TryingToHelp

Ok. Can I say that all hppd roots from anxiety related conditions. No, no one knows the reasons for hppd, it remains a medical mystery. Can we say that a proportion of hppd cases do? Almost certainly. That is the point I am trying to make. You may be certain that you are not one, fair enough. You know better than anyone how you feel and how you see. But you dont know that about anyone else, so why are you so against what I say?

So @dasitmane @dayum_son @hope1 are you saying that it is completely impossible for someone to misinterpret normal visual disturbances caused by anxiery/optical physics etc as being hppd?

Guy must have died from starvation.

@dasitmane you contradict yourself in this very thread. I have also reported you to same mods for your levels of personal abuse Bringing my mother into this, honestly? That's it for you and me. No more of this nonsense.

That's it from me here on this thread. To continue the debate please go here:

A very interesting post from someone who unlike @dasitmane seems to have a balanced mind and good understanding of the way the brain works. But I postulate that the 'cerebral disinhibition' is most likely to result from a mental process of chronic anxiety coupled with memory and associations of the drug experience rather than actual 'drug damage'. Ie this is the cause of any 'adaptive rewiring'. This is not intended to belittle the condition in any way.

You dont need to take mental therapy to recover from mental health issues. Time, exercise, healthy living, change of lifestyle all good cures. A question for you @dasitmane. Can you truthfully say that you yourself are completely free from mental health issues? I seem to remember seeing posts talking about depersonalisation and derealisarion from you in the past. How can you be so certain that I am wrong if this is the case? Seems like a very strange thought process. 'Here I am with some fairly serious anxiety issues and i also see these weird things in my vision. BUT THEY ARE 100% NOT RELATED.....OK!!!!!' Very odd. I suspect that your levels of aggression and abuse stem from being told by some doctor in the past that it is 'all in your head' and you took it badly. Am I right? Any way I have been asked by mods (in my opinion unfairly but I respect them) to refrain from carrying on this debate on various threads so I invite you to go onto the thread I just started today regarding the effect of anxiety on vision.

https://www.calmclinic.com/anxiety/symptoms/visual-problems A very interesting article that should be considered by any one who thinks they might have hppd.

I dont think that is fair. If someone with a history of mental health issues comes on asking if they have hppd after 1 joint I feel it is my duty to present an alternative explanation. To say that I can only post my views on my own threads prevents me from doing this. The very concept of hppd is very dangerous to a fragile mind. People should come to it as a last resort.

Come on every one, a clearer case of health hppd anxiety has never been seen. Cramps and tingling hands, classic anxiety symptoms. He even admits to constantly checking his vision all the time!

@dasitmane Read the success stories thread on here. The consistent theme is recovery from mental health issues. Something which I think you yourself really need to think about.

@dasitmane. "Why is it that so many other can not reproduce the same effect?" The same effect is reproduced in every case of recovery from hppd. Deal with mental health issues. Deal with hppd.

And here we go. @dasitmane dragging someone else into his web of despair. Guy just needs to deal with his mental health issues and here you go trying to convince him he has 'hppd'. Nothing could be less helpful.

Most people would 'see' things such as that if they were anxious about their vision and keep checking it. Vision is as much about the brains interpretations of the raw visual signals as much as it is about the signal itself. Dont focus on your vision, get out and about living life and you won't notice stuff. Last bit of advice, dont come on this forum or indeed any other about hppd. They are full of negativity and wild theories about brain damage etc. Someone will undoubtedly come along and tell you that you must have hppd even though it was just from a joint. With your existing anxiety, that will send you down a bad road. Think about this rationally. Humans have been using cannabis for thousands of years with zero hppd reports. Where are all the jamaican rastas, hip hop stars etc with hppd? Tens of us states ain't gonna legalise something that causes hppd. Hppd has only ever been reported since the 1950s when people started using 'proper psychedelic drugs'.

@LethargicAcid well done. Therapy, meditation, great stuff. @dasitmane you need to look into this one! Guy / girl manages to heal 'brain damage' through anti anxiety treatments. Get his MRI quick!

I think it sounds reasonable. And also something that is highly likely to be affected by stress fear and anxiety.

You do not get hppd from just marijuana. It sounds like you have developed visual snow syndrome. You also have what sounds like a pretty serious anxiety condition. This is making you super conscious of the visual snow that you can see and reading and worrying about hppd is combining with your anxiety to exacerbate the visual things into you talking yourself into having hppd. Treatment: do what is the only proven treatment to combat this affliction. Sort your mental health out.

r@Lucas you are right, what in my terms is a psychological change is in your terms a plastic change in the form of rewiring / formation of neuronal connections. Basically that is what we call learning and it is happening to every one right now as a continual process. This is distinct from the various physiological theories that imply chemical changes or 'brain damage' and which I think are barking up the wrong tree. I think there is the distinct possibility of a bonafide consistent treatment out there around the principle we discuss. Some combination of a desensitization process like the one you have put forward with some other kind of anti anxiety/ PTSD process, and maybe some other things as well. I think the process could start with accepting that the visuals are normal noise that all people have the ability to see and go from there. An educational and acceptance process would be important as if like many you are convinced that you have brain damage, you will never recover. Maybe helping the sufferer to recall childhood visual experiences could help too in taking away some of the fear of the visual symptoms. I also think it is important for the sufferer to completely detach things like depersonalisation, tinnitus and derealization from the visuals. I think that those are symptoms of comorbid anxiety and not caused by the same process that is behind the visual symptoms.

Anxiety and fear will increase the activity of the visual cortex. The brain as part of its flight or flight response sharpens up and focuses on stimuli it perceives as dangerous. Such as background visual noise such as visual snow that reminds someone of their past drug use. The fact that hppd is almost always accompanied by classic anxiety symptoms such as depersonalisarion and derealisation strongly suggest that it is an anxiety related disorder. @dasitmane, this is a simple and logical idea, much more plausible than some of your 'thoeries'. E.g. fungus infection, the liver, heating of the brain and all the other rubbish you have wasted your time with. So many studies around physiological causes and drug treatments have contradicting outcome. The only consistent and reliable treatment is to take care of anxiety and general physical and mental health. Sort that out and the reduction or disappearance of hppd symptoms will follow. Unfortunately @dasitmane, with your current attitude, you will continue to suffer from this curse for a long time to come. Your frantic efforts to search for a cure are a waste of time and sadly drag others who give you credibility along the same sorry road. @Lucas, good and interesting posts. Our views are similar save for that you lean to plastic changes in the brain whereas I lean to subconscious over emphasis of normal low level of visual snow. In my opinion your evidence is more likely to be due to a subconscious psychological change over a physiological one. It seems un plausible that you could change your brains chemistry and or structure by watching television. Subconscious changes in perception of visual stimulate occur continuously through life, becoming good at spotting opponents in the corner of your eye by playing call of duty is a good example.

@dasitmane Please will you stop trolling my posts and calling me e.g. an imbecile for not recognising the 'utter brilliance' of your amateur scientific investigations. I have read all of your 'evidence' and frankly it, along with your responses to my posts, bears the hallmarks of an uneducated obsessive madman.

Or possibly it is a heightened awareness of visual snow brought about by fear and anxiety caused by the drug taking history. All people have visual snow, it is a natural phenomenon inherent in the physical structure of the eye. The human brain can be trained to notice aspects of vision more, e.g. a trained soldier spotting snipers. Hence I think it is likely that a hppd sufferers brain is in some way trained more than that of a non sufferer. It subconsciously picks up the visual snow more than a non sufferer and gives it an unwanted high place in the consciousness of the sufferer. The solution lies in ignoring or reversing that training.... hard to do, try eg getting a war veteran to not jump to alert when they hear a firework or something.

Why the sarcasm etc? If you want your 'science' to be taken seriously, treating people with contrasting views to you with disrespect is not how to operate.

@dasitmane your aggression and rudeness is entirely un necessary. What do you make of the link I posted then? A hppd sufferer from this very forum giving strong evidence to the psychological theory?

Well this is interesting, evidence from this very forum: Different take on the anxiety theory, brain tuning in on things it perceives to be dangerous, makes sense, hppd may by a subconscious protection reaction by the brain....

I dont and have no intention to, even though I think hppd might have a psychological root, that does not mean I think I have zero chance of getting it, my brain is a law unto itself lol. In particular hearing of my friends troubles ( see my first post on this thread) has frightened me greatly. Nice spliff yes please but , any stronger drugs, even mdma, no appeal to me these days. I wonder if a possible line of research would be to see if there is a correlation between memories of experiencing visual noise before drugs and hppd, a positive OR negative correlation could be meaningful.