Introduction + Seeking help/advice

[TCharles]

Hello all, I am new to this site and I’ll try to keep this as simple as I can.

I am recently turned 18 and during my later teenage years before turning 18 I was a frequent LSD and cannabis user. I regret my actions now but in a stupid teenage mindset I often did 200 ug+, sometimes multiple tabs of 200 UG, occasionally 1.5 grams of shrooms. In short, I was incredibly stupid and irresponsible with my usage.

However, it didn’t give me much issues or at least I didn’t think it did. Around 4 months ago before completely sobering up I decided to do a tab of 200 ug and 1.5 of shrooms together. At the time I didn’t pay much mind to it, but afterwards I began to get HPPD symptoms such as visual snow, more sensitivity to bright lights and seeing auras/halos around lights, closing my eyes and seeing vivid and abstract colors.

Then I didn’t pay much mind to it, but since I’ve quit all hallucinogen use and don’t plan to touch them again, and heard of cannabis use causing/worsening symptoms of HPPD so I just recently (2 weeks ago) quit cannabis use. 

Around a month ago I randomly developed an ongoing floater in the left side of my vision but I’ve no clue if that has anything to do with HPPD. I don’t know if my symptoms have been getting worse, or I just recently have gotten more aware and anxious of my symptoms. During the day time my visual snow is very light. Like very distinct film grain in my vision, and when distracted doesn’t bother me and doesn’t cross my mind. At night, however, the grain is much more prevalent, especially in extremely dark areas, where it can just look like I’m trying to look through pixels. It has never interrupted with my day-to-day life, caused me immense trouble, but as of recently my awareness and acknowledgement of it has made me extremely anxious and upset.

I turned my life around and have a steady life now with a caring girlfriend, nice group of friends and family, but this keeps persisting day-to-day and hasn’t been impacting me well at all within the past few weeks and I’m praying this isn’t something permanent that I’m going to have to live with for the rest of my life. I am thankful this isn’t as drastic as most of the cases I have read about and I consider it to be moderate, but I just want this to go away and to live a normal life, I don’t want a perspective of my life tainted and ruined from irresponsible mistakes I made as a teenager. It’s definitely not as bad as it could be, but I’m afraid of it worsening and want to prevent it. Will I be able to recover and is there any advice you guys have on my road to recovery?

[Jay1]

It's still very early days, so I would try not to panic or stress. It's only been 2 weeks since you quit smoking weed, so you will only really know your hppd baseline in the next few months. It sounds like you have a mild version, which is the most likely to recover from, so things are looking positive. Just try to de-stress, don't look too much into hppd for a while, stay clean and try to exercise, eat healthy and distract yourself in whatever way helps to ease the worry and stress.

On a side note, the floater is not hppd, you are just studying your visual field a lot more than you previously did and will see the imperfections of your eyes. I had floater when I was about 5 years old! 

Please keep us up to date and I hope we hear a recovery story soon! 

[TCharles]

Thank you for your advice and comments, it’s helped console my anxiety about my situation. I will continue staying clean, active, and healthy and update monthly on progress, as I highly doubt it’ll be able to heal in a short window of days or weeks. I’ll be staying away from this site until I post again as to keep myself from looking too much into HPPD. Again, thank you for your advice, Jay. 

[TCharles]

I know I said I wouldn’t visit this site within a month, however recently I’ve come down with the flu and notice my visuals seem to be a bit worse. Is this normal, and does it normally go back to normal once I am well again? 

[TCharles]

Also, I’ve been prescribed tamiflu and have been taking it to treat my flu. Can this spark any issues with my HPPD?

[Jay1]

Anything that puts stress on your body can potentially make this worse. I've had flu, swine flu and covid, non of which made my symptoms worse in the long run, you just have to ride it out. Not sure about tamiflu.