Alright so this is gonna be a really long post. I've edited out a few parts but it's still a massive wall of text. Bear with me if you can.
To begin, I’m a 19 year-old male currently in his sophomore year at a big university. For a little background, I was pretty socially awkward and introverted as a kid up until around my junior year of high school. From there, I started socializing and making a lot more friends, for which I’m grateful. During my senior year, I started drinking and smoking weed, albeit rarely and never in excess. In the summer between high school and college I started getting interested in drugs – particularly hallucinogens. I guess a lot of my fascination stemmed from my deep interest in the brain and biochemistry (I’m a biochem major right now and I’m loving the curriculum).
During that first semester at college, my roommate and I didn’t get along very well and argued on many issues. However, the one common passion we shared was a deep interest in drugs and hallucinogens. We wanted to try acid and shrooms so badly, but for some strange reason we were completely unable to find any. As a result, we became interested in legal highs and began researching the strange chemical known as DXM. After reading a few robotrip reports online, we ordered a few bottles of DXM gel-pills and anxiously awaited their arrival. The next Friday, we proceeded to down the pills and soon enjoyed the wondrous confusion that is dextromethorphan. The experience was very empathogenic and broke down a lot of tensions between me and my roommate. From that point on, we were hooked on DXM. We ended up robotripping maybe three or four times that semester, always off of gel caps.
I guess I should mention that throughout that semester, I began drinking pretty heavily with another friend of mine from my hometown. He ended up living a few doors down from my dorm and we quickly became best friends. We spent many a weeknight and nearly every weekend getting plastered. Eventually I started drinking a lot on my own and it got to the point where I decided it would be best for me to stop drinking for a while. I don’t drink that much anymore. My roommate ended up tripping on acid for the first time a few days before the end of the semester. I was jealous, but I got over it.
When I returned the next semester, I was a month sober and ready to get back into drugs at any cost. Over the break I spent a lot of my time researching drugs of all kinds and got particularly enamored with the deliriant drug Diphenhydramine (DPH). Looking back on it, I must have been insane to try such a dangerous drug, but I found it so strange and interesting that I just needed to try it. In the first week of my second semester, I tried DPH with my roommate and had a very strange experience. It was a weird trip. Right around the same time my roommate found a really accessible source of DXM, so I began robotripping relatively frequently (about every 2 weeks) and I started smoking weed pretty heavily. This was probably the only time during my life where I could say I was legitimately addicted to weed. I would grow restless and anxious if I didn’t smoke at least once a day, and I had pretty bad sleeping issues – namely insomnia and sleep paralysis. Around February of this year, I started getting terrifying hallucinations as I was falling asleep. They slowly became less common.
After an idiotic attempt to “scare myself away from drugs” in which I took a bunch of DXM and DPH simultaneously, I woke up and noticed that I still had some strange residual “hallucinations” going on in my peripheral vision. Nothing direct and noticeable, but there would be these occasional black specks flying in the corner of my eye that slightly worried me.
It was about this time that I got into abusing stimulant drugs, namely the Concerta that I was prescribed. In early March, I ended up going on a binge with my roommate, snorting multiple lines and downing some DPH pills. I was too poor to afford weed at this point, and for some reason DPH seemed extra enticing that weekend. I had a pretty “fun” night, although I eventually passed out due to exhaustion. The next night, my roommate convinced me to try DPH yet another time. DPH builds up a tolerance pretty quickly, so we decided to up our doses and proceeded to down a ton of pills in order to chase a high that really shouldn’t be chased. I guess I had fun, laughing at the visual distortions and clinging onto my sanity as hard as I could.
The next day was awful. I woke up feeling shitty and confused. My roommate and I both noticed some residual visual distortions (stuff floating around the corner of my vision, but now more prominent and nagging). I managed to ace my bio exam that evening thanks to all the studying I did, but after the exam I proceeded to have a massive breakdown. At that point I was close to failing my calculus class for the second semester in a row and I had been extraordinarily lazy that entire semester. That, coupled with my now-apparent drug problems, led me to spend the entire night crying as my roommate consoled me. I took a two week long break from smoking, drinking, etc., and since that weekend I have never taken any DXM, DPH, or any other legal drugs. After two weeks, I went home for spring break and spent a large portion of it with my best friend (the alcohol buddy from first semester) and our other mutual friend. We ended up smoking every day of the break.
After returning from break, I was very adamant about keeping my grades up and maintaining good academic standings. In addition, I started smoking pretty frequently (every 1 or 2 days), but I didn’t let it interfere with my schoolwork, so no harm came out of it. At this point, I still had some pretty minor visual disturbances – not necessarily “floaters” or “visual snow”, but more like random stray black marks across my vision every once in a while. It was minor enough that it didn’t really worry me, but I knew it was there and I was aware that HPPD was a very real thing. But I’m stupid, and I do stupid things.
By this point, my best friend (let’s just call him Z at this point), my roommate and I had become pretty close and smoked together pretty frequently. Three weeks before the end of the semester, this guy that I was pretty chill with and had smoked with a few times hit me up and told me he had some nice shrooms that he was willing to sell. Z and I were very interested and proceeded to buy them and try them on a nice warm Friday afternoon. Z and I went for a walk in the woods and talked about life and all-in-all it was really nice. During the trip I realized how recluse I had become over the course of the last semester, and I was determined to change that.
The next day, I noticed a marked decrease in the number of floater/VS-like symptoms I had. I was ecstatic. Shrooms cured my “HPPD”. Flash forward to the next Friday: I’m high as fuck in my room and I’m about to pass out early for the night when this kid I met in my drugs class texted me about this awesome new acid connect he got. I told my roommate and I literally jumped up and down with joy. I was finally trying ACID – the real deal. So basically my roommate and I procure these tabs and immediately put them on our tongue. About 15 minutes after we put the tabs on our tongue, he noted that his tongue felt really numb and that his mouth tasted like grapefruits. I knew that was a sign that it wasn’t legitimate, but I ignored it and tried to enjoy it. I proceeded to trip harder than I had ever in my lifetime. Everything was so amazingly colorful, I was so happy, I had great open conversations with my roommate and I listened to some great music while walking along a beautiful forest path. All in all, it was an amazing night. I was so satisfied with my experience and definitely wanted to try it with Z before going home for the summer. So the next Friday I proceeded to drop tabs with both my roommate and Z, and it was an amazing night.
So after tripping on psychs for 3 straight weekends, I went home for the next few months. At first I barely smoked, but eventually Z and I started visiting our friend B’s house every night and waiting for his mother to go to sleep so that we could get blasted off of a grav bong. Z, B, and I ended up getting high pretty much every night for a month and a half, and then probably every other night for the next month and a half (we all got jobs).
It was around this point that I started noticing pretty prominent floaters in my vision. I found myself waking up in the morning and just staring at my bedroom walls (all white) and noticing the little specks that would fly around and warp. The worst thing was the sky – I would often end up staring at the sky and freaking out about how prominent the hallucinations would become. Compared to now, they weren’t awful, but at the time I was horrified to think that I could have fucked up my vision.
But I’m stupid.
My dumbass brain thought it would be fine if I just ignored it and continued smoking every night throughout the summer. I eventually thought it would be a great idea to end the summer with a nice acid trip between me, Z, and B. We came up to my university dorm a week early, moved everything in, and bought some tabs off the same girl who sold to me the last two times I tripped. The next day, we dropped the tabs and ended up having a blast. The trip was nice, although it was weaker than the last two times. Overall, it was a nice experience.
Over the course of the next few weeks, I realized that my visual disturbances were getting worse. By this point, I was a pretty seasoned stoner. I would show up to random events high all the time, and it was starting to affect my social skills. I can function normally while moderately high, but the grav bong Z (who’s my current roommate) and I use would always get me socially autistic. I ended up pledging the same fraternity as Z this semester and to be honest it’s been really helpful. It’s nice having a bunch of people whom you know you can rely on when you’re in your darkest. But people just couldn’t understand my problems.
However, over the course of the semester my visual disturbances got increasingly worse at an increasing rate. I had been smoking less, but I guess smoking combined with sleep deprivation and a lot of drinking and stress accelerated the whole process. While I’m happy with the position I’m in right now, I developed pretty bad anxiety throughout the semester and probably some semblances of depression for a multitude of personal reasons. My HPPD (I think I can call it that now) was one of the biggest reasons for my anxiety, especially the DP/DR that I’ve developed over the past few months. I’m getting random mood swings that are tearing me apart emotionally and I know that drugs are to blame for it all.
I quit smoking about a month ago, although I’ve caved in a couple of times much to my chagrin. Other than the Vyvanse I’m prescribed and alcohol, I’ve quit all drugs (even caffeine). I know I should stop taking vyvanse because it definitely worsens my visual problems, but I’ve had pretty bad ADHD my whole life and I find it difficult to keep up with my ever-increasing workload without it. I wrote this whole report in kind of a frantic speedy vyvanse rush and I know it’s really wordy and elaborate, but it just feels so good to get this all off my chest. It’s been pent-up for so long and I’ve had nobody to talk to because nobody can really relate to a problem as abstract as HPPD. Once finals end, I’m going to be taking a month and a half-long sabbatical from all drugs and alcohol, so hopefully that helps with my situation. Right now the hardest part of it all is coming to terms with how I’m not gonna be able to do all of the drugs I wanted to try. I know it’s dumb of me to be thinking like that, but I feel like I’m missing out on so many great experiences.
I’m only 19 and I feel like I’ve fucked my life over already. I don’t want my parents to find out and think I’m some sort of fuck-up. I’m trying really hard to make it through school and to become successful and I’m ruining the one thing that will lead me there: My brain.
