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Hello All! Hope everyone is doing well, if not follow the words of Winston Churchill "If you're going through hell, keep going" you can do this. I joined uni in September 2021 and to say the least, I made some bad choices with substance abuse. Below I have listed what substances and the frequency I used them: Weed/Hash/RSO | Every day, anywhere from 3 to 15 joints a day just to exist in a high state. LSD | Most weekends, most of the time double dropping 200ug tabs, some days even going as far as 5 tabs spread over the day, this only happened twice. 2C-B | This was the worst as I am sure I become addicted to the drug and only stopped because my dealer ran out, taking 30mg pills multiple times a week. Psilocybin | Taken every couple of weeks to a month between usage. My highest dosage was 3.7g of AA+ mushrooms which was my first bad trip, I never want to go back to that place nor will I. MDMA | Once or twice a month, I would take a little bag of 0.3g - 0.5g and key that through the night. Ketamine | This was infrequent as I hated the taste so I used this probably 3 times over 6 months. Cocaine | I tried 2 bumps of cocaine both times I hated it. Speed | Only tried once and couldn't sleep until 5 the next day, weirdly I didn't feel highly energised, just felt focused. Kratom | Only tried once. The most I took at once was at a campfire with a group of friends and again I need to list what I took in just one night: 2 tabs of LSD 3 30mg 2C-B 1 gram of MDMA 1 250mg MDMA pill 800mg of weed edibles Joints when they were handed to me. I hadn't tripped in about 4-8 weeks when I got back home and on the 28th of June, I had a friend message me saying "I have some strong weed that makes me prang out" of course I needed to try this and invited him over, I smoked a joint and went to bed. Shortly after is when I got the worst case of cold sweats I have ever had along with shaking, the feeling of impending doom, and genuine belief I was about to die, safe to say the weed did in fact make me prang out. After a couple of hours of comfort from my girlfriend and a cold shower, I managed to get to bed, when I woke up all the symptoms of what I now know is HPPD were apparent. The following night, intense shaking/convulsing ensued waking my girlfriend up, and out of fear for my life and thinking something was wrong I called a friend and had them take me to the A&E (I live in the UK by the way), 10 hours later I was seen by a doctor and given the all-clear after my blood and ECG all came back clear. I have visual snow now, quite apparent halos around text, persisting positive lights that stay in my vision after looking at bright lights, constant headaches, and having more anxiety than I have ever experienced. I also have been having episodes of intense vertigo followed by nystagmus (In my case my eyes shaking left and right with rapid speed, I have also confirmed this is not BPPV, also I have recorded my eyes during one of these episodes and they do not move, leading me to believe this is some kind of damage to the brain. I am going to talk to a doctors about this soon. I have also visited an optician to have an OCT scan of the backs of my eyes and an in depth look of my eyes and they seem to be in perfect health, again leading me to believe this is an issue not associated with my eyes. After completely sobering up from everything instantly after the A&E trip, I have now accepted the fact that I am dealing with HPPD, to increase my chances of recovery I am now taking multiple vitamins including B1 B2 B6 B12, and a plethora more (The exact multivitamin I am taking now) I am starting to eat slightly better by having my own packed lunches and starting to eat fruit, sleeping better usually from 11 pm to 7 am or around that time, and have started drinking a lot more water along with swimming intermittently. Is there anything else I can do or change to increase my odds of recovery? Best regards,

Hi I'll give you the cliffs of my story real quick: Did MDMA once, combined with alcohol and it ruined my brain. For a little over 11 months I've suffered from, and continue to suffer from: Anxiety (Recovered, at least it seems like it) Depression DP/DR HPPD Insomnia Dizzyness Headaches Mild bruxism, though horrible tension headaches Food intolerances Bad IBS An array of cognitive impairments Indescribable suffering ??? etc Now, my question is whether working in this condition could actually be detrimental to my recovery? I had a long summer break, 7 weeks, during which I felt very good, and had many days where I was symptom free. And I had weeks and weeks where I was close to symptom free, living an absolutely fulfilling life. This carried on to the first month and a half working, I felt great. However, now I've been on a steady decline since the end of September, and I'm starting to get scared that work is actually annihilating me further. Work is now extremely hard, and I have to fight to get through it. I think I'm actually fighting harder now than I did during the first 3 months. The only reason I'm able to keep fighting is because I hope I will feel better again in a short while, but it does not seem to be happening. I'm scared that I'm now deteriorating myself permanently by working like this. What should I do? I live in a country with very reasonable health care/disability options.

Hey guys. I've just gotten into a kind of panic after considering an incident I had earlier this year. I suffered from acute hyponatraemia at a festival I went to in January: it was incredibly hot, so I was drinking a lot of water. When I got quite a bad headache, of course I've been told all my life that water's the best solution, so I kept on drinking :S. After jumping around for a bit at a concert, I left and had a tonic-clonic seizure, accompanied by falling over and hitting my head. The next 12 or so hours are missing from memory save what I've been told and blurry pieces here and there. A couple found me and took me to the paramedics, I can recall having very slurred speech and laboured comprehension interacting with them. They didn't really stick around to describe what had happened very thoroughly which is unfortunate. Apparently I was very dazed and out of it. I woke up in the ER, while peeing for a drug test managed to drop the bottle of piss all over the floor before falling asleep again, so I guess that's an indicator of how gone I was at the time. I'm really not sure just how adequate the initial treatment was because they'd assumed it was all because I'd taken drugs (I hadn't) and were trying to "flush anything out" before treating whatever else. They tested my vision and I had a blindspot in the left field where I couldn't see the torch they were holding. This lead to me being kept in the hospital over the weekend (not a fun time). When I got out, people were telling me for a couple of weeks that I still didn't seem completely with it. What's followed has been a year of hell, of course, but I don't know what role that episode has played. Of course, at the time I was already experiencing pretty unpleasant HPPD. I really can't remember too well how different life was before and after the incident, save that it was really shitty all around. I had an MRI and EEG at the time which weren't remarkable save for a slight white spot in the upper-right (really not sure exactly where and don't have the scans on me at the moment) "consistent with having bumped my head" which I was assured was mild and would recover quickly. I'm aware though that a lot of brain damage just can't be picked up by typical scans and now I'm fretting that I'm not only looking at HPPD but also an undetectable ABI. I'm just wondering if anyone knows what I'd best do in this scenario? I've read that there are more sensitive scans that can detect the "shearing of brain cells" from traumatic brain injuries that would normally go undetected but still cause a notable blow to cognition. I read something about a qEEG possible also being of value. I'm not sure if there's anywhere I might be able to receive any such specialised scans in Australia, or indeed whether I might have already undergone the best analysis I have access to. The scans I've received were at the Australian Brain and Mind Research Insitute which has a sizeable neurology sector but I'm not sure of just what scans they might've run given my main claim at the time was drug-related impaired cognition... They did know about the hyponatraemiac seizure episode, of course, so perhaps they ran tests with that in mind... I don't know whether it's appropriate to email the research professor I've been seeing about this, I don't really want to bother him with a spur-of-the-moment hypochondriac rambling... He's clearly a very busy, highly qualified guy who's gracious enough to consult patients when he can. Fuck. Being in a situation like this really does foster rampant hypochondria. Fuck all this ambiguity about what's caused what... I'm just quite panicked right now. Eugh