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Hello All, My name is Allen. I've browsed this site randomly over the past couple years but was afraid share. I'm in my 30's and have had HPPD 2 for 18 years. I was diagnosed 5 years ago after a seeing countless doctors through the years. Recently I found out my wife was pregnant and I became determined to find a treatment or, god willing, a cure. When I was in my mid teens I took lsd about 5 times and I was a chronic marijuana smoker. The last time I took lsd I smoked weed at the same time and I had the worst experience of my life: My heart began to race uncontrollably, my arms and face became numb; I saw long blury trails on everything and I felt hot and cold all at once. It was so intense that I thought for sure I was going to die. In desperation, I curled up in a ball on my couch, closed my eyes, and began to pray to god repeatedly to make it stop and let me live, until eventually I fell asleep. I woke up the next morning and thanked god I was alive. I swore of lsd forever. Unfortunately that didn't stop me from trying to party with my friends as usual. Every time I smoked weed after that I would have severe panic attacks and almost black out. When I'd drink alcohol I felt like I had a lump in my throat and couldn't breathe. A couple weeks after that horrible trip I woke up to a dull version of the same type of visuals I had the night of my bad trip, I was petrified and began having random panic attacks. I finally told my mother what I did and what happened since and she took me to the doctor. The doctor swore it was depression with anxiety and completely dismissed any lsd involvement. She prescribed me Effexor and xanax. The effexor didn't help at all and it made my heart race. The symptoms were not going away. I was afraid I damaged my brain beyond repair. Shortly after I withdrew from school and became a hermit. The xanax helped a lot with anxiety but the visuals remained. Through the years I saw about a dozen different psychiatrists and none of them knew what was wrong with me and continued me on benzodiazepines and ssri's. I lost my insurance and couldn't afford all the doctor appointments and medicine, so I began getting zoloft and Vicodin off the streets to self medicate. Eventually the visuals became less intense and my panic attacks were less frequent. Although the visuals and anxiety are a part of my daily life, I still manage to function. Some days are worse than others but I forced myself back into society and I got a good job in construction, and married my girlfriend who has been with me through this whole experience. I got off the vicodin with suboxone and continued the zoloft. With the news of our first child, I found a new determination to get rid of this horrible disease for good. I told my doctor that I wanted to try anything we can to make this stop and she agreed to start prescribing me different medications to see what, if anything, will work. She prescribed clonidine last visit and I started it 6 days ago. Unfortunately it hasn't helped my visuals at all and last night I began having strange thoughts and seeing weird images when I closed my eyes. I'll keep everyone updated on how it goes. I'm really hopeful that something will get rid of this for good. Wish me luck and good luck to all of you. P.s. I am thankful to whomever started and maintains this site. I hope we can get this horrible disease more attention and find a real treatment for it.

Hey guys. I'm thinking about asking my pysch for keppra. Will I have withdrawals when I decide to quit? How bad are the side effects at first? Also, I have lorazepam. Should I take lorazepam for a while to help with the beginning side effects? I took Lamictal but it didn't help me. Currently, I'm only taking ashwagandha, an adaptogen, and I also drink one mushroom elixir tea in the morning, also adaptogens. I take a lorazepam every one or two weeks when shit hits the fan. Really wish I had klono, but no one will prescribe it to me. I need some relief bad right now. If you have any other helpful info on Keppra please comment. Thanks.

I’ve been trawling through this forum and seems like you guys are really helpful – not sure who’s active anymore but anyway I have some questions. Sorry it's long, if you’re feeling helpful but not up to reading then skip to the end :-) I’m 20 and developed HPPD from LSD maybe 13/14 months ago. Light tracers, afterimages, visual snow, seeing colours etc. It caused me a bit of anxiety towards the beginning but it must have been very mild because it hardly bothered me at all. I could’ve very easily lived with it. I did MDMA multiple times in the following year, and some coke and keta, none made any difference to my HPPD, so I just linked it to LSD (wasn’t sure what it was really). Just over a month ago I had mushrooms for the first (and LAST) time. Trip was extremely intense, I passed out and then it was like I’d woken up in another galaxy, but not a terrible experience like some you hear. About a week later I woke up with insane visuals, everything moving around, colours vibrant, people’s faces looked pink and yellow. I was vomiting and could hardly stand up. I felt like my life had ended, like I was no longer myself at all. I was seeing through a fish eye lens, my voice wasn’t my own, everything was moving around me like on a boat (I also have sea sickness so that didn’t help haha), brain fog, paranoia, crippling anxiety, muscle spasms and pain. Im lucky enough to have a psych ive been seeing for the last 5 years so had that support. I found out a lot of the non-visual symptoms were anxiety-related (brain fog, muscle spasms, paranoia, and some worsening of visuals). I actually still feel as sharp as ever, just distracted by my visuals a lot of the time. My anxiety hasn’t been as bad, I’ve dealt with anxiety and depression before so that part I can handle. It’s the fucking DP/DR that gets me, have never experienced it before and its hell. It got so bad I thought I was in a virtual reality simulator and my memories were all fake. And the visuals are definitely the cause – how could I not feel like things are fake if everything looks fake? I’ve been very up and down in managing it since then but still functioning, seeing friends, doing uni work, trying to get out and do things, exercise, I already ate pretty healthy. Symptoms now: everything permanently looks like a mild acid/mushroom trip, covered in very heavy static, nothing looks solid, colours very vibrant and stuff moves in my peripheral vision, and sort of wobbles in and out of shape when I look at it (with all the afterimages, light trails etc. but I was already sort of okay with that stuff and can deal with it), and DP/DR. I am feeling depressed but that I can deal with. So my questions are: do your visuals (the static in particular) ever fade away or will I just have to get used to them? Or as it’s been just over a month since it got really bad, is it worth having Klonopin, Sinemet or Keppra now or should I wait? I was thinking sinemet could be worth a try, even though it hasn’t done much to a lot of people, it seems to have the least side effects and I want my DP/DR to go away. Or should I just get some Klonopin for the days when it gets really bad? Very luckily my dad’s a doctor and completely believes me and is willing to prescribe me anything I think will help. (I live in Australia and have heard it’s hard to get it recognised at all here) Sorry for the long ramble and thank you so much to whoever replies <3

Hi, I am in the middle of a klonopin taper. I have gone from 1 mg to .05 in the past 2 weeks. I also cut my remeron from 15 mg to 7.5 last Sunday. I started using some CBD oil last Friday mainly to help with chronic pain conditions but also heard it could help with klonopin withdrawal. My dp/dr HPPD symptoms started going through the roof yesterday with panic attacks. My sleep has been terrible since I cut the remeron dose, but last night was the worst with pounding heart like I thought I was going to die. I guess my question to anyone is do you think the symptoms I am having are from withdrawals from meds or do you think CBD could be triggering any of them? I last cut klonopin dose two days ago from .75 to .5. The oil I have is not supposed to have any THC in it.

My doctor prescribed me 0.5 mg of klonopin to take when needed, how should i take it so it reduces visuals.

Hello! I've been on klonopin for 6 months now. It helps with frame rate problems in high doses (over 4mg/day) but i have never wanted to go so high. It also have helped me greatly with the visual snow and basicly reduced all my visual problems. But in November i started to devolop tolerance so i have quit the klonopin after 6 months on 2mg/daily. So now i'm on Lamictal 450mg/day that greatly reduces my visual snow,BFEP and negative afterimages. I will increase my dose soon and see if more positive things happends. But i still have much problems with frame rate problems, positive afterimages and tracers. So now i'm thinking of adding medications to my Lamictal such as Sinemet and Tegretol. I've heard good things about Sinemet when it comes to positive afterimages, tracers and also that it makes the vision much smoother. I've heard some good things about Tegretol too. Somebody that have tried this medications and had good results? I would verry much apreciate some help regarding this because it's a big problem for me. Thanks

Today I took 1.5 mg of klonopin. I feel so relieved right now. My dp/dr is virtually gone, i could care less about visuals, and im anxiety free right now. I was wondering if klonopin helps you guys this much. The problem though is that when it wears off i fall back into the dp/ anxiety cycle. And btw, is it normal to feel relief from klonopin for up to 2 days? Thats generally how long i feel relief from it for.

I've been on the cloneazepam for about 1.75 months and the lamotrigine for about 3 weeks, increasing dosage by 25mg each week until a target dose of 175mg-200mg is achieved (started at 25mg so I'm at 75mg daily right now), after which treatment is to continue for at least 12 months. Here is a short report of what has been going on so far in terms of symptoms: Improvements: Anxiety/panic is almost non-existent (as expected with the clonazepam). I'm also much more social, and to be honest, I seem to be more bold, especially with regards to the opposite sex, you know flirting and whatnot (even went on a pseudo-date with a coworker whom I'm sort of pursuing as a romantic interest ) even though I'm not the most attractive fish in the sea. Social interactions no longer scare the living shit out of me. Eye strain used to severely increase symptoms, to the point of almost being blind after sitting at my computer for a few hours. Eye strain now, while it still increases symptoms, does not worsen symptoms as severely as it did. Ghosting/double-images are reduced in intensity and seem to be only concentrated around brightly lit or colored things now (gets worse when it's really sunny out). Also it seems I have to focus on something in order to get ghosting. Can also read text on a computer screen much more easily now. Depression. Significant improvements here, while I'm still fairly depressed, I'm nowhere near where I was about 2 months ago (constantly suicidal, self harming, engaging in purposefully risky behavior, etc.) Brain fog/confusion/cognitive impairment/concentration problems. Again, much improvement here. I can think much more clearly now and no longer get frustrated when presented with a hard problem. I'm also currently participating in a research internship and am able to understand the rather abstract and hard to grasp concepts fairly easily (coworkers not so much ) Somewhat related to the depression, but I have a much more positive outlook on things now and am more optimistic and accepting about my mental/neurological disorders, of which there are 4. Symptoms lacking improvement: Image trailing. Trailing is still constant and at the same level as it was when this all started. Oscillopsia/breathing objects. I still get visual jittering (things look like they're buzzing or otherwise moving) and when there are areas of high contrast gradients/edges (light to dark/dark to light), I still get severe breathing phenomena. Palinopsia/after-images. Still get both negative and positive after-images that last about the same time as before (a few seconds to a few minutes depending on image intensity). Light beaming/beams/star-bursting. Still get long beams of light that emanate from light sources and still get starbursting around highly concentrated points of light (headlights, streetlamps, LEDs, etc.) Visual snow. Same as before. Scotomas/auras. I still get the odd scotoma/aura every one in awhile, usually at random times and usually in the form of shapeless, colorless blobs. Ghosting/double images. While there has been some improvement, it is still not to the level I would like it to be Depersonalization/derealization. While the grounding/coping techniques my psychologist taught me (and ones I came up with by myself like breath holding and cognitive interaction with my environment) help to ease and stop an attack, I still get episodes of DP/DR. ​Negative side effects: Fatigue, though this is expected with the combo of lamotrigine and clonazepam. Drowsiness and oversleeping. I have, on more than one occasion since starting this course of treatment, overslept by a large margin and either ended missing class or being late to work. Some sexual dysfunction. It's kind of difficult for me to keep and get a you know what for you know what purpose (a man has needs ). Also difficult to *ahem* sow my seed in a timely manner. Decrease in motivation to do things. While I've always been kind of a lazy person, the fatigue and drowsiness from the meds just make me want to sit down and chillout for a few hours listening to some quality tunes. Sort of a stoned, couch lock feeling. Increased appetite, though this isn't that much of a bad thing. Also, question for those who have taken this combo, is having a beer or two here and there while on these meds harmful? I do know these meds when used with alcohol increase drowsiness and decrease tolerance to alcohol, but so far I've found that small amounts of alcohol, like a light beer, don't do much. The only sort of scary experience I had was when I stupidly drank a few shots worth of high quality bourbon in a homemade cocktail. Woke up naked on top of a pile of clothes in my laundry room and not having a clue where the hell I was or how I got there. I plan to continue treatment with the lamotrigine for the recommended time of 12 months. I know it seems long, but I think it will be the key to being rid of this disease. I would also suggest lamotrigine for the people of this board. It will take awhile for it to have any sort of significant improvements on symptoms, about 6-12 months at least. The improvements I described are minor, but nonetheless hopeful for me as they tell me the medication is working and having a positive effect. I do plan on tapering off the clonazepam though as I would rather not have to deal with benzo WD on top of all this. Anyways, that's my report so far and I'll probably post another report at the end of the summer since I should be at the full 175-200mg dose of lamotrigine by then. If you have any questions, feel free to ask!

I saw dr Abraham yesterday and his visit was both a positive and negative experience. He told me it was likely that my HPPD would go away. He also said that my case was fairly serious. I have about 8 different symptoms that I described to him. However each symptom is fairly mild and I can go hours sometimes without noticing anything out of the ordinary. I got kind of depressed hearing that my case was "serious" how many symptoms do you guys have and to some extent how severe are they? Id love to compare symptoms since I was always convinced I had fairly mild HPPD and was fairly distressed to here it was "serious" and that he'd dealt with much milder cases. Thanks for any replies

I'm seeing Dr.Abraham this Saturday and want to collect as much info as I can prior. Has anyone found that benzos do nothing for their visuals? They reduce my anxiety obviously but don't reduce my visuals, no matter the dosage it seems. If anyone has any experience with this their input would be appreciated. Especially if they found something else that worked for them. Thinking or trying sinimet.

Ok, so I know one of the side effects of benzos is memory loss, but i get it REALLY bad from klono. even on .5 or 1 mg, the memory loss is so bad that I forget what I was just thinking about or doing in less than 5 minutes. On 2-3 mg, I honestly walk up to people with the intention to talk to them, but then I actually forget what I was gonna say. does this happen to anybody else? Does anybody have any other benzos I could switch to that don't have as many memory problems?

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