The Positives of HPPD

[Alyssum]

I'm making this thread half as self-assurance and half just to relate some of the stuff I've learned in case anyone else might find it useful. If you've found positive aspects of your HPPD and want to further ingrain them into your own mind or others, feel free to join in. I'm going to do this by sections.

Section 1: Life is a bitch, but don't let it get to you.

Everyone has to go through some kind of tough and/or humbling situation in life, at least once. The people who don't go through these situations generally grow up to be stupid assholes. If you have HPPD and you've reached the point of anxiety and depression, you're probably feeling pretty low. Why did this happen to you? Why can't you just keep partying like your friends? Why does life suck so much for you? Well, I've got news for you: life is unfair. It will never stop trying to throw crap at you, or anyone else. What REALLY matters is how you react to having crap thrown at you. Yes, you've got anxiety and depression and your friends don't. You're also most likely fairly young. Most young people do not have anxiety and depression, so of course this counts you out of the group, but like I said, everyone has to go through tough times. You're just getting yours out of the way early.

I used to just despair all day long, but now I know that the tools I've gained to fight my symptoms have taught me far more than most people my age know. When you've been able to get your symptoms under control, suddenly life seems so much "easier". When the day comes that your friends are lost and alone, you can be the one that says "Hey, life ain't so bad." and lends a helping hand. When your friends are freaking out and don't know what to do, you can be the one that steps in and tells them to calm down, control their breathing, get some fresh air, and etc. Your friends will be extremely grateful for you helping them in these darker aspects of life, and suddenly you'll be the one who's already been through it all and has a tighter grip on themselves than anyone else. Trust me, I've seen this happen. You just have to remember that YOU ARE NOT ALONE. Everyone goes through dark times. Everyone. All getting HPPD does is give you a chance to put yourself at the head of the game. Don't pass up your chance.

Section 2: Tripping is not about visuals.

Chances are, you've heard this before, possibly even repeated many times yourself. Tripping is not about visuals, it's about mindsets. The visuals are merely reflective of a decreased boundary between your mind and your reality. Many people seem to think that HPPD is nothing but the sensory distortions left by hallucinogens, but this view is WRONG. When you have HPPD, it means that the aforementioned boundary is still weakened. This is why anxiety and depression when you have HPPD can be so intense. When you have HPPD, your thoughts are no longer isolated to within. Your thoughts and emotions will permeate your entire reality, whether you pay attention to the visuals or not. It seems like hallucinogens are only leaving behind visuals and not the rest of their effects because their respective effects on things like stimulation/depression and etc. are based in a different part of the brain, and only the part controlling the visuals seems to be effected. However, that part is not ONLY controlling the visuals, and so even if it seems like the mental mark left on your psyche is much less than the sensory one at first, I promise you the longer you have it the more you can see the changes in your reality.

I mentioned anxiety and depression. When you let yourself believe that HPPD is visual only, you are actually enabling yourself to feel even worse. If you keep thinking to yourself that it's just a sensory thing but yet you keep noticing more and more than your mentality seems to be effected as well, the more you're going to start thinking that you've seriously damaged some part of yourself. This will make you anxious and depressed, and that will spread to your whole perception of reality, and then you'll just completely feel wrong and broken. Anything you let yourself imagine has happened to you will push itself into your perceptions. And the more you let yourself use the visuals as a sign of something being wrong, the more apparent they're going to be when you're feeling at your crappiest. However, what you need to remember is that this applies to EVERYTHING. Those negative symptoms will be amplified and can make it hard to feel very positive, but if you can break through to those truly optimistic states of mind, they will be enhanced in the same way! Your happy glow will cover your reality, your sexual fantasies will push you into ecstatic states of mind as they trickle over your world, and when you start getting those wonderful moments again where you really realize you're alive, those moments you thought you lost forever when drugs stopped working the same way, they will be far more beautiful and encompassing than anything you could have appreciated before you ever went through this.

I can admit to being guilty of having said many times before that I wanted to trip forever, like many before me I'm sure. Well, now I am. I've learned to completely ignore my visuals, they don't ever come out unless I want them to. This, by the way, has helped tremendously with controlling other addictive behaviors in my life as well, including many of my old OCD tendencies. And now that I know that there's nothing wrong with me I've saved this bad trip and I live every day watching the world become as bright and positive as I feel. Do I ever get anxious or depressed still? Sure, but only very rarely, and I have it far more under control than I used to. It's more out of habit than anything now. Like I said, life's a bitch, but don't let it get to you.

Section 3: Hallucinations are a good thing!

This is my favorite part about bridging the gap between you and your mind. So some of you may be thinking "Alright, well HPPD connects you to your mind and lets your thoughts become reality, and it can be used positively. Well that's just dandy, but you're still not SUPPOSED to be able to connect your conscious and subconscious mind like that! We're all still fried!" Well I call bullshit! If you've ever looked into lucid dreaming before (and if you haven't you totally should like right now) then you may have stumbled across something called a Wake-Induced Lucid Dream, or a WILD, before. The idea is that you wait until a time right before you're about to begin a REM phase (you can use some methods to find out when these times are, but it's generally not after you've already had some sleep that you do it) and then you get yourself extremely relaxed and enter a hypnagogic state. This means that you start hallucinating, like legitimately hallucinating, not just HPPD patterns and stuff, and if you're able to hold on to it you'll enter a completely-formed dream where you'll already be lucid from the start. In addition, there are people who practice causing natural out-of-body experiences or astral projection (not going to debate the legitimacy of them, just refering to the subjective experiences) which are brought about in a way similar to WILD, and this actually does cause the whole rising-out-of-your-body effect and time travelling and flying through all these strange and abstract worlds. These things be done by people who have NEVER done drugs. In other words, it is perfectly natural for your conscious and subconscious minds to bridge, and you shouldn't be afraid of letting it happen every now and then.

Ever since I started meditating and working on my visualization and lucid dreaming skills, my HPPD has proven repeatedly to be able to push me to the point of reaching dream scenes far more easily than the average person. The best part? Once the scenes begin, there are NO TRACES of the HPPD. They're just like any other dream scene. This heavily reinstates my belief that HPPD is not some kind of scar on my mind but just more direct link to my inner reality. I honestly highly recommend looking into these things to anyone here, the potential is unbelievable. In addition to the benefits it's had on my psyche in relation to HPPD, it's also like... hallucinating for free, without any risk of increasing your visuals, or any risk at all truthfully. It's amazing!

Conclusion

Yes, HPPD can be sucky, but don't let it drag you down. A lot of good can come out of it as well, and it can teach you quite a lot about your mind and how to keep yourself under control. Plus, when you don't let it freak you out anymore, it really does become less and less significant, but the positive lessons you've learned stay with you. Right now, I don't know if I'll ever be without my HPPD. I honestly don't think it would bug me that much if it never happens because I'm already more positive about my life than I've ever been. And if it does disappear one day, then I'll just give it time to fully integrate like you should with any trip, and then move on with my life.

So that's pretty much where I am. I hope someone sees this and feels a bit better about their situation. Like I said, if you guys have anything to share as well, feel free to!

[Guest]

Wait until you reach midlife then come preach...

[Alyssum]

Wait until you reach midlife then come preach...

Yes, because my age somehow invalidates my experience. I came to this forum hoping to find and support a positive attitude about dealing with this condition, not just whine about how much it sucks. I see absolutely no point in being negative when all I'm trying to do is help people with advice that I know works for me.

[Gmo]

Do you have depersonalization???? I'm just curious. I agree with pretty much everything you said, I think I could make it just fine if I happened to get stuck with HPPD for the rest of my life. It's not that bad anymore. At this point it's really the DP that's eating my soul away. I can't deal with that for the rest of my life. There's no bright side to that.

[cs1234]

Wow gmo^ I'm glad I don't have dp. I think that this thread is a great idea though, thinking positively goes such a long way!

http://thingstolookathigh.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/alice-in-wonderland-trippy.png

hallucinating isn't all that bad. the hazy, long-lasting afterimages make pretty colors everywhere

[Guest]

You know?

Ive down this route before where meditation and working out was my life and this gave me enough strength to maintain inner peace. I was able to control my anxiety and be functional but life gets more and more complex as we get older. Friends move on, family gets tired about hearing of a condition that allegedly doesn't exist..

I'm keeping it real.

It sucks after 15 years of HPPD watching people my age 40+ enjoying life while Ive been limping through life working my ass off unable to enjoy something as simple as having a few beers after work like every other normal human being. I drink a few, my brain is screwed. Visuals, DP/DR off the charts. I hate it. I don't want to steal your thunder as a lot of what you said is great when someone is taking care of you but it's a whole lot different when you're all on your own. HPPD is the devil. I can't have a normal relationship as I can't do ordinary things that most folks do. I typically say I'm sober 15 years and get the social pass but it kills me how badly our brains are fried. I want to have peace of mind and enjoy life. I'm tired of this prison without bars.

[Alyssum]

Do you have depersonalization???? I'm just curious. I agree with pretty much everything you said, I think I could make it just fine if I happened to get stuck with HPPD for the rest of my life. It's not that bad anymore. At this point it's really the DP that's eating my soul away. I can't deal with that for the rest of my life. There's no bright side to that.

I used to have it, before even HPPD actually. I was depressed for pretty much my entire life until recently and always had a good deal of it, but when I got my HPPD it got a lot worse. I had stronger derealization than depersonalization though, but it was definitely there. For me, it's completely disappeared. Obviously I can't guarantee that the same will happen for everyone, but when I was first able to start finally ignoring my visuals and started working on my anxiety and depression, those symptoms started disappearing right along with them. I had my HPPD for about a year before I ever had any anxiety from it and that was also about as long as I had it before those things got worse, so I know they're connected.

Anxiety, depression, and DP/DR are all cyclical and connected, they sustain themselves and each other. Anxiety sustains itself by letting you misinterpret sensations and then making you focus on them which makes them more intense, often understandably (like feeling numb limbs, suffocation, and a heavy chest, all of which can happen from not breathing correctly which you do when you're anxious). In this way, it works exactly like a nightmare, but like a nightmare, it's entirely in your head. Depression sustains itself by letting you dwell on the negative aspects of your life until you've focused on them so much that they seem worse than they are. The more you pick at these things, the more significant they will seem because you become obsessed and only think about them. Keep in mind, as well, that anxiety, depression, and OCD have all been linked to low serotonin, so these obsessive behaviors make sense. The same can be said of DP/DR. The more you focus on how strange something is, the more unreal it'll feel. I can demonstrate this even just be repeating a strange word out loud over and over until it sounds made up.

These are all obsessive disorders and as a result their obsessions can fuel each other as well. Do you think about your depersonalization a lot? And do you still get anxious or depressed about it? I'm guessing at least the latter, based on your wording (how it's eating your soul away). I think it can be easy to think of anxiety as the more significant side effect of HPPD and feel like you're done improving once you're over it, but the depression plays at least as important of a role. If you're letting yourself be depressed about your depersonalization, it's not going to go away. You have to remember that this isn't something just naturally within you, it's an outcome of something you did and your brain can recover from it. The brain is FAR more sturdy than most people seem to think. I believe that if you remember that your symptoms can fade away if you just give them a chance, then you really can move past them. I know it can be hard to convince yourself of in the moment, but just think.... Are you really getting anything out of focusing on it? I mean, it's either it fades away or it doesn't... so you either get better, or you have to learn to accept it. Those are your only two options. In other words, you can either hope for a brighter tomorrow, or you can just up all hope for the rest of your life right now. Doesn't the first one sound a bit more appealing?

Wow gmo^ I'm glad I don't have dp. I think that this thread is a great idea though, thinking positively goes such a long way!

http://thingstolooka...land-trippy.png

hallucinating isn't all that bad. the hazy, long-lasting afterimages make pretty colors everywhere

I do like the color changes everyone now and then. X) And yeah, that's pretty much what I was thining. A positive attitude has helped me far more than anything else so far.

You know?

Ive down this route before where meditation and working out was my life and this gave me enough strength to maintain inner peace. I was able to control my anxiety and be functional but life gets more and more complex as we get older. Friends move on, family gets tired about hearing of a condition that allegedly doesn't exist..

I'm keeping it real.

It sucks after 15 years of HPPD watching people my age 40+ enjoying life while Ive been limping through life working my ass off unable to enjoy something as simple as having a few beers after work like every other normal human being. I drink a few, my brain is screwed. Visuals, DP/DR off the charts. I hate it. I don't want to steal your thunder as a lot of what you said is great when someone is taking care of you but it's a whole lot different when you're all on your own. HPPD is the devil. I can't have a normal relationship as I can't do ordinary things that most folks do. I typically say I'm sober 15 years and get the social pass but it kills me how badly our brains are fried. I want to have peace of mind and enjoy life. I'm tired of this prison without bars.

I can appreciate that, but start off with that then.... I understand what you're getting at, but that doesn't change my resolve to stay positive. It's the idea of staying positive through literally any situation that keeps me going, no matter how crappy it is. I can also admit, however, to having something of a leg up in this situation. I'm transgender, and I spent the first two decades of my life constantly contemplating suicide and feeling that my life was over before it even started because since I wasn't living "my own" life it was all just totally meaningless. I'm now a pretty happy-go-lucky person and the only reason is because I was able to keep my head held high and eventually see that there can be a better future.

I feel for you, I really do, but what am I supposed to say aside from what I said above? It's still the most appropriate advice in my opinion. Like I've said, the only two things you can do are be optomistic or dwell on your current situation, and I can't ever imagine a situation where the latter sounds preferable. Life is difficult, I'm definitely not denying that (in fact I've outrighted stated it), and some of us have it harder than others, but that doesn't change the ways it can be made better. I get feeling down, but I still feel that you should let some positivity have a chance to grow before you immediately shoot it down. If you were in a position to read this advice and start to recover from it, wouldn't you want to know it?

[mgrade]

I've had HPPD on again off again for 10-15 years and i am in my 30's. I like your optimism but hallucinations are not funny .....especially if you have had them continuously for over 6 months. The brain is like a house: it's only as sturdy as it was made. The idea of plasticity of course does give us a spark of positivity but you have to realize that you are only 2 or so steps away from being near-psychotic and having extreme HPPD. If we took you down to Guantanamo Bay, and the USA decided you were a terrorist; and the USA tortured you to get some answers; you would be reeling (especially after 4 days of no sleeping).

I understand the joy of not having any symptoms because i have been there and i loved it. But i think that your symptoms were maybe quite mild. Some of people here including some of the admin. have felt like they were tripping for 10+ years.

Some people here have the feeling like they've just smoked PCP and took a tab of acid, all while have PTSD. And this is without any drugs.

I really do appreciate your enthusiasm. HPPD is basically a brain injury (esp. if it includes more than just visuals). Try to tell some one with schizophrenia to keep their head up: it does little good. Nevertheless, stay hopeful.

[Guest]

Thanks mgrade

[Alyssum]

I've had HPPD on again off again for 10-15 years and i am in my 30's. I like your optimism but hallucinations are not funny .....especially if you have had them continuously for over 6 months. The brain is like a house: it's only as sturdy as it was made. The idea of plasticity of course does give us a spark of positivity but you have to realize that you are only 2 or so steps away from being near-psychotic and having extreme HPPD. If we took you down to Guantanamo Bay, and the USA decided you were a terrorist; and the USA tortured you to get some answers; you would be reeling (especially after 4 days of no sleeping).

I understand the joy of not having any symptoms because i have been there and i loved it. But i think that your symptoms were maybe quite mild. Some of people here including some of the admin. have felt like they were tripping for 10+ years.

Some people here have the feeling like they've just smoked PCP and took a tab of acid, all while have PTSD. And this is without any drugs.

I really do appreciate your enthusiasm. HPPD is basically a brain injury (esp. if it includes more than just visuals). Try to tell some one with schizophrenia to keep their head up: it does little good. Nevertheless, stay hopeful.

I know what it's like to have visuals continuously for over six month, and multiple severe panic attacks during every day of it. I used to have visuals constantly that were largely deliriant- and psychedelic-based, I couldn't stare at anything for more than a couple seconds without seeing some faces form, especially in my peripheral vision. There was never a time when all the walls in my house weren't running, or being covered in huge kaleidoscopes, or turning 3-dimensional and making me think I was having a heart attack or a stroke or a seizure or some other terrible thing. I didn't have it for 10+ years, but my symptoms were not mild.

People are born with schizophrenia, but you get HPPD. And people who get schizophrenic symptoms through drug use (like chronic meth abuse) can get better. Not everyone will get over their HPPD, but some people do, and this optomism and advice works for me. I see no need for any further reason than that to justify this thread.

[mgrade]

While predisposition genetically is a truism, most people don't "get" schizophrenia until ~early 20's. It's just hard to "biofeedback" a hardcore hallucination. .....I don't mind but most people here don't want to hear that they can just "will HPPD away", or talk unicorns, cupcakes, and buttercups...................................'n ever thing will be just fine........

Maybe you'd be better off using your energies to better-define the neurobiological actions that cause persistent flashbacks.

(---also on a side note---surprised by the assumed-moral-authority of mr. kozin on his tweet list).

[mgrade]

Sorry Alyssum------I think we got a little carried-away-------I do not wish this disorder on you or anyone else-------And i hope you can help some people here, for the benefit of the entire group. Thanx.

[Gmo]

I agree with what asylum is saying. It is a shitty thing to get stuck with and simply being positive about it isn't going to be enough to recover, but it's still a much better option than sitting around and moping and feeling sorry for yourself. I think my biggest issue right now is accepting all this. I'm always analyzing how I feel and trying to understand why this happened to me and none of my other friends, I really think being positive and changing my outlook on things will really help in the long run.

[morbide]

Hppd has made me appreciate all the little things in life, a girl smiling at you on the subway, an ice cream (fuck yeah) someone making a joke etc... I havr also began to care more about my little sister and brother, girlfriend and well, pretty much everyone i love. I'm not as focused on my own well-being anymore. I mean, i could've started doing this pre-hppd but it feels more right now since there are such few things i can do about hppd. I like myself now more than befire, i'm more self confident,, more laidback.

Internet shoulder-pats to all of you / Harry