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HPPD, should one continue to use psychedelics if he/she is not bothered by symptoms?

al-laddin

al-laddin

Bluelighter
Joined
Apr 10, 2014
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500
Hello ladies and gents,

Hi Im brand new around here but have been a long time lurker and feel that this is a great sight to get information. Anyway Ive been using psychedelcis for 18 years roughly, with a four year gap due to a horrific LSD experience on 500ug-700ug. This trip lead to some sort of PTSD, HPPD and DP/DR. That trip definitely scarred me for life and changed me forever. In some ways the changes were for the better but the horror I experienced was traumatic and there are were definitely some long lasting negative effects. This happened when I was 16 and caused me to cease all drug use with the exception of alcohol. Four years later I decided to try a light psilocybin trip, which seemed to release me from the anxiety I had been living with since the bad experience. This lead to many trips on mushrooms and one or two more LSD trips. I also played with mescaline cacti a handful of times.

Recently I ended up trying 25c-nbome which resulted in a pretty bad psychotic reaction, which I successfully aborted with 1mg alprazolam. However, the trip on this nbome was initially very enjoyable. This was followed up by a few more fun and relatively low dose LSD experiences. Now I must say that one of or both 25c and LSD seemed to have exacerbated my HPPD symptoms. I have tripped on mushrooms many times before this with no problems. Now Im not saying that my vision is like Im peaking on an acid trip but its definitely slightly annoying and distracting at times. I have verified with one other fellow who suffers from HPPD and still uses psychsedelics, that tryptamines, or more specifically psilocybin has never made his vision noticeably worse but phenethylamines and LSD especially have.

Ive tried asking this question on other forums with zero results, but from what I have seen Bluelight is at the top echelon regarding substances and I feel that I will receive some great and realistic advice here. Bottom line , Im willing to live with the level of HPPD that I have but I don't know if I could handle live in a full blown acid world. Im also a bit concerned about the possibility of cognitive damage from psychedelic use. It seems as though theres very little to support the claim that psychedelics cause cognitive damage but I have noticed a change in the way I tghink , for the better; I am far more creative post LSD use. What I would like out of this post is to know if I should cease psychedelic use all together.


Does anyone out there have HPPD that can be compared to a full blown trip? Ive noticed that all the HPPD cases I know of is fairly mild visual disturbances but many of the individuals suffer from massive anxiety and depression co-morbidly .

So in the spirit of harm reduction, DO any of you guys out there have any info regarding this? Some anecdotal experiences or even semi researched info? Thank you so much.
 
HPPD is just enhanced awareness of natural visual processes that are present in all humans to some extent. It starts from someone noticing distortions that are normally 'edited out' by the mind, and they fixate on them unintentionally out of concern or irritation.

There are plenty of people who get HPPD from shit like mushrooms, in fact there are documented cases of that. HPPD can occur with any perception modifying drug, for cannabis to DXM to mushrooms to LSD to phenethylamines.

HPPD is not neccearily a sign of damage. It is a sign you are becoming aware of your nature as a biological system, and that your eyes are not perfect video cameras. Things like floaters, visual noise, halos around objects when you stare at them, etc... are just artifacts of your brain being a noisy mess of nerve cells, and your eyes being built totally backwards - blood vessels are in front of the retina, not behind it.

If you still lose sleep at night over seeing things "properly", go to an optometrist and get a vision test done.

It's probably best not to link to other forums here. We know what DMT is.
 
Seiko, thanks for your reply. This may be the case for some, but neurologists have now found a way to measure ones visual distortions through some sort of brain imaging device. They have in fact found that the brain of hppders does function differently. ALso medical researchers have a test which measures ones sensitivity to light by pupil reaction in hppders. Further, many hppders cannot identify "black" from dark shades of color. This has also been addressed in the medical community. If I can hunt down links Ill post.

I know of one person who has hppd pretty bad. Claims to see complex geometry on all surfaces. etc. He continues to use psychedelics and says that his HPPD has leveled out. In other words he can trip as much as he wants and said visual distortions are his permanent "baseline".
 
I had a minor case of HPPD. I had minor visual distortions like floor tiles shifting and ceiling breathing, but it wasn't bothersome. I continued my use of psychedelics and my symptoms never worsened, but neither did they get better. Interestingly after I candyflipped for my second time my symptoms disappeared completely and have yet to return. Don't try candyflipping to alleviate symptoms though as I'm sure it really depends on the person. It could have been coincidental for all I know.
 
A lot of people in the psychedelic community seem to ignore the reality that HPPD exists along with other long lasting or permanent negative consequences such as DP/DR , PTSD etc. My concern is that the majority of the medical community doesn't care and believes anyone that has even so much as dabbled is junkie scum and has deserved what they got so theres little research . On the other hand you have many pro-psychedelic community ignoring that HPPD is even a real phenenona. I believe psychedelics are great and medically significant but all medicines especially powerful ones may have negative side effects. We must address them so that we can use these medicines to their fullest potential. I mean their are psychedelics which pose greater harm than others, for example Nbomes. Then there are psychs which are nearly harmless like psilocybin. I bring this up because I actually used psilocybin to alleviate my negative after effects of my high dose bad LSD trip, perhaps in the same way you did by candy flipping. If we can first acgknowledge that HPPD may be a problem for some we may find a way to counter it. Im not saying anyone HERE doesn't believ in HPPD existence but I do run into this a lot .
 
I don't worry much, raindow colours in streetlights at night and breathing patterns in tiles and some carpets/rugs makes this boring world a little bit brighter.
Just as long as it doesn't mess with general day to day activities/work I wouldn't worry about using psychs again.
 
Not to throw in too much of a tangent, but its possible that hppd follows its own fluctuating course indepndent from external stimuli or variable.
 
Welcome Al-laddin.

I believe you that your hppd symptoms are real. Can you describe in greater detail the kinds of visual distortions you experience?

At present we really are touching into brand new territory with these substances, as there is little to no history of human use. We are still learning a lot about how they interact with our brains.

My gut reaction is that you should definitely stay away from NBOMe and their relatives NBOH etc. these ones are such highly selective agonists to the 5ht-something receptor. Theres no good reason for you to ever ingest those. Play it safe and stay away from LSD for a good long while. You have a long life ahead and you can come back to it later.

I would suggest you can continue to enjoy low doses of mushrooms, and the simple phenethylamines (mescaline, MDMA, 2c-x), and carefully observe how it affects your hppd. Keep notes.

I would like to learn more about how learning happens in the brain, on a phioslogical/chemical level. Basically, I wonder if your brain has been trained to trip out. We learn more in highly exited states including trauma.
 
my thought in this

My reply is in bold within the quote

perpetualdawn said:
Welcome Al-laddin.

I believe you that your hppd symptoms are real. Can you describe in greater detail the kinds of visual distortions you experience?

Thnk you for the warm welcome! I really appreciate it. My mot noticeable symptoms are constant and they include tracers that are up to three feet long, if I use phone and wave it in front of my face at a rate not very fast but at a natural rate. Visual Snow/static that consumes everything in my visual field. Faint hologram like pseudo-hallucinations in dark environments. The worst is the fact that my eyes don't adjust to dark environments very well. Dark maroon or deep blues look black to me because of the "static". Oh and my hypnogogic (before sleep) closed eye visuals get intense. All objects that Im visualisng in hypnogogic state have enormous tracers which didn't happen to me before.

At present we really are touching into brand new territory with these substances, as there is little to no history of human use. We are still learning a lot about how they interact with our brains.


My gut reaction is that you should definitely stay away from NBOMe and their relatives NBOH etc. these ones are such highly selective agonists to the 5ht-something receptor. Theres no good reason for you to ever ingest those. Play it safe and stay away from LSD for a good long while. You have a long life ahead and you can come back to it later.

I agree they are supposedly near full agonists of the these receptors which previously has never existed in history or nature. Strange times we live in. That was mostl likely a one time thing, as I foolishly thinking it was a really common "club drug", as I don't belong to that scene. I thought , or assumed that it was as harmless as mescaline. The guy who gave it to me called it "digital mescaline"

I would suggest you can continue to enjoy low doses of mushrooms, and the simple phenethylamines (mescaline, MDMA, 2c-x), and carefully observe how it affects your hppd. Keep notes.

I would like to learn more about how learning happens in the brain, on a phioslogical/chemical level. Basically, I wonder if your brain has been trained to trip out. We learn more in highly exited states including trauma

Well I think that people in the psychedelic community are a bit naïve in the assumption that "psychological trauma" isn't as harmful as say, "physiological". I have found in my research of neaurology and psychology that they are very closely tied together. The phenomena of neuroplasticity for example, assumes that the if you repeat certain activities that the brain actually build neural pathways and/or grows cells or brain matter based on said activities or experiences but a traumatic experience can really dig a trench in your brain that you may never be able to back fill. War vets are fucked for life in many cases. Why couldn't this be particularly true for a drug experience that is known to cause one to be vulnerable to external stimuli. .
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Hi there and welcome to bluelight. Although we don't discourage linking to other forums the fact that every other sentence contains an (arguably unnecessary) link makes it read more like an advertisement. I think your intentions are honest so I am going to leave them there but I will ask that you are much more selective if you decide to do this in the future.

Have you considered leviracetam?
 
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hey transform, im not sure what you mean. are you talking about the format that I replied in? none of my text in bold was lifted from any sites or sources. Its all my own words. No what is leviracetam. Sounds like a benzo or nootropic. I shall google now :)

Oh wait youre talking about the links from words such as alcohol, LSD, etc in my original post? Yes it was an accident, as most of the body of the text was copy/pasted from another forum (it was written by me) , where I dint get any replies and I genuinely want to discuss this issue so I brought it over to blue light. I assure you I rewrote and added a lot to it before posting it here and didn't realize that it would save the links. My apologies
 
If it doesn't bother you it's technically not HPPD. I've had some degree of psychedelic visuals outside my trips for a long time now (over a year, didn't happen until I began to have more regular access to psychedelics, so it's a symptom of regular/semi-regular usage for me), but haven't felt the anxiety/depersonalization/derealization which distinguishes HPPD from these mild "flashbacks". The way I see it, if it doesn't bother you, how can it possibly be a problem? And if it does bother you, then of course it's a problem!

Also gonna say that, no matter how much I trip, and how hard I trip, the level of visual flashbacks basically stays exactly the same (well it was stronger for a little while when I was fooling around with NBOMe's briefly, which I stopped not because of that but because I find NBOMe's to completely lack depth and, if anything, take you farther from the "psychedelic truth" instead of bringing you "towards the light" the way every single other psych I've done has). I definitely think better when sober as a result of using lots of psychedelics (as long as I don't dose too regularly- more than once a week will fuck with you, and even weekly dosing needs to stop eventually as I recently realized)- I really doubt psychedelics will cause any cognitive damage, personally even the most difficult trips I've had have done nothing but help me & allow me to become a better person!

I will say that the lifestyle of the "psychedelic devotee" is not for most, but if you decide you want to stop you can always do so, continuing to experiment right now, as long as it's done wisely, should be to your benefit, you'll find out later if your one of us who stick with psychedelics or one of the many who learn some things from them then stop using. And I guess even those of us who use psychedelics on a long term basis may eventually stop still...personally I imagine that I'll just slowly taper my frequency of usage down over time rather then ever completely stopping, I could see myself still taking a psychedelic journey here & there even when I'm 70, but I may just be saying that because I'm a 20 year old dude who's "gotten the message", learned many lessons, and still wants to continue using psychedelics for a long time to come, & still believes that they'll continue to teach me more for as long as I use them (though recently I've started using in a more sustainable, responsible way than I have in the past- gotta balance it out more with other life pursuits now, don't wanna burn myself out!)
 
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Well I've never had full blown HPPD (from psychedelics anyways, an adderall OD as a child caused textbook HPPD for me) but I have gotten lasting visual disturbances from a couple substances and despite the dramatic increase in visual static and morphing I continued my use because they didn't bother me. I'm confused whether your asking whether or not you should continue use with HPPD (which is different than visual disturbances) or if you your just experiencing some lasting visual effects and since they don't bother you wanna know whether or not you should continue use.

If you still have full blown HPPD (with emotional issues attatched to your visual distortions) then it would be wise to discontinue use but if your just having some residual visuals then it's up to you if you wanna continue use, they will get worse if you keep using, at least they did for me, but the good thing is that after I took a break they subsided. I've had residual visuals caused by two substances, 2c-i and LSA and both times I continued psychedelic use and they never got to the point where it felt like I was tripping 24/7, just some morphing and color saturation with some static in the dark. In fact I thoroughly enjoyed the residual visuals from 2c-i, jt made everything seem twisted and distorted, the LSA visual disturbances on the other hand were kinda annoying, everything I stared at drifted and since I was in school at the time it made reading a bit weird.
 
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tryptamine tripper, Thanks for your reply, trouble with this theory is some of us are more resilient than others. For example, one person could have headaches and not be "bothered" by them, while another will be crippled. Some people cant handle being hungry for eight hours , others can go a few days. Lets just call it HPPD for the sake of discussion. I feel Im mentally resilient, and have a high threshold for stress. I can adapt to pain pretty well. I can relate this perhaps to what I went through with my bad trip when I was 16. It was a tough sugercube to swallow for a kid my age. Anyway my point that it IS bothersome. It IS distracting but Im not going to complain about it because in my opinion HPPD IS NOT THAT BAD. I would rather have this than say suffer from cluster headaches or diabetes or numerous other illnesses. I believe others are freaked out and troubled by this because it hits the anxiety switch with them.
 
I agree they are supposedly near full agonists of the these receptors which previously has never existed in history or nature. Strange times we live in.
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One thing I wonder about with these highly selective, full agonists (NBOMe) is if it is possible for them to become basically permanently bound to receptor sites. If that happened, those receptors might just get down regulated, or maybe for some people they don't get down regulated. If they didn't get down regulated, those receptors would just fire more easily, long-term, which could cause hppd symptoms. If they do get down-regulated, it would mean that those neurons fire less easily, something like burn-out. This is all just conjecture on my part, I don't know enough to say if this kind of permanent receptor binding could happen. I suspect not, otherwise NBOMes would have a much longer duration, but it's an interesting idea to consider. Maybe at the tail end, there are a few molecules that just get stuck in the receptors.
 
I have found my visual snow in particular to actually be "movement" of faint patterns. At night or near dark they are basically LSD visuals that aren't as bright or developed as when you are acutely under the influence, if that makes sense. Its just a general movement of the visual field in bright environments. Like little ants crawling on everything... I don't know if its different from non-drug induced visual snow...

Like I said its not very bothersome to me, but I wouldn't want it to get any worse.

Perpetual Dawn, interesting theory...Im wondering though if a foreign molecule decomposes eventually and that would rid the hppd. Or maybe its more like stretching a rubber band..... you can stretch it and stretch ....it will come back to normal but slightly stretched...who knows for some if they stretch too often to hard it may snap. Just a thought
 
I have found my visual snow in particular to actually be "movement" of faint patterns. At night or near dark they are basically LSD visuals that aren't as bright or developed as when you are acutely under the influence, if that makes sense. Its just a general movement of the visual field in bright environments.
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Mine just looks like tv static accompanied by a faint tinnitus - but it's not unbearable. I get distortions, wiggles, negative after images, slight halo's, blepharospasm (resulting in temporary blindness) and if I stare at an object for longer than 20 seconds, the background colour bleeds over it and it disappears. I find it all very amusing, the effects only occur when I keep my eyes still for a moment.

I often wonder how common these kinds of effects are.

The static and tinnitus predates my drug use, however I don't recall when they other effects started.

That's why I was wondering how you would differentiate between them, personally I wouldn't claim I have HPPD. I much prefer the visual snow label :p

I've never noticed any substances to exacerbate the effects once it has left my system.
 
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