SeekingLife

Hey guys, So I had stopped using this forum a while back, since I essentially came to terms with my HPPD and was leading a successful life. I’m no newbie to HPPD (been more than 3 years at this point), and so I have had time to cope with the reality of my situation. However, after a trip abroad at the start of this year, I developed intense insomnia which eventually resulted in anxiety that I could not control. I had not been seeing a psychiatrist or therapist at this point, but anxiety is by far the worst thing I have dealt with in my entire life. I feel exhausted every single day, and with a consistent headache/head pressure that I only used to get ocassionally when I was stressed out. Not to mention I’m still not getting great, unassisted sleep. What’s interesting about this whole scenario is it’s not like my visuals are flaring up, and even when they had in the past I just got over them. I know people in this group experience anxiety from visuals or DP/DR a lot, including myself, but this doesn’t seem connected to those at all. Now there seems to be this persistent anxiety for no reason and I’m not sure how I can live like this. I’m about to graduate college, and have no idea what to do. I guess my question is, do you think our brains with HPPD are more predisposed to anxiety issues, no matter how mentally “good” we feel about them? Does HPPD automatically make our brains more stressed out no matter how hard we try to repress it, and as a result we are destined to live like this? This is just killing me because the anxiety and insomnia feel insurmountable. It’s like my brain just keeps throwing shit my way. Also for reference, I am taking 0.25mg klonopin twice a day, and 50mg trazodone. If either of these has anything to do with the headaches, please let me know.

Hey guys, it's been a while since I've needed to use this forum but I find myself in a rut again. Hopefully I get over this recent stuff like I have before. Bit of a long post so bear with me. I’ve had HPPD for upwards of two years now, and have been coping with it fantastically. The first year or so was incredibly rough but I got past that and haven’t looked back. I cut out every drug except nicotine, adderall (which I am prescribed), caffeine and alcohol, all of which I handled with ease. However, at the start of the month, I went abroad to study pretty much on the other side of the world. This was awesome for the first month, but towards the end of the month I began to have horrible insomnia. I still don’t know what the cause of this insomnia was, as I was never once uncomfortable in the foreign surroundings. I have always loved to travel and be out of my own element; I guess maybe my subconscious mind could have been uncomfortable but I have no clue. I wouldn’t be able to sleep at a normal time out of nowhere, and I was getting around at most 3 hours of sleep a night. However, even with this being said, I was pretty fine. I've had insomnia before for days at a time so I wasn;t stressing at all. However, after a month of this constant insomnia, I began to have intense anxiety not only throughout the day, but especially at night before I went to sleep. To put it into words, I close my eyes, and all of a sudden I would either have racing thoughts, totally random and nonsensical that hop from one topic to the next, or I would be shaken awake almost by a random jolt of anxiety that would leave me shaking. Again, this has no relevance to concerted thoughts or worries that I'm having, it's just totally out of my own control. I’ve never experienced anxiety that was not in my control ever before, so needless to say I was terrified. It got to the point where I got prescribed ambien, and this worked well at first but eventually stopped working. I've been home for a little over a month now and the anxiety is definitely better, but I’m still having these crazy sleep issues where I can’t go to sleep until I’m exhausted, and it’s not good quality sleep (though it’s better than it was when I was abroad). The strange thing is, I was on a completely fine sleep schedule where I would pass out at 10PM and wake up at 6AM for the first week or so that I was back home but all of a sudden I found myself not being able to sleep until late night after this period. which results in my visuals and anxiety being far worse than they were before. I can't nap at all, and I have to wait until 5-7AM to sleep out of exhaustion rather than closing my eyes and being able to fall asleep at a normal time. These new visuals include motion in my peripheral vision when I am staring at a screen in the dark, and visual snow that I did not have before. This sounds trivial, but my HPPD has remained relatively constant for a while and now all of a sudden there's a new level to them. I don't care much about them, but the sleep thing is unbearable. These substances I was totally fine with and relied on now give me anxiety, from alcohol to caffeine. I’m definitely afraid to try adderall again despite the fact I could take 2-3 last year and be totally fine, and this is a problem since I rely on it to do work. Being that I’m a bit of a hypochondriac I tend to inflame my symptoms when I’m cooped up in my house and thus it is difficult to cope with during this quarantine. I guess my questions are, has anyone coped with HPPD well for extended periods of time only to find that it's gotten worse, and has dealt with it successfully? Has anyone had these same or other sleep issues and knows how to deal with them?

Hey guys, So I’m at a pretty big low right now. I’d been abstaining from weed for months now, until a friend convinced me to try it again over december. Long story short it ended in me tripping out heavily with a ton of anxiety attached. Life got pretty strange for a bit after that but I learned to recuperate and was in a good place. Now I’m back at college after break, and all of a sudden a week ago I noticed a certain patterned carpet at a dinner I was at and started tripping. I’d never tripped sober prior to this incident, and now a week later, today to be exact, I was sitting in class and noticed the pattern of the tiles on the floor and the ceiling panels and began to trip again. I try so hard to keep my psyche in control but every time it seems like I lose it. I’m terrified of the idea that I could possibly start tripping at any surface that’s not a simple fucking solid color scheme. It’s such a horrible anxiety-ridden feeling that I cant shake, how I could be at a job interview and just start tripping if the room has the simplest of patterns to it. Please guys, I need some meds or something at this point. If anyone has experience, let me know. I keep hitting these lows and my HPPD just seems to get worse and worse as time goes on. I’m genuinely scared.

Bump

I personally don't have experience with antipsychotics, but after having HPPD and obsessively searching stuff online for about 6 months now I can pretty confidently say don't mess around with those. Nearly everyone says its help is only very, very short term and that once you decide to go off your visuals will be unbearable. So you could either keep taking benzos, get better temporarily to the point where you develop a tolerance, and then have an insanely horrible experience tapering off them, or just not mess with it at all.

Hey all, been a bit since I've posted here. I've been holding up well, and even though I get the occasional DP/DR, I'm managing. I'm heading back to school real soon, and was wondering if anyone had any experience with non-stim ADD meds. Used to take Adderall, but had some really bad DP/DR the day after, and have read that in general stims are not great for HPPD. Doc just prescribed me some Intuniv ER (Guanfacine HCL ER) and said it should kick in after a couple weeks. I'm worried if I should even start taking it though, and pretty much no one has any input on non-stim ADD meds with HPPD online. If anyone's had some firsthand experience, or even some scientific as to why it should/shouldn't make my HPPD worse, I'd greatly appreciate it

Hey all, been a bit since I've posted here. I've been holding up well, and even though I get the occasional DP/DR, I'm managing. I'm heading back to school real soon, and was wondering if anyone had any experience with non-stim ADD meds. Used to take Adderall, but had some really bad DP/DR the day after, and have read that in general stims are not great for HPPD. Doc just prescribed me some Intuniv ER (Guanfacine HCL ER) and said it should kick in after a couple weeks. I'm worried if I should even start taking it though, and pretty much no one has any input on non-stim ADD meds with HPPD online. If anyone's had some firsthand experience, or even some scientific basis as to why it should/shouldn't make my HPPD worse, I'd greatly appreciate it

Check my posts out dude. I was bugging exactly like you, except my symptoms were much worse and I was going to college. Now, whenever I move somewhere, or turn my head, the object in my peripheral vision looks like it's moving towards me (i.e. a wall, ceiling, etc.), I have floaters a ton, blue entoptic not only when looking at a blue sky, but at a white sky, computer screen, white sheet of paper, white wall, etc. Even still, outside does not feel the same, and it feels almost like a movie with the lighting and colors and all, all after one tab of acid. Do I wish this shit was gone? Of course! Did I have suicidal thoughts when I had never even thought of such a thing beforehand? Yes. But either way, you have to be mentally strong and push through, while also stopping drug usage. This sounds like a shitty answer, but it's true. You need to do shit and get outside, and keep living. I actually disagree that you should just watch TV because it makes you feel comfortable. Only in cases of extreme anxiety should you consider such a thing, but asides from that, put the pressure on yourself. I have ADHD, and used to be a huge procrastinator, and this disease has forced me to get my work habits up without relying on a binge on adderall the night before an exam. Get better, and you'll be better.

My bad, I phrased my original concerns poorly. As of now, I'm getting plenty of sleep and have no insomnia, but to do this I've been skipping early classes, studying less than I should, etc. What I want to do is actually be normal on low amounts of sleep like I used to, as we don't really live in a culture where an 18 year old college student can get 8-9 hours of sleep without compromising valuable time. I was just wondering if there was any way or method to function on little sleep without every HPPD-related effect blowing out of proportion.

Hey all, Just wondering if anyone has had success, or done anything, in regards to coping with symptoms that arise from lack of sleep. Currently, I'm in school, and I really can't afford to be bombing exams and missing assignments as well as skipping classes in pursuit of enough sleep. This also worries me for the future as it severely undercuts my ability to do many careers that I've been interested in my entire life. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Jesus man, complete censorship is no way to live. I cut out drug use, drink alcohol occasionally, get as much sleep as I possibly can in college, and this shit happens? I appreciate the advice, but this is just too crazy of a lifestyle change for me, especially after one tab of acid. I seem to be pretty high up on the spectrum for symptoms considering my situation. Only done a handful of drugs in my life too as I'm freshly 18... Adderall, weed, alcohol, and acid. That's it.

Hey guys, At first with HPPD, all I noticed was some slight balance/vertigo issues, but it's been evolving little by little. I had some bouts of DP/DR which I've overcome mostly, as in the world still looks slightly off but I feel mentally here, and I've noticed slight visual snow and entopic phenomena on pretty much every bright surface. These are things I can cope with. However, something that hasn't shown itself till yesterday and one I legitimately cannot take is CEV's. When I close my eyes and it's dark enough, I see full on scenes play out in my eyes. I was sitting in the library, trying to get some rest, and put my head into my arm and all of a sudden began seeing something like a DJ spinning a record, which then changed to some sort of politician speaking, and so on and so forth. I've noticed a recurring theme in most of these is that a good amount are sexual in nature, as well as some other stuff like screaming faces. In describing these "videos", it's almost like at first it's just normal blackness, and all of a sudden the blackness has depth to it, then shading, and then full on visuals. Occasionally, there will be some small red flashes that are pretty short-lived. They sometimes have color, but even the ones that do aren't super intense colors, just slight hues. They also play like shutter film, almost like stop animation, and this applies to every one. This shit makes my other symptoms pale in comparison, as now I don't even have a refuge from HPPD by closing my eyes. It's like I'm fully trapped, and can't even get to sleep normally. I've noticed that they also don't show when I have some light going into my eyes, but the thing is my whole life I've slept in full darkness. Today and yesterday I had this happen, and both days I didn't get much sleep at all, which may have something to do with it. Anyone, please, help me with this crap.

@TheMythos@K.B.Fante Really? I mean, there were days where I felt so much worse a couple weeks ago, like where it legitimately felt like I wasn't myself anymore, and that I was looking at the world through some fuzzy glass. It was extremely difficult to talk to people, and they were probably the worst days of my life. Now, I feel much more grounded, and can talk to people, but just don't feel the sensations of emotions in my head. The outside thing, in more detail, feels like my vision is sort of worse, and every time I look at patterns outside, like this one pebble garden or trees, there's a slight vibrating sensation where my eyes don't fully focus on the tree. But the weird thing is, none of this happens inside. Inside my house, I feel almost entirely identical to my old self, aside from slight visual changes. I noticed this in my dorm too back at college. It's just as soon as I step outside, the lighting and overall environment feels super, I don't know, large and imposing.

Hey guys, So I posted last week about some visual symptoms that I've been going through, but I have some other issues I'd like to speak on. For one, I feel like I can't "feel" any emotions in my head. I was hanging with a friend yesterday, and laughed a decent amount, even really hard at one point, but never "felt" in my head that it was funny. I purposely tried to evoke sadness by watching some sad videos yesterday, and felt nothing. It's not like I don't feel like I'm in the world like DP/DR stuff, but it's more a legitimate lack of being able to feel any emotions in my head. Another thing that tends to make me irritated with lack of recovery is when I go outside. In the morning, I feel pretty normal, up until I go outside and just observe. I'm home from college right now, and outside just doesn't look right. I don't know how to describe it, but it's almost overwhelming how not OK I am just looking outside. There's no visuals or anything, but the world outside, the world I grew up in right outside of my house, doesn't feel the same. I can't just hole up inside, so if anyone could give me any tips I would appreciate it.

@MadDoc My history is really only that one tab of acid. I mentioned shrooms because I had assumed at first that my friend and I would do shrooms but all he had was acid. Aside from that, it's only been liquor and weed, and a whole lot of both, but really I've had no other experiences and don't plan on having any more in the future. Even 100 mics was super crazy. Really for me the worrying thing isn't the halos, or the starbursting, but it's this fucking imbalance where objects, the ceiling, the hall etc. seem to tilt in the opposite direction as my head. The ceiling is the most disorienting thing for whatever reason, where if I focus on a point and tilt my head even slightly left or right, it responds by moving right or left. I'm thinking maybe it's a vestibular thing since I literally can't find anything, HPPD or not, on this type of issue. I also get way more mentally exhausted from walking than I used to. I don't know, I just want this stuff to go.

@TheMythos I've entirely stopped smoking and realized that although I sure as hell will miss it, all I want now is to be sober like I used to. I've decided I'll only use alcohol, but even this is difficult sometimes as I think the halos have gotten larger and more prominent since I began drinking. Although it's easy to say "just stop" in this regard, being in my freshman year of college it makes it incredibly difficult. By the way, since you seem very experienced, is there any hints as to my motion symptoms? It's by far the worst part of my symptoms at this point. I was wondering, could I have had these issues and just brought them out through the flashbacks? I've also always noticed floaters since I was younger, but only occasionally. They're there almost all the time now especially at daytime. Truly though, thank you for taking the time out of your day to answer these questions. You are a good man.

Hey all. I'm 18 and pretty confident I have some form of HPPD, or at least something's definitely changed in the past few months, and this is the first support board I've consulted. This is going to be really long because I want to be as specific as possible and see if anyone can relate in any ways. If you only care for what I consider the more important part of the reason why I'm typing this, read the last 2 paragraphs. First, I'll start with some background: About 4 months ago, my friend hit me up about tripping at a different friend's house. At first, I thought we were doing some shrooms, but when I arrived he only had a couple tabs of acid, and I was down to try as it was the summertime before I was going to go to college, and I believed myself ready for such an experience. I took one tab, 100mics, and was fully confident. Eventually though, we had to move locations, and my friend decided to go to a beach near my house. As I was on the come up, he thought it a good idea to invite all my sober friends over and hang out. I was good up until this point, but we then moved location to my house, and this is when I really started bugging. So as we were about to go in my house, my sober friends decided to talk to me about "how stupid it was" to have taken acid and that they "never would have done that". This combined with the setting of my house with my parents and siblings inside made for a very paranoid portion of the trip. Luckily, I wasn't really tripping so much as feeling pretty high at this stage, so I insisted to my friend that we leave immediately. I began pleading to my friend that was also tripping, saying maybe it was a mistake that I took it, and that maybe I would be changed forever, but he brought me somewhat back into control, but it was mostly of my own efforts. As soon as we left my house, the experience completely changed. At this point, I was really tripping hard and the car ride felt super good, with the wind blowing and all of my senses being melded together, I just felt really really good. As the night progressed, we had arrived at a nature conservatory, and just settled down. I won't go into specifics, but I really enjoyed this portion and had a super positive and intelligent time. I then headed back with the same friend who had tripped, and began to see those weird effects on objects when you're driving, where it becomes like shutter frames or something. The roads around me are also super swervy, and I felt pretty cool as I drifted back and forth (This is important for later on). As we arrived back, I slept it off and felt pretty dead the next day, but felt nonetheless completely normal. TL;DR, We tripped at my house for a little, where I was bugging out, but as soon as we left I had a really positive and mind-blowing experience with acid. Post all this, I was a big fan of acid, and even vouched for it to multiple friends and believed it to be supremely enjoyable. I was even considering doing it with one of my close friends who had done it in the past, and never really looked back on the experience the whole rest of the summer. I drank, smoked, and enjoyed the rest of my days pretty much just partying. I had some slight paranoia about flashbacks and such, because of course I had realized they existed, but such a low percentage of people had it that I was sure I wouldn't and one friend I knew had taken 1000 mics and convinced me that they didn't exist. I wouldn't be the guy who got it. No way. Fast forward to about 2 months ago, and it was three days before I was set to leave. I was having one more huge smoke sesh with my friend before I left, and didn't have acid on my mind for a second. It was like any other stoned night, and as I was driving my friend back to my house, I distinctly remember feeling a sudden onset of that swervy road feeling again, and it brought me back to the trip where I began seeing the same exact visuals that I saw the night that I was tripping on the way back to my house, like the shutter frame thing. I got pretty paranoid, but my friend convinced me to go get pizza in town with him and settle down, and I instantly felt way better. I ended the night on a high note, and the trip ended as soon as I stepped out of the car. Then I proceeded to pass out at my house. I decided that as long as I didn't drive at night baked, I would be fine. The next day, I woke up feeling fine and decided to smoke with one of the same friends. With the knowledge I had assumed, that all I needed to do was not drive high at night, I gave high driving another go but this time during the day. Boy, was I wrong. I got far far more trippy visuals than the day before, like my whole line of sight being tilted side to side every time I looked up at the road, along with the same visual effect as the other day. I was incredibly paranoid, and wondered if this would happen every time I smoked. I told my friend that I needed to drop him off (what a shitty way to end our last sesh ever) and proceeded to drive back in this same trippy state. When I got back home, the trip didn't end like when I got out of the car the night before, and I really started to freak out and immediately decided to sleep it off. I don't really remember how I felt the rest of the day, but I know I wasn't tripping anymore after I slept, just slightly foggy like after you smoke. The day after this, I noticed something was up. I felt pretty detached, and became super anxious, especially as it was the day before I was leaving for college. It felt like I was just permanently slightly buzzed. I also noticed that when I drove, my vision would ever so slightly lean one way then snap back into place, which obviously didn't help. As I got to college, my vision was still the same, cloudy and like my entire perception is different. When I arrived (Been about a month and a half now) I continued to drink, and felt pretty fine and continue to feel mostly fine. I then decided to try adderall (I'm prescribed) and felt fine the first two times, but the third had my first onset of what I believe to be true DP;DR, or at least one of them the day after. It was probably the single-handed worst day of my life. I felt as though I couldn't communicate with anyone, and that I was barely there, almost like I was just a set of senses looking at people through a weird fuzzy glass. I couldn't feel emotions like I used to, so much so that I visited the university doctor and got pretty much nothing besides a possible prescription for benzos, which I refused. For those of you who deal with this on an everyday basis, I cannot imagine the pain and suffering you go through. I continued to have these days every so often on a lesser scale, but on these days as soon as I began interacting with people and getting into routine I was brought back into myself, but never fully. This brings me to now, as I sit here typing this instead of my 10 page essay because it's so hard to do fucking anything now. I used to be very social, with a significant amount of control over my emotions and my mental state. It's super difficult and strange to describe how I feel on a day-to-day basis in terms of my mental state, as most days I feel and function fine, but it's almost as if I don't truly enjoy, hate, love, or feel anymore. I'll laugh at things I find funny, but it's like the part of me that laughs is in a completely separated part of my head than how I feel. Even when I was crying to the doctor involuntarily about my mother, I felt this sort of utter nothingness in my head, yet an overwhelming sorrow and melancholy at the same time. I don't want to say this is psychosis, because I felt far worse the day I had a bout of DP;DR, but it still feels like so inferior to my past way of living. The visual stuff is worse and better on some days, but a symptom I haven't yet read of anyone else getting is that when I shake my head, my perception almost needs to catch up, which creates this disorienting illusion of the objects moving side to side. The same applies to when I move my head forward and back and look at an object, it almost becomes magnified for a quick second when I pull my head away because the closeness of the object is still there for a quick second. The tilting of my peripheral is sometimes still there, though I can make it worse by tilting my head. When I run, with every step my vision gets jolted slightly, and one of the most noticeable weird things is that when I make myself dizzy, and then stare at an object, rather than getting that typical woozy dizzy feeling I used to get, my vision tilts and snaps back very quickly (Every .5s) at a lesser and lesser scale until eventually it settles back into place. I also get halos (rainbow with white lights), streaks when I blink, and light sensitivity. It doesn't help that I'm posed to go into business, and noticed that with stress and lack of sleep my symptoms get way worse. All of this is also worse at night. In such an important time in my life, acid really screwed me over. Thanks to whoever takes the time to read all this.