Have i permantly fucked my brain in a way

[TrippingBallzz]

Well I did 4 tabs of lucy the other day and ever since I have got these weird dots in my eye sight, they are like 2 or 3 small grey dots that move with my eyes when i move them, and also i can see small cell-like transparent images flow with them (its like one small bit of my eyesight is with these things)
I don't know what it is or if it will get better!? Does anyone know anything about this? It's like it's not my eyes but its like the inside of my brain which is making me see these things? They are super small but they just drift across as I move my eyes, like I can ignore them it's just worrying having them there?
It's fucked up, it's like my whole sensory vision thing has been sorta messed up?

p.s i think this is in the wrong forum :S i wasn't sure which one...

 

[LSDMDMA&AMP]

sounds like floaters man, youre fine.

 

[TrippingBallzz]

sounds like floaters man, youre fine.

can you explain what 'floaters' are? i googled it and looked at images, i think this is it. do they go away? and am i safe to do more trips even with this condition? or would it make it worse? :S
also it says on sites its part of a natural age process, but says its common above 40s, i'm not 40 years old lol not even close! isn't that a bit worrying!?

 

[DiZzyBonne]

A lot of people have floaters. I found out I had one while I was taking a shower while at my cousin's house in Las Vegas, before I've ever even done drugs, well besides marijuana. I never knew what it was until I saw a Family Guy episode lol.

Peter Griffin has an eye floater.

Here's a little read for ya.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floater

Like I said, it's common, and there's no "real" treatment for it from what I can gather. You just coincidentally happened to spot yours after a trip, which is what has you so paranoid. You're completely safe to trip some more my friend!

 

[Shambles]

It's perfectly normal - most everyone gets them. Don't worry about it - nowt to do with psyches (or any other drugs) at all

 

[TrippingBallzz]

Thank you guys I have been slightly concerned in the past couple days, but yeah I have been ignoring them and it's reassuring to know that info and what they are especially lol I thought I was the only one seeing them like something was up with me! Sorry for alarm thanks for the infos!

 

[ford442]

i remember noticing them a lot more on LSD.. looking at the purple sky they seemed to be everywhere.. they for sure go away - no worries..

 

[Marvo Ging]

Yeah, it sounds like floaters alright, but I must disagree with Shambles, while I don't think psychotropics cause floaters, they sure seem to make you notice them more afterwards, I've never noticed I had them until my first ganja toke, now it's hard to forget they're there and I can see they're there while sober. Had the same reaction as the OP at that time too.

 

[psood0nym]

It doesn't sound like floaters to me because every floater I've seen moves. The black spots always stay in the same relative position. Floaters look like this:

They tend to go from top to bottom with gravity and coast with the movement of the eye because they're actual material floating in the fluid of the eye. The black spots described sound like perceptual malfunctions in the brain itself. I sometimes see a black spot in my vision when I look at a bright uniform field. I've seen it off and on for years, but it's most likely to appear after a large dose of aMT. I ALSO see blue sparks when I look at the sky, but I know these are white blood cells in my retina that reflect blue light. The "blue light entopic phenomena" sparks ARE in my eye, the spots are not. Of course I see floaters too and know the difference (you can make floaters easier to see by closing your eyes half way so that they're still open but you're peering out through your eyelashes).

So, if you have what I occasionally get with these black spots, yes, you may have made changes to your brain that could last a long time, but at worst they'll probably go away in a few days and maybe come back the next time you trip. It's doubtful that you fucked up you perceptual system permanently.

 

[donvliet]

same here. Psychedelics made me aware of the floaters I already had. I just hadn't noticed them before, but when I saw them I knew I had seen them many times before.

 

[psood0nym]

To expand on my post above: one way to know that it's not in your eyes is to simply close one eye and see if the spots are still in the visual field of the other eye, and vice versa. The black spot I occasionally get is in the lower right hand field of my vision, which is the same place that slowly growing visuals will sometimes originate at and continue for a half hour within a few days of my last using DMT. I think that whatever part of my perceptual system corresponds to this area of my visual field has probably had a few fuses blown because of the psychedelic surges I've sent through the system over the years. The chemical over-amplification has perhaps resulted in damaged areas of low activity (black spots) and areas prone to over-excitation (the .5 hours of expanding visuals). The rest of your brain is probably fine, as the perceptual areas are clearly proportionately far more sensitive to psychedelic influence than the other parts.

Fucking up our brains this way is a statically small but very real danger in using psychedelics, even just casually. I consider myself lucky that I only have these ephemeral issues after using for so long rather than full HPPD.

 

[hearcolours]

haha the memories. started seing those floaters too after my first mushroom trip as a teenager. it's been 12 years since then. you get used to it kid

 

[Dondante]

It doesn't sound like floaters to me because every floater I've seen moves. The black spots always stay in the same relative position. Floaters look like this:

They tend to go from top to bottom with gravity and coast with the movement of the eye because they're actual material floating in the fluid of the eye. The black spots described sound like perceptual malfunctions in the brain itself. I sometimes see a black spot in my vision when I look at a bright uniform field. I've seen it off and on for years, but it's most likely to appear after a large dose of aMT. I ALSO see blue sparks when I look at the sky, but I know these are white blood cells in my retina that reflect blue light. The "blue light entopic phenomena" sparks ARE in my eye, the spots are not. Of course I see floaters too and know the difference (you can make floaters easier to see by closing your eyes half way so that they're still open but you're peering out through your eyelashes).

So, if you have what I occasionally get with these black spots, yes, you may have made changes to your brain that could last a long time, but at worst they'll probably go away in a few days and maybe come back the next time you trip. It's doubtful that you fucked up you perceptual system permanently.

Cool post...hadn't heard of the blue light entoptic phenomenon before.

I haven't had any spots in my visual field for a while, but I have had them in the past, and they are undoubtedly related to psychedelic use. The spots that I experienced were not black dots though. Rather, they were very small targets. While it makes sense to assume these are due to changes in the visual cortex where there are an abundance of 5-HT2A receptors, I think the event causing the misperception may be misfiring of a neuron downstream from a retinal ganglion cell if not the RG cell itself.

Retinal ganglion cells are responsible for edge detection (detection of contrast) in visual perception. They achieve this through a center-surround response, which makes use of on center and off center retinal ganglion cells. These two types of cells respond differently to a light stimulus. The on center RG cell is stimulated when light hits the center of its receptive field. When stimulated, it simultaneously causes lateral inhibition of adjacent RG cells. The off center RG cell responds in the exact opposite manner.

The targets I see are exactly what I would expect if an RG cell or its downstream neuron were to depolarize in the absence of a light stimulus.

As for my vision, I now experience auras around bright lights at night and I can say without a doubt that the saturation of color in my vision is slightly increased. Neither is a significant distraction, and I often perceive the latter as an enhancement in my visual perception.

 

[chaosbydesign]

Yeah, floaters. They can be annoying sometimes, but also interesting to look at. I've always noticed them, but I did notice them even more after I started tripping. Perception is just changed after an experience like that; hopefully it doesn't bother you too much. If it does bother you though, I'm sure that as long as you weren't tripping all the time, your perception would return to how it was before the trip.

 

[Spitfire706]

Part of my everyday life now, I just think of them as souvenirs from a trip...literally and metaphorically

 

[MescalitoBandito]

Don't worry about it. I've noticed all sorts of perceptual distortions after taking psychedelics, and yes they DO go away if you abstain from all drugs for at least a year or two.

I don't mind them myself, I think I'm just noticing features of the light entering my eye that my brain had previously filtered out. I don't consider that "damage."

 

[Shambles]

Am I the only one that's always had floaters? I remember "playing" with them as a kid long before taking any drugs so just assumed they had nothing to do with drugs. Can't say I notice them any more or less than I ever did.

 

[tBirdee]

Am I the only one that's always had floaters? I remember "playing" with them as a kid long before taking any drugs so just assumed they had nothing to do with drugs. Can't say I notice them any more or less than I ever did.

Exactly, I used to chase em around and just observe them when I was younger.

 

[ABCDFG I Ate The E]

i noticed this a few days ago when i did lsd for the first time. the day after, if i blinked, or more if i blinked really hard, i would see 2-3 black dots. got scared at first but they only really came if i blinked.

they're gone now btw

 

[Dondante]

Am I the only one that's always had floaters? I remember "playing" with them as a kid long before taking any drugs so just assumed they had nothing to do with drugs. Can't say I notice them any more or less than I ever did.

You very well may have floaters, but I think the point is that what most people are describing are not true floaters.

"Scheerer's phenomenon (the blue light entoptic phenomenon)should not be confused with "floaters". Scheerer's phenomenon is distinguished by the appearance of multiple, identical-looking bright dots that move around rapidly in random directions. Floaters are variable in appearance; although they sometimes are dots, they often have the appearance of threads or shreds of crumpled cellophane. Floaters remain almost stationary or drift slowly and do not follow well-defined paths. They are due to debris floating in the vitreous humor of the eye."

There are plenty of other entoptic (within the eye) phenomenon, many of which are described here.

Visual changes after psychedelic use are not solely entoptic phenomenon, although they may play off naturally occurring visual effects such as Sheerer's phenomenon.