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Found 22 results

  1. Hello everyone, in advance I wanna apologize for my non mother tounge English and for not really coming to an end with telling my story and maybe using the wrong tread for that post. I‘m not quite sure yet if a self diagnose with HPPD is appropriate for me but I want to tell you about my story, my seizure-similar experiences and my worries about taking meds. i don’t really know when all of this started. I‘m 24 now and I’ve been smoking weed regularly since 2015/2016, never had any noticeable problems with consuming it but could always keep it on a kind of moderate level, smoked everyday but usually at night time and never had problems having breaks inbetween for weeks. August 2019 I went to Indonesia/Gili Islands and „of course“ I had to try one of there mushroomshakes there, Even though I never had drug experiences besides 3 times of mdma and the weed. However, the first mushroom trip was quite pleasing nothing as how I experienced it and the dose was very low as I wanted it to be so I nearly had any hallucinations, my mind felt very clear and I did feel kind of creative. That good and light experience might have taken the my „respect“ of this drug so on that same holiday 2 weeks later I drank another mushroom shake, at night, in my hotel were the atmosphere wasn’t that nice, furthermore my friend I wanted to take it with didn’t notice anything and the dosage was a bit to high for me I guess. I wouldn’t call it having a bad trip, but all of the circumstances kind of freaked me out and I really had to calm myself down throughout the trip. Anyways when I came back to Germany, my home country I ordered some mushrooms from the Netherlands, because I wanted to microdose them, for „selfhealing“ my selfdiagnosed depression that I was to scared to go to a doctor with. In December 2019 I started microdosing for nearly three month, I didn’t feel so much of the positive effects promised but I didn’t stopped smoking while doing it which might me the reason for that, sometimes the day after taking it a felt kinda dizzy and I had that thing called mouches volantes I guess, that seemed like little flys/black dots infront of my eyes, next day I didn’t have anything. Sometimes when I took the dosage in the morning and smoked werd afterwards I got really sensitive to noises which also kind of made me aggressive or I felt like I had to leave the situation. However, all of that stopped when I stopped with the microdosing. At that point I want to say that I hadn’t felt really depressed ever since, anyways I feel like I kind of changed ever since, which I haven’t really noticed as a Problem till a few month ago, that’s why I don’t know if i‘n actually having the HPPD or what it’s caused from. in the past year is started getting more annoyed of people or not really „getting“ their way of living life, I started feeling anxious about talking infront of others and felt Kindle confused when I had too, but it was just in front of my class (i’m studying health science - how ironic I know) and I started isolating myself more, but just felt that I wasn’t as dependent on others as I used too. Then suddenly I started hating the smell and taste of weed, I didn’t like the “relaxing” effects it gave me because I just felt unsatisfied with myself and not good, summer2020 I went on a vacation with my family and didn’t smoke fore 2 month, everything was fine, don’t think I ever felt that good and stable during a vacation in a long period of time. However when I came back to the city I’m studying in and to my circle of friends who is smoking weed excessively I started smoking again too, with the differences that I felt that weed didn’t have any effect on me anymore, I couldn’t smell it, didn’t really taste it, it didn’t make me tired anymore, there was still a slight change but I don’t really know what made me continue smoking, I also noticed that it got kind of Heard- for me to not smoke for a few days because it made me feel really weird, I thought I couldn’t focus as much anymore and I thought I needed it to write on my assignments, I don’t really know. I felt kind of anxious at some points when I was smoking and had those weird episodes which makes me think there might be more connection to seizures. in the past 6 month it had happened that when I smoked time seemed to pass on “double-time” like really really fast and voices of YouTube videos sounded quite weird, sometimes when was reading it felt like it takes me less then 3 seconds to read through a pages and sometimes I could hear my heartbeat really really loud and thought it was really fast but when was measuring it everything was fine. I found this forum where people are describing similar situation but there is not a clear diagnose to it yet, some people are talking about DEREALISATION but some people are also diagnosed with SEIZURES due to those episodes were there was also found proof for it in brain storms. I can’t find an English tread where it’s described but if you type in everything feels loud and fast into google you can find treads liked to derealisation but also to partial epilepsy. on New Years I took mdma and it was kind of weird because I needed nearly double the dose of my flatmate even though I didn’t consume it for 3 years in advance, everything felt fine and I felt happy as I always do on mdma. Next day was fine too, but that’s when I started questioning myself more and more, especially because I felt like nothing really had any effect on my mind or my body, like I was non existent. With that I’m talking about the not getting stoned anymore, being able to take very high mdma doses and just stopping to smoke cigarettes without really caring or feeling any withdrawal about it after smoking around twenty cigs for the past 8 years. I got really worried about myself even though I felt good in general, but somehow too good, like nothing really bothered me or could get close to me without the feeling of being depressed. the experience I made that made me stop smoking weed and being scared of ever wanting to take any kind of drug ever in my life again, also made me go to a psychologist since it made me really panic. I started blaming the weird effect of the weed on me, that I couldn’t taste or really smell it on the weed because I know there was going some bad Chinese chemical cannabidoids around close to the town I’m studying in, anyways when I went to my hometown I brought some of it because I somehow got really used to smoking weed and with that I mean a lot of weed, even though I never had a tolerance with it before or anything I started rolling blunts without feeling anything the weeks in advance. Since I was kind of unsure about the weed after I heard about the chemical Chinese thing I rolled a joint and just put a little tiny amount of it in the joint, when I hitted it first I already felt anxious about it, after 4-5 hits I had to stop smoking because everything started feeling very weird for me again, I tried to do some anxiety meditation and while I was sitting on my Yogamatt my whole body started shaking even though I felt relaxed, the speakers voice got so loud even I lowered my laptops tone to the lowest and everything started speeding up, my environment started looking weird as I everything was drawn (now I know that that’s how it looks when you are derealized) but it was just so much worse then my worst state of derealisation, but somehow feeling calm meanwhile. However, that’s when I told myself I need to stop, I already had made an appointment at the psychiatrist before that situation but there were still a few days to go which where really horrific. I posted about those “fast and loud” situations on an neurological Facebook page where people told me about their kids having experienced the exact same and then were diagnosed with epilepsy. now to the current situation: I got really really anxious about what could be wrong with me, I thought I just got schizophrenia or really bad psychosis, but it was just a really bad state of derealisation and an extrem depersonalize where I couldn’t feel myself anymore and felt like someone else was talking and people started looking differently and so on and I felt tense and sweaty 24/7. The psychologist I’m still seeing weekly ever since diagnosed me with an anxiety disorder, depression and derealisation symptoms caused by a childhood trauma (my dad was killed when I was at the age of two). She prescribed seroquel/quetiapin at the lowest dose of 25mg, mainly because she thinks it heals for the derealisation which is kept up by anxiety and to relax my mind again. I took it at night before going to sleep, my bad derealisation and depersonalization actually went away and I felt really really good even though it’s a very low dose, anyways, I’m not really feeling fine with taking meds which made me anxious about the seroquel and check on google all of the time as if it was my main problem now. When reading the first “bad” experiences I started thinking about it in a more negative way even though it still made me feel as good and motivated as I haven’t felt in YEARS, which also freaked me out because I wasn’t used to feeling that good. My psychologist wants to give me the control over the medicating and leaves it up to me if I’m taking it or not, if I stop taking it every now and then to control how I’m feeling without it and so on. right now and don’t really know what to do. I took the seroquel for 1 month now, last week I stopped taking it because I got scared of all the negative side effects I was reading about on the internet. After not taking it I didn’t have any sleeping problems, anyways I don’t feel that motivated anymore and I’m struggling keeping active as much as I did in the Seroquel. I notice those visual effects as “heatwaves”, sometimes a dot infront of my eyes when I’m reading and a thing that I can only describe as seeing the “molecules” in the air but I had those things the past year every now and then without giving them to much value. now that I’m reading about the HPPD which might be my actual problem I don’t really know what to do anymore. I’m scared that taking the Seroquel will disturb my self healing process if HPPD or make it last even though it might have vanished in its own after a few more month on the other hand I feel better with the Seroquel but with all the posts about Seroquel not being good for HPPD it gets me worries that I might worsen the situation or as I already said, make it stay even though it might have been gone in it’s own after a few more month. I don’t want to try out other things but since the LAMOTRIGIN is used for epilepsy and epilepsy might show the same symptoms of the derealisation I had that I now think came from the HPPD rather then from child trauma I somehow think there could be more connection between it and I should try it out but also with that I’m scared that it makes the HPPD manifest and that it will have even worse negative side effects then the low dose of Quetiapin I’m taking. I’m reading that best thing is not taking anything which I feel too but on the other hand I felt so much better with the Seroquel and now that I’m not using it my brain fog and my unmotivatedness and my anxiety makes me feel worse and tired and I actually need to function. I don’t really know what answers or inputs I’m hoping to get from this post of myself I just felt like I need to share everything that’s going through my mind even though it might be kind of confusing. I don’t really feel supported with those thoughts by my psychologist because as I mentioned she’s leaving it up to me if I take it or not. But I just don’t know. I can’t and I don’t want to talk to her about thinking that I have HPPD because I’m scared that she doesn’t know how to treat it and neither does anyone else around where I come from.
  2. Hello All, My name is Allen. I've browsed this site randomly over the past couple years but was afraid share. I'm in my 30's and have had HPPD 2 for 18 years. I was diagnosed 5 years ago after a seeing countless doctors through the years. Recently I found out my wife was pregnant and I became determined to find a treatment or, god willing, a cure. When I was in my mid teens I took lsd about 5 times and I was a chronic marijuana smoker. The last time I took lsd I smoked weed at the same time and I had the worst experience of my life: My heart began to race uncontrollably, my arms and face became numb; I saw long blury trails on everything and I felt hot and cold all at once. It was so intense that I thought for sure I was going to die. In desperation, I curled up in a ball on my couch, closed my eyes, and began to pray to god repeatedly to make it stop and let me live, until eventually I fell asleep. I woke up the next morning and thanked god I was alive. I swore of lsd forever. Unfortunately that didn't stop me from trying to party with my friends as usual. Every time I smoked weed after that I would have severe panic attacks and almost black out. When I'd drink alcohol I felt like I had a lump in my throat and couldn't breathe. A couple weeks after that horrible trip I woke up to a dull version of the same type of visuals I had the night of my bad trip, I was petrified and began having random panic attacks. I finally told my mother what I did and what happened since and she took me to the doctor. The doctor swore it was depression with anxiety and completely dismissed any lsd involvement. She prescribed me Effexor and xanax. The effexor didn't help at all and it made my heart race. The symptoms were not going away. I was afraid I damaged my brain beyond repair. Shortly after I withdrew from school and became a hermit. The xanax helped a lot with anxiety but the visuals remained. Through the years I saw about a dozen different psychiatrists and none of them knew what was wrong with me and continued me on benzodiazepines and ssri's. I lost my insurance and couldn't afford all the doctor appointments and medicine, so I began getting zoloft and Vicodin off the streets to self medicate. Eventually the visuals became less intense and my panic attacks were less frequent. Although the visuals and anxiety are a part of my daily life, I still manage to function. Some days are worse than others but I forced myself back into society and I got a good job in construction, and married my girlfriend who has been with me through this whole experience. I got off the vicodin with suboxone and continued the zoloft. With the news of our first child, I found a new determination to get rid of this horrible disease for good. I told my doctor that I wanted to try anything we can to make this stop and she agreed to start prescribing me different medications to see what, if anything, will work. She prescribed clonidine last visit and I started it 6 days ago. Unfortunately it hasn't helped my visuals at all and last night I began having strange thoughts and seeing weird images when I closed my eyes. I'll keep everyone updated on how it goes. I'm really hopeful that something will get rid of this for good. Wish me luck and good luck to all of you. P.s. I am thankful to whomever started and maintains this site. I hope we can get this horrible disease more attention and find a real treatment for it.
  3. Boy, have I had fun struggling to explain this over the years. Having read implications that people can naturally develop HPPD without the use of drugs, I feel brave enough to come out and propose... I believe I was born with HPPD. Yes, there are an endless amount of possibilities of what can happen to a child before their memory develops. The unknown aside, my mother swears upon her life that she was emotionally compelled to be clean during her pregnancy. She did however try recreational substances in the years before her pregnancy. That's all there really is to factor into the early development without getting into genetics. Fast forward to my mental awakening: My earliest memories go as far back as 2 years old, with a high amount of detail for a small handful of experiences. HPPD's visual snow began as early 3 years old, no sooner than 4. I can't tell you anything else about my life with more certainty. Staring at a moonlit ceiling while lying in my parents' bed, unable to sleep, I could conjure up the visual snow and follow it about for entertainment until dozing off. I distinctly remember it starting as a zebra-like puddle which grew in unnaturally rippling waves. I was obsessing over this nightly until it began to take color and move like a three-dimensional flock of birds descending from the gypsum ceiling to toil about as a flock of hundreds of birds would. (Side note: Growing up with white Gypsum walls/ceilings is a disastrous trap for obsessing and worsening the condition. In my worst episode, I was seeing morphing, endless crude depictions of the black plague in my gypsum-walled home, aprox 16 y/o.) Depersonalization symptoms set in around 4-6 years old, the beginning of which I described as having, "woken up for the first time;" but I was already awake. I asked my mother if she felt it, worried it was a natural phenomenon I'd just experienced. This took place on the usual morning drive to school. At around age 10 I 'lost control' due to obsessive habits mixed with social stress, and began to have increasing difficulty with reading. At the same time I developed a sensitivity to horizontal stripes of almost any two colors. They force a sensation of false-vertigo, nausea, anxiety/nervousness, poor sense of balance or the need to steady myself all with an alluring fixation on this rather distressing visual. It's taken a long, long time to learn to limit the amount of stress this causes to a manageable level. Object-specific color changes usually occur with a pearlescent effect, and are a rather relaxing replacement for the old habit of obsessing (wall staring). Strangely, I find both the visual snow and object specific color changes to be... slightly controllable during dawn and dusk. I can really only give it the last mental nudge to get started, but otherwise can't control the outcome. I can also intuitively fight the potential minor trigger sensation/stimulus in an effort to squelch micro-episodes. Sometimes it takes a bit more than just conscious ignorance, which I really cannot describe yet. Along with this came high-ceiling spatial distortion. Basically what I mean by that is... Any warehouse sized store such as Target, Walmart, Raley's, Costco, Sam's Club, Sports Warehouse or even hardware depots will all force sensations of losing balance constantly between peripheral warping. I can only describe this as feeling like walking in a hamster ball. I must say this one snuck it's way into my childhood at random before becoming a staple of my symptoms. It takes intense concentration, energy and physical control to navigate the store. (merely forcing myself to remember the experience to describe it with better accuracy sent me into a slurry of funny typos!) I've always been regarded as dramatic or 'overly dramatic' for complaining of such sensitives growing up. None of my complaints were taken even remotely seriously, allowing me to steep in these issues and make them grow worse. Of course, my family speculated in all the wrong directions when they did listen, only creating more stress and many unnecessary issues through years of misunderstanding. I can't tell you how great it felt to shed the hysteria pinned upon me of potential mental illnesses once I learned about HPPD and shared it with my family, regardless of whether they believed me or not. It would be useful to note that I also went through roughly 10 years of chronic lyme disease, which definitely worsened my visual symptoms. I'm now 20 and going on a year and a half lyme-free (supposedly). My lyme treatments did not seem to have any particular effect on my HPPD besides the associated stresses of treatment. While moderately tamed down in severity, my visuals are still occurring daily. Experiencing my visual distortions is about as normal as breathing now, occurring or interacting with my daily life as subconscious thoughts do. I avoid recreational drugs adamantly as they can throw me far out of the balance required to keep my own peace. The medication combination I've found to help lessen my HPPD (prescribed for reasons other than HPPD) are Low Dose Naltrexone, Cymbalta and medicinal cannabis extracts. The LDN (Naltrexone) has been my only successful combatant against depersonalization, albeit a slow creep. 10mg Cymbalta once in the evening is just enough to help reduce possibly over-exciting stimuli from actually being too exciting. Yet, I still can't sleep in a dark room most nights. In fact, my difficulty sleeping is what's driven me to write this introduction. I've been skipping stones on the issue all my life, but it's only been getting worse. I used to sleep with lights off as a teen no problem. Now I absolutely need a lamp in the corner of my room to be lit until sunrise. I'm in an odd pickle, since this situation leaves me seeing pockets of visual snow on a nightly basis when trying to sleep. If I try to sleep in darkness or near-darkness, the slightest flicker of visual snow explodes into momentary images or after images of rather terrifying things; usually large or distant faces of ambiguous or monstrous nature. Sometimes straight out of media, sometimes abominations of the imagination. I find these frightening because they occur like jump scares, when I least expect them and only for a nano-second. I'm not one to obsess over violent or scary things, instead I'm unsettled rather easily, so I prefer to avoid thinking on such things. Perhaps that practiced avoidance is what's nurturing this emerging issue. Anyways, therapy is not helpful for this, as the phenomenon doesn't seem to be entirely tied to my state of mind. Certainly provoked under stress, but definitely no recurring themes or obsessions which could fuel these more severe night-time hallucinations. I've tried chopping this up to many other diagnosis by myself since my 20+ doctors over the years have never been able to guess at anything better than visual synesthesia or eye damage from frequent TV usage. Much of dealing with HPPD seems to be oriented around self-discovery rather than self-treatment, in my opinion. I'd love any feedback from others who believe themselves to have been dealt a similar hand in life, since we seem to be too few to notice or be noticed. - J.L.
  4. Hi, I'm 16 and 5 months ago I smoked weed for the first time, never have taken any sort of drug before that. I had a really bad trip, followed by panic attacks and heavy depersonalization/derealization. When I woke up the next day for the whole entire week it looked like everything was in fast forward. After that week the world started to look dreamlike out of nowhere and then I got used to the symptom (especially after I knew it couldn't hurt me) and it kinda went away, my dp/dr was going away too but I was still pretty anxious and shaken up by the whole experience. About 2 months ago I was walking down the street and my vision started focusing and unfocusing, and I was back in a dream state. I started experiencing all types of really scary visual symptoms like static, after-images, looking up in the sky and seeing all these little tiny white dots (SO MANY), vision skips, tunnel vision, flashing whenever I look at lights, I even have seen colors or glimmers on walls before. Objects have violently shaken up until I blinked, when I bite down on my nail everything goes up and down with it (it's really hard to explain) or when I chew the whole world shakes with every bite. I can't look up, down, then side to side or else my eyes feel so fucked. I have this head pressure 24/7, reading is hard as the letters shift every 10 seconds. I am so so scared, I know you guys probably don't care but before this, I was a really good student, ran track, had plans of going to college and I can't even walk outside now without everything looking so fucking weird. I feel like I'm going crazy. Did I permanently fuck up my brain? Does this even sound like Hppd or something else? I have no one else to really talk to about this because no one else in my life understands, everyone I know just smokes weed and it perfectly fine, Please please if you have ANY advice or can relate to any of my symptoms I would really appreciate it.
  5. Hello guys, it's been a year since i had the same problem as you. Always exactly 1 year I took 150ug of LSD and had a terrible bad trip that traumatized me and left me sequels. I had flashbacks and I missed a lot because of it. Distorted visions in my peripheral field. All this was cured with antipsychotics, especially risperidone (I can not remember the dosage). But what it took to be cured was the emotional sequel that caused me. Psychedelic experiences transform you radically and unfortunately if you are not prepared for them it may take a long time for you to get back on track and I confess that I am not yet 100% healed of this trauma. But what I can say to you is that the worst of all this is not the visions, but the horrible thoughts that go through our heads thanks to the anxiety that causes us. And what I want to know about this post is just that. What are the thoughts that torment you because of this anxiety? Write them in the comments and we'll help each other by talking about them. For example, I used to think all the time that I was getting schizophrenic, that there would be some outbreak, over time this evolved into existential crises where I thought my soul was lost in space time and I was not living reality, just watching it (depersonalization and derealization helped in this).
  6. I apologize to those who have been hurt by this post.
  7. So I have pretty moderate hppd. From what I know, people say it is only visual symptoms and stuff like that but to me it's much more. I'm sure plenty of us have had problems with brain fog and depersonalization, which may lead to some depression. For me, especially when I wake up in the mornings or from a nap, I even FEEL like I'm trippin. I've had days where I've woken up feeling like I took a hit of acid before I fell asleep or something. So I read on some forums about 5-htp, which is a vitamin that increases serotonin levels in the brain. I read somewhere else that one cause of hppd is not having enough serotonin, so I decided to give it a try. Literally the first pill I took I noticed a difference. As soon as I got back from the vitamin shoppe, I took a pill and that night I slept a full exact 8 hours (and had real dreams that weren't trippy) and when I woke up the next morning, I felt sober. Of course the visuals were still there, but I felt great!! I've continued taking them and continued to feel so much better. There was one day that I decided to wait until later to take a pill when normally I do it in the morning and got my schedule all messed up and in the process I felt the brain fog and depersonalization come right back up. To me, it makes enough of a difference that I can live my everyday life and not have to focus on my hppd as much. Also, because it helped me get better night's worth of sleep, indirectly it's even helping my visuals. Depersonalization wise, now when i look in the mirror i actually see myself and don't always feel like I'm living in a weird type of nightmare. I just wanted to get on here and let people know that this may be a good option worth trying, because I've seen so many threads putting 5-htp down. Also, it's really not that expensive for one a day! (I've also been taking lion's mane, but I read somewhere that it takes months to work so I doubt that's what making me feel better) my only concern is, I've read online that taking 5-htp everyday could have some negative consequences, but I kinda assumed that applied to normal people who didn't need the extra serotonin like I do. Should I be be worried about it? Idk what do you guys think?
  8. Hi everyone, Thanks for your time to anyone who is reading this. I have aways been a "sensory sensitive" person (i.e. only kid on a youth soccer team to have to wear sunglass sports goggles). I took LSD (one time only) during the summer after I graduated from college in 2006. Upon waking up the next morning (after little sleep lol) and getting my day started, it was overwhelmingly evident that something in my brain had changed. I have for the 8 years since then been dealing with a variety of extremely bothersome, what I would describe as, visual sensory overload issues. My brain is now agitated and overwhelmed by all sorts of visual stimuli, most notably unnatural lighting that I encounter in the evening (i.e. all forms of indoor lighting, car headlights, porchlights etc). Also, as crazy as it may sound, my brain is often extremely agitated and distracted by shadows that are created by such lights...things that my brain would have formerly subconsciously filtered out. For instance, an overhead fan with a light behind it will drive me absolutely crazy. I also have issues during daytime hours, though not as intensely, as I am also now more sensitive to brightness from the sun (as well as daytime shadows). When I am in the throes of my "symptoms", my experience ranges from mild agitation to literally feeling like my brain is on fire and in desperate need of someone popping my skull open to dump ice water onto it. This latter feeling generally arises from prolonged exposure, for instance a situation where I cannot just go take a shower to calm my brain down or lie down in a dark room for a while. I don't know if the condition I have is precisely HPPD, as I do not experience visual snow, halos, trailers, or any of the other "common symptoms" I have seen listed under diagnosis criteria for HPPD. However, I keep coming back to this forum and other websites related to HPPD because I have had a persisting sensory condition that was (however predisposed I may have been) either caused or multiplied a hundred times by taking a psychedelic drug. To wrap up with a few other details: I have suffered from Depersonalization Disorder since my senior year of high school (that I am certain was triggered or at least exacerbated by marijuana use). I have not taken any psychedelic drugs since my LSD experience, and have not smoked pot in about 7 years as it makes all of my symptoms much worse. I mostly try to sleep and exercise consistently to help me battle my problems. I have been to several people for help. A neurologist told me frankly that he understood in theory what I was saying, but had no idea what to do. I was later prescribed Xanax by a psychiatrist. It has helped me quite a bit and I generally take it at night time when my symptoms hit at their worst. I do hope to get off of it someday soon because of the zombie-ish feeling it can create. But for now, I much prefer it to the suffering I endure without it. I have been disciplined and have not upped my Xanax dosage during the 2 1/2 years I have been taking it. I believe that the condition I deal with might line up more closely with some of the sensory overload issues faced by MS or Autistic patients. It might very well be that certain receptors were overstimulated during my LSD experience and now my GABA production has been permanently affected. This would explain why taking a Benzo, like Xanax, temporarily makes me feel better. Drinking alcohol, though I don't often engage in it, has a slightly similar calming effect. If anyone has any thoughts, I would greatly appreciate hearing them. I am quite desperate, to be frank, and am open to all suggestions. N-Met is a product I have seen marketed for sensory overload sufferers, as well as GABA Calm. Keppra intrigues me as well because of it's work on GABA receptors, though I am a bit nervous about trying an anti-convulsant. I have also considered meeting with an Occupational Therapist, or a hypnotist. Thanks everyone! DJ
  9. "Well Im sorry that if the rest of the world was born with perfect brain synapses and just walking around in lala-land and I can't tell if this fucking flower is real" Cracked me up a lot of times and you do recognize yourself completly in the movie. So hilarious. The director is actually a sufferer of depersonalization disoder. Yet he succesfully pulled this movie off. You have to see it if you haven't already! Great humor in it as well. Banging the shrink fuck yea! http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0795439/ Download link: https://oldpiratebay.org/torrent/12209646/Numb-2007-720p-BluRay-DTS-x264-SbR
  10. Hey guys. First and foremost; I wish I could put this all coherently in an elaborate article like I did with Coluracetam, however my current state does not allow for that, so forgive me if this all seems a bit vague or wishy-washy. This is a substance I've been wanting to try for months now. Basically what it is, is an orally active selective long and fast acting (~2 weeks) potent kappa opioid receptor (KOR) antagonist. Say that three times fast. The KOR is implicated in many things. Salvia Divinorum (more specifically, its active agent Salvinorin A), which I'm sure most of us are acquainted with, is a KOR agonist. So is Ketamine (see here a study with both aforementioned and JDTic). These both (as well as all KOR agonists) known to induce a state of dissociation, depersonalization, derealization, anxiety, cognitive impairment, as well as hallucinations/visual distortions, and perhaps some others nuisances I'm forgetting. Dynorphin is the endogenous KOR agonist, which appears to increase in levels under circumstances of stress and depression (see wiki), and also blocks glutamate release. Glutamate is also implicated in DP/DR as recently discussed, moreover it's the precursor to GABA, hence hypoglutamatergia is no fun. Furthermore, trying to agonize NMDA receptors for instance, would be kind of like mopping the floor with the faucet running. Though, as a side note, NRX-1074 (GLYX-13 derivative) would be really cool to try. Ok well.. I don't seem to be good at tying up the loose ends here, but in any case it seems to me to have a high chance of abolishing dissociative symptoms. Oh yes, Naloxone and Naltrexone have been used to treat DP, the former of which completely abolished it in several individuals, however Naloxone is unsustainable. JDTic seems to be relatively safe.. some concerns about 2/14 individuals having a transient heart arrhythmia or something benign like that, which is why they halted studies (protocol I guess). I'll try to add more later, but if you've any questions, please ask. This stuff is not available yet. I know many of you, like myself, are very willing to experiment if it's worth a shot, and this one most certainly is. There's not a group buy yet, but currently there are already 16 people interested in doing one. If you want to be a part of the group buy, and for far more elaborate discussion (and a lot of interesting articles), check out the Longecity thread. Also, for the only user review in the world, check out jdtic.com (bear in mind, this person did not suffer from any dissociative issues).
  11. I'm aware that none or most of you are medical professionals, but unfortunately like many of you medical professionals have failed to help me. I have seen that many of you also have personal experience for what works what doesn't work. I suppose almost using yourselfs as guinea pigs. I guess I'm okay with that. Considering I was okay with taking Psychedelics suppliments helping my current state with suppliments doesn't seem like such a bad idea. Medicine History: (PRE HPPD I did this crap) I took ritalin for a short time as a child. At sixteen years old I ODed about three times on effexor. Completely horrible experience. Mental state was suggestible I hallucinated for a little. I ODed on my own personal coctail (migrain pills, antidepressants, ect), I did once more on acetaminophen at 19. I have tried zoloft in high school and out (hated it), Lexapro (didn't give it enough chance so I don't know), Effexor (too heavy hate it), Clonopin (Gave me rare side effect of extreme bruising), Ativan (I still have it take as needed though gives me short term memory). Before I started psychedelics I was on wellbutrin with the most success out of any of these long time off and back on again. It helped with my fluctuations but made me feel cold and void as a person. If you want to know why this all happened I did it, I had a bad environment, abuse, neglect, bipolar, borderline tendencies, rape, abuse. When I started living on my own I felt so much better without realizing that my coping skills were still the same. I knew I would evolve as a person naturally, but I never really understood when my highs were taking me too far in heights. I started smoking pot all the time with my roomie who introed me to drugs. I felt really good for the first time. I did mushroom three times with awesome trips. The first being the best trip, the second two good but not as good as the first. I had a good acid trip. I lost all the weight I wanted to lose. I had a lot of friends who found me interesting, quirky, cute ect. I was on the high of life and everything was awesome never feeling this good so I started to experiment. I had one bad acid trip that did have after effects, but none that I noticed at the time. The wortst was a really bad mushroom trip that sent me to the ER making me think I was dying. What a wonderful Valentines day (last year). I got psychosis for a month and a half. I was really truely lost. My friends all left me thought now that my weirdness was no longer (cute but I was being weird as I really didn't understand social mechanisms really anymore). I was suggestable, and my mind frame was what effecting me. My mental fluctuations were like a box I was confined in this tight box and I had panic attacks all the time. I don't have them anymore though. My thinking was airy and for awhile I couldn't control my thoughts it felt like I was falling into a hole in my mind and nothing could stop it but occasionally falling on little edges and cliffs. I couldn't concentrate couldn't compute thoughts the way I normally did. I was without a paddle in a deep scary ocean that was my mind. I had deep ego loss, and figuring out how much control to give my ego as it does serve to protect us was hard. I had to rebuild it from mindfulness being in the present and learning from my woes of the past. For the record I am 22 now. Live in my own apartment. Work. and have a successful relationship without blame to to the person who brought me into these drugs. We had different learning experiences to cope from, but those were our own battles. Life has been rough for us but we stayed together through the roughness finding beauty in the way that it is. The reason why I think I'm not getting over my hppd is that. After my terrible trip and losing all associations to who I was or thought I was or even being functional as a person is that I widened my mind body connection with this painful experience. I literally cannot poop. I can't move my bowels. It's honestly terrible. This started a few weeks after my experiences. Starting with food allergies, then to extreme bloating, constipation, constant urination. Due to my suggestable nature and thought of death that truely peaked me in my trip. I was assured that I had cancer, that I had some sort of strange movie like premonition and the fear ate me up. I've had colonscopies only finding damage from my constant use of laxatives. This has been going on since febuary. I constantly feel tired, fatigued, bloated, constipated, all the time which effects me emotionally which ends up effecting the loose strings of the hppd that I try to tie up everyday. I more so have the depersonalization, derealization than I do any visuals (I get them occasionally but I don't feel bothered such like tiny splashes of colors). At the moment I cant eat bread, beans, milk, any sugar, any additives, and everything has to be in balance or else it's just too binding for me. I have candida, leaky gut (intestinal permeability that leads to the allergies or really food intolerances), and I can't really poop. I think the inability to poop is the cause for the allergies and bacterial overgrowth. I eat organic veggies in different ways smoothies, soup, steamed, I am doing bone broth. I eat fish chicken, pumpkin seeds, green bitter granny smith apples. If I eat one thing that is none in balance or intolerance my stomach grows to a huge amount and stays like that for the rest of the day. I am fairly thin weighing about 127 lbs and being 5'6 female. It's disheartening looking pregnant when you are not and not knowing how to deal with that if another were to give that sort of attention.I have been reading about how many of the neurotrainsmitters effect our guts and how our gut is like our second brain. Seritonin, GABA and some others play a role in this. I deduced pehaps the suppliment that would help my gut working is the one that will help me move on with my thought disorders after my encounters with psychedelics. I believe that the trainsmittors can be healed with time. What I'm looking for is heal my trainsmittors and brain, general mood balance, brain health, and possibly tackling this gut issue.I tried a few suppliments. Melatonin helps me sleep. Sometimes I take magnesium. St Johns was good at first. Ginko is good occasionally. I'm scared to go back on perscriptions. I know what thats all about. I don't want it to ruin my trainsmittors anymore than they already are. I don't want the split to widen even more... Everyday I take a candida management suppliment, vitamin without iron, garlic, NAC just started , Vitamin B drops I just started and not going to do everyday, and I have a lot of enzymes, suppliments that help me break down my food. I drink aloe water when I can afford it. I'm not very well off with money and thought about social security but the thought of tackling down this issue is unbarable. My doctors all know and they think this is all emotional based. I go to therapy. I just feel lost like I don't know what to do. I just finished a book called the how of happiness which has really great long term happiness based techniques, great advice. Exercise is hard when I feel honestly horrible most of the time. I've been getting better at socializing but I'm not where I was a year ago and honestly it will take time. Part of me has thought that if I tripped again and had a good trip maybe I could go back and fix the bad connections. With my current health and fresh state I thought against this. I at least said let's deal with the current issues without that fist and I haven't thought of that since. I don't hate the shroom it was a big learning experience and all I could do was take the positive out of something that was probably the worst episode of my life. I sort of relapse day to day. Sometimes I feel really good and confident in my character and get a lot of things done other days I get destracted and my mind fights against the idea of change wanting to stay still doing nothing and in the end being nothing. I get lost in there a lot. Sometimes no one knows I'm so on it and other days they can tell I'm real off. I'm trying to find reasons to be inspired to keep up with this and that's why I'm here. Many people left my life, I guess I understand since I'm just not the same. But with a community that really understands I was afraid to go into that at first but I guess laying the truth out that this is really my life right now and having other people accept that I guess that would be amazing. Self acceptance can be a hard one but worth it. I just...don't want to live like this forever you know? I want to be able to use the bathroom and get my health back more than anything. I work about 25 hrs a week due to feeling so ill all the time which I know is both the body and mind infuenced. It was just the craziest draw back to get sick and both ways than just one.
  12. Anyone have any experiences with Naltrexone? Or Naloxone, but I believe the latter is only available intravenously, hence I doubt anyone has tried this for the long-term. If you do have any experience with either of these, how did it help? Apparently Naloxone is pretty ace for DP, but of course comes with practical difficulties. An open trial of naltrexone in the treatment of depersonalization disorder. Effect of Naloxone therapy on depersonalization: a pilot study. Also Suboxone has been reported to help with DP/DR, but I haven't looked into that. What I'm interested in is "Amentoflavone", found in SJW and Ginkgo Biloba, which is an antagonist at the Kappa and Delta sites (not sure about the latter). No; this is not a hippie agenda, it's merely because Naltrexone, Naloxone, and Suboxone are particularly hard to get prescribed, thus Amentoflavone would be the easiest way to go. Anyway, you also might want to have a read through this post about Suboxone virtually curing DP. Though pure Amentoflavone is really expensive and hard to get, I'd thought that perhaps combining high-quality extracts of both SJW and Ginkgo Biloba may have a chance at helping.. Thinking about trying this out myself. I haven't ever tried SJW, so I thought it could be an interesting idea. As for Ginkgo; I've tried your average supermarket brand without any noticeable effects. Turns out that quality and brand really does matter, so it's worth giving another shot. Altogether that would be +/-$40 for a 20 day trial of both with the products I'm considering, so not ridiculously expensive. Input anyone?
  13. Age 23 Date got HPPD 03/29/2013 Medication's: Klonopin .5 X2, Depakote 250mg X2, Keppra 250mg X2, Supplements: Melatonin 3mg w/B6 2mg X2, St. Johns Wort, Ginkgo Biloba, Multi-Vitamin, Omega 3 Symptoms Shutter Vision Static Vision/Visual Snow Tracers and After Images Dark Frame Surrounding Peripherals/ Tunnle vision Depersonalization/Derealization/ Numbness Massive Depression / Depressed and Insane Thoughts General Anxiety/Social Anxiety / Impending Doom feeling attention/focus difficulties Loss of libido Lack of Self Meaning/Unmotivated Lacking Cognitive Function/Confusion Severe Loss of Sort Term Memory Complete lack of ego Extreme Paranoia(People are out to get me every time someone tells a story I think its pertaining to me, when people laugh I think there all laughing at me) Everything looks clear/sharper (textures look really detailed) Sensory overload First off I want to apologize for any grammatical errors. I'm pretty sure I had mild Asperger's syndrome before I got hppd at least that's what a psychologist mentioned to me a few years ago but never had an official diagnosis. But regardless I was never fluent in reading and writing but excelled in math and science. I first noticed the visual snow after I went on a intense whip-it and molly binger one night I split a case of about 400 whip-its with a lady friend of mine i was loading my cracker with 5 at a time and after every hit I would take I would breath it into a large balloon then after the cracker was empty i would start inhaling/exhaling what was left in the balloon until I got to the point where I completely lost control over what my body was doing and I was so far dissociated I didn’t realize it. After id come too I noticed that there was a small/light vail of static over everything I looked at but it wasn’t that bad and I didn’t care that much at the time because I thought it would fade away in a few hours or days. And it did for the most part. But when I “REALLY” got hppd from staying up all night on about a gram of mdma and then when I started coming down I took 2c-I around 8am to hopefully keep it going and at first it was awesome for the first time in my life actually seen open eyed hallucinations like I saw thing that whernt actually there and I felt like I was rolling. It really was one of the most incredible experiences of my life but after about 4 or 5 hours it turned into a horribly bad trip I felt anxious and depressed and insane and this is when I felt the depersonalization for the first time and it hasn’t went away sense then. I noticed that everything looked a lot clearer and sharper and that everything has like a lot of static of visual snow over it. After a couple days of not sleeping I ended up getting a taking a antianxiety pill and got a several hours of much need sleep but when I woke up I noticed that I still had persisting images, visual snow, tracers, and most of my symptoms. I never feel completely calm. Now everything looks completely different sounds different I can’t feel anything physically. Every time I look at a bright light and look away I see the after image of the light for a few seconds. Or if I look at something and look away really fast the previous thing that I looked at is still there like an after image. And im not to entirely sure but I feel like a piece of my brain isn’t functioning anymore but I can’t seem to notice it. After the initial shock of hppd I kinda calmed down and living with my friends I found it hard to stay away from drugs. I just thought I should stay away from hallucinogens and so I did but I continued to use other drugs and found myself slightly addicted to smoking 4-fa and sometimes doing apvp(bath salts). And continued to do molly and whip-its. It wasn’t so bad having hppd at this point even though it completely scared me Id still do drugs without any noticeable change to my hppd symptoms. However I did end up getting really depressed over so girl problems I was going through at the time and the depression got so bad I just wanted to kill myself so I attempted to do so with a massive dose of a sleeping pill containing (diphenhydramine) little did I know it was an ssri and made you trip out in large dose’s and it considerably hard to actually OD on. And im pretty sure this actually made my hppd way worse. I finally came to the conclusion that I need to stop doing all drugs in general and get a grasp on my life. So I completely quit all drugs in general and moved to Williston North Dakota and landed a well-paying job I just assumed at the time that my symptoms would subside over time and I could just reintegrate back into society normally. But quit the opposite happened I actually was extremely nervous around everyone I meet at my new job. I didn’t talk to anyone about anything unless they asked me a question or told me to do something. I could tell that people defiantly new something was wrong with me. My shift was 12 hours a day everyday for 6 weeks I also lived where I worked and my phone ended up breaking so I literally talked to no one at all I would just spend all of my spare time in my room and the other time I spent working and trying my hardest to avoid any social contact with anyone I could. I was stuck there for 6 weeks and for some reason every minute felt like an hour time moved so slowly. And all I could think about was that I need to get through this and get back home and everything will be better being around my friends and people I could actually talk to. Toward the last 2 weeks I was the I acctuly started seeing a psychologist who of course never herd of hppd before in her life and just thought I had drug induced schizophrenia and prescribed me olanzapine an antipsychotic. I tried one that same night and it was so horrible made me feel a hundred times worse and like I was having a really bad trip. She later prescribed me with a anti-depressant Lexapro which made me feel really happy for like an hour or two then really shitty for the rest of the day. I eventually got fired from where I was working because of my worsening symptom and came back home. Now I barley talk to people. Ill hardly look people in the eye’s when people try and talk to me ill be quite the entire time then try and end the conversation and leave. Now I usually just try and avoid people because its always awkward. Most days I spend without talking to a single person. Then most days I’ll get really nervous and no matter what I do I cant seem to calm down and my inner voice just keeps telling me that im worthless, that my whole life is a joke and that im not good enough. Out of a 24 hour day I leave my room for about a half hour and its only to eat and shower. Iv been seeing this psychologist back here at home and when I originally asked for keppra she got really tense and hissed a little like as if I insulted her beliefs or something. And instead she put me on Depakote 250mgs 3 times a day and Klonpine .5mgs twice a day to treat my mood and hopefully my visuals. Depakote did nothing for my visuals but did help my mood some I noticed that I was slightly less depressed but not necessarily happy at all. Plus I noticed taking Depakote 3 times a day gave me a sever headache so I lowered it to twice a day. When I saw here again to weeks later I told her that my mood was a little elevated but no change in my visual symptoms. She proceeded to tell me she had done some research herself and I presented her with the case study on keppra. And she agreed that it was the best liable treatment from my condition. So now I take 250mgs of both keppra and Depakote in the morning and right before bed. Results well I’m still very nervous around any person even close friends of mine. However keppra a reduced my visual symptoms a lot I still notice visual snow but its about %70 less, after images have significantly reduced, trails and tracers are about %90 reduced, my depersonalization, de-realization, and numbness is down like %70. My anxiety is down like %40 I feel like I can think better with less brain fog and confusion. And its only been 4 days now im excited to see how ill be after 3 months. However there is a down side to keppra when I was taking Depakote and klonpine I bailer noticed any side effects at all. But with the addition on keppra I fell heavily sedated almost like a drunk zombie. I feel like im shit faced without the head change sometime ill stumble or bump into walls. I fell a little dizzy as well. I do fell a little more agitated but nothing like the infamous “Keppra Rage” iv been hearing about. Iv also been taking gingko for memory and St Johns Wort because its an mild ssri and I haven’t noticed any sever changes in symptoms I’m just really desperate to get rid of this intense depression. I feel like I don’t have any emotions at all anymore like I can’t feel happiness or anger or anything anymore only a really low baseline sadness…. And I’m hoping that just maybe it’ll help my increases my mood. Is it normal for people with hppd to feel so insane it repeats all though out the day in my head? All I think about is “I’m insane, no im normal, nope I’m defiantly crazy, no its just the hppd I’m fine it’ll get better.” I also notice for a very brief period in the morning when I every first wake up calmly is that I feel completely normal I can feel the bed sheets brushing against my legs. I run my hand through my hair and it almost tickles because I can feel my hair move. Then after about five minutes my body pretty much goes numb and my symptoms slowly fade in. Any advice form anyone would be great I defiantly want to stay positive and get through this and get on with my life. Because my psychologist isn’t sure I can qualify for disability because I can still function and communicate but when I’m around people I freak out or end up getting fired from jobs. So financially I’m in a bind which doesn’t help my depression.
  14. Do any of you with depersonalization feel like you cant speak? Almost like your choked up? I feel this and Im not sure whether this is because my own voice sounds strange to me and I avoid speaking, but this is stressful to me. I want to be calm and sociable again? Is this a common thing? Any advice?
  15. Ever since this depersonalization started along with the hppd I feel as if ive lost my morals/identity. I dont give a fuck about anything or anyone else anymore. I feel like such a selfish piece of shit. Ive just got this fuck the world mentality and its truly no way to live your life. I used to take such pride in being a good person no matter what. Now I feel like all I think about is myself and I absolutely hate myself for it. I dont know what to do or how to feel anymore. I feel like the bitter fucked up person I used to be in high school. Honestly, this world would be a better place without me. It feels like I went from an incredibly meaningful existence to a disturbingly pointless chasm of eternal darkness that I dare call my life. I struggle to find meaning in my life every day but its as if its vanished. It feels like every day im mourning the loss of the happy go lucky, giving, carefree person I used to be. Its like ive lost someone very close to me and where there used to be happiness, all that remains is a lifetime of regret and sadness. Will I ever find the person I used to be again? Im slowly losing hope... sorry, had to get that off my chest.
  16. So I'm just trying to find some commonalities amongst all of us and determine what the main culprit in causing HPPD is(i.e. frequency, dosage, substance). So if you could just list the drugs you used up until HPPD and what substances you used after HPPD and how frequently, I'd appreciate it. Also, if you could state whether or not your HPPD was instantaneous after a particular experience or gradual.....I guess really I just want like as detailed of an account as your trying to give from the time you started using drugs up until this point. If you don't wanna read this entire thing(It's kinda long) just skip to the bottom. Story: {{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{So for me I smoked weed for about a year before my HPPD "hit" I had done ecstasy around 20-25 times, taken LSD about 5 times, shrooms once, cocaine twice, and pills every now and then(klonopin, xanax, vicodin) but not very often. The bulk of my ecstasy use was the summer before I got into LSD.......After all my ecstasy use I had a little HPPD, I would see trails on certain things and I had a little light sensitivity but nothing out of control. It really didn't bother me at all, everything just looked a little more vibrant and alive. So then sophomore year(when I started using LSD) of college I found a LSD hook up and started trippin. I tripped 3 times over like 1 1/2 months and felt completely fine. No anxiety or weird visuals and my weed highs were still normal. Then I took like a 2 week break and then tripped acid twice more within like 3 weeks of each other. After these two trips things started to go down hill. These last 2 acid trips I had were terrible. I was really paranoid and one of my friends was screwing with me the entire time and the experiences left me in some odd state of mind. Afterwards things started to look a little "acid-like" when I was sober but I still felt like everything was ok. However whenever I would smoke weed I started to clam up and have a lot of anxiety and couldn't really speak straight at all. So I decided to take a break on weed for Christmas break and when I tried to smoke once second semester started the problems were like 20 times worse. From here on out things gradually got worse and worse, I tried to continue smoking as I thought if I regained my tolerance weed would go back to normal. After a bit of this the weird delusional thoughts and anxiety started creeping into my sober life and I decided to stop smoking weed. But, I did decide to do DMT twice and LSD once in an attempt to have a good experience and maybe redirect where everything was heading. It didn't really help....it made the visuals slightly worse but overall was just a waste of time and money. So I decided to stop with all the psychedelics and was "sober" for about a month before I went to a 2 day rave. I took ecstasy both days thinking I could never have a bad experience with that but did and that weekend worsened my visuals quite a bit. So........about a month later I got hit with DP and that was about 7 months ago.....I've taken ecstasy twice since DP hit.....Once was terrible and once was actually enjoyable. I've been more or less sober since around August except for a few drinks from time to time. So yea that's my drug story.....all of that was within about a year and a half from the first time I smoked weed to the time I got DP.}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}} I don't expect most people to of read all of that but mainly what I'm wanting is just to know what you believe the main culprit of your DP/DR/HPPD was. I think for me it was the two negative experiences I had on LSD. Those two experiences just set in a negative undertone to my subsequent drug use from that point forward. I feel like if I had kept the same frequency of drug usage but avoided those negative trips then I never would've developed anxiety that never would've led to DP and I don't believe my HPPD would've gotten as bad.
  17. I get static pretty bad and the best way I can describe it is being somewhere between what I see and my thoughts. Along with static I have been seeing trippy stuff in this same plane of consciousness. Its like hallucinations that seem to fall short of reaching into my vision. Its like little pixels in my static are arranged into pictures that I can see overlapping my normal eyesight. I also feel like afterimages fit in this same place. I kind of think it is intertwined with my DP/DR, Its like I get so far dissociated from myself. These thoughts and visions are so powerful and out of my control that it can be pretty scary and overwhelming at times, but it really makes me wonder about the insane potential of the human brain.
  18. I've had HPPD for about 5 months now. I'm 100% sure it was caused by two intense mushroom trips spaced about a week apart. My symptoms include: -Trails and static -Moving patterns -Objects changing shape/size -Anxiety These last three symptoms seem to be the easiest to cope with in my case. The symptoms that really scare me are the ones that seem to happen more inside my head. -I get racing thoughts that move extremely fast and seem to branch out on to different strings of thoughts so I end up thinking about too many things at once and this seems to trigger a lot of my anxiety. - All of my perceptions and memories feel hazy which is usually accompanied by deep thoughts about what is going to happen when I die and other philosophical things like that which seem to also increase my anxiety -Random disturbing or confusing thoughts pop into my head for example picturing in my head my throat being sliced or other images of harming myself or being harmed. I have never self mutilated or even considered it which is also one of the reasons why this really troubles me. -Sometimes while trying to sleep I get extreme depersonalization accompanied by a feeling that I am melting which I experienced while on the trip. I also have distorted perception of the feeling of my body as in my body will feel long and stretched out as if i were made out of putty and pulled across the room. Also another thing that really bothers me is sometimes I perceive and extra limb, like I can feel an extra arm or leg. I have various other symptoms, but most cannot even be put into words. I take this condition very seriously and I've completely cut all drugs out of my system and severely cut down on my drinking(about once every month and a half and only having 1 or 2 beers). I run collegiate cross country and track so I run every day so my exercise is taken care of. I try to avoid caffeine as much as possible because it makes my symptoms slightly worse. I try to make sure to get a decent amount of sleep; I feel like this has a lot to do with worsening or bettering of my symptoms. The problem with sleep is that I have to find a happy medium because too little sleep makes symptoms worse and too much sleep makes symptoms worse. Also my symptoms seemed like they were getting better about 3 months in, but I was prescribed an SSRI which drastically worsened symptoms. Anyway sorry to write a book, but I would really appreciate your comments and suggestions
  19. [Note: I posted this a week or so ago in the DP/DR file, but it got only one response, so I'm posting it here so hopefully more people see it/take it seriously. This is as much a call to the community to write any particular techniques they use to stave off stress caused by DP/DR than my current ideas and theories about DP/DR. I want to compile these tips into one file and post it on the website. If you don't feel like reading a large post, please just write any tips you have found useful for getting over DP/DR. For example, today I discovered that if I rapidly waved my fingers past my eyes, difficulty in reading computer text seemed to decrease. I have my own ideas about why this might be, but that is less important than our getting a concise, compiled file on all our techniques. Once we have them all in one place, we might all weigh in on them one at a time consider why they might work, as well as get some general concensus on whether they work for the majority of us.] Sorry I have been away so long everyone. Please take this seriously. I have a psychology degree, and these are not things I thought up today, but theories accumulated through years of having HPPD, a year of reflection upon it, and through the aid of the degree in psychology. The majority of my theories on exactly why different symptoms of HPPD are crippling in their respective ways hinge on biological, evolutionary responses elicited by what would normally be non-threatening stimuli. Most of the anxiety built up by DP/DR I believe are due to instinctual flight or fight responses due to the non-recognition of stimuli, of what one is looking at. If you are stressed, your instinctual, animal self, the self that has evolved virtually none in ten thousand years, assumes danger is lurking. In essence, your logical self realizes there is no actual danger, no saber-tooth tiger lurking in the bushes, but the instinctual part of your brain, as an evolutionary precaution, assumes first and foremost that it is dangerous, thus giving the body the greatest capacity to defend itself if necessary. Essentially, many of the difficulties we face with HPPD is this animalistic part of the mind assuming, since we do not recognize things immediately as a normal human would, that what we look at is a threat, and should be treated as such, which results in a constantly higher level of stress. Take the human face, for example. To not recognize a face, or even the 'humanness' of a face, is to assume it is a stranger, perhaps a stranger from another, rival clan. The animal brain will always assume the worst, a thing scientifically proven through endless studies. Again, this is evolutionary design. Faces differ in extremely minute ways, yet they are the critical element we use to distinguish humans from one another. With the visual distortions HPPD causes, these otherwise less significant distortions become multiplied when looking at a face, because the human brain is designed to gather enormous details from looking at that face. So since all faces look bizarre with HPPD, a massive amount of information is acquired that is mutated by the depersonalization and realization. So, in short, human faces are particularly vulnerable to the distortions caused by HPPD, because a greater amount of sensory input is being distorted This can even occur looking at one's own reflection. I know this was my own experience. Logically, I was aware it was my face. However, the animalistic part of me did not, and thus, it assumed a stranger. And if there is a stranger in my home at 2 A.M., when it is dark and the only person who would logically appear at this time would likely be a burglar or murderer or some kind of threat, the animalistic part of my brain assumed the worst. To this day, seeing my own darkened silhouette in my door elicits a fight or flight response within me. In essence, whatever the brain cannot categorize as recognized and safe, it classifies as a potential danger, thus raising stress levels. This is why DP/DR can be so hellish. One is constantly feeling, even if only on the very fringes of the conscious, that there are potential enemies everywhere. So, how does one combat this? Here are the techniques I have come up with: 1) Choose what stimuli to focus on. If the reflection in the doorway frightens you, as it does me, choose to pay it no attention. 2) If one is incapable to avoid the stressful stimuli, choose to put forth effort to deny the negative thoughts, the fearful thoughts, that accumulate. If there is anything in your immediate surroundings to focus on that is pleasant, focus on it. If there is nothing positive to look at, choose to put forth the effort to fight the negative thoughts, and think of something pleasant. This is not easily done, and requires effort. It may tire you out. But it is a muscle just like any other muscle, and it can be strengthened. 3) Workout. Essentially, with DP/DR, one is, no matter what, going to endure the extra stress from fight or flight responses elicited from illogical sources (for example, my computer speakers used to literally scare me, and to this day can still seem a bit like they are staring at me, calculating something menacing, two eyes staring, etc etc). This, while DP/DR persists, I do not believe can be helped. One cannot simply turn off the symptoms of DP/DR. So, stopping DP/DR is out of the question. What does this mean? One is thrust into either one of two extreme positions:A) one of constant fear at potential inability to defend one's self from the onslaught of fear elicited from illogical stimuli, or one is constantly aware of this fear, but feels capable to defend oneself from these stimuli. 4) Winner's mindset. This is a technique I stumbled upon through, believe it or not, videogames, but it can be built through any competitive effort, or any effort where one is put under pressure to perform and must focus past that pressure and fear and succeed in the present. This is the mental equivalent of being physically strong. In whatever way you can, you must try to prove to yourself that, when it is crunch time, you will be victorious. It is not an overnight process. It is something I work at every day. It is a relatively new technique for me, and I try to put myself under pressure quite often during the day, even in such menial situations as trying to throw a piece of paper into a trashcan where people are around to criticize me, laugh at me, if I fail. What matters is one's 'mental muscle'. It matters far less whether the paper goes in the trashcan than whether I was completely focused on the act at hand, not the repercussion. This is one of the few things that I believe the animal mind (the 'subconscious' as it's often referred to, but I think in this case, the definition is clumsy) responds to. It can feel confidence. The animal mind is engineered to appraise the severity of a threat as quickly as possible. If one has been going through daily life engaging in activities that constantly reaffirm a feeling of likelihood or capability to succeed in stressful situations, the animal mind will appraise threats reflectively, and thus reduce the stress level it initiates. So, in summary, I think someone with DP/DR, without aid of medication or some kind of natural reduction in the severity of the symptoms, can do little to simply not feel its effects. (Meditation is another technique I should mention, for it calms the mind and thus, the animalistic mind feels less stress, and thus assumes less danger, but I myself have not yet incorporated this into my daily routine.) I believe one is thrust into one of either two extreme positions: that of the defenseless and under attack, or that of the capable, even aggressive, and under attack. It is, from a cost-benefit ratio, massively beneficial as far as accumulated stress, to do what one can to feel capable in defending oneself. The mind of someone with HPPD will perceive vastly more threats than a normal person due to non-recognition of otherwise harmless stimuli, and thus the feeling of capacity to succeed in some sort of conflict, instilled into the animalistic brain through efforts performed by the conscious, is an effective way to combat these feelings. These are the techniques I have personally discovered and used. I have not yet looked, but I do not know of a sort of DP/DR specific area or file or post that have the accumulated techniques the community have discovered to combat the effects of these symptoms. I hope everyone posts their own techniques in response to this, of whatever scope, doesn't matter if it sounds silly or not (I liked to look at tree-lines when I had bad HPPD, for example), and to compile this into one file that everyone can use. I think it would be enormously beneficial to have a refined, distilled, singular post or file of these techniques, rather than the scattered information we usually have that are spread out among many posts. Once I get substantial feedback, I will write as refined and edited and distilled a collection of this material as I can. I will post them and we as the community can decide what needs to be edited, revised, changed, improved. Hope you are all doing well. HBB
  20. Sorry I have been away so long everyone. Please take this seriously. I have a psychology degree, and these are not things I thought up today, but theories accumulated through years of having HPPD, a year of reflection upon it, and through the aid of the degree in psychology. The majority of my theories on exactly why different symptoms of HPPD are crippling in their respective ways hinge on biological, evolutionary responses elicited by what would normally be non-threatening stimuli. Most of the anxiety built up by DP/DR I believe are due to instinctual flight or fight responses due to the non-recognition of stimuli, of what one is looking at. If you are stressed, your instinctual, animal self, the self that has evolved virtually none in ten thousand years, assumes danger is lurking. In essence, your logical self realizes there is no actual danger, no saber-tooth tiger lurking in the bushes, but the instinctual part of your brain, as an evolutionary precaution, assumes first and foremost that it is dangerous, thus giving the body the greatest capacity to defend itself if necessary. Essentially, many of the difficulties we face with HPPD is this animalistic part of the mind assuming, since we do not recognize things immediately as a normal human would, that what we look at is a threat, and should be treated as such, which results in a constantly higher level of stress. Take the human face, for example. To not recognize a face, or even the 'humanness' of a face, is to assume it is a stranger, perhaps a stranger from another, rival clan. The animal brain will always assume the worst, a thing scientifically proven through endless studies. Again, this is evolutionary design. Faces differ in extremely minute ways, yet they are the critical element we use to distinguish humans from one another. With the visual distortions HPPD causes, these otherwise less significant distortions become multiplied when looking at a face, because the human brain is designed to gather enormous details from looking at that face. So since all faces look bizarre with HPPD, a massive amount of information is acquired that is mutated by the depersonalization and realization. So, in short, human faces are particularly vulnerable to the distortions caused by HPPD, because a greater amount of sensory input is being distorted This can even occur looking at one's own reflection. I know this was my own experience. Logically, I was aware it was my face. However, the animalistic part of me did not, and thus, it assumed a stranger. And if there is a stranger in my home at 2 A.M., when it is dark and the only person who would logically appear at this time would likely be a burglar or murderer or some kind of threat, the animalistic part of my brain assumed the worst. To this day, seeing my own darkened silhouette in my door elicits a fight or flight response within me. In essence, whatever the brain cannot categorize as recognized and safe, it classifies as a potential danger, thus raising stress levels. This is why DP/DR can be so hellish. One is constantly feeling, even if only on the very fringes of the conscious, that there are potential enemies everywhere. So, how does one combat this? Here are the techniques I have come up with: 1) Choose what stimuli to focus on. If the reflection in the doorway frightens you, as it does me, choose to pay it no attention. 2) If one is incapable to avoid the stressful stimuli, choose to put forth effort to deny the negative thoughts, the fearful thoughts, that accumulate. If there is anything in your immediate surroundings to focus on that is pleasant, focus on it. If there is nothing positive to look at, choose to put forth the effort to fight the negative thoughts, and think of something pleasant. This is not easily done, and requires effort. It may tire you out. But it is a muscle just like any other muscle, and it can be strengthened. 3) Workout. Essentially, with DP/DR, one is, no matter what, going to endure the extra stress from fight or flight responses elicited from illogical sources (for example, my computer speakers used to literally scare me, and to this day can still seem a bit like they are staring at me, calculating something menacing, two eyes staring, etc etc). This, while DP/DR persists, I do not believe can be helped. One cannot simply turn off the symptoms of DP/DR. So, stopping DP/DR is out of the question. What does this mean? One is thrust into either one of two extreme positions:A) one of constant fear at potential inability to defend one's self from the onslaught of fear elicited from illogical stimuli, or, one is constantly aware of this fear, but feels capable to defend oneself from these stimuli. 4) Winner's mindset. This is a technique I stumbled upon through, believe it or not, videogames, but it can be built through any competitive effort, or any effort where one is put under pressure to perform and must focus past that pressure and fear and succeed in the present. This is the mental equivalent of being physically strong. In whatever way you can, you must try to prove to yourself that, when it is crunch time, you will be victorious. It is not an overnight process. It is something I work at every day. It is a relatively new technique for me, and I try to put myself under pressure quite often during the day, even in such menial situations as trying to throw a piece of paper into a trashcan where people are around to criticize me, laugh at me, if I fail. What matters is one's 'mental muscle'. It matters far less whether the paper goes in the trashcan than whether I was completely focused on the act at hand, not the repercussion. This is one of the few things that I believe the animal mind (the 'subconscious' as it's often referred to, but I think in this case, the definition is clumsy) responds to. It can feel confidence. The animal mind is engineered to appraise the severity of a threat as quickly as possible. If one has been going through daily life engaging in activities that constantly reaffirm a feeling of likelihood or capability to succeed in stressful situations, the animal mind will appraise threats reflectively, and thus reduce the stress level it initiates. So, in summary, I think someone with DP/DR, without aid of medication or some kind of natural reduction in the severity of the symptoms, can do little to simply not feel its effects. (Meditation is another technique I should mention, for it calms the mind and thus, the animalistic mind feels less stress, and thus assumes less danger, but I myself have not yet incorporated this into my daily routine.) I believe one is thrust into one of either two extreme positions: that of the defenseless and under attack, or that of the capable, even aggressive, and under attack. It is, from a cost-benefit ratio, massively beneficial as far as accumulated stress, to do what one can to feel capable in defending oneself. The mind of someone with HPPD will perceive vastly more threats than a normal person due to non-recognition of otherwise harmless stimuli, and thus the feeling of capacity to succeed in some sort of conflict, instilled into the animalistic brain through efforts performed by the conscious, is an effective way to combat these feelings. These are the techniques I have personally discovered and used. I have not yet looked, but I do not know of a sort of DP/DR specific area or file or post that have the accumulated techniques the community have discovered to combat the effects of these symptoms. I hope everyone posts their own techniques in response to this, of whatever scope, doesn't matter if it sounds silly or not (I liked to look at tree-lines when I had bad HPPD, for example), and to compile this into one file that everyone can use. I think it would be enormously beneficial to have a refined, distilled, singular post or file of these techniques, rather than the scattered information we usually have that are spread out among many posts. Once I get substantial feedback, I will write as refined and edited and distilled a collection of this material as I can. I will post them and we as the community can decide what needs to be edited, revised, changed, improved. Hope you are all doing well. Sincerely, HBB
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