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Hello, my name is Anna, I am 29. I have HPPD for 2,5 months, my life has become hell. Before I was dynamic, enthusiastic and funny, now I can no longer function normally, I am only a shadow of myself. I have very little hope due to my age, I'm afraid of never recovering. I am depressed and suicidal for the first time in my life. My story : I used cannabis daily for 10 years, from my 19 years to my 29 years, I stopped everything for 4 months this year, I felt so healthy and happy ! The last week of August I stupidly smoked every night while beeing on Prednisone (Corticoid) for a flu, until Monday the 28th when I woke up and nothing was like before. I did no bad trip. I also used small doses of Mdma (7), excstazy (20), mushrooms (2), LSD (1), cocaine (5) during the years 2018/2019 and only twice LSD in 2020. My symptoms started with a feeling of hangover that wouldn't go away but I knew there was something else, then derealization, dizziness, blurred vision and three days later I started experiencing all the symptoms of VSS. I didn't sleep for more than a month, I had to quit my job and go back to live with my parents (few days before the onset I had a promotion and find the house of my dreams). I passed all the tests, MRI, EEG, blood tests etc. All clean. Today I live daily with these symptoms: Full VSS (visual snow, static, pattern glare, afterimages, blue entoptic field, floaters, night blindness etc...) Constant dizziness Constant nausea Derealization Head pressure Tinnitus Anxiety/Depression Constant feeling of being high I have read many posts and I have already talk to people from this website, but I feel so hopeless that I wanted to post my story in order to know if a severe ça se like me had good chance of recovery, if some who recovered recognize himself. I feel so guilty, one joint too many and boom. I'm tapering off benzo because if think it's slows down my recovery and I didn't want to take other meds for the moment. I am just taking supplements and homeopathy. I walk 1 hour per day, meditate and do yoga sometimes, read some books, watch TV and cry a lot...

Hi all, I’m a newbie. I found this forum a couple of months ago when I googled ‘can lsd change your peripheral vision?’ What a ride that was! After a week of intense anxiety, I retook control of my narrative and all symptoms generally subsided. So I assumed it wasn’t HPPD. On Sunday, I had a quarter tab and now I’m quite certain it is. I’m quite self-aware and I write for a living, so I may be able to put into words some of the things people struggle to describe. If so, I hope it’s useful. I think (/hope) that my case is mild but I guess we’ll see. I’ll start with my history, then the episode that led me to this forum, and lastly the most recent episode. History I’m 39. I never had drugs before the age of 37. I’ve had probably a lot of mdma, a fair amount of ketamine, a little bit of cocaine, weed four times, acid four times, and mushrooms once. I have adult ADD, which became apparent at the age of 35. I have a history of generalised anxiety, and a couple of periods moderate depression, initially managed by Lyrica (Pregabalin) and Wellbutrin (Bupropion - which was chosen because it acts on Dopamine rather than Serotonin - ADD). But it was actually mindfulness and journaling that really managed these conditions. I have ALWAYS had quite vivid dreams, often lucid. I have ALWAYS had hypnagogic closed eye visuals - waves of colour moving in concentric ‘circles’ inwards to the centre or outwards from the centre. Usually green, sometimes mixed with purple and blue. In a really dark room I can still perceive these with my eyes open. I have ALWAYS had hypnagogic auditory hallucinations. Like I’m processing everything I’ve heard that day. Sometimes it’s voices I absolutely recognise (family mostly) but saying things I don’t think I’ve ever heard them say. I’ve ALWAYS had trouble falling and staying asleep. I have often also been aware of levels of consciousness in the process of falling asleep. And it does feel like falling (like a physical sensation in the brain) from one level to the next. Sometimes, if I pay too much attention, it actually wakes me up. The first episode During the month-long run up to Mardi Gras here in Sydney, I had a weekend where I took two half-tabs of acid over the course of a day (along with a mix of mdma and ket at various times during that day). Nothing curious happened that weekend. But two weeks later, mdma behaved quite differently. I was getting the geometric visuals that I had previously experienced from lsd, but I hadn’t had any lsd. That same evening, in a fairly dark room, I began to hallucinate that each person who’s face I focused on was wearing Harry Potter-style gold wire-rimmed glasses. Which I knew was not the case and when I concentrated, the glasses disappeared. During the following week, I would sometimes catch the faintest echo of geometric patterns over uniform white backgrounds, such as walls in my apartment. Tessellating hexagons. When I closed my eyes I could see millions of microscopic red and green dots against the black background. This is what I believe translates into visual snow when the eyes are open (especially in dark rooms). In the corner of my eye I would catch a momentary movement of something dark, that turned out not to be there. Any small dark speck, like a crumb, or a stone, would momentarily appear to my peripheral vision as a tiny insect, until I looked at it directly. That is why I googled and found out about HPPD. I didn’t have ANY anxiety... until I read about HPPD. But for 48 hours it spiralled. Dark rooms at night were menacing, which made me unconsciously resistant to going to bed/sleep. Given my history with anxiety, I immediately returned to journaling and mindfulness. It took away the power that this concept of HPPD had over me, and everything seemed to return to normal by the Friday. And it didn’t recur after a weekend with just mdma. So I chalked it all up to anxiety and moved on. The most recent episode So, on Sunday I had a quarter tab. Wasn’t even enough to have a noticeable effect on the day. Monday was fine until nighttime. My sleep was restless and filled with dreams, lucid dreams, and non-REM dreams where the dream continues even in a state of being half-awake. It was the closest I came to experiencing Inception. In one dream I experienced the physical sensation of dizziness. Quite clearly. Usually dreams are conceptual and abstract. This was just like being awake. In another dream, I could read actual text (which I’ve always been told is impossible, as the language/meaning processing centres in the brain are not active while dreaming). I was sorting an email inbox alphabetically, and scrolling down to the word Seneca. I consciously spelled it out in the dream. Daytime on Tuesday was fine. Nighttime was awful. In one dream, I was in a car chase on the street where I grew up. We sped up to get away from a police car and turned a sharp corner. I experienced the centrifugal force just as though I was awake. I chose to wake up at that point. Today I have had a low-level dizziness all day. A strange dizziness that is difficult to describe, but I’ll give it a go. A dizziness that feels like it is affecting your balance. You feel like you’re staggering slightly to the right, but you’re actually walking dead straight. Only really happened when I was moving. A dizziness that feels like six pints of lager drunk, but with absolute mental clarity. A dizziness that feels like the moment before vomiting, when your blood pressure drops, mixed with the feeling of an adrenaline rush concentrated in a horizontal plane through the middle of your head, starting dead centre and spreading outwards. And a dizziness that feels like the absolute fatigue of sleep deprivation, and you have the physical sensation in your head at the point that you start microsleeping. It’s now 1:30am and I’m typing this out because I had a night terror, and what I think is a form of DP/DR. I felt a sort of paralysis in my arms, but also a field of energy that started just outside the skin of my arms up to my elbows, and I perceived it for maybe 3-5 cm surrounding the arms. This was probably in the halfway state between awake and asleep. Shortly afterwards I became aware that I was breathing very fast and shallow, like a panic attack, but I knew I wasn’t awake yet. I knew and was aware that my boyfriend was sleeping behind me. I was aware that he had stirred. But I was trapped. I yelled out ‘Help!’ but apparently this was just in my head. He woke me; cuddled me; calmed me. I can’t go back to sleep though. This is probably what I would have written in my journal, but it may be useful to others. And others may have insights that will help me. If you’re still reading, thank you, and I hope your experience with HPPD is improving.

Hi, I get massive headaches after having a few drinks. When I have 2 glasses of wine it feels like I had 10 beers the next morning. Just wondering how it is for you guys?! I also have constant neck tension/pain. I'm still trying to figure out if this is due to HPPD or the stress/anxiety I'm in. Any experience? I also feel nauseas and have a strange sensation in my stomach (like motion sickness e.g. when I'm walking around or when I'm dizzy). I didn't find a lot about this on the forum. Do you think this is related to strained nerves or a common symptom of HPPD? Thanks!!

Hi! I have dizziness, motion sickness, severe head and neck pain/tension for more than 3 months now. The ache in my head is moving around .. I have it mostly at the front part of my head and the back of my neck. I don't have any (strong) visual disturbances (floaters, ghosting, etc.). Does anyone have similar symptoms? How did the head and neck pain evolve over time (e.g. gradually got better, disappeared/stayed)? Kind of freaking out that I have to live with it forever. Does anyone has experience with dizziness and motion sickness? Thank you!