Home› Drink & Drugs
If you need urgent support, call 999 or go to your nearest A&E. To contact our Crisis Messenger (open 24/7) text THEMIX to 85258.
Read the community guidelines before posting ✨

Hppd

Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
after seein a few posts floatin around other threads regarding it i thought it would be a good idea to make a post about it and find out other peoples problems with it/thoughts on it

does anyone else here suffer from it ? (i know turlough does for a start!)

what visual distortions do you get?

i see red and green patterns over most things, its basically like a static pattern (like on the tv) apart from coloured .. its far more noticeable at night but it shows up on just about everything

when its completly dark every looks green

lots of stuff seems to 'shimmer', a sort of weird brightness about things

soft halos around lights

if i look at something (say the carpet for example) whatever im focusing on will move .. it may be up or down or in or out or maybe it gets bigger or a bit smaller but most of the time it does something!

contrasting colours (for example text on a background) are prone to making stuff happen

i would compare the colours to the colours you see when you close your eyes (unless im the only person that sees colours when my eyes are closed) .. sometimes when i close my eyes i'll see really weird stuff, i've saw outlines of people made up of colours .. dancing towards me and moving around in weird ways .. the other night i seeing people sitting talking on a sofa, whenever i closed my eyes tight and concerntrated for a second i could clearly see it, not to mention various other random things

i saw turlough say something about seeing black blobs when he looks at the sky .. whenever i look at something bright (ie the sky or a brightly coloured wall) i also get black lines and blobs that 'follow' my vision so to speak .. for a while i believed it was that floater shit you get in your eye but its never went away ... then i thought i'd damaged the retina of my eye or whatever from looking into a strobe light for quite some time .. but now that he mentioned it im puttin it down to hppd

and another thing, cannabis DEFINATLY makes it worse, espically the 'brightness'/'shimmering' off stuff, but everything else gets worse too, can end up with a lot of closed eye visuals (patterns particularly)

i actually find it really difficult to explain what i see so im sure this wont make much sense to some people!

Comments

  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    apologies if you already know, but if not you may find this interesting;

    Erowid HPPD vault
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    i dont get it, but i occasionally get tripped out day dreaming kind of thoughts witch i's put down to smoking weed. makes me think too deeply.

    used to have problems with hppd when i was taking pills regularly, one reason why i stopped.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Yes, I have considered myself to have most of the symptoms of HPPD although from what I know, I don't have much of problem compared to some people who are properly fucked by this.

    Basically, my vision is permanently "tripped" and i'm heavily spaced out.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    yes you definately have it, as i'm writing this, the screen is like a rainbow coloured effect, the black blob (looks like a sperm cell to me) that floats down from one corner of your vision to another doesn't occur constantly but it happens now and again and it's always unexpected, I hate looking at car/lamp post/bulb lights/lights from cameras because the imprint is kept on my vision fopr ages, i see green and red aswell but also purple which is weird, when I look at walls or the roof it's really wierd, hard to describe but i think they call it "static" like when you touch a Tv and the static comes of it...for some it goes away after a while, others have it their whole life, pretty used to it now but i can honestly say drugs make it worse, dope especially...makes me freak out.

    Also Zo1...I can't sleep in the dark either, far too intense, also sometimes (usually when i'm tired or hungover) when I close my eyes I can see full on people dancing in front of me, actually see their faces, bodies, the clothes they are wearing and they don't even have to be in the same room as me, freakes the bit out of me.
  • JadedJaded Posts: 2,682 Boards Guru
    Some (obviously not all) of what you describe also happens to everyone, particularly when tired.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    yeah the seeing people with eyes closed is a bit freaky at night, for me it usually starts out as a blur of colours and then starts to become a person or people .. but they're always moving around or doin something of some description

    and i also find the imprints left of lights annoying, its always happened and im sure it happens to everyone but its a lot easier to be left with 'imprints' and they last longer

    and yes, the monitor can and does look quite strange at times .. its got hte red and green pattern around it then the screen looks really bright .. i always notice how it gets a lot brighter when im stoned

    also sometimes i see little oval shaped things, they look like cells through a microscope, evenly spread over my vision .. its like the pattern is built into your eye, not that everything has a pattern on it
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    z01 wrote:
    yeah the seeing people with eyes closed is a bit freaky at night, for me it usually starts out as a blur of colours and then starts to become a person or people .. but they're always moving around or doin something of some description

    and i also find the imprints left of lights annoying, its always happened and im sure it happens to everyone but its a lot easier to be left with 'imprints' and they last longer

    and yes, the monitor can and does look quite strange at times .. its got hte red and green pattern around it then the screen looks really bright .. i always notice how it gets a lot brighter when im stoned

    also sometimes i see little oval shaped things, they look like cells through a microscope, evenly spread over my vision .. its like the pattern is built into your eye, not that everything has a pattern on it

    Yeh blobs of yellow that form into a person.

    It's quite fun moving back and forward looking at the letters on your computer, they just really fluxuate in size...and when you look walls after being on the computer for ages you'lll just see lines of purple on them...weird yes, enjoyable no!
  • Teh_GerbilTeh_Gerbil Posts: 13,332 Born on Earth, Raised by The Mix
    I guess it is right to a large extent this is present in everyone, I guess taking hallucinagens just makes it far more active or something, I get half of that anyway. Especially annoying is the objects changing size - I happens all the time watching tv, it just shrinks away and becomes so small.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    I am having a shufti at this at the moment, very interesting stuff all around.

    I can induce it easy enough and take it away from myself and I am still working on it from the point of view of it being a type of hyperaesthesia. Colourblindness is inducable using hypnosis so I thought I would have a go at this.

    Couple of things I have noticed.

    Drinking water helps.

    If I look through curved glass (like a coke bottle) it gets better.

    Coloured glass also has an effect.

    Cold air (like looking at things in a freezer) seems to improve it too.

    Of course, I don't really have it, so let me know if these things help you at all. If it was cause by one case of drug use, then one approach would be to relive the experience and play it backwards until vision became "normal" again.

    Interestingly, you all know that you aren't really "seeing what you are seeing" if you know what I mean, which means that a part of the brain is still seeing things correctly to make the comparison.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    klintock wrote:
    Interestingly, you all know that you aren't really "seeing what you are seeing" if you know what I mean, which means that a part of the brain is still seeing things correctly to make the comparison.

    It can make the comparison but it's not something you can turn on and off like a switch.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    It turns itself on and off, quite uncontrolable

    I have it constantly, when I'm busy and don't think about it i'll not notice it but it's always there.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    It can make the comparison but it's not something you can turn on and off like a switch.

    With hypnosis, you can change colour perception, turn pain off, i.e. some people get operated on under something called the "Esdaille" state. I've changed my own perceptions radically in the past - to only see the gold and green in things, to turn sounds up and down.

    While you can't do these things consciously, the unconscious mind can and does alter perceptions all the time. Most of the time it's on autopilot and it can change course. Some people can hallucinate at will sounds and pictures. Most small children can and do this all the time, having amazing eidetic imagery.

    While HPPD might not be able to be "fixed" using hypnosis, I'm almost certain that the accompanying anxiety can be tackled, and the actual effects can be dropped from conscious awareness. If I can get someone to fail to see things that are really there i.e. a packet of fags, a couple of blobs of colour that aren't should be possible.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    klintock wrote:
    If I can get someone to fail to see things that are really there i.e. a packet of fags, a couple of blobs of colour that aren't should be possible.

    Yes but I know consciously that it shouldn't be there, it's not a delusion.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Yes but I know consciously that it shouldn't be there, it's not a delusion.

    At the moment I doubt you are aware of the temperature of your left foot, are you?

    Well, you are now because I drew your attention to it.

    I bet you haven't noticed all the brown things in the room until I just mentioned it either. The conscious mind can only focus on a few things at once, what you focus on is usually unconsciously determined. Once you add in a new thing, something must drop out of awareness.

    Problem is I can't hypnotise you online.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    OK...I'm going now to drink a pint of water and stick my head in the freezer ;)
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Good, good, much better to look for what works no matter how silly it might sound than to sit around looking at what's broken, innit?

    ;)

    p.s. water first - you can't drink ice.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    i constantly have it but i don't notice it too much when my minds concentrating on other things, its usually when im sittin doing nothing (or lyin in bed!) .. the black stuff dragging along with my vision is a distraction sometimes though
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    I have been hypnotised before and imo i think that it was basically part of free will, meaning only that i wanted to be hypnotised, it worked, but i also found that it didn't work like they say it does.

    There's two basic forms of hypnosis - the traditional authoritarian "look into my eyes" approach and something else called "Ericksonian hypnosis", where the person has no idea they are being hypnotised while you talk to them. If you've seen Derren Brown stop people in the street and get them to hand over their watch and wallet willingly, that's an example of it.

    It does work differently for everyone, because it's an altered state of consciousness and no two people have the same basic state of consciousness.
    On the subject you really do think you could stop it?

    I think I could stop the anxiety, definitely. To actually "cure" it I doubt to be honest, it's a problem caused by organic causes through drugs changing synapses. However, I am almost sure that I could reduce awareness of the visual fuck ups as well. Not that they won't still happen, you just wouldn't be aware of them anymore.
    Also if your a real hypnotist you could make a tape for whoever wants rid of hppd and send it to them.

    Doubt it. To make a tape you need to build up a script. This is quite easy with something like smoking, where tens of thousands of people have been hypnotised for that reason, and the commonalities that need to be there for most people are known. Tapes still won't work on everyone, the feedback that's needed for good hypnotism isn't there.

    For HPPD I have no map, I would have to make it up as I went along.
    Although i think Turlough is quite happy with his Hppd

    So do I. ;)
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    NLP?

    I got trained in that a few years ago. Very powerful, when it works.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    That's the only one that comes to mind.

    Neuro Linguistic Pogramming.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    I used to get this all the time when I was taking alot of drugs (mainly ecstacy and tons of weed). Just before I went to bed, when it was completely dark, I could look around my room and everything would be full-on distorting and swirling. If I tried to focus it wouldn't make a bit of difference. It was sort of like the white noise of a TV? But usually more colourful or whatever.
    I still get it when I'm stoned but it's a bit of a variation-I can close my eyes and see detailed people moving quickly towards me one after the other and transforming...Hard to describe.
    When I cut down on everything it gradually faded away though, so I only get it if I've been smoking (not so often) nowadays.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Don't really get it but one of my mates gets it real bad, seen today a little black dot went from top of my vision to the bottom, actually looked behind me to see where it went, fucked up but mad at the same time, bit hard to explain.
Sign In or Register to comment.