HPPD-like symptoms in non drug users(also psychic phenomena anyone?)

[Lobotomizer]

So if you do a quick google search you may find that HPPD like symptoms are not limited to those who have indulged in mind altering chemicals. The ones we should most notably look at with interest are those who claim to have these problems from natural mind altering practices such as meditation, yoga and lucid dreaming. Many people have had psychotic-like symptoms from meditation and other similar practices. Many of them claim that they experience symptoms EXACTLY like our HPPD symptoms. These HPPD-esque symptoms they experience after these spiritual practices may or may not exist co-morbidly with a psychotic-like episode. Sound familiar?? Its been a very long time since Ive researched this so I cant provide links but I distinctly remember finding support groups online for people with "kundalini awakening"; a phenomena that manifests in people practicing kundalini meditation. This support group that I found in many ways paralled the HPPD forum of the old days, a lonely little website in a dark corner of the web due to the obscurity of the disorder. There were many lost, hopeless and even suicidal people posting due to the lack of knowledge on the phenomena. As I said eerily parallel with HPPD.

 

Anyway, a somewhat related question that I have to ask you guys here is if any of you have experienced any odd or unusual phenomena that may be difficult to explain by western scientific standards? One thing that happened to me around the onset of my HPPD is being unable to sleep on my back. To do so will cause sleep paralysis that inevidably causes an out of body experience one out of three times. Ive also experienced lucid dreams much more often. On top of all this I have had some prophetic dreams. I had a dream that my girlfriend got in a car accident only to awaken and have her call me no more than thirty minutes later and confirm my dream. The way she described it was eerily accurate to what I experienced in my dream. In my dream I was driving and hit something in the middle of the road and spun out. She described hitting a deer and spinning out off the road as well. The accuracy in my dream compared to the real life event was too high to deny it being worthy of an "unexplainable event". So, I just wanted to know of any of you have had I higher frequency of similar phenomena after your onset of HPPD. I know its difficult for some of you to come forward with some of these experiences out of fear of ridicule but hopefully you may take comfort in the fact that I don't doubt the possibility of anything after what Ive been through in the last decade.

[China]

I don't doubt it if using that whole LSD perspective "I am you, as he is her, as we are all the same in everything". It kinda makes sense seeing that everything is comprised of energy and energy is just vibrations. This may be a little off topic but in quantum physics there's this phenomenon called quantum entanglement. I don't really remember what it entails but googles got a phd in just about everything. It's something along the lines that if two electrons were shot at each other at super speeds, and then sent off from one another, changing the spin of one electron could indirectly change the spin of the other electron, no matter where it was in space...a bunch of crazy science bs, but it's documented. So premonitions aren't too far off from that. I wish I had a premonition story, but I don't. Lol. I would go with these foresights though, it's kinda like a super power if you think about it.

[BigPapaChakra]

Wow, Lobotomizer, I can't even describe how much this resonates with me.

 

Firstly, the dreaming - SAME EXACT THINGS happened/happen to me. I went through a period of MONTHS where I couldn't sleep on my back. I would try, then I would get hypnagogic-like sensations/tactile hallucinations; my body felt weightless, the sensation of going down a roller coaster was present (it felt as though I was falling through the bed), and I often felt as though I were on the verge of having an OBE. All I had to do was rotate and sleep on my belly and it'd stop (though if I let it go on long enough, I'd still feel odd for a long period of time).

 

Also, premonitory dreams, and hyper-vivid dreams. Dreams I'd wake up from and be crying because I was crying in my dream. All this weird stuff.

 

This is what has made me semi-fearful of meditation, now. Before HPPD I was into trying to astral project, have lucid dreams and OBEs, meditation, etc. I've seen a lot of spiritual forums where people have odd sensations during/after meditation, often persisting for days, weeks, or sometimes years. I'd look up ThinkingAllowedTV on youtube, with Jeffrey Mishlove. It's all about the science of spirituality/mysticism, and the likes of John C. Lilly (inventor of sensory deprivation tanks and big-time ketamine user) have been on there. Nonetheless, there was some woman on there who described similar things to HPPD/Kundalini Awakening, yet called it a Spiritual Emergency or something of that sort.

 

In fact, there are books on this from renowned psychologists/scientists such as Stanislav and Christina Grof: Spiritual Emergency: When Personal Transformation Becomes a Crisis

[Lobotomizer]

Do you see the parallels of hppd / and spiritual crisis? Its a psychosis of sorts, according to western medicine standpoint. Its no longer fun or enlightening and exciting. Its when one has gone too far and wants off the rollercoaster but its picked up too much momentum. This same exact thing can happen with spiritual practices and I believe its downplayed in the scientific community. UNFORTUNATLY dogmatic religious institutions know alllll about this and use it to their advantage when arguing against the occult(which happens to be anything that does not fall into the juedeo-christian scheme of things).

 

I don't know when it happened, Bigpapachakra, as I was "different" as a child. I was fascinated with esoteric subjects from as far back as I can remember(about three years of age). Ive always been overly creative and somewhat introverted just because I felt that no one really understood how I viewed reality. I feel that I may have always been closer to the "edge" and whether I would have practiced TM or yoga I would have had "breakthrough" or psychosis whatever you want to call it. Anyway, my use of psychedelics , I feel is what exacerbated my spiritual experiences along with HPPD. Im extrememy surprised that more people do not experience what you and I have. As you can see this thread isn't very popular. What Im saying is I don't know if I would have the same spiritual views and experiences without psychedelics, but Im inclined to believe I would have.

My view on this HPPD is that you can accept it as a curse or a blessing (though so many on here would disagree with the latter that it makes me shudder thinking of what type of responses this will receive). I promise, once I accepted what had happened to me I began to enjoy my life again just as much as the next person, my vision began to clear up months after that (or maybe I simply didn't notice it). I believe this will happen for many if not all. But the hardest part is to find the strength and the courage to actually believe and VISUALIZE yourself healed. Its a type of submission that many bullheaded types cannot accept as they feel it will hinder their intellectual integrity. You have to ultimately believe and KNOW that you WILL be healthy again. but that's the paradox with all this spiritual mumbo jumbo aint it? "You must believe in order to experience" and is probably the most difficult t thing to accept for a scientific nuts and bolts type and I don't blame em.

 

The thing is the HPPD community is not the only one that has experience with HPPD. I discuss this with others on other forums but the difference is that those who do not view this as a curse integrate it into their lives and are not filled with the anxt and depressive feelings. This seems to be the common trend here. Yeah its weird, it gets scary sometimes. But its no scarier for me to realize that we are lost in space on a rock hurtling through the cosmos seemingly by chance with zero purpose.

 

One example is a a thread I stumbled upon months back. Unfortunatly I cannot find it , otherwise I would provide a link. In this thread several individuals discussed a positive increase in spacial memory and recall from use of psychedelics. They described a long lasting or permanent change in the ability to visualize. I found that I also have this increase in spacial memeory and visualization. Also my ability to visualize more abstract objects has been increased. Now many MAY feel that this is a handicap becauae they do not want the ability to "see things that arent there" but others, like me may find this to be a beneift. Do you think these indiviuals have a form of or a certain degree of HPPD? They claim that they are "seeing" these things in their minds eye. Just something to ruminate on.

[China]

I know you were directing that to BPC, but I'm a nosy Nancy and to put in my two cents, being able to visualize and see increasingly complex/abstract thoughts is not hppd. Hppd, I believe has to be accompanied with the visuals, not just with thoughts. When I first started doing trippy, I had a skyrocket in creativity. I could write fairly decent songs, and for me, that's incredible lol. I could see myself accomplishing goals, which helped me work hard for things, etc. none for that hindered my quality of life until I got hppd, as I was not hallucinating. I do believe that visualizing more or opening the minds eye is part of the formula for hppd though, because right before I got hppd from synthetic weed, I had taken 2ci or some variant, and after that trip ( I didn't particularly enjoy it, I had to babysit my friends who were also on it, and at that point I had done enough trip to where it wasn't interesting at all) I was thinking at like 5 thoughts a second, like my brain felt it was on hyperdrive. When I would sleep, I would have like a slide show on fast forward of a multitude of different images. It was insane. I was a señor in high school (hppd was my grad present! Haha) and I could write the most clever sarcastic 3-4 page papers, drenched with personality, in like 15 minutes. It was insane! I was also a total douche at that point, and I think karma caught up with me and my brain crashed..did you feel like that prior to hppd and after the end of your last trip? Maybe the 'software' in our brains simply crashed and we need to reboot ourselves?

[Lobotomizer]

WHats 'BPC'? Short answer is no I I had a really bad trip/psychotic reaction/very high dose. I felt fine before that , although I did notice that I hd lingering after effects for several days to a week.....I think THAT is huge,  huge warning sign to study. Because it seemed with every trip the lingering lasted longer and longer.

 

I do think that it is possibly thr nature of these drugs to alter perception to a degree peranantly and EVERYONE is capable of experiencing HPPD. Because if you REALLLY cross examine any former LSD user you will get what you are looking for , YES most do have or have /had some form of hppd. HPPD to LSD is hangover is to alcohol....I belive.

[China]

Bigpapachakra= BPC, sorry I'm lazy

And I'm sorry to hear that, I had a bad trip on synthetic weed where I thought I was a squeak toy, I kept shouting to my friend "what the **** is this!!!!" He started freaking out and was all "I DONT KNOW!!" Haha you had to be there, it was really traumatizing at first, but I look back at it and laugh my lungs out.

I'd agree with that connection, this has been one looong hangover.

[Lobotomizer]

Yeah I tried 25c-nbome recently and it was enjoyable but I smoked some cannabis with it and then I started have the most bizzare delusions like what you describe....I was terrified out of my mind......funny thing is it may have slightly increased my HPPD but no other ill effects form the bad trip. I really think cannabis related compounds are extremely dangerous for mental health

[Lobotomizer]

WHats 'BPC'? Short answer is no I I had a really bad trip/psychotic reaction/very high dose. I felt fine before that , although I did notice that I hd lingering after effects for several days to a week.....I think THAT is huge,  huge warning sign to study. Because it seemed with every trip the lingering lasted longer and longer.

 

I do think that it is possibly thr nature of these drugs to alter perception to a degree peranantly and EVERYONE is capable of experiencing HPPD. Because if you REALLLY cross examine any former LSD user you will get what you are looking for , YES most do have or have /had some form of hppd. HPPD to LSD is hangover is to alcohol....I belive.

Shit let me expand on what I said....my bad trip is what caused full blown hppd....but I have had lingering after effects from every lsd trip Ive ever had.....its seems as though each time the lingering effects seemed to get gradually worse and for a longer duration so I don't know if I would have gotten HPPD if I never had a bad trip

[China]

Yeah totally, I have to say though, i never had a problem with weed until I started experimenting with more illicit drugs. I would guess if we never did other drugs we would be perfectly fine, smoking up the ganj, having a great time. Oh well, shit happens. :/

I've never been able to remember how different rc's made me feel. But is 25c the one that makes you feel like you're on a rollercoaster? Like adrenaline but not really adrenaline? Or was that 2ci? I don't know, but the one that gave me an intense body high is one of the trips I most enjoyed. You might have, but it probably be way more mild and easy to manage. I feel like bad trips really fuck your brain up. I'm guessing a rule of thumb would be to not do drugs with names only comprised of numbers and letters lol.

[Lobotomizer]

Nahh 25c wasn't a "body high" it was definitely adrenaline esque. I havnt tried to many RCs and Im pretty careful with my use these days. I may enjoy mushrooms or cacti annually if im feeling up to it. I feel as though Ive been to the darkest place drugs can take me and now Ive adjusted to what has happened. Ever since HPPD s onset 18 years ago.....I had it decline in intensity and about four years later I did use a few mushrooms but low doses which seemed to help me cope with the mess....not seemed. THEY FIXED my anxiety. Mind you , that Im talking low doses. They never made my HPPD any worse. I used to belive that no matter the psychedelic they all effect the brain the same and if one type has side effects the other will potentially give the same side effects. I now strongly believe that natural tryptamines such as DMT and psilocybin have the least potential for long lasting side effects as opposed to LSD and phenethylamines. Although isn't ibogaine a tryptamine? I my have to reevaluate my thoughts on this because if so then I know of at least one person who suffered some pretty bad long lasting effects from it and that person is posts on these boards.