Phew. Took me a while (16 years) to find you guys. :) some knowledge required.

[Monkey_magic]

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[2muchmandy]

Hey kev welcome. Everyone here is very friendly. Its a shame to meet u ( I say this ass hppd is bad and its horrible to meet another poor individual who has it ) anyway generally ssris are not good for hppd. Things such as valium, klonopin ( for extreme cases ) are beneficial. If ur lucky, sinemet, keppra flurinzine may help u greatly.

[Jay1]

welcome Kev.

Similar story to me... had it for 17 years and spent 13 or so years not having a clue what was wrong and doctors passing me on and filling me with anti depressents. Glad that you have finally found your way here,

My 1st advice would be to taper off the anti depressants and see where you are at (unless depression was/is your most pressing symptom). Most of us here find SSRIs make things worse, not better. If you taper down slowly, you might find that you actually start to feel better.

What would you consider the symptoms you dislike most? Visuals? Anxiety? Depression? DP/DR (trippy feeling)?

Do you drink alcohol, smoke?

[Monkey_magic]

Hi jay. Cheers for the reply Erm...god. Hard one that to choose what's the worst out of a whole bad bunch. When things get bad then every single one of them intensifies to the absolute max! I have to say though I get these 'anxiety attacks' that just blow my head off. I'd compare them more to a mini seizure than an anxiety attack. But a mini-seizure that's every bad feeling/emotion I've ever had times 1,000 condensed into the 3-5 seconds or so the attack lasts. That's the ultimate worst, and when it's been at its worst they hit me every 5 - 10 minutes of the day. But they are linked in big time to the dp/dr.

In hindsight even a year or two before I got full blown hppd with the visuals etc I suffered from depersonalisation and lack of ego. And the occasional bout of dr. But the dr really came into play with the hppd. The dp and depression was there for a while before the hppd just nowhere near the extent it was to become. But yeah the depression (at the moment) is a major factor. I'm on 40mg of Prozac a day, had come off it for three months there to try Zoloft, but apart from a bit sharper vision I didn't like the side effects, even a less effective Prozac seems better so I've been back on that for a week. I talked my psych into letting me try cymbalta and I had one tablet and nearly lost the plot. At the moment my brain is just full of excited neurons and adrenaline/stress so popping a snri that locks in adrenaline was not a good idea. Its as if in general my brains like a greenhouse. It can let stress in but it can't let it out until it just can't keep a lid on it and I go bonkers and have a breakdown. Seems to be a pattern emerging.

I do drink alcohol but I've never smoked. Well, the odd cigarette when I'm drunk. I tend to binge drink and black out. I'm a terrible drunk when i black out but sometimes it seems the easiest thing to do. I've always been my own worst enemy but I really want to sort myself out. Before I found out about hppd I used to have benders on Valium and occasionally Temazepam (with drink) because I knew I felt a lot better on those drugs as it took away the anxiety and visuals. Just buying it off dealers though, not through docs. I'm a stupid dick though cos some of my mates pop tramadol for a buzz and in the past year or two I've indulged a bit in those. Not habitually but if it's offered. I dunno how much this has hindered me.

[Monkey_magic]

I have smoked weed since d-day (or at least hppd day lol) and I find that it big time increases anxiety/dr and visuals especially just by itself. So I've tried to be drunk before having a smoke (why?). I would never even think about looking at acid or mushrooms etc now because if I did I know there would not be a 'me' left. I've done myself enough damage in a hallucinatory sense lol. I just want to find a decent drug/drugs that reduce things by even 20% and change my lifestyle big time. Ive had it long enough to realise im gonna be on some kinda drug for the rest of my days n i dont mind that. I've always exercised loads, but my diets never been that good till the last year or two. I do drink a lot of energy juice and take in a lot of caffeine which i need to stop. Sleeps a major problem and has been for years now. I wake up about 4/5 times a night for 5 mins or so and never really hit a deep sleep which is annoying. If there's a sliding scale for hppd in the 1-10 range a la the richter scale I dunno where I'd be exactly but I reckon it'd be in the top half easily.

[2muchmandy]

Where about in scotland are u man? Im edinburgh living in aberdeen now.

Did u find the tramadol helped ur vision. I recently gave away 40 trammys cos I got hppd and decided to go 100% sober and didnt think theyd help. Tamazapan I was also offered by a quack.

Generally the drinking doesnt help hppd in the long run. Most people stick to no or litte booze. Nice to have a fellow scot on here actually, if things get too much or ud like to meet a fellow hppder five me a shout

[Monkey_magic]

Hey man. I'm in Stirling, born and bred. Aye, I doubt there's many Scottish hppdrs out there. Il deffo give you a shout.

Nah, the trammies didnt help my visuals but it lifts your mood to the point where you don't really bother about them. There's a bit of a crash though and it can make me a bit irritable on the flipside. I read they work on serotonin levels and stuff so I'm probably better staying away from things like that while I'm on Prozac. I just thought they were a typical painkiller a la hydrocodeine or whatever. The doc gave me 28 .5mg klonopins for the first time 3 weeks ago cos I read they worked well for hppd. She said 'use sparingly', I had took them all within ten days. Whoops. It did do ok though, it's the same benzo effect without the slowing down and dumbness of Valium n the like.

Yeah, I do try to stay away from drink and can go weeks and months without one but in this society it's not the easiest thing in the world if your pals are all bevvying and I want to appear 'normal'. Hangovers are terrible though and anxiety and visuals are much worsened for days afterwards. And depression too.i think I need ttotal pals but you dont get many of them about here. Plus if I'm in the pub and feel anxious I just ant stop myself. I can just get away with it and no more having a big bevvy over one night. Two nights and that's me done for weeks.

So what brought you here man?

[2muchmandy]

Thats the issue I have too. Scotland is a very hard place not to drink. Im 19 aswell so everyone drinks. U cant meet women, going out always involves alcohol. Definately distancing urself helps alot. It sucks but it helps, I had to stop going to dnb raves n stuff cos I couldnt handle the want to drink and the tinnitus hppd also brings. U got any hobbies toget a break from it all? Ur quite near the trossachs so fishing, mtb and climbing could be on the cards

[Monkey_magic]

Yeah. I'm in the gym all the time but that brings its own problems cos when you overdo it it revs your adrenaline up and the free radicals just make you worse. Ive always took things too far in everything I do. Which is crap cos hppd makes you ten times more fragile and sensitive to things than normal. I play 7 a sides once a week which is good but also not cos half the time you don't do yourself justice. Especially if your hppds playing up and you can't judge distances n stuff. Luckily I was pretty good pre-hppd so I still play at a decent level even if I'm 30% of what I could be. I don't drive cos I've never had the cognitive function for it and depth perceptions shot. I was thinking about meditation and yoga, but I mentioned it yesterday and my pals burst out laughing. (they don't know I've got hppd, I've told some of them I've got psychological problems but most of them are in there early 20s and you know what guys are like).

But the fact I've actually discovered hppd as a disorder exists and Im not on my todd is a bonus. Knowledge is power n all that, so anything I can bring on board to help my hppd is good likes.

[2muchmandy]

yeah they dont tend to understand or take things so seriously, iv told all my mates and its kinda filtered out the dickheads and the ones who do care so its good from that perspective i guess. iv only had this 4 months, if it progressed to a point i cant drive...i dunno what i would do, i couldnt take it. yoga is definately a good idea, alot of guys on here meditate and the like, it gives them alot of anxiety and mental releif atleast so its worth a crack.

[Jay1]

i'm the same with the booze mate... I know it kills me for days after, but I love having a laugh and a day off from all this bullshit.

Have you looked into Lamictal? It has anti depressent qualities, but is not an SSRI, so doesn't mess with HPPD (if anything, my visuals went down).

[Monkey_magic]

Not heard of lamictal yet mate. There's definitely a hefty link between my hppd and migraine/epilepsy for sure. At the moment I'm a walking migraine symptom lol. I really want a detailed brain scan just to rule out shit or indeed confirm shit but my doc n psych think I'm a big enough hypochondriac as it is. Keppra seems to be the main talking point here though eh. Although my psych wants to try me on LYrica. What's the difference between Lyrica and Keppra? And why do you get ' the rage' with Keppra supposedly and not lyrica. I just want a decent drug for everything that doesn't fire the weight on me and allows me to have a sex drive and decent energy levels. Maybe asking too much. I don't care if I get in a rage or aggressive as a side effect. I can count to ten with the best of them.

I like to think I'm as bright as the next person but all these terms I read here with the synapses, upregulators, agonists n antogonists, GABA etc, while its pretty interesting half of it goes right over my head. Although I've learnt more in the last 6 months than I have the 15 years before it. Once upon a time Prozac worked well for me, every symptom showed a marked improvement (wouldn't have been hard though I was that bad). I still had bouts of anxiety and visuals but at the start I could see walls as walls so I have hope that another drug can work as well and If I find it I won't make the same mistakes I've made in the past. Il be like a goddamn monk.

Yeah. When I first got hppd at 20 I lost all the mates I grew up with because I just wasn't the guy they knew for a long time. But there's always new pals round the corner and one bonus of hppd is it let's you see things in a way that no-one else really does. I.e you can see the bigger picture more automatically.

[Monkey_magic]

I deffo also think the drug that brought on the hppd plays a big part of what symptoms tend to be worse than others in different people. Like I say I'm pretty sure that while I had taken decent amounts of acid and mushrooms (with the occasional dodgy trip in there) it was E that hammered the nails in and done 80% of the damage. at a point where I was so stressed and sleep deprived there was only gonna be one outcome in the neuron department. So while my visuals are well dodgy I could easily live with them if my anxiety and depression were lifted. Even a 10% improvement in the visuals would be amazing just now. One thing that has got slightly better on its own (touch wood) is the wee squiggly sperm things. I used to have hundreds of them at the start all flowing in their wee patterns but they've died down a fair bit.