No visual symptoms, Have I HPPD ? Need help

[delkid]

Hi, I'lm new in the forum.

I'm a french medical student. I'm stucked since my New Year Trip with, i think,  a HPPD...

I took a 1/2 LSD with a bit of coke, alcohol and weed that night.

 

Actually, I'm a bit lost because contrary to most of what people experience, I don't have any visual, but only mental symptoms. 

These symtoms are: 

- headaches migrating over my brain, my face. Duration and intensity variate a lot depending on the day. In general, it increases during daytime, to be maximal afer noon. Also, when I drive my car, this headache increase other my speed, i feel like my brain is compressed while i accelerate. 

- With these headaches, comes a sort of brain fog, with concentration disability, that variate during daytime. 

- sleep disorders, some nights i really have to wait like 2 hours before to fall asleep. However, i'm really tired but my body makes muscle twitch just before i fall a sleep so i wake with tachycardia.

when i am exposed to cigarette smoke, my symptoms increase to be maximal during 1 week, and slowly decrease... 

Since i've started experiencing this bad trip, i stopped every drugs and alcohol and cigarettes. Paracetamol and Ibuprofen do not work on headache, and melatonin not really much. 

Sometimes, for a few minutes or hours, every symptoms disappears, to finally come back, unfortunately.

I just try to have a healthy lifestyle, sport no drugs, regular time of sleep. But last night i had really hard symptoms altough i didn't do anithyng to make symptoms worse, but i woke up just like if i had a hangover on alcohol. 

I am really exhausted fighting against my brain, i don't know what more i can do 

Do you think i have a HPPD ? Should I Try Keppra, is it efficient on this type of symptoms ? 

 

Thanks for support, Have a good day

 

Charles

 

 

[delkid]

Sorry for my bad english guys

[Hall89]

If you have no visual disturbances you don't have HPPD, which you should feel very thankful for! A tip is that you stay away from all drugs that are known to cause it for the rest of your life, which are all hallucinogens (including cannabis), but even MDMA has been proven to cause HPPD. I've also talked to people that have gotten visual snow from cocain. So the best thing is just to stay away from all drugs.

[Onemorestep]

You must reduce brain inflammation! Ibudilast is the safest thing i've found for this right now.

Edited April 18, 2021 by Onemorestep

[swissman123]

On 4/18/2021 at 4:07 AM, delkid said:

Hi, I'lm new in the forum.

I'm a french medical student. I'm stucked since my New Year Trip with, i think,  a HPPD...

I took a 1/2 LSD with a bit of coke, alcohol and weed that night.

 

Actually, I'm a bit lost because contrary to most of what people experience, I don't have any visual, but only mental symptoms. 

These symtoms are: 

- headaches migrating over my brain, my face. Duration and intensity variate a lot depending on the day. In general, it increases during daytime, to be maximal afer noon. Also, when I drive my car, this headache increase other my speed, i feel like my brain is compressed while i accelerate. 

- With these headaches, comes a sort of brain fog, with concentration disability, that variate during daytime. 

- sleep disorders, some nights i really have to wait like 2 hours before to fall asleep. However, i'm really tired but my body makes muscle twitch just before i fall a sleep so i wake with tachycardia.

when i am exposed to cigarette smoke, my symptoms increase to be maximal during 1 week, and slowly decrease... 

Since i've started experiencing this bad trip, i stopped every drugs and alcohol and cigarettes. Paracetamol and Ibuprofen do not work on headache, and melatonin not really much. 

Sometimes, for a few minutes or hours, every symptoms disappears, to finally come back, unfortunately.

I just try to have a healthy lifestyle, sport no drugs, regular time of sleep. But last night i had really hard symptoms altough i didn't do anithyng to make symptoms worse, but i woke up just like if i had a hangover on alcohol. 

I am really exhausted fighting against my brain, i don't know what more i can do 

Do you think i have a HPPD ? Should I Try Keppra, is it efficient on this type of symptoms ? 

 

Thanks for support, Have a good day

 

Charles

 

 

Hey Charles,

Thanks for sharing your story - it sounds like we are having very similar experiences. About 1 month ago I took about 100ug of LSD and had a bit of a bad trip. Later that night I got super drunk with my friends (had a fun time at least) and ended up throwing up from the alcohol. In the morning I woke up and felt like I was still tripping a little bit - lots of brain fog and a weird sensation in my head very much like you described. Over the next few days it never went away and I started freaking out - my anxiety went through the roof and it was really difficult to concentrate at work. Dealing with just about anything induced all kinds of anxiety in me. I actually had a big project due at work in the same time period and it was literal hell making it through that. Thankfully I have been doing a lot of meditation and therapy, and luckily enough one of the spiritual guides that I work with was able to talk me out of it. She told me "You don't have brain damage, just trust me". And I could see how the anxiety was fuelling this crazy trip that I was going through. So after 10 days of madness most of those symptoms finally subsided and I was basically back to normal within 2-3 days. Pretty amazing what the mind can do...

Unfortunately 5 days or so later, some symptoms resurfaced and my trust quickly fell apart. I started feeling really anxious again and the weird sensations in my head came back. Not as strong, thank god, but nevertheless very difficult to deal with.  Again, just like you, no visual effects at all, just weird tingling/numbing/headache sensations in the top of the head that spread into the face when it gets bad. I talked to her again recently (~3 weeks after the trip) and she told me to really focus on the anxiety and watch how the anxiety drives the symptoms in a self feeding loop. I'm working on that now, but it's obviously really hard and it can be demoralizing when the symptoms come back to haunt you again and again. I've also had depression for the last 9 years or so, which really doesn't help either. Good news is that I'm really working on it and I have some great people's support. Very grateful for that!

In any case if I can offer any advice, I'd say to do your best to stay positive, TRUST that it will pass eventually and use this as an opportunity to learn more about yourself/live a healthier lifestyle. In a way this has been a useful indicator for me to know exactly when anxiety is taking over inside me. It helps me identify it and over time, I'll hopefully learn to cope with the anxiety before the symptoms happen. Another thing was to realize that many of us (definitely for me) have taught or bodies to react with anxiety and stress to deal with difficult situations. Recognizing that has helped me to try and choose a more healthy and useful response to the symptoms - instead of freaking out, I try to let it be as much as possible and avoid resisting. I don't know if that's helpful, but I felt like it has helped me a little bit even if it's hard when you're at work and your head is melting on the inside.

If you don't mind me asking, how are you doing these days? It's been about 7 months for you, right? Have things improved at all? Did you try any medicines that might help? Any pointers would be hugely appreciated man! Best of luck with school and I sincerely hope that you are doing better. I'm praying that there is a light at the end of the tunnel for us.

Meilleures salutations,

Jan

[Lucas]

Hey man,

Your symptoms are very similar to mine and I think you do have HPPD despite no visual symptoms, I'm French too if you want to talk in private messages I'd very glad to.

[Lucas]

On 4/18/2021 at 1:16 PM, Onemorestep said:

You must reduce brain inflammation! Ibudilast is the safest thing i've found for this right now.

How could one get his hands on this medicine ?

[Fawkinchit]

On 4/18/2021 at 2:31 AM, Hall89 said:

If you have no visual disturbances you don't have HPPD, which you should feel very thankful for! A tip is that you stay away from all drugs that are known to cause it for the rest of your life, which are all hallucinogens (including cannabis), but even MDMA has been proven to cause HPPD. I've also talked to people that have gotten visual snow from cocain. So the best thing is just to stay away from all drugs.

This may not be entirely accurate, I do believe there are rare cases that do not present much for visual disturbances. For myself in fact I didn't develop visual snow for a couple weeks, and eventually the visual snow went away, however other symptoms remained.

It does however seem like something is going on, I agree it may not be HPPD, but it does seem like something neurological is going on, and given the series of events a form of HPPD is probable. To be honest though, what you're reporting Lucas is rather mild in comparison to what I have seen in other sufferers. 

[Lucas]

It may be milder than some but still very imparing, quality of life down by 50%.

I think as long as it creates distress it can be considered as HPPD : a chronic disorder caused by an hallucinogen.

[Hall89]

On 6/30/2021 at 4:13 PM, Fawkinchit said:

This may not be entirely accurate, I do believe there are rare cases that do not present much for visual disturbances. For myself in fact I didn't develop visual snow for a couple weeks, and eventually the visual snow went away, however other symptoms remained.

Yeah, the spectrum of severity seems to be big, but visual disturbances is a must for it to be classified as HPPD, or well, HPP, since it's so mild for some that it doesn't cause them any suffering. I've read about some that only got some intensified colors and mild tracers, others only visual snow and then there's those like me and others here that got it real bad. I'm glad to hear that your VS went away, it's my worst symptom today. Wich remained?