Gaz

I have also developed vitiligo and I am in my early 20s and I also have HPPD. I only have vitiligo on my fingertips but it shows up worse in summer when the rest of my hand tans but my fingers don't. There could maybe be some sort of a connection. I know that vitiligo is caused by an auto-immune response and i have heard some people on this forum say that auto-immune conditions are linked in with HPPD. Maybe if you have vitiligo you could be more prone to developing HPPD.

It's getting worse now it's really affecting my sleep. It feels like my tinnitus is coming right from the middle of my head rather than my ears. I get it really bad anytime I am in silence especially when I am trying to get to sleep. Anyone know of anything that can help?

Yes I get this as well just had it today actually. I have problems with perceiving the size / distance of my hands and using them for different tasks. It feels like I am just sitting back in some control room somewhere where my hands just run on auto pilot without my control.

I have this too and usually get it when I am having derealization symptoms as well. I remember when I was tripping that my hearing was affected and sounds seemed to be massively amplified and distorted just like my vision was. All your senses can be affected by psychedelics so in theory any sense can be affected by hppd. I think it is just a sensitivity problem that will slowly return to baseline with time and sobriety.

Honestly don't worry about that at all. You smell tobacco and alcohol all the time around different places and you never get any effect from that. The smell is just made up of burning plant matter the thc would only make it into your bloodstream if you were in an air tight room with many people smoking very close to you and even tgen the effects would be negligible. The problem is that your brain automatically associates the distinct smell of cannabis with making your HPPD worse and thus induces panic and fear. It's a placebo effect. Just keep telling yourself that second hand smoke can do no harm to you and that you are very strong for not smoking it yourself. If it is really freaking you out I would definitely invest in some sort of good quality air freshener / incense.

Yes that's exactly how I feel. I knew that the tinnitus had to be neurological as I haven't been to any loud raves recently lol. Hopefully it will fade with time. I am amazed that I didn't have a derealization episode today because it was so stressful and busy in work. I just had the "level 1" mild derealization where everything seems slightly fake. It's seems like it's just luck of the draw if I go into them or not. I'm trying to find any correlations I can. Staring at someone's face while having a conversation with them is definitely the biggest trigger for me. I know that facial / expression recognition requires a lot of brain activity in the areas that psychedelics also have their effects.

Thanks I will pick some of that up next time I'm shopping and give it a try for a few weeks. I did notice a big improvement when I was eating half a grapefruit every morning. I don't know if they have b12 in. I had a very strange new symptom develop today. All of a sudden I got a ringing in my right ear then my hearing in that ear was impaired which aggravated my derealization and anxiety. Now whenever there is any sound my ear has this bleeping sound like when you dial a telephone number. I still have it now. It just started happening out of the blue. There is just a constant bleeping now when people are talking to me or there is general background noise. When will it end!? lol. Thankfully it stops when there is no sound so it isn't affecting my ability to sleep.

I think I am definitely more likely to have problems if my blood sugar is low. I find that if I have eaten sweet things this actually has a beneficial effect on my hppd. It's as if I need energy to control my derealization and when my energy levels are low I find it harder to prevent my conciousness being altered. I have been ok for the last few days but it hasn't been tgat busy in work. I think that I could be in for another episode this Saturday though when it gets a hell of lot busier. I just have to adapt and get on with it though as I need to pay my bills. I'm getting married at the end of this year and my biggest fear is that I go into a major derealization episode while I am doing my speech. That does sound awful about the torch. I get problems with afterimages if I see any lights in my vision or if there are two objects of contrasting colours. Bright light is horrible for hppd sufferers. When you think about it the brighter the light, the stronger the stimulation to your brain and the worse the symptoms. I much prefer night time since getting hppd. During the day I feel like I am constantly having a mild trip.

They both happened when I was feeling "heavy" tired and hungry. I hadn't had much to eat or drink before they happened. The first time it happened in the early evening just before I was about to finish my shift. The second time it was just before my lunch break. The environment I work in is incredibly brightly lit with white floor tiles, white walls and white ceiling which is the worst possible environment for someone with HPPD. It has only happened when I was at work. On both occasions I felt very stressed because it was very busy and I was rushing from customer to customer and I felt exhausted. On both occasions it started while I was talking to someone face to face. Both times my perception of motion and size were altered. I have had "mini-episodes" when talking face to face with people where part of them will change colour or appearance while staring at them. It always happens when I am in a social situation with someone. I have mild social anxiety so this probably doesn't help. It has now been 8 months since I had my bad trip and I haven't even touched alcohol yet I am still having these problems. Hopefully it will gradually fade. At the moment I feel like every day at work is a battle to defend my "safe zone" from breaking down.

Yeah I find that if you have to stare at something, particularly people, my visual perception and recognition starts to break down. I was at a lecture and I had to keep looking away from the lecturer to try and keep under control. It makes sense though as human brains have evolved to recognise complex facial expressions etc which actually requires a massive amount of brain activity to sustain it.

I think if I was in my home environment or out with friends etc it wouldn't bother me as much but when I'm trying to do my job it becomes a nightmare. I think its just a panic attack and the mind just kind of shuts off in defence. After the peak of the experience I was left with an afterglow of weird visual perception for a few hours. I do find it interesting at the same time though I would love to know what is actually happening in the brain to cause such a bizarre experience.

Ok so this is the second time this has happened to me now. I wonder if anyone else has experienced it. It happened on Saturday at work when it was very busy and stressful. This is also what triggered it last time. I was talking to someone and I started noticing that all the "edges" of his facial features and everything around me became very sharp and high in contrast this made my heart rate go up and I had that fear feeling you get all across your chest. Then things got much worse and my hearing and sense of touch was affected and reality just dissolved into a confusing bundle of jumbled sensory input. People's faces turned cartoonish and false looking and objects looked very unusual. It is impossible to put the experience completely into words but it's a very frightening experience. I found it slightly easier to deal with this time as I kept telling myself that it will pass like it did before just stay calm nobody knows what is going on in your head you look normal. Reality returned to normal after about 15 mins or so and then I experienced a very strong tinnitus like you get when you are about to pass out. Has anyone else experienced something similar? The only other way I can describe it is that it's very similar to an intense salvia trip. It's definitely got to be some sort of disociative problem. Since it happened a lot of my other symptoms have worsened. I feel like I am not in control of my hands and have kind of an out of body experience while driving.

https://scienceyourfacein.wordpress.com/tag/2cb/ Very interesting short read about 2cb and why it has psychedelic effects similar to lsd.

I was laying in bed last night scrolling through my fb news feed and there was an animated gif on there which flashed very quickly and brightly. When I looked at it my tinnitus got a lot worse and seemed to turn on and off very quickly in sync with the flashing of the image. When I looked away from the image my tinnitus returned to a normal baseline level. This has made me realise that the route of my tinnitus has to be neurological. Has anyone else noticed anything similar?

I had a single bad trip but it lasted for literally 18 hours because I was the idiot of the year and double dropped because the first gel capsule didn't hit me for over 90mins. I have found that the biggest and most powerful cure for HPPD is the art of distracting your brain. Get on with your daily life as normal, socialise, exercise, play video games do what ever you enjoy The more you ignore hppd the more it goes away. Sounds so simple but its tricky to ignore it when it's scaring you shitless. Put it in to perspective. All it is is a few alterations in your perception that have lingered longer than normal. You are not insane. You are not going to end up in a mental hospital. You will return to a normal state of mind. Time is the best healer. Progress is very slow but it will happen. Just don't do any more psychoactivs in the mean time as that would be adding fuel to the fire. Whenever I get scared about my HPPD I like to remind myself that there are people out there living with a hell of a lot worse and that gives me the strength to go on.

Does anyone else have this annoying symptom where sentences seem to move around while you read them? They seem to move in a wave like pattern as I move along the sentence as if they are being distorted. This is a new symptom for me only noticed it a few weeks ago. I dont know if it's a good sign or a bad sign. It may be my visual processing neurones reconfiguring themselves or it may be more delayed damage who knows.

Do you have Astigmatism? It may be that your glasses have a cylinder component to correct your astigmatism but your contact lenses don't. Your glasses might also have an anti-reflection coating which helps to reduce glare around lights especially at night but again your contact lenses don't have that. I wear contact lenses and glasses and I do notice that I get more star burst around lights with my contact lenses. The eyes are just optical systems and all optical systems can experience aberrations particularly at night when your pupils are large.

My HPPD was caused by a bad bk-2cb trip which is a research chemical analogue of 2cb. I had exactly the same worries as you about psychosis etc. I had a very bad episode a month after my trip where I lost touch with reality for about 20 mins in a weird visual feedback loop. It was very scary as I was at work at the time and I was convinced that I would need to be taken to hospital because of it as I had the same sort of feeling you get about being physically sick when you know that you are badly ill and need help but it was mental health. Anyway luckily it's a lot better now. I noticed from researching online that there have been a couple of associated cases of Neurological damage associated with the use of 2c related drugs. It doesn't say if that's from single use or cronic abuse but that does worry me slightly. Anyway I still have problems 6 months after my bad trip but they are no where near as bad as they were. Progress is very slow but I can feel an improvement. I have remained sober for 6 months now and it is definitely helping. I would highly recommend remaining sober and exercising regularly if you can because this is helping me massively. Don't worry you are not alone there are loads of people on this forum who are going through exactly the same as you and worse. I still don't know if what I have is hppd. It's not severely impacting my daily life to the point where I can't function normally. However it is causing me many sleepless nights, depression and anxiety. At the moment I feel as if my visual perception of the world has been messed with as people, buildings, cars etc look strange and almost cartoonish. I feel overly emotionally sensitive and anxious all the time, have a constant tinnitus when in silence and I have negative after images a lot. That's all my symptoms pretty much. I do also have this weird ability now to picture thoughts in my head as much more visual representations as if I'm watching a film inmy head. Not sure if that's good or bad lol. Anyway you probably don't have HPPD, Psychosis, or neurological damage. What you do have is the warning signs that you need to be careful.

Great poll! It looks like there is a clear link between anxiety disorders before tripping and developing HPPD. I have mild social anxiety. I have always been very sensitive to criticism and I am wondering if this sensitivity is linked with sensitivity to psychedelics.

I wonder what it is that makes allergy medicines have this affect on HPPD. I am slightly worried as I have a very bad allergy to Brazil nuts that requires a strong antihistamine medication to cure if I accidently ingest some. Not to mention bad hay fever. I think I would rather suffer the symptoms of an allergic reaction than a HPPD reaction to be honest.

Yeah I have this it comes and goes now but I had it constant a few months ago. When I look at people, buildings, cars etc it's as if they are a giant model or something fake or cartoonish. It can be quite scary especially when talking to people. I suppose it has something to do with the visual recognition and memory part of the brain. The raw visual information is being interpreted slightly differently than before. Mine has massively improved now just get the occasional episode. I would say I had it bad for about 4-5 months. I found that allergy nasal spray made it 10x worse so avoid that.

Lol no I don't want that. I am hoping it's just a sinus infection from my cold that has been released. I can't explain the weird colour though that actually stained the skin of my hand like iodine. I haven't had any weird medicines or foods. If it happens again I will go to the doctor. I have been having bad headaches lately as well. When you have HPPD you shit yourself and link them together.

Ok so I had a cold last week so I'm hoping this symptom is related to that. I just felt like I had a nose bleed but when I wiped my nose it was bright almost luminous yellow watery liquid and it was literally dripping out of my nose. I read online that it could be cerebrospinal fluid. Has anyone else had this problem before?

I have found that listening to certain ASMR videos with earphones in bed works wonders for helping me get to sleep. Here is one of my favourites:

Have you been to the Optican since you developed this problem? An increase in floaters should definitely be checked out especially if it's accompanied with flashing lights or loss or distortion of vision. Have you had any blows / knocks to the head recently? Do you require spectacle correction for your eyesight? It may be that HPPD has made you more sensitive to your floaters. If that is the case then time should slowly reverse your sensitivity to them.