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Suspected HPPD

yaboydever

yaboydever

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Joined
Nov 12, 2012
Messages
14
I suspect that i may have become subject to some degree of HPPD (Hallucinogen Persisting Perception Disorder) but I am not entirely sure. Lately I have been noticing small squiggles and things but this is not the issue as i am sure that everybody gets these once in a while and I'm sure I got them before I ever touched hallucinogenic drugs. The HPPD only becomes apparent when I'm under the influence of other drugs such as cannabis or other downers which I never experienced before until very recently. I found this surprising as my experience with hallucinogenic drugs is somewhat limited. Until June of last year I smoked cannabis fairly frequently. Since then I take MDMA frequently and have encountered drugs like 2-CB only once 2-CE and 2-CI more than a few times a long with psilocybin (mushrooms) and DMT whenever I can. Can anybody help me out with what I can do to prevent the HPPD or even figure out if that is what I am experiencing?
 
I know its not uncommon to experience visuals from cannabis but it never used to happen to me. I get the sort of visuals that I would expect to experience near the end of a trip such as shadows seem like they're growing or moving around slowly or sometimes even different colours and shimmers.
 
No actually I've started to quite enjoy them as I figured I may as well learn to like them but sometimes they can make me quite anxious/paranoid and I sometimes hear loud noises as if someone is drilling right behind my head, this only really happens when I try to sleep though and it keeps me from sleeping.
 
Using psychedelics often results in a lasting perceptual shift, at least to some degree. Our perceptions are based off of what we learn throughout our lives through experience, and something as powerful as a psychedelic can lead to reimprinting of those learned patterns in an incredibly short amount of time. We are most affected by events that happen during periods of intense emotional vulnerability, so for example, if you trip on mushrooms and sort of 'discover' that trees are conscious beings while on the trip (regardless of the objectivity), you might end up believing that for the rest of your life. The same goes for the way you perceive visual information.
 
Thanks, that actually helps a lot. So my brain sort of remembers that that's what it looks like so tells me it looks that way. And maybe the use of other drugs just triggers these memories?
 
What Crashing said happens because psychedelics have shown to destabilize the coherence between brain activity from certain specialized areas. So the brain is less able to contain certain restrictions and barriers and apparently this results in loss of boundaries in both perception and cognition.

I don't think there is a whole lot you can do except keep an eye on this shift, most of all while sober. And regulate or limit the frequency of your drug use (in particular psychedelics but it includes cannabis), as well as the size of your doses.
For example, something that would be like asking for HPPD is using 2C-X compounds so often that you get tolerance - but still continuing to trip so often using increasing doses. I have no proof but to me that would be like pushing both dosage and frequency and thus pushing changes in your brain chemistry.

Not everyone is equally susceptible to HPPD, that is why you shouldn't just compare your drug intake with that of others but keep an eye on how you chronically react to them.
 
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yaboydever said:
sometimes hear loud noises as if someone is drilling right behind my head, this only really happens when I try to sleep though and it keeps me from sleeping.
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Sounds like a Brain Zap friend, might be a sign to ease up on the psychedelics & chemicals in general for awhile. Are you on, or have you ever been on, SSRI or SNRI Anti-Depressant drugs? Do you take Ecstacy, or other Serotonergic Stimulants legal or otherwise?
 
yaboydever said:
I take MDMA fairly fequently
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^ The brain zaps that Si Ingwe mentioned are very common in people who've abused MDMA/ecstasy and taken large amounts or take it too frequently. You should limit yourself to a very maximum of once a month, ideally every 2-4 months or less. Any more frequently than that is going to make things worse.

Also as Solipsis mentioned, HPPD is something that is present even when you've been completely sober for a long time. If you're still using psychedelics, smoking cannabis, and more importantly taking MDMA (where MDA, one of its main metabolites is a psychedelic in itself) - then you're not sober, and as such it makes sense that you're still experiencing residual effects.

Also, you said you noticed "little squiggles" - could these perhaps be floaters? Try seeing an opthalmologist. I started experiencing something like this shortly after a psychedelic trip and thought it was linked, I went to see my opthalmologist and they said it was an unrelated PVD or Posterior Vitreous Detachment, which caused a sudden massive onset of floaters filling my vision.

These floaters were ever persistent and I couldn't seem to concentrate on anything else in my vision because they were so prevalent, so I asked her what to do, and she said to simply try and ignore them and they'll go away - so I did, and now I can't even see them when I try. I can still see some floaters but not nearly as many as before and they don't intrude on my vision.

There's also visual static/visual snow, where your vision becomes grainy like static on a TV - this is common and many people have it, and it seems to be worsened by various substances, MDMA being one that's notorious for it - so if you're noticing this effect it could be linked to your MDMA use, and you might need to tone down the frequency and amounts. In my experience Cannabis can also make it worse so you might want to cut down if you're a regular smoker too. Phenethylamine psychedelics (like the 2C-X series, the NBOMes and the DOx series) all seem to make it worse too, though tryptamines (like aMT, DMT, Psilocin) have the opposite effect.

When I'm high on Cannabis or alcohol my visual snow and floaters are most visible so this could be what you're experiencing.
 
Jesusgreen said:
There's also visual static/visual snow. Phenethylamine psychedelics (like the 2C-X series, the NBOMes and the DOx series) all seem to make it worse too, though tryptamines (like aMT, DMT, Psilocin) have the opposite effect.
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I was interested by this... do you have a source for this info? I have VS and excessive afterimages and im wary of tripping again because of it, would be interesting to see if mushrooms or DMT would be ok or maybe even improve my static, but that sounds a bit... dodgy haha
 
nitetrain said:
I was interested by this... do you have a source for this info? I have VS and excessive afterimages and im wary of tripping again because of it, would be interesting to see if mushrooms or DMT would be ok or maybe even improve my static, but that sounds a bit... dodgy haha
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+1 .
 
nitetrain said:
I was interested by this... do you have a source for this info? I have VS and excessive afterimages and im wary of tripping again because of it, would be interesting to see if mushrooms or DMT would be ok or maybe even improve my static, but that sounds a bit... dodgy haha
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The source is just my own experience, after taking tryptamines my visual snow clears up a lot, it's still there, since my visual snow is pretty bad in the first place, but it's very much reduced, for anywhere from a few days to a couple of weeks - floaters generally seem either unaffected or I notice them a little less for a while. With phenethylamines however my visual snow gets significantly worse for 2-3 weeks after my most recent trip.

It's worth noting that it seems relative to the duration of the substance too somewhat, since with (vaped) DMT the reduction in visual snow I experienced only lasted a few hours/a day rather than days/weeks.
 
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