9 ms·

I have three friends who all have or have had hppd. I find this lax attitude of psilocybin worrying especially when nobody seems to warn about the dangers of hp

I have three friends who all have or have had hppd. I find this lax attitude of psilocybin worrying especially when nobody seems to warn about the dangers of hppd. One friend of mine had it for 6months and was lucky that it passed away, the two others are in a living hell and will never have a normal life again. I know its supposed to be rare, but the amount of people i read of having some form of it is too many for me to believe that there are a hidden majority of users that has gotten it and wont report for various reasons.

hummusandsushi 6y ago
This is where I am pretty conflicted. I have ingested numerous hallucinogenic drugs, most of them when I was very young. I can only assume that I suffer from HPPD due to the eerily similar symptoms that I experience on a daily basis. However, it appears to me that marijuana had much more of an impact on my daily perception and I experienced it as the catalyst that causes my aberrant perception to be considered a disability. Today I consume no psychoactive drugs other than my prescribed antidepressants. That said, no one can be sure. There is no reliable way to diagnose HPPD since the change in perception could be caused by any number of confounding factors, and "a change" is not enough to cause discomfort, the effect needs to cause anxiety or disability to be considered a medical condition. Even with this I really wish countries would fund psilocybin research because the number of unknown factors are too large for people to be self-medicating with substances that cause temporary insanity. "Increased entropy of the brain" is absolutely what it causes, but there is no reason to assume that the change caused is entirely beneficial. Edit: I feel like I didn't get my point across well enough or communicate all that I wanted to. A component of a psychedelic experience is that you feel like nothing is ever "quite the same" afterwards. If you are prone to mental illness in any way, it is very easy to attribute it to the drug. It is hard to know whether the drug caused your change in perception, or it just made a pre-existing condition more noticeable. That however just gets us kind of into a chicken-egg situation of whether the mental condition would have had much impact without the ingestion of the drug. In any case, this is understandably an incredibly grey area. That said, psilocybin definitely has an effect that lasts at least a few months after ingestion and some effects that last a lifetime as far as I can tell. In my case the shorter-acting effect is overwhelmingly positive, and the longer-lasting effect is mixed, but I don't really regret it. I can easily imagine this having a large contributing factor to my current condition and is one of the reasons why I warn people before taking psychedelic drugs. It has the potential for impacting your life and perspective in ways you can not even begin to predict, and I cannot emphasize enough how much you can not assume that all the changes will be positive. I suffer from an anxiety disorder that seems to be passed genetically, and this has caused some after effects of hallucinogens, especially the ones affecting my perception, to become VERY uncomfortable. The problem that I have though is that psilocybin is also, in my experience, an incredibly effective countermeasure against anxiety and depression. It gives you the ability especially to change your behavior in very radical ways which can be essential in breaking the vicious cycle that anxiety and depression often is. My opinion on the matter is that there is definitely great potential here, but it is not to be taken lightly. I believe psilocybin has amazing potential, but it needs to be researched and its effects observed as scientifically as possible before we have uninformed people (like younger me) ingesting it without taking the proper precautions and being aware of the possible negative effects.
- therealx 6y ago
  At the same time, when you factor in memory degridation on each recall and ever changing perspective - it'll drive you wild trying to match objective benchmarks with subjective tools. Marijauna, while often a "light" drug, has quite the ability to pull mental difficulties currently just under the surface in to the top. People often stop dreaming/having REM sleep the same if they smoke before bed, which can't be good long term. This is yet another reason we should be pushing for full legalization of all substances. Being able to go buy Xmg of pure psilocybin with no contamination and a constant dose is so very imporatant (defunding the cartels is just a fun side benefit to citizens safety.)
Pelic4n 6y ago
>The two others are in a living hell and will never have a normal life again. With that degree of seriousness it can be not HPPD but underlying psychosis or schizophrenia that has been activated by the drug. It happens with cannabis too. I hope they are followed by a psychiatrist and on proper medication. I agree with you. I believe psychedelics open a door in in the brain that can never close back. A lot of people have psychiatric fragilities and have no business trying these substances. Hppd occurence is closely related to past psychiatric symptoms like anxiety or depression. One heavy dose of mushrooms significantly & permanently altered my visual perception: I see colors a lot brighter, a lot more saturated, and with tones & hues I wasn't really perceiving before. It's not technically an hallucination I don't think it's hppd, but it's something.
- saiya-jin 6y ago
  > it can be not HPPD but underlying psychosis or schizophrenia that has been activated by the drug This is crucial part - tons of folks are a mess inside, and either it will never manifest fully (but they won't be perfectly normal balanced happy human beings either, just some grey zone), or it will with some shock - be it car crash, heavy alcohol use, tough breakup, death in close family or psychedelics for example. My first GF's father had permanent paranoid schizophrenia triggered just by episode of heavy drinking during mandatory military service. Fucked up for rest of his life, on heavy medications. Its not as rare in the population as we would like to think, still carries a heavy stigma with it so folks don't talk about it unless they have to.
  - noneeeed 6y ago
    That's one of my low-key worries in life. People go through life apparantly happy and healthy, and then bam some event unlocks or triggers something and they spend the rest of their life with crippling, life changing mental illness.
    - therealx 6y ago
      I think you can alleviate a lot of your anxiety (as far as you can without hacking the anxiety itself with, say, cbt) by being in tune with your body and not ignoring potential early symptoms of conditions that leave these lasting effects. Combine that with only doing "allergy" doses first (think, peanut dust that would trigger your throat to swell, but not close as if you had taken a spoonfull of peanut butter), and you really will be okay. As a pro tip I tell everyone exploring lsd/shrooms - always have a benzo on handy. If you need to end the trip NOW, it'll almost for sure do the trick. If you may be susecptible to mental trauma, you will be doing no one a favor by "pushing through" it. Message me if you want :)
Uptrenda 6y ago
This is a really good point. I had a friend who was interested in psychedelics who told me about similar neutral to negative changes in perception. He observed a number of changes: - Night vision changed and became impaired by 'visual noise' - 'Auras' or 'halos' around lights became extremely exaggerated - Letters were occasionally harder to read as switching to a new sentence would leave a burned-in impression of the previous sentence overlapping on the new text I honestly find these changes fascinating but it would probably be quite frightening for people not expecting possible perceptual changes. If it was me and I didn't know any better I'd think I was 'stuck in a trip' or 'permanently broken.' I wonder if people have ever lost it from having thoughts like that before. Definitely not a toy.
- hummusandsushi 6y ago
  I have the visual noise as well, seems to be by far the most common HPPD symptom. I sometimes get burned-in impressions of things I look at, but thankly not with text. However, I can sometimes see faint but complex patterns on walls that are not there. The intensity oscillates, and I definitely have the thoughts that I am stuck in an endless trip and have definitely considered the possibility of having caused irreparable harm to myself to the tune of being 'permanently broken'. The cheerier side of this is that the anxiety caused by most of these effects improved considerably simply by improving my diet. One important thing to keep in mind is that the perceptive changes themselves are absolutely harmless and only serve to exacerbate existing anxieties, if allowed to do so. If I am feeling good, they only serve as additional spice to my daily experience.
- javbit 6y ago
  I've had these symptoms my whole life (and still do), so it makes me wonder if already having chronic visual disturbances can play a role in developing or "preventing " [1] HPPD. [1] If you already have the symptoms can you get HPPD?
JacobSuperslav 6y ago
I love my LSD, psilocybin, and mescaline, but I agree with you. And this is the result of the war on drugs. If these things were legal we would know more about these dangers. There is also the fact that both LSD and psilocybin activate the 5-HT2B receptor, which is linked to the formation of 'valvular strands', which can lead to valvular heart disease, potentially. And almost nobody is talking about this! https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17950805/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17950805/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19505264/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19505264/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21440001/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21440001/

hummusandsushi 6y ago

This is where I am pretty conflicted. I have ingested numerous hallucinogenic drugs, most of them when I was very young. I can only assume that I suffer from HPPD due to the eerily similar symptoms that I experience on a daily basis. However, it appears to me that marijuana had much more of an impact on my daily perception and I experienced it as the catalyst that causes my aberrant perception to be considered a disability. Today I consume no psychoactive drugs other than my prescribed antidepressants. That said, no one can be sure. There is no reliable way to diagnose HPPD since the change in perception could be caused by any number of confounding factors, and "a change" is not enough to cause discomfort, the effect needs to cause anxiety or disability to be considered a medical condition. Even with this I really wish countries would fund psilocybin research because the number of unknown factors are too large for people to be self-medicating with substances that cause temporary insanity. "Increased entropy of the brain" is absolutely what it causes, but there is no reason to assume that the change caused is entirely beneficial. Edit: I feel like I didn't get my point across well enough or communicate all that I wanted to. A component of a psychedelic experience is that you feel like nothing is ever "quite the same" afterwards. If you are prone to mental illness in any way, it is very easy to attribute it to the drug. It is hard to know whether the drug caused your change in perception, or it just made a pre-existing condition more noticeable. That however just gets us kind of into a chicken-egg situation of whether the mental condition would have had much impact without the ingestion of the drug. In any case, this is understandably an incredibly grey area. That said, psilocybin definitely has an effect that lasts at least a few months after ingestion and some effects that last a lifetime as far as I can tell. In my case the shorter-acting effect is overwhelmingly positive, and the longer-lasting effect is mixed, but I don't really regret it. I can easily imagine this having a large contributing factor to my current condition and is one of the reasons why I warn people before taking psychedelic drugs. It has the potential for impacting your life and perspective in ways you can not even begin to predict, and I cannot emphasize enough how much you can not assume that all the changes will be positive. I suffer from an anxiety disorder that seems to be passed genetically, and this has caused some after effects of hallucinogens, especially the ones affecting my perception, to become VERY uncomfortable. The problem that I have though is that psilocybin is also, in my experience, an incredibly effective countermeasure against anxiety and depression. It gives you the ability especially to change your behavior in very radical ways which can be essential in breaking the vicious cycle that anxiety and depression often is. My opinion on the matter is that there is definitely great potential here, but it is not to be taken lightly. I believe psilocybin has amazing potential, but it needs to be researched and its effects observed as scientifically as possible before we have uninformed people (like younger me) ingesting it without taking the proper precautions and being aware of the possible negative effects.

therealx 6y ago
At the same time, when you factor in memory degridation on each recall and ever changing perspective - it'll drive you wild trying to match objective benchmarks with subjective tools. Marijauna, while often a "light" drug, has quite the ability to pull mental difficulties currently just under the surface in to the top. People often stop dreaming/having REM sleep the same if they smoke before bed, which can't be good long term. This is yet another reason we should be pushing for full legalization of all substances. Being able to go buy Xmg of pure psilocybin with no contamination and a constant dose is so very imporatant (defunding the cartels is just a fun side benefit to citizens safety.)

Pelic4n 6y ago

>The two others are in a living hell and will never have a normal life again. With that degree of seriousness it can be not HPPD but underlying psychosis or schizophrenia that has been activated by the drug. It happens with cannabis too. I hope they are followed by a psychiatrist and on proper medication. I agree with you. I believe psychedelics open a door in in the brain that can never close back. A lot of people have psychiatric fragilities and have no business trying these substances. Hppd occurence is closely related to past psychiatric symptoms like anxiety or depression. One heavy dose of mushrooms significantly & permanently altered my visual perception: I see colors a lot brighter, a lot more saturated, and with tones & hues I wasn't really perceiving before. It's not technically an hallucination I don't think it's hppd, but it's something.

saiya-jin 6y ago
> it can be not HPPD but underlying psychosis or schizophrenia that has been activated by the drug This is crucial part - tons of folks are a mess inside, and either it will never manifest fully (but they won't be perfectly normal balanced happy human beings either, just some grey zone), or it will with some shock - be it car crash, heavy alcohol use, tough breakup, death in close family or psychedelics for example. My first GF's father had permanent paranoid schizophrenia triggered just by episode of heavy drinking during mandatory military service. Fucked up for rest of his life, on heavy medications. Its not as rare in the population as we would like to think, still carries a heavy stigma with it so folks don't talk about it unless they have to.
- noneeeed 6y ago
  That's one of my low-key worries in life. People go through life apparantly happy and healthy, and then bam some event unlocks or triggers something and they spend the rest of their life with crippling, life changing mental illness.
  - therealx 6y ago
    I think you can alleviate a lot of your anxiety (as far as you can without hacking the anxiety itself with, say, cbt) by being in tune with your body and not ignoring potential early symptoms of conditions that leave these lasting effects. Combine that with only doing "allergy" doses first (think, peanut dust that would trigger your throat to swell, but not close as if you had taken a spoonfull of peanut butter), and you really will be okay. As a pro tip I tell everyone exploring lsd/shrooms - always have a benzo on handy. If you need to end the trip NOW, it'll almost for sure do the trick. If you may be susecptible to mental trauma, you will be doing no one a favor by "pushing through" it. Message me if you want :)

Uptrenda 6y ago

This is a really good point. I had a friend who was interested in psychedelics who told me about similar neutral to negative changes in perception. He observed a number of changes: - Night vision changed and became impaired by 'visual noise' - 'Auras' or 'halos' around lights became extremely exaggerated - Letters were occasionally harder to read as switching to a new sentence would leave a burned-in impression of the previous sentence overlapping on the new text I honestly find these changes fascinating but it would probably be quite frightening for people not expecting possible perceptual changes. If it was me and I didn't know any better I'd think I was 'stuck in a trip' or 'permanently broken.' I wonder if people have ever lost it from having thoughts like that before. Definitely not a toy.

hummusandsushi 6y ago
I have the visual noise as well, seems to be by far the most common HPPD symptom. I sometimes get burned-in impressions of things I look at, but thankly not with text. However, I can sometimes see faint but complex patterns on walls that are not there. The intensity oscillates, and I definitely have the thoughts that I am stuck in an endless trip and have definitely considered the possibility of having caused irreparable harm to myself to the tune of being 'permanently broken'. The cheerier side of this is that the anxiety caused by most of these effects improved considerably simply by improving my diet. One important thing to keep in mind is that the perceptive changes themselves are absolutely harmless and only serve to exacerbate existing anxieties, if allowed to do so. If I am feeling good, they only serve as additional spice to my daily experience.
javbit 6y ago
I've had these symptoms my whole life (and still do), so it makes me wonder if already having chronic visual disturbances can play a role in developing or "preventing " [1] HPPD. [1] If you already have the symptoms can you get HPPD?

JacobSuperslav 6y ago

I love my LSD, psilocybin, and mescaline, but I agree with you. And this is the result of the war on drugs. If these things were legal we would know more about these dangers. There is also the fact that both LSD and psilocybin activate the 5-HT2B receptor, which is linked to the formation of 'valvular strands', which can lead to valvular heart disease, potentially. And almost nobody is talking about this! https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17950805/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17950805/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19505264/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19505264/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21440001/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21440001/