Hello All

[Scared23]

Hello everyone. 
 

I’m currently 19 a rising sophomore in college. I experimented with drugs, but never abused them or had a bad trip at all. I’ve done acid 4 times, each time a half tab less than 100 ug. Barely had visuals, never saw anything and it was mostly mental. I did molly about 3 months ago, the first time I truly tripped. i had fun with my friends, the comedown was bad but nothing anxiety inducing or bad visuals or anything like that. It was a in a big frat party setting, I had a lot of fun. It was fun, but vowed to never touch drugs again besides weed. I liked it, but they weren’t for me. I never had a bad trip at all, no PTSD or anything all were very controlled and good times. During this time, I was smoking weed from sunrise to sundown all day every day, never giving my brain a break. I quit 3 weeks ago, and ever since quitting I’ve had symptoms of HPPD, albeit pretty mild compared to others on here. My visual snow is not 24/7, mostly only at night and only on certain surfaces. I have afterimages, but I have to intently stare at an object for 5+ seconds for them to happen, it has to be bright or high contrasted. I also see floaters a lot. Have a little bit of DP/DR, but it’s manageable (just feel weird and uncomfortable as if I’m living in my head sometimes, as if I weren’t giving the commands to do or say stuff. I also constantly second guess if I’m feeling normal ALL THE TIME.) as I go to work everyday and managed to finish the semester with straight A’s. My cognitive abilities aren’t impaired, and my memory is still sharp as a tack.  Other than that, I don’t have other symptoms. Is it possible I have this? I didn’t start seeing any symptoms until researching weed withdrawal, and leading me to the Reddit HPPD page. Ever since then, I started seeing afterimages and vs. My DP/DR developed a few days into quitting weed and nicotine. I’m freaking out and can’t stop researching this, wondering if I have it, which seems to make my symptoms worse and worse. I’m hoping this is all something caused by my increased anxiety from quitting weed. Any comments help. 

[Jay1]

Stay sober for a few months, eat healthy, exercise and take your mind off this, try not to read every little thing about hppd at this point.

Most people at your stage make a recovery. 

btw - the reddit channel is a bit of a crazy place with, i suspect, quite a few drug trolls who are actively encouraging further drug use. I would stay away from there. 

[Scared23]

Thank you for the advice. I was already committed to staying sober and won’t touch anything for a long while. I’ve seen everyone’s posts and realized that any drugs can make this into a debilitating condition. It just seems odd, most posts are of people who abused psychadelics or had a terrible trip, and it seemed to happen right after. None of these things happened to me, and it occurred nearly 3 months after of me taking a low dose of molly, less than a point of me eating it. Just seems odd but I’m grateful that it’s so mild. Still holding out hope that I don’t possibly have it. 

[MadDoc]

What Jay said.  Staying clean for a while will give you a baseline as to where you stand.  I'm not trying to minimize what you're dealing with, but you're symptoms don't sound too severe.  I've also found that hppd doesn't limit my ability to think and reason.  I got through college, graduate school and so forth (I hope I don't come off sounding like a bozo).

Keep clean, stay focused, exercise and you have an excellent chance of leaving your symptoms behind.

Take care, hang in there.

[cosmiccharlie]

I agree whole heartedly with what's been said.  All I have to add is try not to get too wrapped around worrying about whether you have it or not.  Like Jay said, stay sober for a few months and see what happens, chances are you will make a full recovery.  However try not to make the same mistake many of us have, going back to the drugs once the symptoms have cleared up.  I have made that mistake more than once and each time the recovery was more difficult.  You can take this experience as a warning sign that you may be a member of the population that is susceptible to this condition.

  Anyway take care and stay positive!