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Hello All! Hope everyone is doing well, if not continue to push harder, there will be a day we beat this. I am talking with a mental health doctor, and he is very understanding of the condition, although I am the first patient he has ever treated for HPPD despite him seeing other patients with HPPD (I believe this is because I did my research and read on this forum and told him my understanding of the situation). I was first started on clonazepam at 2 mg each day, 2 0.5 mg pills in the morning and 2 0.5 mg pills at night, this worked wonders to start with, but I quickly started to notice my symptoms again. Long story short, I am now taking: Monday Lamotrigine 25mg Mirtazipine 15mg Tuesday Lamotrigine 25mg Mirtazipine 15mg Wednesday Lamotrigine 25mg Mirtazipine 15mg Thursday Lamotrigine 25mg Mirtazipine 15mg Clonazepam 0.5mg 9am Clonazepam 1mg 8pm Friday Lamotrigine 25mg Mirtazipine 15mg Clonazepam 0.5mg 9am Clonazepam 1mg 8pm Saturday Lamotrigine 25mg Mirtazipine 15mg Clonazepam 2mg 9am Clonazepam 2mg 8pm Sunday Lamotrigine 25mg Mirtazipine 15mg Clonazepam 2mg 9am Clonazepam 2mg 8pm My symptoms remain mostly the same, but I will be titrating up the lamotrigine slowly up to an acceptable level to see if that helps at all. Any advice is hugely appreciated. Stay safe and keep pushing on, Best regards, Liam

Hi. I want to present to you my rather unusual, I think, case and I hope for a slight explanation of my situation. At the beginning I would like to apologize for my English, but it is not my native language. So, everything started 23 Feb when I started to take Sertraline (Zoloft). I took 25 mg of sertraline in the evening after seeing the doctor. The next morning I had visual symptoms. Optical snow and the movement of objects appeared. I continued taking sertraline for the next 5 days at 50 mg per day. After consulting my doctor, I stopped taking Zoloft. Additionally, I developed symptoms of serotonin syndrome. The symptoms did not go away and a month later I received moclobemide from my doctor. I only took it for 2 days because it caused a serious worsening of my symptoms. The optical snow was very strong, objects waved, "jumped". I also have some of tinnitus. Everything held up, and in June I decided to try clonazepam treatment. I took it for 4 days, 2 mg a day, but I did not feel any improvement. I even had the impression that after higher evening doses the visuals got worse. I smoked cannabis in July, but experienced a very strong dissociation, cognitive dissonance, derealization, depersonalization and paranoia. I felt that it made my symptoms much worse. I had a second attempt at cannabis, but it ended similarly. A few days later I smoked CBD and my symptoms got worse. I had a very strong paranoia and DR / DP that persisted even on the second day. To this day, I feel that the HPPD is much worse. The visual changes are strong, and so are the mental changes. I don't know very much what drugs can help me, I was surprised that clonazepam did not work for me. Additional information is that I'm struggling with depression and social anxiety. My only contact with drugs before getting HPPD was dimenhydrinate in January 2021.

Hey guys, I started taking Clonazepam in a really small dose (0,2mg per day) 3 days ago, and yesterday evening I started getting possitive palinopsia and hard afterimages. Is it possible that Clonazepam induced me this? My psychiatrist prescribed it to me for Sertraline and Lorazepam withadrawl, for not getting too much abstinence (I am currently on Sertraline 50mg and Lorazepam 0,5mg and going down every week step by step)

Hi, I'm new to this forum My condition started 1 year ago when I snorted 60mg of 2C-B, that night I had a horrible bad trip that ended in a panic attack and a visit to the hospital since that day I have anxiety problems, but I never had HPPD, visual snow, depersonalization / derealization, so I consider myself lucky !!! my symptoms have been more like traditional anxiety: chest pain, insomnia, fear of dying, muscle twitching, racing thoughts, nightmares, myoclonus (jerking when trying to sleep), shortness of breath, panic attacks the first few months...I think I have some form of PTSD caused by this bad trip I've been sober for almost 9 months and the only symptom I have now is muscle twitching (like fasciculations)... it's not a big deal, so I have a pretty normal life to be honest, I cannot complain. but if I drink alcohol/caffeine my anxiety increases the following days, and some old symptoms return. So I was wondering how bad it would be get drunk once a month and cut the anxiety of the following days with clonazepam? (I can handle 2 beers without problem, but if I took more I may have some anxiety problems the following days) What do you guys think, is not worth it? Can my condition evolve into HPPD just because of alcohol?

My doctor prescribed me 0.5 mg of klonopin to take when needed, how should i take it so it reduces visuals.

So, it's been a couple months and I'm at my target dose of 200mg lamotrigine daily. Still on 2mg clonazepam daily, but will be starting a taper off of it within the next month or so. No signs of addiction or dependence so I'm not too worried about tapering off it. I'm pretty much the same as I was when I posted the first report. However, the double images/ghosting has improved quite a bit and now seems to come in waves rather than being constant. There are days where it's the same as it was before treatment, and the there are days where it's almost not noticeable unless I purposefully look for it. Another thing of note, it seems to now only occur with brightly colored/reflective objects that are being hit with intense light OR with lights that emit at a high intensity. Also, it sort of follows a cosine like trend where it's at its worse in the morning and night, but not so bad midday (this is perhaps a function simply of eye adjustment, i.e., the eyes adjust to light after being in darkness for an extended period and the eyes adjusting to darkness after being exposed to light for an extended period of time). Ghosting/double vision with text on a computer screen is almost nonexistent now, it comes and goes but for the most part, it isn't present. However, all other archetypal symptoms are still present at their normal intensities. I plan on going the full recommended 12 months to see how this turns out. The improvements make me hopeful. Another thing of note, I will be starting a course of haloperidol soon due to an increase in psychotic symptoms (pdoc is starting to get worried and wants to get this under control ASAP before I end up in the looney bin). My target dose will be 5mg once daily, starting at 2mg once daily. He recommended it since it primarily affects only the dopamine receptors, specifically the D2 receptors and HPPD seems to be primarily linked with the serotonin receptors, as we all know by now the 5-HT2A receptors in particular, which most modern APs have an affinity for along with the dopamine receptors. In his words, he said it would either have a positive effect for HPPD or be completely benign. In Lerner's clinical literature review, dopamine antagonists (i.e. typical antipsychotics) seem to be either helpful or benign with regards to HPPD. So, I'm hoping it helps or is benign and doesn't worsen HPPD. The only thing that surprises me is that no one has really tried it yet with HPPD, except for a few people here on the forums. I think this is because most HPPD'ers are told not to even approach APs regardless of their generation (typical/atypical), but this seems to stem mostly from experiences with only one AP, risperidone and not others. We'll see how this plays out. If there is anyone else that has tried haloperidol with HPPD, it would be much appreciated if you could give an anecdotal report of your experience, was it a success, complete failure, so-so results, etc. If it works, great. If it doesn't, well, I'll just keep on keeping on and move on to something else (likely clonidine, levetiracetam, perphenazine and a few others, definitely not levodopa though since I have an underlying psychotic condition).

I've been on the cloneazepam for about 1.75 months and the lamotrigine for about 3 weeks, increasing dosage by 25mg each week until a target dose of 175mg-200mg is achieved (started at 25mg so I'm at 75mg daily right now), after which treatment is to continue for at least 12 months. Here is a short report of what has been going on so far in terms of symptoms: Improvements: Anxiety/panic is almost non-existent (as expected with the clonazepam). I'm also much more social, and to be honest, I seem to be more bold, especially with regards to the opposite sex, you know flirting and whatnot (even went on a pseudo-date with a coworker whom I'm sort of pursuing as a romantic interest ) even though I'm not the most attractive fish in the sea. Social interactions no longer scare the living shit out of me. Eye strain used to severely increase symptoms, to the point of almost being blind after sitting at my computer for a few hours. Eye strain now, while it still increases symptoms, does not worsen symptoms as severely as it did. Ghosting/double-images are reduced in intensity and seem to be only concentrated around brightly lit or colored things now (gets worse when it's really sunny out). Also it seems I have to focus on something in order to get ghosting. Can also read text on a computer screen much more easily now. Depression. Significant improvements here, while I'm still fairly depressed, I'm nowhere near where I was about 2 months ago (constantly suicidal, self harming, engaging in purposefully risky behavior, etc.) Brain fog/confusion/cognitive impairment/concentration problems. Again, much improvement here. I can think much more clearly now and no longer get frustrated when presented with a hard problem. I'm also currently participating in a research internship and am able to understand the rather abstract and hard to grasp concepts fairly easily (coworkers not so much ) Somewhat related to the depression, but I have a much more positive outlook on things now and am more optimistic and accepting about my mental/neurological disorders, of which there are 4. Symptoms lacking improvement: Image trailing. Trailing is still constant and at the same level as it was when this all started. Oscillopsia/breathing objects. I still get visual jittering (things look like they're buzzing or otherwise moving) and when there are areas of high contrast gradients/edges (light to dark/dark to light), I still get severe breathing phenomena. Palinopsia/after-images. Still get both negative and positive after-images that last about the same time as before (a few seconds to a few minutes depending on image intensity). Light beaming/beams/star-bursting. Still get long beams of light that emanate from light sources and still get starbursting around highly concentrated points of light (headlights, streetlamps, LEDs, etc.) Visual snow. Same as before. Scotomas/auras. I still get the odd scotoma/aura every one in awhile, usually at random times and usually in the form of shapeless, colorless blobs. Ghosting/double images. While there has been some improvement, it is still not to the level I would like it to be Depersonalization/derealization. While the grounding/coping techniques my psychologist taught me (and ones I came up with by myself like breath holding and cognitive interaction with my environment) help to ease and stop an attack, I still get episodes of DP/DR. ​Negative side effects: Fatigue, though this is expected with the combo of lamotrigine and clonazepam. Drowsiness and oversleeping. I have, on more than one occasion since starting this course of treatment, overslept by a large margin and either ended missing class or being late to work. Some sexual dysfunction. It's kind of difficult for me to keep and get a you know what for you know what purpose (a man has needs ). Also difficult to *ahem* sow my seed in a timely manner. Decrease in motivation to do things. While I've always been kind of a lazy person, the fatigue and drowsiness from the meds just make me want to sit down and chillout for a few hours listening to some quality tunes. Sort of a stoned, couch lock feeling. Increased appetite, though this isn't that much of a bad thing. Also, question for those who have taken this combo, is having a beer or two here and there while on these meds harmful? I do know these meds when used with alcohol increase drowsiness and decrease tolerance to alcohol, but so far I've found that small amounts of alcohol, like a light beer, don't do much. The only sort of scary experience I had was when I stupidly drank a few shots worth of high quality bourbon in a homemade cocktail. Woke up naked on top of a pile of clothes in my laundry room and not having a clue where the hell I was or how I got there. I plan to continue treatment with the lamotrigine for the recommended time of 12 months. I know it seems long, but I think it will be the key to being rid of this disease. I would also suggest lamotrigine for the people of this board. It will take awhile for it to have any sort of significant improvements on symptoms, about 6-12 months at least. The improvements I described are minor, but nonetheless hopeful for me as they tell me the medication is working and having a positive effect. I do plan on tapering off the clonazepam though as I would rather not have to deal with benzo WD on top of all this. Anyways, that's my report so far and I'll probably post another report at the end of the summer since I should be at the full 175-200mg dose of lamotrigine by then. If you have any questions, feel free to ask!

In the past when I smoked weed, took xanaxes or valium I would experience some auditory hallucinations the NEXT day (when not taking anything again), while falling asleep.. By auditory hallucinations I mean some sounds that my brains imagines and hm... they seem to be on the edge of "a thought of a sound" and "a sound" - but as I fall asleep/drift away it closer the sound than just a thought of it. Last time I had something similar to a clock ticking - im sure you know what i mean, but I am giving a description for those who don't. I took clonazepam/clonopine twice recently and same thing happened to me. It gives me the auditory visuals + some random thoughts, that I don't experience so much anymore on a regular basis (there was a time I did when taking different drugs occasionally). I don't intend to take it anymore as clonazepam makes me amnestic (spaced out), whats the point of being relaxed if you have nothing there to talk about. It wonders me a bit is it just HPPD related and what mechanisms cause it, since agonising GABA, I GUESS, should be good for temporary calming of HPPD if the GABA receptors were downregulated, but it seems that it kind of exacerbate the hallucinatory symptom of HPPD. Does anybody experience similar from clonazepam or other medicines? cheers

can anyone, tell me the difference between ? HPPD and DP/DR ? how are the symptoms different from each other ? and how to know if i have HPPD or DP/DR ?

Ok, so I know one of the side effects of benzos is memory loss, but i get it REALLY bad from klono. even on .5 or 1 mg, the memory loss is so bad that I forget what I was just thinking about or doing in less than 5 minutes. On 2-3 mg, I honestly walk up to people with the intention to talk to them, but then I actually forget what I was gonna say. does this happen to anybody else? Does anybody have any other benzos I could switch to that don't have as many memory problems?

I understand the relief Benzo's allow when it comes to HPPD symptoms, including obviously the reduction in anxiety and its related symptoms. I am also aware that these drugs can help you to not care or notice the visual disturbances that can sometimes deeply agonise a HPPD sufferer. But has anyone experienced an actual full or even part recovery from any Visual symptoms?