Visual Snow / HPPD

Do any other lains have symptoms of visual snow or hallucinogen persisting perception disorder? How have you adjusted your life in order to deal with it? Has it gotten any better over time? I haven't taken any psychedelic drugs in over a year and a half, but my vision has steadily been getting worse. The most distracting part is negative afterimages that makes text hard to read and LED lights leave a trail. To compensate I got a new pair of glasses with blue light blocking and they've helped with eye strain (The optimist said my eyes were healthy, which I expected since this is something neurological), and I'm constantly adjusting visual settings on my phone and laptop to make them more legible depending on place and time of day. I'm going to stop smoking weed every day since I'm sure that's the major contributor. I hope to hear your experiences.

I have some, thought it was normal until one day describing the clear tv static on blank walls and everyone looked at me like I was crazy. The blurring of headlights makes night driving a pain, particularly in night rain when streetlights reflect on the ground for visual snow mirror hell. I'm otherwise adjusted and don't think about it much. Also use bluelight filter glasses. People show me text on their phone and it's too straining for me to read, all my devices are zoomed in to text at 130%-150%. I'd go bigger but nobody needs to be reading my screen from across the room. This is the first I heard of hallucinogen persisting perception disorder. Don't think that's the case with me, as just merely smoking weed before ever doing anything harder could make the snow a lot "louder" or more vivid than normal. That being said I smoke maybe once every 2 years now but it's still here, but it's not as intense as past experiences being high. I don't need glasses to function outside of reading, but my eye doctor recommended wearing them daily to reduce strain, and therefore fatigue. I'm about to finally take her up on it and renew my script. Getting plenty of sleep also helps to be honest.

>>9007 Visual snow/static, screen legibility issues, and afterimages I can relate to. For a few years after my last trip I was very worried about them. They intensified, or maybe I simply noticed them more, with anxiety and weed use. Made work difficult and amplified already stressful situations going on at the time. I was worried that I'd permanently fuarrrked up my brain, but at some point - I don't remember exactly when, but it was ~2 years after they started - I realized that I wasn't experiencing them anymore. I don't recall there being a steady decline in intensity, I think it just sort of happened? but I didn't keep a journal so I can't say for sure. YMMV of course but I wouldn't stress out about mentally charting it out like you would body weight. Unfortunately I don't have any novel advice to offer, I'm under the impression you've done plenty of HPPD research already. But you're definitely not alone, and I'm rooting for you in a childish but nonetheless heartfelt way

I've fried my brain with LSD abuse and while I don't have any apparent visual snow, I still have symptoms that tell me I might have HPPD. It first started when I started to see tiny geometric fractals in my vision when I woke up, almost as if my vision was glitching out. More recently, I've had acute tracers and textured surfaces such as popcorn ceiling or brownie bits at work triggering colour enhancement akin to muted iridescent stereotypical psychedelia. Weed doesn't really seem to bring these symptoms on. What my triggers are, are awakening and quick exposure to light.

I have moderate HPPD, not getting better or worse. No difficulty reading but it's pretty noticeable at times. I find focusing on it makes it worse so I do my best to leave it be.

I don't have it so take my theories with a grain of salt. Have any of you tried looking at something then closing your eyes and visualizing it in your mind as if you see it normally? Start with something very simple like an image of a square or something. I sort of wonder if this would retrain the brain to see properly. May be a wasted effort though and since it builds visualization skills being basically same as a mandala meditation it may even make things worse potentially but trying it short term probably wouldn't cause much potential harm if there is any.

Yeah I've had a lot of after-effects from LSD use. Visual snow not so much, a big one for me is that if I focus too long on something it will start to 'flow'. Very pleasing IMO but can make reading a pain. Most lights have very pronounced halos too. Some mild color shifting and texturing, and little white swirls when I look at the blue sky. Microdosing makes it worse but it's totally manageable. After a while your eyes start to adjust or something, idk. Staring at a screen for a long period is definitely what makes it the worst for me. It's only "HPPD" if it interferes with your ability to function. Most people get some long-term after effects on their vision from heavy LSD use. For most people it's fine. I personally like it.

Any advice on offering understanding and support to someone you know with HPPD?

When I was about 12-15, I glorified hallucinogens, but soon after I realized I was already fuarrrked in the head enough that abstaining would be a smart move. I'll probably end up doing something to try and fix my anhedonia, like ket or cannabis.

>>9016 Do you think it would be helpful to talk with them about it every so often, like a short check-in asking how their symptoms have been? Nothing hammy or forceful, just giving them a platform to talk about it if they want to. HPPD struck me as very similar to the way other kinds of trauma are described: extremely isolating because no one else can experience or really understand the symptoms or the suffering they can cause, and it's kind of difficult to bring up. I think simply showing that you give a soykaf, and legitimizing their struggle with the illness, would go a long way, even if they end up not talking about it. I know that's Live Laugh Love -tier advice but I would encourage you to check their pulse on their HPPD anyways

>>9009 Thank you for your kind words >>9014 This is a good thought. I caved in and made a reddit account to follow the visual snow community and you can see many people there saying they also experience aphantasia. I'm not entirely sure if I do as well or not, I remember thinking visually as a child but it was completely lost to me to where I didn't believe it when I heard people talking about actually seeing things with their eyes closed. I consciously try to visualize as I'm falling asleep but it's dark and grey-scale, so I don't think I'm truly unable to visualize, it's just in the 'dark'. >>9015 I see that flowing too. I'm often dazzled by liquids and love seeing moiré patterns (which is good because I notice them everywhere) >>9016 As others in the thread have said it flares up with stress and anxiety, so indirectly one of the best ways to help them would make them feel comfortable and at ease.

>>9025 >>9026 Sounds like good advice guys, thanks and be well.

>>9007 I have visual snow but naturally lol

Please excuse grammer, not native speaker. >>9007 For ~2 years I used dissociatives/deliriants/psychedelics with moderate to high frequency and acquired moderate HPPD as a result (melting textures, visual snow, weird perceptual shifts at night). It was disturbing at first, but eventually I got used to it. Now (a few years later, more or less sober) things have improved a lot. Still a more than normal visual snow at night. My vision feels more "susceptible" to things (e.g. tunnel vision effect from biking). But overall much much better. Wanted to share this to encourage other lains that it can be better. Also, if you are trying to reduce/eliminate HPPD: DO NOT USE MARIJUANA IN ANY FORM. IIRC this is known to aggravate it, enhance it, and make it stick around for much longer. I can try and dig a citation for this if desired. >>9016 If they are very worried about it, tell them: 1) Stop doing drugs (primarily psychs, cannibis included) 2) It will get better with time, just ignore it as best you can for now. That's about all there is to it.

The best thing you can do while treating your own HPPD is to accept it and stop thinking about it. :3

I've had visual snow for as long as I can remember in life, and non-permanent HPPD as a result of heavy LSD usage. As far as the HPPD goes, there were times where it did bother me; cessation of weed usage will 100% help as it tends to seriously exacerbate it unless it's been a really long time since your last usage of psychedelics. For the visual snow, it does get in the way sometimes. In the olden days, when my eyesight was a lot clearer otherwise, it wasn't something that ever bothered me, but as it's gotten soykaftier I've noticed that the static tends to get in the way of reading a lot more, text I would be otherwise *somewhat* able to read now becomes effectively illegible. As far as OP's concerns go, I would recommend stopping weed. If that doesn't help and it doesn't go away in another year, well... Best I can tell you is to not focus on it. When my HPPD was at its worst, I had the best time dealing with it when I managed to distract myself with something else. I sure hope sharpshooting and hunting aren't hobbies of yours.

Yes, I have this. I've never done any psychedelics, but I am a Government Certified Schizo-Bot 9000™. I' wear normal glasses, but I've never told my eye doctor I have these (Acutally, I suppose it would be more accurate to say I have not told any doctors of this phenomena.) I find that long exposure to bright AND (keyword AND) unnatural lights make it worse. To compensate, I keep dim, warm lights in my room. I also keep my monitors and other diode driven digital displays on low brightness and use blue-light-filtering whenever possible. Outside I tend to just get lots of eye "floaters" and only really seen visual "snow" if I stare off into the sky (but not at the sun obviously!) Other than that, I guess I just filter it out mentally at this point. Although, sometimes objects kinda look like they vibrate or oscillate or something, not sure if that is related. I hope my advice and point-of-view helps a fellow lainon.

>>9007 Have had visual snow as long as I can remember. But my LSD use definitely made the visual snow worse, it got to a point where I thought I was going to go blind which spiraled me into non-stop panic attacks. After doing some research I found this: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23983976/ I got some prescribed; The lamotrigine did help with reducing visual snow symptoms back to a bearable level but due to the negative side effects I sadly had to discontinued my treatment. Now I just try to not think about it too much, or rather try to enjoy it and ride it out like an acid trip. I really hope I can at least help one of you lainons.

>>9026 Did they develop aphantasia or had it before the HPPD? I was thinking HPPD may be like a sensory processing disorder where the brain just isn't reproducing the image right because it's overstimulated. Is there any improvement when one eye is closed? If there is then the problem lies in where the brain is combining images from the eyes into a single image. I know magnesium is used by some people with autism and found upon looking just now some people with autism see things like visual snow. Then I checked if anyone improved visual snow with magnesium and some suggest it works. I know magnesium l threonate passes the brain blood barrier more so that may be the form to use but if not I think magnesium glycinate is the ideal. Trying to look up magnesium for aphantasia was a dead end though. May be worth looking into more.

>>9101 I should add that magnesium glycinate is magnesium bound to glycine. Glycine also may help visual snow because some people with visual snow have underactive glycine receptors is one theory.

>>9007 From what i have researched a lot of it is just your body recovering. So best thing to do is to get rest, sleep it off and take time away from Psychedelics. Let the brain repair itself.

>>9145 Accurate I had depersonalization for almost a year with huge overdose on Shrooms. And I think that HPPD is what happens when you do too much Psychedelics and you do not give your body a break to recover and get a lot of rest. Usually I hear it's about 3-6 months before you start seeing things get better.

>>9091 Yeah I can believe this theory about glasses I never have heard any of these people get their eyes checked at all lol.

I was hoping some of you would have tested my ideas for possible treatment by now and report back. i guess no one tried or didnt get results worth reporting or idk.

just use dark mode on your browser and programs and dont think about it too much. it's mostly a matter of overthinking, just like tinnitus. literally just dont get fixated about it, that's all you have to do.

>>9378 That reminds me. One treatment for tinnutus is listening to pink noise. So I think something similar but visual may help visual snow.

I got floaters and visual snow after doing some weird legal high. Might have been BZP. They’ve never gone away. It’s been over 10 years.

>>9007 Probably the brain adjusting for the blurriness from a young age of near-sightedness. Maybe some odd attempt by the brain to make the blurriness easier to see. I have this visual static stuff, but it's probably factored from being in front of CRTs too much or not getting glasses for my poor vision until like 6th or 7th grade.

>>9017 Does Ket help with depression?

>>9007 i got it after doing LSD for the first time a few years back. the symptoms really scary at first (static, afterimages, etc) and i seriously believed that i fuarrrked up my vision and i was eventually going to go blind or something. it's actually gotten better over time though. i haven't done psychadelics since then (or any drug except for cbd) so that's probably got something to do with it. my advice for any lains dealing with HPPD is to just keep your head up. i know how scary it can be but it really does get easier. eventually you just accept it. plus the less you think about it the less you notice it, like with tinnitus. and maybe consider quit doing drugs recreationally in order to let your brain heal.

I don't know if it has actually been forever, but I have had visual snow for as long as I can remember. I saw an optometrist when I was younger and he said my eyes were fine and not t worry about it. Not too long ago I was having a rough go at it and hearing voices and such so I had an online doctor appointment. When describing symptoms the doc kept asking if I had these different visual problems and I said yes to almost all. Didn't end up following up with the cyber-doc but they mentioned HPPD and I don't know how to make sense of it. Never taken psychedelics in my life.

>>9495 I was in the last thread, and I'm in a pretty similar spot. for me it's because my parents abused psychedelics and opioids while I was a fetus, which has pretty much irreversibly fuarrrked my vision

>>9496 jeez if they were taking acid you're lucky you got out of the womb, it's highly uterogenic.

>>9497 i doubt they took LSD, but i know they're/were addicted to kratom and pot pretty heavily

Meditating for an hour a day helped 99% of my visual snow and LSD flashbacks go away. It's still here to an extent but I've only been meditating regularly for about 4 years now. The severity of my symptoms was pretty high though, dissociation, warping environment, synaesthesia, etc, so I really think even a moderate case like some people in this thread describe would be helped by meditating.

>>9458 Not him but I had suicidal psychotic depression that's been with me since childhood cured by a ketamine clinic so yes it 100% works.

I've had visual snow my entire life. I must've been born this way. I always thought everyone could see it -- that it was some sort of energy field or that that pinpricks of constant static were the very atoms of the universe. I didn't know it was abnormal until 13, and it took until 16 or so for me to figure out it had a name. There are optometrists in my family, and they say it's harmless. Some people say it's stress-induced or neurological -- no one has a solution. I figure since it's been life-long, it's not really any issue. It gets worse if I'm on any substance, particularly alcohol, weed, and shrooms. It's more noticeable at night, against the blue sky, and in dim lighting. When sober, the snow settles down to its baseline level again. As far as HPPD goes, SWIM grew a batch of shrooms last year and occasionally now gets strange warping effects on landscapes in the distance. It doesn't impact anything and has happened maybe 3 times since, for only about a minute each time. It hasn't affected the visual snow in any way. (Also, if baked enough, I see fractals. It's always fun to turn on actual TV static & stare at it until the geometry appears.) I definitely don't have aphantasia. I do have projective-type grapheme-color associative synesthesia, though. Ultimately, I wouldn't give up visual snow if given the choice.

>>9495 were you born prematurely?

>>9672 Ive had visual snow my entire life too, I remember as a kid seeing orbs and static swirling around when I would be looking around my room at night, I always thought it was normal but now I found out it was abnormal just this year. Ive also had full aphantasia my entire life which I also thought was normal until this year too. Since using psychedelics the past year I've noticed patterns in my vision when I wake up and go to bed which >>9010 describes really well. Reading text on a screen can be difficult because my vision will "glitch out". Looking at the sky makes visual snow more pronounced and I can see floaters. When I smoke weed I notice visuals which is usually lines or blobs, sometimes with color.

well i have just now learned that this isn't something everyone experiences. good to know

Had visual snow even before taking any drugs which would possibly have caused it, it comes and goes and is different in different light sources or around different objects. idk why it would happen but it does feel a little mystical and strange, it's interesting to think about how it exists in film photography but not digital photography too.

>>9673 Yes actually. 9 weeks premature.

>>9673 I've also had visual snow for as long as I can remember. I wasn't a premie, but I was malnourished as an infant.

>>9713 >>9716 Interesting. Also premature here (28wks). I know someone who was born even more prematurely than I was -- I'm going to reach out to them and see if they also have visual snow. I wonder if it's a developmental thing... or if it's something most people have as children and grow out of? It reminds me a bit of the parapsychological theory that all babies can see auras but we grow out of it and lose that ability. If it is a byproduct of some failed re-wiring of the brain during an early developmental stage, I wonder if we can determine a scientific explanation. Does anyone here have executive functioning difficulties or other mental illness/developmental abnormalities? (Aside from depression, as this is Lainchan. We're all depressed here.) I think the more commonalities we can identify among lifelong visual snow-havers, the better a chance we have at identifying a cause (and maybe a cure for those who want one).

>>9718 Aspie (diagnosed) here. I've never done any psychedelics in my life, and I don't drink. I've had visual snow for a long time, as long as I can remember. Sometimes I see very slight auras too, especially around streetlights. My mom's pregnancy was all normal, no drugs, no alckie. Birthed right on time. When I went to the optometrist a few years back over a concern about this, he said that everything was normal, excepting some optic nerve cupping, which he claimed in my case was not a sign of the onset of glaucoma. Another note: the nurse doing the pre-exam, who was supposed to administer eye drops to dilate my pupils, wondered if I had already gotten the drops. I guess I have big pupils. Don't know if that's relevant.

>>9007 What did you take so that I can avoid it

never did lsd, had it since i was a kid

>>10786 Since birth / as long as you can remember, or did it simply appear one day? Was there any sort of trigger for it?

>>9729 It's pretty much the same for me. >>10786 Yeah me too, I found out when I was very young that looking at some direction and staring into the distance caused everything to start morphing. I'm not a diagnosed sperg but I suspect I have some level of it. Everyone I've heard to have this is a sperg, so it only makes sense that I am. >>10793 It was probably there since birth but I only realized it happens when I look at one point and focus in the distance. I really have no idea what causes this, but I have a theory it might be related to how spergs and people with some mental illnesses generate elevated amounts of psychedelic chemicals like DMT in their brain.