People that have gotten better from HPPD.

[takimarn]

You dont have hppd cause you ate L 5 times a week for 6 years. Youve just done too much acid... Its all relative and everyone needs to stop thinking negative post-trips means something wrong. I seriously cant take this damn hppd talk anymore. Educate yourself about what you're eating and dont look for reasons how and why it hurt you sooo dramatically and forever. I'm gonna make a statement and say that 99% of people thinking they have hppd, should probably not be eating acid in the first place simply for being so uneducated about it. Dont eat psychedelics if you want you're tiny universe to never change.

 

[Roger&Me]

^What are you going on about, man? Get off your high horse, you sound ridiculous.

HPPD is recognized psychiatric disorder in the DSM-IV-TR. It's a result of neurological changes engendered by the use of psychedelics. It's a well-documented condition that can theoretically affect anyone who uses psychedelic drugs.

There is no correlation between level of "education" regarding psychedelic substances and the development of HPPD!

Additionally, I find it rather repugnant that you seek to berate and marginalize people simply for speaking out about their disorder.

 

[Amberthefrog]

Remind me that my perceptions aren't reliable.

Exactly! For me it's just a persistent, pleasant reminder of what tripping is about, why I do it, or rather why I should do it. It doesn't hinder me at all so...

 

[takimarn]

No offense Roger&Me, but you are exactly what im talking about. Oh i know its a recognized disorder in the DSM. I know it a documented condition. And because of the line of logic people like you use, every new uneducated user of psychedelics thinks (hopes) he has hppd when something isn't quite right. That is what Im saying.

There is a huge correlation between education regarding psychedelic substances and the development of HPPD. Because the educated undertand you're perception will change with psychedelic use and mostly understand what and why is happening, and you dont need to look for something out of the DSM to explain a friggen flashback or something of the sort. And the uneducated desperately look for reasons they aren't the same as they were, which is simply wrong. So I'll stay on my high horse and laugh and laugh at this new generation of users who need an acronym to make themselves feel more comfortable themselves. As i said, dont eat LSD 10 times a week for 10 years and expect to stay the same.

All I'm saying is I was changed, very very changed after my early psychedelic use, and if i had the internet to search on and had 1000s of other people calling every negative post-trip situation as hppd, then i probably would think it too. But instead, i was able to figure it out on my own and realize that its all just perception and relative to what you want to beleive, mostly.

I guess you can say i have a bad case of hppd and i love it cause i didnt have a community nurturing this totally untrue and unfound idea. Don't get me wrong, i know it's real, a percent of a percent have real HPPD. The rest is simply in their own mind.

And back to the DSM my friend, I hope you understand that you need to have ALL, not just some but ALL of the reported effects in the DSM, like any other disorder, I don't have anxiety because i get anxious sometimes, I'm not a schizophrenic because i have experienced paranoia, I'm not depressed because I have experienced sadness. So to say that it is in the DSM and therefore everyone is allowed to say they have it, is a very very silly statement. Unless everyone is busting out the DSM and properly diagnosing themselves, again, going to have to use the word uneducated because that is the only word that describes such behavior.

Sorry, I'm not here to nurture and defend dumb ideas.

 

[greenberryhaze]

takiman, even if you were right, which you're not, you'd still be an asshole.

 

[Liquid Sunshine]

Regardless of where this thread is going or where it is currently, I would like to say that "HPPD" and recurrent visual phenomena from tripping are different things, and they have much more to do with residual stimulation of the optical nerves than anything terribly psychological. I do get very obvious visual disturbances from time to time, but it is important for me and others to recognize that it is probably not HPPD, nor is it anything to worry about.

Almost every post (including mine) fits these criteria, rather than the ones listed in the DSM for HPPD, and it is important to consider the validity of your self-diagnoses, as self-diagnoses are typically of high suspect, even in intelligent and otherwise realistic people.

To Takiman: Real HPPD is all in your head is well, being as it is a psychological disorder.

 

[bluffythefluffy]

The DSM is a work of fiction.

That being said, I don't know what to think about HPPD-like side effects of psychedelic use. The Native American Church doesn't seem to experience these effects at all, but quite a large number of LSD users do. It seems entirely possible that LSD causes HPPD-like effects in a certain percentage of users.

For this reason I tend to stay away from LSD.

I sincerely wish all of you experiencing HPPD a complete recovery.

 

[takimarn]

Agree fully with liquid sunshine. Period. And better said than I. But none-the-less, exactly what I'm trying to say. So thanks for wording it better, so the sensitive ones can learn something around here. God knows my post just makes them clam up.

You know the world is fucked up when people call you an asshole for stating hard irrefutable facts.... but then again, what else is there to say when you're wrong? I understand tho, no hard feelings.

Most of you would not stand a day in ancient Greece where real conversation took place. Grow up.

 

[dimetaltrypafiend]

I personally enjoyed HPPD for awhile. Dark rooms and resting became entertainment

 

[Ohwhatfun]

What causes it and how can it be avoided... besides not doing them all together... like maybe ur food diet physical activity and what not?

 

[futuretastic]

This is a good thread.

1. To those pointing out the 'differences' between HPPD and 'recurrent visual phenomena' - you have good points. I guess what I have referred to in this thread as HPPD is more akin to 'persistent visual phenomena'.

However, I don't hold much stock in the DSM and I think the distinction here doesn't really carry a whole lot of weight in practice. Basically the idea is in the vein of

'if your visual effects bother you and come with depression / anxiety, etc. (e.g. things that would bother your psychic state or potentially make you unhappy / uncomfortable) - THEN you have HPPD, OTHERWISE it's just 'recurrent visual phenomena from taking psychs'.

So if it bothers you, you have a DISORDER, otherwise you just have PHENOMENA. I don't even really like the word 'disorder' used in this context really but I guess it's an accepted psychological term.

Getting back to it, to me this distinction is kind of arbitrary, in that they are both referring to the same thing, but one potentially has the connotation attached that it bothers you.

So I guess 'recurrent visual phenomena' is a more accurate descriptor for what I've gone through because it never really bothered me, it's just changes in my perception that I noticed and assimilated and now I can more or less control.

But, regardless of whether HPPD is an accurate descriptor, I'm still gonna chime in about my HPPD that didn't bother me because people understand HPPD on this board in the wider sense beyond 'disorder' - more akin to persistent visual phenomena, or added perceptual ability depending on how you look at it.

That's part of my point in posting within this thread, at one point I thought that my HPPD (or PVP how bout that lul) was or could be a problem - since it bothered me or at least gave me a little distress as I considered it at one point in my life.

I consider it sort of like I 'got better' from HPPD, because I learned how to control it and that it wasn't actually a DISORDER or PROBLEM.

We aren't on very stable ground here and even pointing to the DSM doesn't really clear things up since that's just a book made by some psychology heads out there, this thread and board get more in depth with the HPPD ideas and discussion than anywhere else I've ever seen.

===========

long post but on a final related note, I was watching videos of talks by David Nichols, trying to find recordings or stuff where he's talked about his synthesis of 4-aco-dmt and his development of that synthesis (the history of the development of chems can be SUPER obscure with almost no data on this one beyond his paper on it's synthesis that resulted in it being available to us, and a few obscure quips here and there by nichols).

Getting back to the point, on this video with Nichols a kid stood up in the crowd with a question, he looked like one of us - younger, stringy, probably tripped a good jillion times - he seemed a little anxious.

He asked Nichols what he thought about HPPD. Nichols completely dismissed his question and basically said he was making it up. I know Nichols loves and supports psych's but he really just seemed out of date on the current discussion. PVP or HPPD or whatever the hell you want to call it IS REAL and IS an INTERESTING part of psychedelic use. It must be recognized and flippantly saying 'that doesn't matter' doesn't progress the issue and does a disservice to the people who are effected by this phenomenon.

For anyone who's interested in seeing Nichols dismissal of HPPD, it's in a video of him talking somewhere where he's talking about psychedelics causing physical changes in man, he uses the example of taking a psychedlic and walking on some hard sticks or something and having them not cut your feet because you are tripping.

ahh, long post is long and I feel better for having expressed myself. LONNNNGGGGG time lurker but recently made an account. Thanks Bluelight!

 

[RandomGuy123]

Agree fully with liquid sunshine. Period. And better said than I. But none-the-less, exactly what I'm trying to say. So thanks for wording it better, so the sensitive ones can learn something around here. God knows my post just makes them clam up.

You know the world is fucked up when people call you an asshole for stating hard irrefutable facts.... but then again, what else is there to say when you're wrong? I understand tho, no hard feelings.

Most of you would not stand a day in ancient Greece where real conversation took place. Grow up.

Jesus christ, I'd hate to know you in real life, already know I wouldn't like you.

 

[Crazedboy]

Finally figured it all out, It's nothing to stress out about. It will pretty much always be there. I have learned to live with it now, and it has it's ups and downs. One way or another though you are going to have to live with the downs. The only advice I have for everyone is to just to relax and just move on like you would, it is nothing you should dwell on. Continue on with life like normal, even though it may not be 100% the way you used to live. In the end if it goes a way your lucky if it doesn't than just carry on. All I can say is good luck, and try to keep your wits about yourself.

 

[Apollo Matta]

i was just thinking about this today,
after i smoked a couple of bowls,
looked at a light in the sunlight,
moved my eyes and the light followed my vision quite clearly.
i know i have hppd,
its gotten to the point where i went to an orientation and the speakers shadow kept moving around.
its just stuff you get used to,
and it might go away, there really no way to know,
only way to find out though is to stop all drug use.
so either learn to live with it or change..

i kind of like it though,
pot hasnt been the same,
and i can hallucinate on command now,
not like, bugs bunny on the bench,
but if i look at light then close my eyes i see intricate patterns,
or if i look at gravel it begins to move a bit.

 

[Styrofoam Jones]

I have HPPD. And I don't mean "OMG STUFF KIND OF WIGGLES AND I GET TRAILS SOMETIMES HELP ME" HPPD. I mean fractals when I look far off into the distance, patterns in my carpet and tile flooring, oily auras around every object that I focus on, rainbow swirls and static, and a "cubism" effect that overlays my vision. This is all whilst stone sober. I don't care what you want to call it, it's real. I do think that some people overreact to light visual disturbances following psychedelic experiences, but it is very possible to get strong, persistent, and markedly noticeable HPPD.

I got it after my very first 2C-E experience, so it doesn't always come from abuse. I had done psychedelics prior to that and never noticed any lasting visual changes, but just one dose of 2C-E was enough to "do me in", so to speak. I stopped using drugs for 8 months after a series of bad trips and it got slightly better, but not by much. It's worse when I'm tired, or when I'm anxious. When I get up in the middle of the night to groggily stumble to the bathroom or something I could sometimes swear somebody had dosed me in my sleep, the visual effects are that strong. I feel the same way during panic attacks (luckily, those are mostly under control by now). Dissociatives help take the edge off, my HPPD is always a lot less prominent after a heavy dose of DXM or Ketamine, but always kicks back in once I use another visual psychedelic. Oddly, MXE doesn't seem to do much for it.

It really bothered me for a while after the series of bad trips that I mentioned above, as it felt like a constant reminder of a horrible state of mind. But I've learned to live with it at this point, and now it's just kind of how I see things.

EDIT: Another thing that I've found to be helpful is getting a good amount of sun every day. Spending too much time in dim or artificial lighting really aggravates it for me.

 

[kobilica]

My HPPD came from first 2C-I usage, and I think it stayed same forever. Getting used to it is only way to cure it, because then you notice it less and your vision becomes kinda normal. Trails will never go away though, it's permanent.

I also heard Mescaline cures visual noise. Don't know if it is real.

 

[Styrofoam Jones]

It seems like the 2C's are a lot more problematic when it comes to HPPD.

 

[Flickering]

A mod in the Cannabis forum felt this was blog material and locked my topic. I actually was looking for feedback on whether it sounded like an early, mild form of HPPD, and if anyone else who's smoked weed ever gets anything like it. So here it is.

Last night taking a post-sunset bushwalk with a friend, I stopped and looked around the woods and was surprised to see a familiar optical illusion. It looked as though the outside world was bending away from me, stretching ever more distant.. "Are you seeing this?" I asked my friend, but no, he wasn't. It reminded me distinctly of my first san pedro trip, and I wondered if I was experiencing a mild flashback.

Later, as I was driving home, something else happened. I found myself hovering around the freakish mindset I had from both the times I've smoked weed - especially the first, which was a much higher amount. It wasn't a good frame of mind to be in while driving. I basically got this niggling feeling, which came across as a convinced thought - it seemed self-evident - that reality isn't actually real. All my sensory perceptions, sense of self and even memories became distant, surreal, ridiculous. It felt as though I was wavering on the edge of waking up from this 'self' I thought I was into something different, being... what? Nothingness, maybe? Anyway, this was nothing compared to the actual weed experiences, which were in turn nothing on the magic mushroom experiences that took this to a whole other, horrific level, so I simply dismissed it as an imagination-induced flashback.

Reflecting on it, though, it bothers me. It sounds awfully like schizophrenia, and the extent of dissociation was enough to make me think it might at least be HPPD. I was very tired at the time, which is known to exacerbate HPPD. I seem to be quite sane, but nonetheless, I found this vivid imagination disturbing. I don't plan on smoking weed again anyway, but has anyone experienced a similar phenomenon, or do you have any thoughts on it at all?

 

[lolusername]

I have had heavy visual 'static' my entire life, even before I ever touched drugs of any kind. When I was younger I used to occasionally see what looked like a burn in image but it was completely unrelated to anything I was actually looking at, clear as day. Whenever I smoke weed the heavy static actually starts to form patterns, its pretty cool. I notice that when I smoke it is more prevalent in light environments then usual, but other then that nothing else changes.

It doesn't bother me, I'm just used to it. The idea of seeing things without any visual static seems odd to me as I have always had it.

 

[SpecialK_]

I think a lot of people confuse this with their perceptions just being altered due to psychedelics. Before taking a fair amount of cid or your psychedelic of choice you didn't know how whatever you looked at would appear to 'react' on acid - now you do.