Thanks for the response. The OCD is pretty impactful, and it takes a physical manifestation where I worry about things with my body. That's why I I think HPPD would be hard for me to handle. However, I am able to function with OCD in the sense that I have a job, did well in school, and am hoping to start medical school within the next 2 years. I'd describe OCD as a large weight that I carry around all day and it spends a good portion of the day at the forefront of my mind with repetitive thought loops.
As I mentioned above, I still carry some of the side effects I got on the SSRIs 5 years ago (some sexual and some emotional/anhedonia/tinnitus related) - so I've been through the works of mental torture. I thought I was dying for the first year after that. I'd always assumed that HPPD was similar in that some symptoms from on the trip carried through afterwards. In an ideal world, I'd take a dose so low that I wouldn't have any visual changes. But maybe that's not how it works.
On one end you have silicon valley folks boasting about micro-dosing and it's getting air time on Vice etc as a cure-all. On the other end i guess they have a risk involved as most things in life do.
I did some research on visual snow and that's totally what I have. They look like white bugs crawling around my vision in circles. I've had it since childhood. Usually is triggered by something like bright white snow or high altitude and lasts under a minute.
If that was the type of HPPD that I had but just doubled or tripled in frequency that would be totally worth the risk due to my OCD, but I guess there is no way of knowing.
I have the psilocybin but I'll have to think on it more - definitely a big choice and if nothing else I'll lean further on the side of micro-dose now. I want to understand more about how it helps OCD and what type of dose I'd need for that.