we only tend to look at this bright, beautiful life that could have been.... but It's not just a 2 sided coin, we could have become better people without hppd, we could have become worse.

Luckily I missed the boat on the ket scene.... From what my mates tell me, it sounds a bit like a Salvia hit (the real out of body Salvia hits). I can't see anything being as fucked as Salvia when you really hit your inner space, cept maybe the few stories i've heard about people doing Datora (is that how it's spelt?)..... A friend of mine, who is proper pshyconaut did something when he was travelling in africa that put him in a state for 3 days, and he experienced all the bad things he has ever done to other people, from the perspective of the other person. He buzzed off it, saying it was very cleansing and stripped him of any lingering "bad vibes". Sounds like pure hell, to me. Anyway, yea... madchester, stone roses, happy mondays back.... HAC51 next? That would be a blast from my past!