Hi All,
It’s with great enthusiasm that we announce the launch of the Perception Restoration Foundation (PRF), a non-profit committed to organize, support, and fund scientific research into HPPD and work towards a cure.
The HPPD community has shown tremendous resilience over the past few decades. In online communities and patient-founded nonprofits, we’ve helped each other navigate the difficulties of living with these symptoms. And at the PRF, it’s our ambition to act as a representative, engaged and self-reflective voice for the HPPD community, which has been undercovered and marginalised in most discussions around psychedelics and other triggering drugs.
We’ve put together an amazing team of researchers, clinicians, investors, and corporations who have a genuine interest in increasing the awareness of HPPD, and researching how we could one day cure the condition.
We have three projects that we’re ready to announce, and several others that will be announced at a later time. To make sure you don’t miss any updates -- sign up for our mailing list:
Macquarie University in Australia: This will be the deepest neuroimaging to date on HPPD patients’ brains, using EEG, MEG and fMRI scans. It’s hoped that the scans will surface a mechanism at the neurophysiological level which may pave the way for new and more effective treatments. Due to COVID restrictions, only Australian residents are eligible to be scanned, but there is an online survey into HPPD that everyone is encouraged to fill out.
In the future, we may open participation in other locations so be sure to fill out the survey even if you’re not in Australia.
See this post for more information on the study and instructions for participating:
The University of Melbourne: Researchers are developing a psychophysics tool - a way of representing visual experience on screens - that will test if subjects may have HPPD or be at risk for developing it. Early evidence suggests that developing HPPD-style changes may be more likely if people have past experience of visual disturbances, so the tool may also help prevent people at risk for developing HPPD from dosing.
A documentary: The PRF is helping to put together a documentary to raise awareness and attention for the disorder. We’ve spoken to more than 100 HPPD sufferers from around the world as part of this project. You can see the trailer here.
This will be matched by awareness-raising activity across the board. One of our team is the journalist and writer, Ed Prideaux, who’s invested in the psychedelic community while having lived with HPPD-style perceptual changes since he was a teenager. Ed appeared on the Adventures Through The Mind podcast hosted by James W Jesso - an influential psychedelic media personality - and will appear on a number of other channels in the next month, including Third Wave, Psychedelics Today and Psychedelic Spotlight.
Thanks all. Please contact us to say hello, ask any questions, share concerns, and, if applicable, to apply for participation in the Macquarie study.(As above, it’d really help us if you signed up to our email newsletter, too!)
Thanks -
The PRF team