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Hello. I am McCabe Mostoller and I’m now 17. I got this shit two months before my birthday after a really wrong acid trip that fucked my life backwards. I’m here to say YOU will get better. But I’m gonna give the truth. I have lived with this for what feels like years when in reality it has only been a set of months. I’ve been in therapy the whole time and I luckily got a therapist who not only understands but is treating someone else with the same issue, who in fact, lives in the same place as me. Which yes a lot of the time distresses my brain and makes me believe I’m not living or I’m dreaming or whatever, all that dumb stupid shit. But none the less the more time goes on the more I am able to live with this condition. Now the question of does it get better, the symptoms anyway? Yes and no, for me my visual symptoms have more of switched I guess, they aren’t the same as they used to be but that doesn’t mean their worse. Even if they were because I’ve had it for so long, or what feels like an eternity to me now, I’ve learned how to somewhat come to terms with it. Some days it’s worse some days it isn’t. My advice with that is, don’t worry about the visuals or feelings going away, try to worry more about yourself learning how to live and deal with it. Because I think for all of us this is trauma. You gotta learn to deal with it like any other trauma, even if you have trauma already and you think this is much much worse. It might be. But you have no control over that part. But you are able to figure out how to respond to it. I’ve made stupid mistakes while having this condition because of being so depressed. I went back to weed multiple times, then stopped, went back, constant cycle you know. And yes it did make it worse during the time and for about a week or two after I would stop smoking marijuana. Of course that thought in my mind always wants me to go back to psychedelics, but of course I’m not gonna do that to myself, it’s like another intrusive thought. Part of me wants to but I know I won’t do it. It’s hard of course. But one interesting thing is I stayed in my house for most of the time after getting this as I have a fear of the outside, especially at night haha (I’m sure you all understand). But when I do it’s usually for work and school (I also attend a more laid back school, I only go two days a week for two hours. If you want to know how this is possible just dm me and I’ll explain what it is). I’m starting to feel the stress of the outside world seep into me again which ironically is both horrible and refreshing. Of course I don’t want both the weight of this shit and outside problems on me. But I locked myself away and isolated for so long that it feels nice to see the outside of my head every once in a while even if the stress In turn makes me symptoms worse. I like to think living with this is like living with a handicap for a video game. You always gotta try to avoid difficult situations cause anything can really set you off and spiral you into a panic attack and In turn spiral your vision too haha. I hate it. However the more you live with it again, the easier it gets to deal with this “veteran difficulty” type thing you’ve got going on. Sorry I know I’m making a lot of jokes and puns here but I haven’t been able to about this for so long and I’m trying to just be cool with it for a little bit of time before it decides to spike up again. My life is weird. I don’t understand. Like many of you, I think I’m dreaming or dead. I have this thought that I’m actually constantly dying and changing to other parallel universes. Like quantum immortality. Yeah saying it all out loud to people that aren’t my therapist and it also just being typed on a page makes me sound crazy. Idk, I’ve learned I can’t control my thoughts for a while but hopefully soon that will change. One weird thing that this condition has done to me is really screw up my actual dreams. I have a lot of waking dreams, if you know what those are, and dreams where I am in the place I fell asleep and I wake up in the dream and something happens that didn’t actually happen and then it makes me believe it really did happen, which is part of the reason I believe I’m shifting realities. Yeah there’s a lot messed with my brain. That’s why I gotta be doing therapy. But if you struggle with any of those other things that I struggle with just know you’re not alone even if it feels like it. I don’t know you. But I’m here supporting you with my thoughts. I know how hard it is. But don’t let it beat your ass for too long, you’re a strong human being, I mean you’re living with a very hard disorder. So am I. And there’s now progress for research and all this great stuff happening. People are starting to recognize this. People are starting to care. So don’t give up. Please. It does get easier. I promise. JUST DONT DO ANYMORE DRUGS UNLESS YOU KNOW THEY DONT INTERACT WITH YOUR SYMPTOMS. Trust me you don’t want to be the thing that makes it worse for yourself. It sucks. Anyway, hope you guys find your ways and abilities. I love you all and happy new year. Hope this is the one that can free us all if not get us closer to leaving this prison cell of this disease in our heads.

Hello everyone -- I have been experiencing symptoms of HPPD for about a month now so I figured it's time to find other people with this condition to tell my story and ask more specific questions -- that being said hello out there, nice to meet you and I'm happy this forum exists. Thanks in advance if you're about to take the time to read this.... I have been using psychedelic drugs on and off for about 10 years now. I've always been very careful and aware of harm reduction practices, and have never really had a "bad" trip before. This summer I spent about a month in Berlin and partied pretty hard, I used mainly MDMA, but also ketamine, speed, alcohol and weed. (from most used to least used) So, I didn't do any "proper" psychedelic drugs (I do think MDMA and especially ketamine are psychedelic). My most recent "proper" psychedelic trip was 7g of mushrooms about 6 months prior. I used to take a lot of MDMA but it has been quite a few years (3-4?) since I've taken so much of it over an extended period of time. While I was in Berlin I did a lot of MDMA, give or take about 4 days on and 3 days off for the month. Note that this is nothing compared to how some of the hardcore locals party, and I mention that to point out that I don't understand why this is happening to me and not other people? Obviously we don't know, but for real, why meee??Anyways if I take a large enough amount of MDMA (1/2 of a really good pill) I almost always experience psychedelic visuals. When I was in experiencing this in Berlin I would ask whoever I split a pill with if they were seeing the visuals that I was, and they never were. I only asked a handful of people but it's still a bit strange that they weren't seeing what I was when we took the same thing, and this ruled out my thinking that maybe I was given MDA, 2CB, or something more psychedelic instead of MDMA. The visuals are very similar to what I experience on acid/shrooms, but very gentle and more heavy on the geometric patterns. The first night I was there I took 2 pills of really good MDMA and I was super fucked up, sitting on a bench, trying to keep my eyes open so I didn't get kicked out of Berghain, all the while watching light reflections in the air flip from 3D and then to 2D, almost like a hologram glitching out. My depth perception was wonky and trippy and everyone I saw had thin, bright technicolor halos around their bodies with little swirls here and there around their features. When I'm tripping I always really pay attention to the patterns that show up in my skin and in the walls (also in the sky and certain kinds of organic formations). I describe this pattern to people as Aztec lace that kind of flows and pulses through everything. I've tried to draw it before because it looks as if it could be drawn, but it's elusive and moves around so it can't really be captured. I see this exact same "pattern" on acid, mushrooms and now on MDMA. One night in a club I got stuck in the bathroom watching these patterns on the wall of the stall, they were so vivid and I was also seeing animals and creatures showing themselves to me from within the walls which was new to me. I'll stop attempting to tell about all of the fun, trippy (crazy) stuff that I experience/d on MDMA but I am generally curious if this is common for people who use it who dont have hppd, (I do have some friends who don't have hppd who have had psychedelic visuals on MDMA) and also whether people who have hppd have had similar experiences on MDMA. I noticed my hppd symptoms one day towards the end of my stay in Berlin because this pattern that I see in my skin stopped going away. At this point in time I had started using a lot of speed and was a bit sleep deprived. One night I didn't sleep and still went out the next evening and took MDMA. (a lot of other people I was partying with do this kind of thing often and I don't think they've developed hppd) Ever since those few days I have constantly been able to look at my forearm and undeniably see the aztec lace. I continued to use MDMA for a few more times after noticing that the patterns weren't going away when I sobered up, and they would just fade a little and be less noticeable when I got sober and would get more intense when I was using. One of the mornings after going out I couldn't even tell if my pupils were still huge or if my perception was just fucked up and I wasn't able to tell if I was sober or not because at this point I had full on hppd symptoms. When using MDMA the visuals got a lot more intense, but maybe because I was paying a lot of attention to them. One of the last mornings after taking MDMA I literally saw "the pattern" slowly morph into a fucking portal in the wall next to my bed. It was beautiful and strange and spiritual-ish (?) but at this point I decided to stop giving it so much attention and that I needed to take a break and do a fucking detox. I did some research and I wasn't freaking out because I figured it would fade away and that I just did too much speed or something and it will all get out of my system. Well here I am today a month later and I can still see the pattern in my skin (and other people's skin, etc.) Note that I always see this pattern when I'm tripping on "proper" psychedelics and would aaalways wonder WHY the hell it can be so undeniably real, right there in my arm, but when I'm sober it's completely gone! I would wish that I could just see this beautiful interesting shit when I'm sober. Well, here I am... be careful what you wish for I guess. I've been reading a lot about this and i definitely think its a real disorder, but maybe manifests in different ways for different people. We do not understand the human brain very well, let alone what psychedelics are doing to them so no wonder a disorder like this is so elusive. What I do know for sure is that I was never able to notice this pattern when I was sober, no matter how fucking hard I tried to, and I really have tried to see it when I'm sober with no luck. Now trying not to see it can be difficult sometimes. This is new. The anxiety element is the only thing that worries me. I had my first panic attack last summer and haven't really had one since but now I feel it creeping in sometimes like it might take over and fuck me up which is really scary in itself. So I've avoided what felt like the beginnings of a few panic attacks since then. I got the panic attack in the first place because I had taken Kratom and then touched a wet vile of acid and thought I dosed myself -- so rightfully so I freaked out. It lasted an hour and I thought I was going to die but I didn't dose myself and everything was fine. I felt a bit of panic creeping in in the few days after I self-diagnosed with hppd but I'm mostly ok with it now that I've realized that my brain is mostly ok, from what I'm capable of noticing I haven't done any serious damage. The problem is that I feel like in the future it may be far more difficult for me to take psychedelics, and I worry I may give myself a panic attack and think I'll get stuck like this forever or whatever. I do NOT want to stop taking psychedelics, though. I've read that weed is the worst trigger and makes symptoms worse, and I rarely smoke weed so I have no serious problem with giving that up. I haven't smoked yet since getting hppd, though, and I wonder if it's worth it since I'm only a month in to see what happens. TLDR: MDMA bender gave me HPPD --> SYMPTOMS: "acid pattern" is undeniably noticeable in my skin and other things like walls and certain kinds of surfaces. It does come out more when I pay attention to it but it's distracting on other people's faces and I have to try not to pay attention to it when talking to people (especially people with freckles). I also have visual snow, trailing, and generally a bit of brain fog. It also really affects me on the computer when I'm reading (right this instant) because the letters are swaying. It gets much worse at night and with anxiety or attention, BUT this is NOT all in my head or purely because of anxiety/attention. I noticed one morning that the "acid pattern" didn't go away, and this is undeniable: It is still here and it wasn't here before. I have some other symptoms as well but I'll stop rambling here because Ive told the main points of my story and explained my symptoms. In conclusion : I'd like to hear what some of you think of my experience, if it's similar or different to yours, etc. Any suggestions or recommendations. As interesting as it is I would like to go back to normal, but am in the process of accepting that I might not and will have to be extra careful with my drug use in the future, which reeeally saddens me actually, now that I'm typing it out!! I am always so careful with drugs and usually really responsible but I just went a liiitle bit out of bounds and now I have fucking hppd, shit!! I also am just intellectually interested in all of this stuff... I like to speculate about what exactly happens within this particular kind of psychedelic pattern recognition and what it means in the big picture questions about reality and consciousness. Anyways.. thanks again if you read this and I hope to chat with some of you ~

Hi, I'm new to this forum and have only spent a couple of hours reading through it. I have had mental health problems as long as I remember but it has never been diagnosed. So it's not definite but the family doctor, past psychiatrists, and my school nurse have all thought that I suffer from anxiety and depression, and I believe so too. all of my symptoms make me feel ver depressed and anxious, and like my life is hopeless and I can't live like everyone else. i have used 25i-nbome twice, the first time was fine but the second time I had a very bad trip and I believed that I was dead. its been almost 3 months now and I've been experiencing what seems to be symptoms of hppd. My symptoms are: In dark rooms or when my eyes are closed I see blue or red fractals at the centre of my vision, and I'm mildly lit rooms they travel over the walls, Long lasting after images from bright objects, the worst symptom is that whenever I look at carpets and sometimes other objects they seem to grow this psychedelic pattern into them, seeing this really scares me. I avoid it by not looking at the floor basically but if I do then it will make me really anxious and more prone to my symptoms for the rest of the day. Does anybody else see this? Because I've only ever read about one other person having it. i see slight red lines over my keyboard on my phone screen On plain walls I also see what seems to be like mild static. when I am hungover I also have strong CEV's that basically take me back to the night before or I see a distant screen that shows what seems to be videos of me I still have hope for this going away as a lot of the symptoms are only really there when I think about them. So I was wondering if others think this seems hopeful or not? the fear of my symptoms never going away also scares me a lot and makes things a lot worse. i am basically sober now, I don't even drink caffeine, but I do occasionally drink alcohol which I am trying to stop. I am on a diet and I go to the gym for a couple of hours daily. i can have episodes where I feel a lot better and that it is going to go away, and I can sometimes have whole days when I don't think I see any visual disturbances, but small things like my mood being changed can bring it on again where I feel worried about the hallucinations all the time. i am only 17 so I don't have access to any medication to help yet and it takes a long time to go through the children's mental health service. i was wondering if people think my hppd will fade eventually, and if there is anything else I can do to further my recovery. please don't give comments that are negative or make me feel like I will never be cured because it makes things a lot worse for myself. thank you for any responses given!

For the first couple years I jumped around to different doctors. No one had answers. After all this time I finally got the courage to google it. I can't beleive a lot of answers were so close this whole time. Ive been on Effexor now for more years then I can remember. It barely keeps me afloat. Ive been reading these pages all day and keep hearing about Kepra. I made a doctors appointment. Any advice about dosage or combinations would be greatly appreciated.