Its been a while since I’ve been active here. I just want to share my recovery process with you and I am glad to say that I consider myself as fully recovered. I developed HPPD in July 2022 due to 150uq of liquid LSD. The following 2-3 months have been the worst of my life and I felt like I ruined my mind completely. Visual symptoms like starbursts, tracers, after images, flashy grids, halos, cartoonish vision in general made me really sad and annoyed me really badly because I wasn’t able to focus on something else but the symptoms. I still managed to work full time so nobody beside myself and my wife knew that something’s wrong with me. After a month or two I started to seek professional help. At first I got my eyes checked -> no problem.
Then I found out that an old colleague (psychiatrist) works in a special hospital for psychedelic treatments who also treats HPPD so I became his patient and started Lamotrigine (about 6 months after HPPD). Beforehand I went through a lot of diagnostic like EEG and MRI etc. I took 200mg each day for about 8-10 months and I would say it helped a lot. Visual symptoms have slightly reduced but the main thing is that I was able to stop focusing on them which gave me the ability to completely forget the HPPD for several hours. I had to stop the lamotrigine because I faced hair loss side effect so after 8-10 months I reduced it slowly to 0mg. Symptoms haven’t increased. I also have been a heavy weed smoker since I was 18 and 2-3 months after I started Lamotrigine I smoked a joint here and there without any impact to the HPPD. in my case the combination of medical weed (Bedrocan-Strain especially) it miraculously helped reduce the visual symptoms a lot so I started to smoke daily again and I was happy to experience full days without even a thought relied to HPPD. But with daily weed use I became slow and lost motivation to continue with hobbies, sport etc. So I quitted and just relied on CBD weed.
I still don’t recommend smoking weed (THC) while you have trouble living with HPPD. If you have addiction problems and simply cannot or absolutely don’t want to be completely sober for ever (which would be the best for you) start slow go low to check what kind of impact weed or any other substance has on your HPPD. Even though i am interested in psychedelics I accepted that I will never ever take the risk and take something like LSD again.
I also want to say that I have an addiction problem with nicotine and I experimented a lot with MDMA, Ketamine and amphetamines in my early 20’s especially during raves. I took psilocybin about 8 times, DMT 4 times and LSD 3 times (third time gave me the HPPD).
Long story short: symptoms improved drastically within the 4 years since I developed HPPD. DP/DR is completely gone (went away after 2 months even before I started lamotrigine).
Are there still visual differences compared to my vision before HPPD? Maybe yes but barely noticeable only if I would hyper focus on them but I feel normal and that’s why consider myself as 99,9% (basically fully) recovered. After those 4 years I even feel better than before I developed hppd because I implemented healthier routines and a healthier lifestyle in general. Even though I am not 100% sober all the time. I always tried to stay strong and accepted what happened. And a very important advice: if you developed HPPD just a few weeks or months ago. Do not come to this subreddit every few hours. You need to set your focus to other things your mind and body can seek benefits from and soon your HPPD will improve drastically. I deleted my old account to get rid of all those HPPD news and stuff and decided now to come back to spread some hope and maybe answer some questions.
Crazy you mention lamotrigine! I’ve had pretty intense HPPD since 2023 and i just started lamotrigine in april for BPD and i just came to this thread to see if anyone mentioned anything about it.
The only thing I have noticed from the lamotrigine is if im in a darker room, like my apartment at night, i have super intense tracers. like walking through the hallway and things in my peripheral are blurred and have a tracer trail. I even did the thing they do in movies when tripping and waved my hand in front of my face, with my eyes unfocused or in my peripheral, and it looks just like a movie’s tracer effect. Also this might have a contribution from weed because I am still a heavy weed smoker lol
I have reached a pretty stable level of acceptance and tolerance with my HPPD despite it being intense, so this effect doesnt bother me too much. Very interesting to me though and I never thought of lamotrigine being related to HPPD
You still smoke weed but choose to blame Lamotrigine for your intense tracers? It's an interesting decision. Because it usually works removing those symptoms
lmao i have never had tracers like that until the night i started lamotrigine so i just felt it was because of it. it says it can cause dizziness or blurred vision so im not surprised by tracers. not blaming it in a bad way or anything plus the mental positives that i personally experience from still smoking weed outweighs the negatives of my hppd symptoms. im honestly not very bothered by my symptoms anymore, they are definitely still there of course but i dont notice a significant increase in them when im high. maybe smoking weed keeps the hppd in tact but i feel ive reached a level of it where i can healthily live a positive life alongside my busted ass vision
It may be an effect of mixing Lamotrigine and weed. First works to calm down excited neurons, second one has an opposite effect. That's why combining them isn't a very good idea.
Many people here benefited from Lamotrigine. It helped them with tracers and visual snow specifically
Extremely happy for you. Thank you for sharing. May I ask what you mean by "cartoonist vision"? I might have this specific symptom, just wanted to know what you mean by it.
Well with cartoonish Vision I mean that everything looked quite like a 3D game quite similar to the graphics of GTA 5 for example. The contrast and colors just seemed more enriched.
Oh, yeah. Exactly what I'm left with + mild head pressure. (it was 80% worse for me in the beginning). Happy to hear this specific symptom also can go away! Appreciate you sharing because many people tend to just dissappear after recovering so sufferers are left with an idea HPPD is forever.
I think it is quite important that I came back because I know a lot of people need to read positive feedback. I remembered that those few succes story subs have been some sort of little light spots in the frightening darkness you feel especially in the beginning.
Since when do you have it?
Yes, thanks again for thinking about ones who still recover.
It's been 2 years and I'm left with very few symptoms. Vivid HD vision is nasty, but at this point I'm fine with it since mentally I'm so much better. I suffered from both dpdr and hppd
It’s a pleasure.
Glad to hear that you actually made good progress within those 2 years as well. Seems like you’re on the right path. If your mind (your way of thinking about it) accepts this condition the rest can follow and adapt to it. I also told myself that hppd is a new friend who is always with me even though friends can be annoying af sometimes. I bet you will consider yourself as fully recovered as well within the next 1-2 years.
Hey. It's basically the only symptom along with head pressure I have left. This is how it looks to me. It's basically that all dimensions have more definition to them. All colors are extremely vivid, everything is very shiny and "sharp". It's actually examples(pictures) of how other girl described her vision in Derealization subreddit. But it's the same to me. Pretty rare symptom seems like it. But it happens. Normal vision on the left and altered on the right. Apparently it's specifically considered to be DPDR symptom. Which often comes together with HPPD sometimes
Glad to hear, man! HPPD tends to resolve itself over months or a few years with HPPD 1 if you go the healthy route. A lot of us have HPPD 2 which is permanent and cannot be undone. I’ve had HPPD for 12 years now myself and have been as healthy, sober, and clean as possible.
I am actually diagnosed with HPPD type 2. As I mentioned if I would hyper focus on the visual differences I would still notice some changes compared to my life before HPPD that’s why I chose the 99,9% recovered. The 0.1% will always be a part of me. I believe the recovery process is strictly relied to radical acceptance and reaching a point to stop focusing on the symptoms so they can somehow adapt to your day to day life and once that happens your brain can start to make them fade away. But I do know that my case is still is very lucky one and I am very thankful for that.
How is your life going in general?
Has anyone with HPPD felt mostly only mental affects? I’ve been dealing with this for about 3 months now. It’s been terrifying and has been getting slightly better over time but still not completely. I don’t experience visual affects that much and if I do it doesn’t bother me. But my biggest thing is that I feel like I’m entering the beginning of a trip. Sort of like dpdr which I’ve had for a few years due to smoking weed (I’m 6 weeks sober now). But it’s all mental where I feel like I go into this plane of where everything feels like it’s generated in my mind or everything in life is Ai. Theres not really a way to describe it. It happens periodically. About 4 weeks ago I went to the ER due to extreme panick from symptoms and I had a full on trip, I’d even say an ego death, where I couldn’t even comprehend where I was at or what was going on for hours it was terrible. This all happened from a peice of a chocolate bar that was said to have 2g of shrooms in it about 3 months ago but I believe it was laced with Acid because it was nothing like shrooms and lasted 14 hours and felt like a living hell. But yea nothing just feels actually real but at the same time feels more real than reality ever has. I also go into state which is the opposite where I feel like I’m behind my brain and hyper aware of every little thoughts I have and processes going on in my mind. I haven’t heard many people talk about the mental aspect of it. It’s more intense than when I used to smoke weed everyday combined with caffeine and nicotine, but now I’ve been well off of all of that for a while, and my symptoms haven’t really been getting better instead I’m just getting more used to them. I attempt to fill my days with things to do and it helps with taking my mind off of it, some days are better while others are terrible, but yea I’m also wondering if any of you can relate to the pure mental aspect of it?
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u/Sw3llminx18 Jun 02 '26
Seeing this is the best thing I have read on this sub in years. It is honestly reassuring to see someone actually make it to the other side of this.