Before I get into the details, let me give some context. I am a 16 year old male and Ive always had anxiety and depression for as long as I can remember. I’ve been on a ton ssris and various medications for it to no avail. Well, about a few months into 2019 I was prescribed with klonopin for anxiety and I was very uninformed and I feel like lied to, even though you cant lie if you don’t say anything. But I got addicted to klonopin without misusing it and then I started doing LSD and after I got addicted to klonopin and I ran out of ways to “feel something“ because I always felt numb from these medications and I just wanted to feel something and I didn’t care if it was good or bad, I just wanted to feel. So I got out of control with the drugs and went on a drug tangent throughout the year doing mostly psychedelics pretty heavily. But, What kicked off my hppd (I have no official diagnosis), is when I took 900mg of DXM and I had the worst experience of my life and I had done it before but i really thought my life was coming to an end. After that I had to kind of ease my way back into daily functioning and I realized that my eyesight was weird and whenever I would smoke weed I would get pretty strong visuals but not like the ones from lsd, they look very similar if not identical to dxm hallucinations. It got pretty bad to where after a few times I realized that I always had it going on and when I would smoke, the hallucinations would get way worse. I do remember having visual distortions very similar in my early childhood and before my last and final experience with substances. But as of now I’m currently tapering off of klonopin and getting off of everything because I can’t stand to have this poison in my system, although I’ve heard it can help with hppd, it’s just not an option to me.
I strongly believe I have hppd ongoing. Constant white snow, and it seems that my eyes always feel really dry and kind of burn. I have gone through depersonalization before from medication withdrawal before so I know that’s what’s been going on. When my anxiety flares up, so do the visuals. My mind is pretty cloudy and glazed over and it gets way worse at night and I wake up in the morning horrified at how severe it is to the point where I cry sometimes because I wonder if I’ll ever be the same. It’s pretty severe to the point where I’m not sure if this will resolve on its own and of course I worry a lot with my anxiety and panic attacks. I’m so surprised at the lack of research on such a potentially debilitating condition. I’m kind of stuck because I don’t know what to do. CBD helps a lot with my visuals and distortions of sight but it also may be that it’s my anxiety lowering itself which also brings down the visuals or I may just be nervous and notice them more when I’m in a time of distress. I just need answers. It’s very frustrating and I don’t know how I’ll be able to continue to life on my already difficult life as it is. Either way I want to find out or at least figure out what is really happening from a scientific and psychological level. Even if it resolves on its own I still want to try and get to the bottom of this because in all honesty it’s horrific to experience and it almost feels seizure inducing at times because of how violent it can get. No one seems to understand the severity of it and I’m not sure what to do. I’ve heard mixed emotions on basically everything there is out there to help with hppd so I’m very hesitant to do much but I feel like I have to do something rather than nothing.
I’m probably leaving out a lot of things but I can’t really think straight at the moment and it’s like my mind has been thrown off balance, but I hope my story can help with this mystery of what’s happening to me and various others.
I just found out that when I was a child, I would go to my parents room at night because I would say I couldn’t sleep because I saw things but I couldn’t say what. That’s really interesting because my hppd ongoing only really kicked off about last year and was most noticeable after I did molly and then it was nonstop after 900mg of pure dxm. I’ve also been bitten by ticks too so I find this very interesting and I also have joint pains (mostly knees, ankles, wrists and fingers, but I don’t have arthritis). I also remember seeing visuals and white snow before I ever did any drugs, especially in my early childhood.