HPPD, Brain Damage, addiction and negative drug effects

Fellow Lains: How has your drug use negatively impacted your life? Drugs are extremely interesting and the politics and demonization surrounding them is like kicking dead whales down the beach. At the same time I feel that it’s important to be able to talk honestly and freely about the negative sides of them, so that people can make informed decisions. I did a lot of drugs these past three years. Especially did a lot of psychedelics. Then got addicted to opioids for about 9 months and took another 3 to finally quit. I have HPPD. It’s getting better but I still have visual snow every day, have depersonalization often, have developed paranoid thought loops, my language fluency has decreased, and I’m only slowly getting back my motivation to do things. Used to have brain zaps as well but that luckily went away. My vision looks like pics related. Almost all people I know who frequently used psychedelics suffered similar effects. Most people who still actively use drugs, who I’m friends with, are driven by their impulse for pleasure, unreliable, unstable, have diagnosed mental illness and personality disorders, and, quite frankly, are getting nowhere in life. Of course there are exceptions. I also have friends who actively use and can contain their use to certain phases or still do well academically and financially. I am now of the opinion that drugs are very often either defunct self-medication, a distraction and running away from the reality of life, and/or a way to gain social status.

No drugs needed. Some people are just born damaged.

>>9354 My parents abused opioids pretty heavily during my upbringing, so unfortunately I'm in the boat >>9355 mentioned. I don't have so much visual snow anymore, but I frequently hallucinate the "floaties" and halos that other people mention so much. Ever since I started smoking pot and doing LSD on an irregular basis, I've also gotten new (undocumented, as far as I can tell) hallucinations that are a little more difficult to describe. Whenever I'm sitting at a computer or staring at any kind of flat surface, my vision draws little convex shapes on the walls before filling them with a tunnel of light and color that terminates in darkness, before the hallucination fades altogether. These little episodes last ~3-7 seconds, and only crop up once every hour or so. Hugely distracting though, and it definitely contributes to my overall paranoia.

>>9356 >I frequently hallucinate the "floaties" Some floaters are real defects of the eye, not hallucinations. I have many mobile floaters since my birth - they don't change with time and are located in constant places. >my vision draws little convex shapes on the walls before filling them with a tunnel of light and color that terminates in darknes Like picrel? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Form_constant

>>9354 The only issue is you abused them and did them a lot. And also like you mentioned drugs are only bad when the user is awful and has no real impulse control or uses it to escape life's problems. Which is why everyone says to use them in a set, setting and mindset. As for HPPD better within 5-6 months and you will need to rest a lot in order for things to get better and no longer use anything until it clears up. Your body needs to reset itself.

>>9357 Not the lain you are quoting, but i noticed ever since i starting tripping frequently, when sober i can see a combination of the pic related spirals and honeycomb gratings if i stare at a blank wall for a while or get some strong nicotine.

>>9354 >I am now of the opinion that drugs are very often either defunct self-medication, a distraction and running away from the reality of life, and/or a way to gain social status. I did what you did but for a shorter amount of time and with stimulans more than psychedelics, and I have come to the similar conclusion. In my experience, the first 2 reasons are the most common among speed&weed enjoyers I mostly hung out with.

>>9354 >I am now of the opinion that drugs are very often either defunct self-medication, a distraction and running away from the reality of life, and/or a way to gain social status. this. i almost always turn to drugs when my life is going downhill. luckily, my drug use has not directly added to my major life problems, yet. it has definiteley indirectly, though. i think the differentiating factor is what you're using the drugs for. if u snort blow at parties to help u socialize, that is a valid reason. if u do it alone at night in ur room, ur probably abusing it. psychs r a bit dif, but same concept. as dr andrew huberman put it, "a lot of the reason ppl do them is, they're lying. they say they want plasticity and they want all this stuff - they want a peak experience." >How has your drug use negatively impacted your life? ive never been physically dependent upon a drug to where i had major withdrawal when i quit, but ive had stints w/ basically every drug i could find and it was unhealthy to say the least. coke had me losing weight, easily angered, and lacking patience. molly had me acting like a middle schooler in public and embarrassing myself. xans had me blacking out for days on end, walking around like a zombie. percs had me actin a fool and causin trouble for myself. acid had me talking nonsense and scared of everyday occurences. drugs may seem fun in the moment, but i almost always regret doin em when i look back. ive broken promises and disappointed those i care about too much. >>9371 >As for HPPD better within 5-6 months and you will need to rest a lot in order for things to get better and no longer use anything until it clears up. Your body needs to reset itself. mine hasnt gone away completely after a year, but its very managable now

Trying to find the willpower to space out my psychedelic use enough that I don't have another mental break, wish being sober wasn't so boring frens

>>9625 Binge TV shows or play a game you love so much you forget about time. Not perfect but but can help a lot, Stay strong and if you can't handle it and take psych again, try to take very low doses.

Those of you with visual snow. What does it do to you when you use this visual snow simulator? Try and match it close as you can to what you see and try and focus on the image not the snow for let's say 10 minutes. https://visionsimulations.com/visual-snow.htm Does it make it better or worse after once the image burn in your eyes wears off? My thought is since some people with tetanus have it treated listening to coloured noise maybe visual snow imagery would help visual snow.

I suffer from tinnitus which puts me at increased risk of HPPD (which I only learned afterwards, of course). I only did psychedelics a handful of times and in pretty low doses, but I didn't take the recommended month-long break after trips, which might have been the problem. After my last trip the after-effects like more intense colours, sharper visual perception, etc didn't seem to go away. After a while I started noticing very mild visual snow and freaked the fuarrrk out. I kept focusing on it and started getting feelings of derealization when looking at things in a certain light until it triggered a panic attack. I thought I was going insane and had really bad anxiety for two weeks straight. It didn't help that I had absolutely nothing to do all day around that time. I know you're not supposed to focus on it, but that just wasn't possible. But, for anyone going through a similar experience I can tell you: It does get better. Even if the symptoms never fully go away (and I know what a scary thought that can be), you learn quickly that it's not the end of the world. There's plenty of people who don't have perfect vision, or suffer from concentration problems, and HPPD really is no different. At some point you won't even be able to tell anymore. My tinnitus started 10+ years ago, and I couldn't say if I still have it. If you think HPPD is different, because it's "your own fault" and you knowingly "ruined" your health, don't beat yourself up over it. Plenty of people damage their own health with an unhealthy diet, lack of exercise, staring at a screen 24/7, not wearing earplugs at a concert, alcohol, nicotine, you name it. Learn to live with your decisions and realize that whether good or bad, they make us who we are. And besides: Even if you live the most healthy life imaginable, everyone of us gets old and is going to have to deal with something like this eventually and learn how to cope with mortality.

>>9668 Read post above you. Also depending how bad your tinnitus is you can possibly help reduce it through doing neck stretches and massaging your ears and tapping at back of base of your skull near your ear. I only get an ear ringing on occasion and this always works for me but I dont know how it goes for people with chronic tinnitus. I do have hyperacusis though which often is associated with tinnitus and pink noise and stretches made it slightly better.

>>9354 Weed ruined my brain. :( I wish I could turn back time.

>>9355 some weird thing happened to me recently. I was sitting together with my bros, one of them started to tell story about some person they both knew in past and i did not (i am much younger). Then second bro continued his story about him getting into house of mentioned person, but his story quickly turned insane. He told there were people walking on the walls and jumping to his face, like its he was in Excorcist or other horror movie. I can add bro that told this smoke weed for most of his live. First bro reacted to this story with disbelief, but this disbelief was strangely exagarated, he was screaming and laughing maniacally in said disbelief. They smoked but also were drinking all day, i just smoked some, so i was kinda sober. I started laughing, but quickly my feeling has turned sour, i really felt they are both insane. I has also started getting pretty high, after some time i left room and i quickly heard bro1 talking about me, and his words were full of hatred. He said he was ashamed of me, and that i am retarded. It deeply hurt me, but he did not said it to my face, instead he was pretty friendly when i was in room. Problem is: when i smoke weed i sometimes hear things and i have no idea if it really happens or not. I also have memories, which are really terrible and makes me feel bad, again, i have no idea if it happened or not. For example i vaguely remember seeing similiar scenes, they were high and i was sober (because i was child), and bro1 was insulting me for being retarded, he was really aggressive and kinda hypermanic. I remember being slapped by him few times when i was child, so it could have happened. Anyway, if half or most of memories i get on weed really happened (memories of abuse and screaming), then my childhood was really terrible, and it dawns on my i was brought up in house of insane people. But i just cant be sure if my mind is not playing tricks on me. I asked bro2 if bro1 said some things about me when i was out of room. He answered, that there was nothing negative said, but i assume he may be lying. If he really thinks such things about me, than it makes me kill myself, because there is not many things i can do to make my life better. I tried for years to make a decent person out of me, but i ended up as failure anyway, if i am garbage even for my family, then its not really worth living i think.

>>9354 Got only visual snow in December two days after my first psychedelic trip (two grams of shrooms) it's very slowly getting better, if it goes 100% away can I trip again? Or at least smoke weed?

>>9354 Twofold. Psychedelics have been great a couple of times, but I've also had very very unpleasant experiences that left me with persistent phobias and hypochondria. I have always had some some form of neuroticism and anxiety, and psychedelics really deepened them rather than sorting them out. I never feel like I belong in a place with more than 4 or 5 people in it, and I have to really focus and force myself to remain calm - I used to feel uncomfortable in large groups but now it is almost unbearable. The second thing is that I got completely cut off by my friend group because of my drug use. When I was very depressed I started drinking loads, and eventually progressed to smoking crack and heroin in my room in a shared house - I never "did" anything to anyone or stole or whatever, and tried to keep it to myself as much as I could, but eventually they found out and more or less immediately chucked me out. Haven't spoken to any of them since. I don't blame them for what they did at all (I have no idea how I would react, probably similarly), but I still feel that I was treated unfairly. I obviously needed help for some time before I got to that stage. Nowadays I just have a few beers in an evening and maybe a valium. In social situations I might have a toke if somethings being passed around, or take cocaine (in socially acceptable ways) at parties to stop the anxiety from taking over

>>10152 I forgot to attach my picture, so here it is, in this follow up post, which is pointlessly verbose to satisfy and arbitrary minimum body length that is like kicking dead whales into an ocean of soykaf

>>9689 to the good ol daaays~

I'm 18. Have been doing weed and alcohol since 16 and acid since 17. I've had visual snow since I was born but got mild hppd from acid. I'm talking slight movements at the corner of my vision. Now that is mostly gone and the only thing I have is when I walk over parallel lines in the ground they seem to bend. I'm still doing acid from time to time and it has not gotten any worse.

I developed visual snow from meditation alone. I had an experience where all of awareness felt very embodied and alive, not just my body. And in the visual field, I noticed negative space felt alive and was shimmering. Ever since then I've seen visual snow,

I've had visual snow since birth, but that hasn't gotten any worse after using psychedelics. I see people say "mild visual snow" which leads me to believe people are mistaking the normal static inherent to vision with visual snow. This is one of the reasons why doctors are not yet convinced that psychedelics cause visual snow: everyone has some level of static that largely is ignored until they focus on it after learning about it, which happens more often in the psychonaut community since it is discussed more often there and with an added fear of brain damage attached to it.

>>10173 I think getting visual snow in meditation is the first step to knowing you are doing something right. I have constant visual snow and getting level 2 geometries now in meditation. The goal is of course level 8. Psychonautwiki has article on that, I love how repeatable is that. Done some LSD, DMT, shrooms and some research stuff, and still no serious HPDD. Also, wouldnt care if I had constant level 5 visual geometries, as long as socially functional.

>>10175 Agree, I think HPPD is obsessively noticing natural visual phenomenon and spinning an anxious narrative about it that feeds on itself and keeps going.

>>10178 HPPD is different from visual snow. As for why psychonauts see it more: IME it takes weeks or even months for your vision to go completely back to normal after a strong trip. I guess most people don't notice it like with visual snow but those who do would likely notice the other little perceptual glitches.

>>10179 If you induce a non-dual state while meditating, everything is brighter and has a glow to it, similar to a psychedelic afterglow. It seems to happen when awareness is wide and the concept of subject-object boundaries are relaxed.

>>9699 I hope pure still alive lainon. I love you and so does the world.

>>10176 Visual snow and geometrics are the first stages of more severe hallucinations. Hallucinating without the use of drugs is generally a bad thing. Drugs wear off, but this won't. It can turn negative real fast and then you're trapped. Take this warning from a schizo. Don't make it worse.

>>9354 I don't see a difference between visual snow and normal vision, can someone point it out for me?

>>10176 Visual snow and geometrics are the first stages of peeling back the base firmament. A view to the real world, drugs only a lily pad. A glimpse. Sustain it long enough and it can sonicwarp you out and then you're liberated. Rejoice! A day to remember. Exciting unknowns waiting!