leelalala

I just came off of Cymbalta a month ago, and it was like hell. It's an SNRI though, a bit different than SSRIs. The brain zaps and confusion were so severe that, I couldn't even have a break to get depressed I don't have a gym membership, but working out definitely helps. Also I think vitamin B supplements have been helping me a lot.

As I said mine was triggered by a psilocybin experience, but I think my overall state of mind at the time was also a huge influence. Before that, I have always been careful with psychedelics, have done them only when I was in a good mood with the right people and environment. I used some shrooms, lsd and salvia between ages 15-17. But I have been in an ongoing depressive state ever since, and anything I used led to panic attacks, so I didn't use anything for over 4 years except the occasional weed. In 2011 my depression got a lot worse, and I started using Cymbalta (an SNRI). I guess it triggered a manic state in me, and I started doing a lot more drugs than ever. After about 6 months of excessive alcohol, mdma and such, I quitted cymbalta and the drugs altogether. A few months later some life events brought me to a nervous breakdown, and I took some shrooms in the middle of it. Aside from panic attacks, it was my first real bad trip and I freaked out for the first time. Btw, I don't have any problems regarding alcohol and hppd since I started lamictal, but lamictal itself lowers my alcohol treshold a lot and I wake up feeling like shit everytime, even with a few beers.

I just found out about HPPD and this forum, and the first thing that came into my mind was the lack of info/education regarding this disorder. (You can read my intro post over here) The widespread use of hallucinogens and the psy culture is relatively new where I live. Until mid 2000s we only had a few underground parties with few people, but it has been growing rapidly since. And the senseless use of drugs have been frightening me a lot in the recent years. I think providing some pamphlets or other educational materials at psy trance festivals and such would be beneficial. Although producing websites and videos would be great, I think it is more important to reach people personally at an obviously non-antidrugs context. I haven't been to any festivals abroad, but I know that there are some organizations like DanceSafe.org working to provide some education. We have no such thing around here, and I'll be glad to handout pamphlets and such at the festivals I attend.

Thanks for the recommendations, I'll definitely check those threads. Well, my daily life is still difficult but not because of HPPD The disturbing symptoms have almost vanished completely... I just checked the list of symptoms over erowid again. Actually I had most of them for a long long time, and still do, but they are very mild. I started experimenting with drugs when I was 13 (now I'm 24), so it's hard for me to tell if they started before or after drugs (never been a heavy user though). What I still have is mostly static, geometric patterns and halos but they aren't disturbing, sometimes they're even fun. Some color combinations still give me a bit of a hard time, cyan + magenta in particular. When they are together, they tend to get illuminated, a bit 3D like and moving... But it's easy to ignore by not looking.

Hi there! For the past two years, I have been having difficulties with video projectors, and sometimes leds. When I watched anything on a projector, the image seperated into red-green-blue trails. Usually a great sense of terror and panic attacks accompanied the visual disturbance. It was awful for me, because as an art student I am exposed to projectors constantly, and I had to give up on many of my classes because of it. It all started about a month after a very bad psilocybin experience. (I guess I haven't been exposed to any projectors in between) At the time I also experienced constant sleep paralysis, disturbing lucid dreams which started over and over when I tried to wake up... When I mentioned this to my psychiatrist, he didn't seem to care and prescribed me antidepressants and antipsychotics for my depression and general anxiety (first prozac and rexapin, then cymbalta and seroquel). I started seeing another pdoc, and it was the same with him. I told my parents about my problem (not the psilocybin experience though) and a neurologist who is a family friend suggested that I get screened for epilepsy. I went to an epilepsy expert. She wanted EEGs and MRIs which came out clear. I told about my drug use, and gave her a list of drugs I have tried over the years. She said that it must be a result of my drug use, but offered nothing to help. About 6 months ago I started seeing another pdoc. She said that some minor epileptic cases may not be diagnosed by EEGs, and prescribed me a low dose Lamictal. The main reason for Lamictal was that it acted as a mood stabilizer, but she also wanted to see if it helped with these symptoms. I started with 25 mg, around 75 mgs the visual disturbances vanished (now I'm using 200mgs but that's for the mood stabilizing effects). Well, altough I mentioned my drug use none of these doctors mentioned anything about HPPD, I guess they just don't know about it. I just found out about it myself, and after reading some articles and the posts on this forum, it seems a lot more relevant to me than photosensitive epilepsy. Still, it was treated by the instincts of my pdoc I guess I'll talk more about this with her next time we meet. What I'm curious about is, is this thing curable? Or will it return if I stop using Lamictal?