HPPD Syndrome due to one time LSD use .

[tierraazul]

Hi .

I had LSD a couple of months back . One stamp . Needless to say , the trip was bad , due to my emotional state of mind . I get the same trips and even newer ones when i smoke pot , that progress out into a story that has been made in my head , which is very unpleasant . The effect is more psychological i believe , because there are not much hallucinations . I over think about stuff , and sometimes coincidences are so strong that it has left me in a very bad mental state . I get paranoid too . It is accompanied with a strange deja-vu feeling . Trips like my best friend is hitting on my girl friend , and that i am gay , have caused severe anxiety problems . These feelings are clearly due to outburst of related thoughts in my head . I haven't started any medication or visited any psychiatrist .

Is my situation chronic ? What should i do .
Please help .

 

[Jesusgreen]

This sounds to me like anxiety and paranoia rather than any sort of "trip", I'm surprised you did not have this before with Cannabis as it's pretty common. The key is to smoke less, I'd avoid sativas and stick to indicas if that doesn't help, since indicas are the more relaxed highs with less complex thought trains and less anxiety

You might find better help in Cannabis Discussion, however I'm not going to move this there unless you'd prefer, as I feel with psychedelics having such a profound effect on the mind, plenty of people here may be able to offer advice on how to get past the root causes of your anxiety, rather than just smoking less

 

[fridgebuzz]

"where we have strong emotions we are liable to fool ourselves" - carl sagan

i know what you mean about the coincidence thing. sometimes stuff happens to a T that it's hard not to be suspicious of contrived or self-conscious alternatives. remember the human mind is designed to detect patterns so it's all in your head and in all probability isn't quite the way you imagine.

 

[Jinux]

"Over thinking, over analysing, separates the body from the mind" -- Maynard J Keenan

Remember that thoughts such as:

my best friend is hitting on my girl friend , and that i am gay

Aren't out of the ordinary, other people wonder about shit like that too

 

[EntheoDjinn]

................ remember the human mind is designed to detect patterns ........

Well, an adherent of intelligent design might say that. Maybe more flexibility can be envisaged by thinking that the brain has developed a capacity to help us recognise patterns and stick with them. Helps to get things done. On the other hand it also 'helps' us to learn habits which hog-tie us. But our infallibility is our salvation. See a psychotherapist rather than a psychiatrist. A psychotherapist will help you deal with the meanings of your thoughts, a psychiatrist will probably give you medication to fuzz them.

E

 

[Isidor]

I had a very bad psychosis after taking one blotter of shiva LSD (my first time). What you said about coincidences really struck a chord - I saw strange coincidences everywhere and not before long they started to form patterns and everything spiraled out of control... My mind was working overdrive associating and forming patterns of all kinds. I could not control my thoughts because they were so overwhelming and "realization" after "realization" would pop into my head uninvited... I refused to go to the hospital because I thought they would kill me (society was a big conspiracy and I saw patterns pointing to this...). After five days (had barely slept yet didn't feel tired) my family forced me to go and I was taken there in a police car... I was in the loony bin for a long time and let me tell you it was fucking crazy (I was at several times almost 100% sure they were going to kill me). Your case doesn't sound as bad as mine but be very careful if you do get symptoms similar to mine... Because your thinking seems so undeniably true at the time but looking back on it, it was of course the drug-triggered alterated mind-set and nothing else. I would do agree with the aforementioned opinion that it would be much better to see a psychologist or psychoterapist... psychiatrists only made my psychosis worse - pumped me full of so much medicines I was a zombie who couldn't think or understand anything so I had no ability to critically examine to eventually reject all these extremely strong "realizations"... I desperately asked for someone to TALK TO about all these ideas but it took me 4 months to see a psychologist... Stay the fuck away from psych wards...

I would be happy to write a more lengthy trip report + more detailed description of my psychotic mind-set if there is interest (in another thread of course, don't mean to hi-jack)... it's a good story if nothing else...

 

[Lucid420]

How do you recover from stuff like that?

 

[Isidor]

Well gradually you see the "realizations" from more sober perspectives, and are able to reject them... but some of them burned themselves so deeply in my mind that I just prefer not to think about them... I underwent a depersonalization process where I thought my life had been a lie, orchestrated etc (think Truman Show almost), that my parents weren't my real parents etc and I still haven't quite recovered from that. It feels very strange looking back on memories pre-psychosis, during psychosis, etc, because it feels like those are different people from who I am now. It's a bit like when you read a book in the me-perspective and you connect with the protagonist so that when something that happens to him you feel like it is happening to you; it is you in your imagination...

edit: oh and I easily remember what I did, what I heard, what was said, what I saw etc, but I have a very hard time relating to experiences like how I felt, what I thought, my internal monologue and decision-making process (which is now much weaker) etc and stuff like that

 

[Isidor]

Yes, very much so... I had two blotters; one with Buddha and one with Shiva. When I was psyschotic I always thought if I had taken the Buddha one it all would have been so very different...