My HPPD and Visual Snow Syndrome experience.
I've had visual snow all my life. Since I was a child, I would look into the sky and see floaters and static. I remember telling my mom and being checked out by a doctor. I must not have described it well at all, and they probably assumed it was my imagination. I have lived with it since then, thinking it was normal until my recent research into HPPD (Hallucinogen Persisting Perception Disorder).
This is close to what I would experience before frequent psychedelic use, but it's not a perfect example. I think everyone experiences floaters, after-images, and small moving points on a blue sky (This is actually called the blue field entoptic phenomenon). But with visual snow, these normal visual quirks turn into distractions, being significantly more noticeable than for people with "normal" vision. In a way, it feels like my eyes are always over-stimulated; my baseline for static and other visual noise is high, and the HPPD just makes things worse. This ever-updating post will be about my experiences with both visual static and HPPD combined, as both are affecting me now.
HPPD began near the end of my psychedelic use, which consisted of taking acid and 4-HO-MET every 5–7 days, or as little time between tolerance as I could get away with. It wasn't sudden; I just noticed things had been wavy for the last few weeks. Textured surfaces would "breathe" in and out, warping in a slow, comforting way. I did not know what HPPD was during this time, thinking the drugs were still in my system in some way.
My final trip five years ago, which resulted in me believing I was dying of a stroke, has been a life-changing event even today. The day after the trip, it felt like my brain was searching for any problems at a microscopic level. I noticed I had astigmatism, which added to the ever-growing anxiety that I had suffered a stroke and could have one again. I noticed the static and breathing textures more, and this time it felt threatening and painful. It made my mind scream at me to get help, and that everything I was experiencing was evidence of severe brain damage or, to an extent, death.
My first replication of my HPPD, uploaded on 05-15-2021
It's quite hard to show how HPPD looks visually because there is depth to it, but ultimately, this is as close as I can get. The warping usually happens along the surface immediately after looking at said surface, followed by breathing up and down, or in and out. I remember for a year or two, I could not handle looking at Discord’s default dark theme; the shade of blue caused every line of text to have long-lasting after-images, which would stack with other lines of text. This, along with the wobbling letters and static, caused me to become overwhelmed. This seems to have improved, although I still use my own background.
This is an example of my HPPD and VSS on an especially anxious day.
Not much is known about HPPD, or visual snow for that matter. Many theories and ideas seem to have popped up, with the latest and most agreed-upon being that HPPD is a result of neuroplasticity. Neuroplasticity is usually a good thing; it’s how the mind adapts and heals. But psychedelics seem to induce a state of "hyper-plasticity," allowing the brain to make new connections rapidly. The current theory suggests that with my frequent use of psychedelics, my brain effectively "learned" the visual psychedelic state as a new default. It rewired the visual processing centers to be hyper-excitable, losing the ability to filter out the unnecessary "noise" that a normal brain ignores. It’s not that my eyes are broken or that I have brain damage; it’s that my visual cortex is running raw data without a filter. My brain sees it as a danger, amplifying it.
Amir Garakani
This is an interesting read supporting the neuroplasticity theory and mentioning HPPD.
In my research, I learned of many proposed ways to treat HPPD. Benzodiazepines are one, although obviously a terrible choice; I believe this shows a connection between HPPD and anxiety. There is also vision therapy, which seems very promising for me; I have an appointment coming up this month. Hopefully, that will go well; otherwise, I'm not sure of any "for sure" options. I've also read that migraine medicine can help, or even Lamictal, usually prescribed for seizures or bipolar disorder, though the side effects worry me somewhat.
I hope you've enjoyed my first blog post. I hope to continue for the foreseeable future.
