Hello everyone,
I am a 20 year old university student from the UK.
So, almost 5 months ago, I took ecstasy for the first time. I have never taken any other hallucinogens in my life although I have smoked weed regularly when I was 16 years old. I was at a work friends party, very drunk, and so I decided to take a pill of ecstasy. I felt great after taking the pill, and continued to drink which was a very stupid decision I know! It was at this point that I blacked out from the drink and remember nothing else from the night. The next day I found out from my friend that I took another pill 2-3 hours after the first and found out that these pills were strong (not sure of exact dosage). I felt crap for the next 2-3 days as expected but after that felt completely back to normal.
About 1 month after taking the pills, I was on holiday abroad and about half way through the holiday I noticed for the first time visual static when I looked into the distance. I felt a sense of intense dread and anxiety that I have never felt before. I believe this is when my HPPD was triggered. The anxiety and symptoms continued to get worse over the next couple of weeks. At this point I believed I had triggered an anxiety disorder as the last year has been hard with the death of a close friend and illness with a family member. I had a couple of panic attacks in the first couple of weeks and began noticing floaters, other entoptic phenomena, intense CEV's in the first few days which were particularly scary and graphic, reduced night vision, difficulty reading, brain fog (particularly bad memory), anxiety and panic attacks. As the months have gone on I have noticed slight tinnitus and became a little depressed as I struggled to work out how what I thought was just anxiety was affecting me in so many ways.
A couple of weeks ago while searching online whether anxiety can cause visual static, I came across this website and immediately figured that I had many matching symptoms with HPPD. This revelation ramped my anxiety and depression up again as it had got slowly better over the last 4 months. Discovering that I actually had a neurological condition was very hard to take and I contemplated committing suicide however decided that it would be a cowards way out and that I have to fight this illness.
I have read through many posts on this website trying to find out how to cure or combat the illness. I have not been to see a doctor about the condition but I was wondering if anyone thought I should? Also I have been eating healthily and exercising in the past couple of weeks and trying not to drink very often which is hard as a uni student. Has anyone got any other advice for coping with this illness as this would be much appreciated.
I hope that in time either my brain will heal itself or I will be able to cope better with this illness if it doesn't and I really hope that a cure will be found one day.
I apologize for the lengthy post, but I haven't told anyone about this condition and needed to get a few things off my chest.
I would appreciate if anyone could give me any advice on how to cope (other than medications as I would rather not go down that route) or have any other questions or thoughts about this post.
Thank you