
Some people who take psychedelics continue hallucinating indefinitely - pelt
https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/09/11/lots-of-people-going-around-with-mild-hallucinations-all-the-time/
======
improv32
I'm the one who provided the third quoted anecdote in the article. What I
didn't mention was the HPPD coincided with a sort of
depersonalization/derealization effect. Basically I got very checked out from
my own life. I felt as if I was a spectator watching my life happen and I
didn't really feel any connection or agency towards anything coming into my
sensorium. It was a really weird and hard time for me. Those feelings as well
as the hallucinations came and went together for me. After about 1-2 years I
was completely back to normal. During that time I still microdosed
occasionally, but that didn't seem to have any effect on those symptoms either
way. I didn't have experience anything like that until I took pretty large
doses (>200ug). I was taking 100ug doses on a regular basis without having any
lasting effects, it appeared to me that the high doses came with the
aftereffects. I also didn't experience anything like that with psilocin
(mushrooms). I'm willing to answer any questions about my experience if anyone
has any

~~~
precisioncoder
Something I'm surprised hasn't come up yet is the ability to flex...
"something" in your brain and turn hallucinations on and off.

I grew up in a Buddhist family and was meditating since an early age. I'm not
sure if this was related at all but since I was young I could look at things
when I was bored and do something in my brain that would cause the patterns to
move. If I then needed to concentrate I could focus and it would go away.

I did some research and found out that there is a common effect with
meditators that they can meditate while on drugs in order to mitigate or in
some cases even deactivate some of the effects. So if you want to experiment
it might be good to learn a bit so you have an extra tool to work with your
mind while you're altering it.

YMMV of course.

~~~
theNJR
I didn’t realize this was a thing! I’m generally able to do this too,
especially when meditating. It started after trying psychedelics in college,
which probably ‘activated’ something in my brain that said “you can make the
carpet swirl”. It’s sort of like looking at a Magic Eye photo. I just tried to
do it now, but having just woke up, I don’t think I can concentrate enough to
do it.

How early did your parents start you on meditation?

~~~
precisioncoder
When you grow up in a buddhist family it's more like something that's always
there. My parents were heavy meditators (1 hour+/day) so I would often just
hang out with them. They probably half taught me a few dozen times when I was
young, it's a culture thing. Kinda like growing up a Christian household I'm
sure you accumulate random knowledge about the bible, god and jesus. When I
was older I went through some more official training but it was purely an
interest thing, they let me pick my own path. These days I meditate but I do
it in a purely secular non religious way.

~~~
theNJR
That’s really cool. Appreciate you sharing.

------
chubot
_So I wonder: psychedelics make you more likely to believe woo, and more
likely to have certain classes of visual hallucinations. But some people
believe woo without taking psychedelics, and some people have those same
visual hallucinations without taking psychedelics._

Interesting, I believe it and have always wondered about this. I think
people's sensory experiences vary wildly by nature, but we have no access to
them so can't really prove anything.

Some people are audiophiles, others foodies, others fashionistas, etc.

Your athletic ability can vary from Usain Bolt to completely uncoordinated;
some people have photographic memories (e.g. Lebron James apparently); some
people can factor large numbers in their heads (computation), or recite huge
strings of digits (non-episodic memory).

Some people are prediposed to like drugs and others don't. (e.g. reading a lot
of rock n' roll biographies it becomes apparent that the alcohol and heroin
addictions aren't randomly distributed; it's somewhat "innate")

It would be surprising if our sensory experiences did NOT vary widely.

This sounds silly and is totally unsubstantiated, but I always believed my
senses are "accurate". I told a friend in high school this and he said it was
stupid and impossible :)

\----

Although I can also conjure some low-level hallucinations when "looking at the
back of my eyelids" when falling asleep. I imagine that's pretty normal/common
since low light is sort of like sensory deprivation.

But they are very elaborate hallucations with all sorts of geometric forms and
motion. Elaborate but not intense, if that makes sense.

~~~
ianai
Iirc those symbols in your vision with your eyes closed aren’t hallucinations.
They’re reflective of the blood pressure and flow around your eye/eye lid.
Though I definitely have an ability to relax by paying attention to them. I
can’t offer a source for this though.

~~~
chubot
I think everybody has the blood flow thing.

But the degree to which they turn into "hallucinations" varies.

By that I mean very elaborate geometric shapes with a lot of motion and
rotation. Sort of like a Persian rug in 3D and 4D (time), with a lot of scale.
Fractals, etc.

I suspect there is some common physiological reason why people find fractals
"trippy" and say pictures of cars in traffic are not "trippy".

Drugs tickle your brain in a certain ways, but as the OP suggests, they're not
the only way your brain can be tickled like that. And some brains are more
predisposed to such hallucinations than others.

------
perl4ever
The article alludes to it, but understates how difficult it is to ask
questions about things similar to psychosis with no frame of reference.

For instance, it is possible to look at a person, see someone else, and be
kind of aware of the discrepancy, but not to experience as a _visual_
disturbance but more of a disturbance in the part of the mind that identifies
people. Upstream of the visual input, so to speak. But it's triggered by
seeing.

Or one can see something as being in motion, without actually seeing it move.
Like, things look normal, but seem to squirm. Again, the mind can separate
qualities which are normally inherently connected. Every aspect of physical
reality is interpreted by a module that can more or less go haywire
_separately_.

So when someone depicts by illustration what hallucination is like, that is a
subset, possibly a small subset of the possibilities, whether drug induced or
otherwise.

And there's also the limitations and unpredictability of memory. Who knows
whether the memories people have of hallucinations are complete or accurate?

~~~
drunken-serval
> For instance, it is possible to look at a person, see someone else, and be
> kind of aware of the discrepancy, but not to experience as a visual
> disturbance but more of a disturbance in the part of the mind that
> identifies people.

Yes. I've had a psychotic break and saw my hands as animal paws. At the same
time, some part of my brain was vaguely away something was very wrong and as a
result, I successfully hid these symptoms for 4 months until they cleared up.
For that time, I was an animal pretending to be human.

The memories from my animal self are as real as anything I've experienced as a
human. None of it feels abnormal to me.

This isn't just an experience I've had. I've talked to other people in my
support group who are bipolar or schizoaffective (bipolar type). They have
similar experiences.

My theory is, there's some part of the brain where reality and imagination
cross. In me, they merged for a time. So far, antipsychotics have kept this
from repeating.

~~~
kaybe
I'd love to hear more about your experience. What else was different from your
normal self?

~~~
drunken-serval
Let's see... I had a tail no one could see but I could feel it. I also the
life memories from the other person I was. It's like I've lived two lives.

It's easy to tell which memories are real because I'm human in the real ones.

I'll send you an email. The full story isn't something I want to go into here.

------
hppdthrowaway
Alright, I'll bite.

I developed HPPD in 2017, and I've been seeing unusual things for a bit over 2
years. The HPPD was triggered by dropping on the order of 1000-1400 micrograms
of LSD - and for context a reasonable dose was 50 micrograms. This was way too
much, and I fried for a few days. I'm not sure when I came down because HPPD
decided to show up and it took me a while to realize that the HPPD was, well,
persistent.

The effect is pretty minimal - I see faint geometric shapes in the sky, blank
walls, monochromatic screens, such like that. When I look at things like pine
trees or complex shapes the patterns vanish. The patterns are actually quite
pretty, though it gets irritating at times. It's hardly crippling, but maybe
I've gotten lucky.

A few months before I developed HPPD, I also developed tinnitus due to a
combination of incredibly severe stress, severe life-long depression, and a
doctor prescribed high dosage of Zoloft. I got my ears tested and I have
perfect hearing in my left and near perfect in my right, so this isn't
auditory damage. In contrast to HPPD, tinnitus can be crippling. Tinnitus is a
neurological condition so there's no limit on how bad it can get - and when it
gets so loud that you can't hear people over the tin, you get pretty
desperate.

With both HPPD and tinnitus, the only real treatment is to learn to not let it
get to you. As you become more stressed and anxious the symptoms worsen, so if
you fixate on it then you'll quite literally drive yourself mad.

HPPD is vaguely frustrating, but I know that it was my actions that caused
this. However I'm livid about the tinnitus because it was most likely a
legally prescribed drug with known side effects, and doctors hand out scripts
for that stuff like it's candy. It's easy to say "oh no, the psychedelics are
going to break our brains!" \- but doctors regularly prescribe ototoxic drugs,
SSRIs that are _incredibly_ habit forming and aren't effective in the long
run.

If you don't want HPPD, maybe take it easy on the drugs, but in the grand
scheme of thing there are numerous medical practices that are dramatically
more damaging than seeing some mildly weird shit.

Happy to answer questions if that would help anyone here.

~~~
Zod666
I have never heard Tinnitus described as a neurological condition. I had
pretty bad Tinnitus as a result of a jaw injury. It has gradually faded but it
made sleeping difficult for a very long time.

~~~
hppdthrowaway
I'm on the run so can't respond in depth, but check out ototoxic drugs which
attack the auditory nerve. SSRIs may not be directly ototoxic but numerous
studies have shown that sertraline can cause tinnitus, due to the role that
serotonin plays in filtering audio signals. So there are multiple causes of
tinnitus, and the impact of SSRIs is partially known but not fully understood.

~~~
osullivj
Seconding you're point on SSRIs. I'm currently reading Ed Bullmore's Inflamed
Mind, and he makes the point forcefully that there's no way of measuring SSRI
levels in regular clinical practice, they way blood pressue, cholosterol or
white/red blood cell levels are tested.

------
dvt
I have _always_ steered clear of psychedelics. I know some people are super
into legalization, but I wager it's a bit irresponsible considering we barely
understand their long (and short, for that matter) -term effects. There's some
evidence where psychedelics (particularly LSD) may have triggered
schizophrenia in some patients[1].

Musician Daniel Johnston (he passed away a few months ago) is a notable case.

[1]
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6870484](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6870484)

~~~
wavefunction
Latent schizophrenics shouldn't take psychoactive drugs of any kind.
Schizophrenics (like other people suffering from mental illness) are prone to
self-medicate as well though. And the evidence that someone prone to
schizophrenia who develops it because of drug use but wouldn't have otherwise
developed schizophrenia is scant or non-existent.

~~~
diminoten
According to the article, it's not just schizophrenics, it's literally
everyone who is at risk.

Legalization would be highly irresponsible until we understand why.

~~~
kick
He used "latent" for that reason.

------
es-hn
I’ve used LSD and psilocybin, though not for many years, and have had minor,
infrequent, non-disruptive hallucinations.

They usually consist of momentary visual deformations of repeating patterns,
e.g., tiles on a BART platform will appear to shift or move. These visual
variances are a small taste of a full-on trip, in which _everything_ can
shift, move, or dance.

It’s nice to see others have shared this experience.

Related: Psychedelics caused me to have a _permanent_ , positive attitude
adjustment. I recommend them highly.

~~~
tempsy
Counterpoint: The YouTube engineer who, over the summer, took LSD and went on
a stabbing rampage.

[https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/davidmack/youtube-
engin...](https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/davidmack/youtube-engineer-lsd-
rampage-arrested)

~~~
sova
That's probably more related to working for YouTube where the comments are
absolute vitriol. Actually reading this article this person was clearly not
mentally equipped for a trip, ended up taking 2 additional doses after already
"becoming delusional" and then going on a rampage when his friends tried to
get him to stop. All because they rented a house on the fourth of July and
thought what better thing to use to party with loud explosions than the most
introspective and revelatory substance ever discovered by mankind. What? How
about a little respect for the aperture in the navel of the Universe? I
wouldn't chug a liter of Ayahuasca and go mow the lawn, what sort of world do
people think this is? No consequences is the lie that got us here if you ask
me. Of course there are consequences. Nurture altruistic intentions.

~~~
blotter_paper
My worst trip (which I still don't regret) was when I took a strip of acid,
and then a friend who was 4 tabs in pulled out some tannerite that he hadn't
mentioned beforehand and started shooting at exploding targets. I was totally
lost in the swirl of drugs, vaguely aware of the explosions and worrying about
the safety of my friends. I think I could've handled it a lot better if I had
known about the exploding targets before the entheogens kicked in, but still,
the 4th of July probably isn't the best time for those particular drugs :/

~~~
kaybe
Most kinds of drugs, really. Alcohol and explosives are a legal but often
unfortunate combination.

------
empath75
I’ve always thought of this as more of an anxiety attack and possibly a bit of
PTSD from what is often an incredibly powerful and upsetting experience.

I think most people experience minor visual disturbances or have what can be
loosely defined as ‘trippy’ experiences from time to time and just ignore them
or compensate for them, but imagine having recently had a tremendously
upsetting experience that began with similar sensations and how that could
tweak someone’s anxiety so that they hyper focus and worry about it to the
point that it becomes a serious issue for them.

------
throwaway8732
I kind of got this after a heavy meditation session 6 months ago after reading
Mindfulness in Plain English and listening to Om (the band.) Never seriously
meditated before but after that I became pretty good at meditation and so
depending on my mood and whether I meditated in the morning I slip into a
meditative state right away when concentrating and see pretty small perceptual
abnormalities.

I was seriously ready to kill myself back then so pretty small tradeoff.

------
shawnz
> Third, it talks about HPPD-like visual hallucinations in people who have
> never taken psychedelic drugs. It says many people have them. [...] My only
> argument that this doesn’t disprove HPPD is how many people – including my
> survey respondents – describe these oddities starting (or getting much
> worse) right after they use psychedelics.

This is what I believe, and I think there's a simple reason why people often
report the symptoms getting worse after taking psychedelics. They are more
noticeable once you've seen the full-blown effects of the drug in comparison.
Prior to that, you wouldn't have any reason to pick out those hallucinations
and might unconsciously ignore them. But once you've seen the full effect then
even mild instances are too obvious to ignore.

------
slfnflctd
Around the mid 1990s I hung out with a few ravers and hippies (different
music, similar overall vibe), and several told me they'd done so much acid
that they tripped all the time.

I had chalked it up to either exaggeration or the awakened latent
schizophrenia thing until now, but maybe there was more to it. Apparently the
relevant subreddit has existed for 11 years! I feel out of the loop, but I'm
super glad these conversations are happening. As others have pointed out, we
could have been so much further along in research on this stuff if it wasn't
for the boneheaded War On Drugs.

------
regecks
If you want to scare yourself off psychedelics for life, /r/hppd has some
pretty horrifying posts from people reaching out for help. I am grateful that
my own extremely minor experience with similar symptoms taught me to stay
clear.

------
almost_usual
I’ve done a bit of psilocybin over my life. The only permanent hallucinatory
change I’ve experienced is “seeing stars” occasionally (maybe once a year). I
distinctly remember the first time it happened while on mushrooms.

I had shorter semi-permanent hallucinations when I was taking them the most.
Breathing walls, halos around lights, etc. All of those effects tended to go
away once I stopped.

A stranger permanent change has been my unconscious or dream state. I’ve had
full blown psychedelic dreams on occasion since taking psilocybin. Those
dreams happen maybe once a year.

For context my peak usage was nearly 20 years ago and I used to do quite a
bit. Much more than what I’ve heard as ‘common’ nowadays.

------
thrower123
I'll admit it is rather weak sauce, but the one time I smoked salvia was
enough to put me off psychadelics forever. The entire room that I was in
morphed into a Roadrunner and Coyote canyonland for about five minutes, just
as Chuck Jones would have it drawn up. No desire to repeat that kind of
disassociation from reality.

~~~
empath75
Salvia is not weak sauce and is something that very few people enjoy compared
to LSD and mushrooms.

~~~
zamalek
That depends on how it is used. Smoking raw and untreated leaves provides a
very minor and brief high. A tea (the traditional technique), or
treated/fortified leaves, is where it becomes potent.

The parent commenter likely used fortified leaves given that they had such a
distressful experience.

------
llamataboot
I've gone through multiple periods of doing lots of LSD in my life. In my
senior year of high school I probably tripped once a week with anywhere from
1-4+ hits, while also smoking pot every day.

After about 3 months I had developed perma-tracers (I could draw shapes in the
air with a lit cigarette), after about 6 months I saw after-images at night,
usually while driving. (For example, a ghostly day-glow purple stop sign
behind the actual stop sign). It wasn't enough to be actually disruptive to my
life, besides the slight anxiety about it.

At about 9 months I developed a stutter which increased in frequency over the
next few months, until it was an actual speech impediment. I stopped smoking
pot and decreased my LSD use to a few times a year and it all went away within
6-9 months and never came back. It has never come back with LSD use, but it
/did/ come back during a year in my 30s where I smoked a lot of pot and used
no psycehdelics, so take that anecdata as you will.

These days I notice that if I do LSD more than about 4 times within 1 month,
I'll develop some tracers and visual distortions that persist very slightly
when sober, and more persistently when only stoned on pot. Tiled bathrooms
breathe a little, lights sparkle and shimmer. But it always resolves within
about a month of abstinence and has never caused me any trouble.

There are no (as far as I can tell) cognitive distortions or anything else
while sober, and the visual distortions range from mildly amusing to slightly
alarming. I've had tons of panic attacks (unrelated in my life) but none of
them had the quality of any sort of "flashback", just plain old anxiety.

There has been a little bit (but not a ton) of research done on HPPD, and
bluelight and other harm reduction forums had good discussions with those
dealing with it for many years. For many (most) people it resolves on its own.

My completely out of my ass theory is that it basically works like water
making a groove in dirt in that some neural pathways get overly "primed" to
fire and fall into a habitual pathway.

/Most/ people I know that have either experimented heavily with LSD /or/ with
intensive meditation have reported some sort of visual or auditory after
effects that persist while sober and resolve on their own, but most people
I've talked to haven't been too bothered by it.

That's not to discount the people that have experienced disruption to their
life from HPPD, but this definitely seems to be the exception to the rule of
either not having any persisting effects or not finding them that bothersome.

edit: typos

------
largespoon
I took lsd for the first time two weeks ago and sometimes when I zone out,
geometric patterns like carpet appears to morph. I'm not really good at
understanding my own thought process, so I can't really tell if it affects me
in other areas. From my extremely limited experience however, I would warn
against casually taking any psychedelics. For me at least it was a needless
experience, with needless aftereffects.

~~~
NetOpWibby
I've been interested in taking a guided "tour" into DMT but uhh, maybe not
now.

~~~
largespoon
I recommend asking yourself if an idiot would do what you are going to do. Do
the opposite. I took lsd by myself, with no one home at 5pm. And only while
the effects started to take place did I begin researching the effects. I did
not know that you can't sleep when on acid for instance. So maybe don't listen
to me. I'm also not so hot mentally, so take what I say with a grain of salt.

~~~
mdhen
You essentially did everything wrong. I'm a bit amazed actually.

~~~
Zod666
I'm sorry but that is funny.

Checklist for a first badtrip.

1) be alone. 2) take it too late to sleep at a reasonable hour. 3) start
researching only after taking it.

~~~
filoleg
Point (3) specifically is easily the worst, because you start researching
after you get anxious, and what you find will make you even more anxious,
because if you are looking for potential side effects and issues, that's
exactly what you are going to find. The positive feedback loop with this one
is pretty bad.

~~~
largespoon
I also did point (4). I talked to my grandma on the phone. I called her an
hour before I took it, but she called back an hour after I took it. The
surprising thing is that I actually didn't have a bad trip. It was just pretty
meh after I tried everything in the vicinity.

------
bafflingworld
I take psychedelics once or twice a year, and sometimes I just have these
weird moments where, for example, I'll look at a door and go "What the hell is
that? We all walk through portals every day!" I think they bring out a sense
of wonder in the mundane, which can be amazing but also occasionally
disconcerting.

------
elessdee
I have this. It used to freak me out sometimes (am I tripping?), but I have
grown to accept it, even find fun in it. It's been 5 years since I last took a
hallucinogen.

One scary thing about this is that I worry my emotions are permanently changed
too, but I just don't notice it as much. Visual's lasting effects are very
clear to me because I see them. Emotions are so complicated that I will never
know how it permanently affected me. I am definitely a different person from
before I started taking them.

------
throwawayitall
I sustained pretty severe HPPD after taking LSD and drinking alcohol at the
same time. I had taken a number of hallucinogens before that time. It took two
years and went away. I still have tinnitus, however.

I took a 300mg MDMA pill 2 years ago (on accident - I didn't realize pills
were this strong - and had no experience with MDMA prior to that), and have
permanent low-level anxiety at all times now. The quality of my life has been
reduced like 30%.

~~~
mikelyons
Strangely enough, a friend of mine who I tripped with in Thailand said that
his lifelong tinnitus went away from the mushrooms we took. /anecdote

------
cwkoss
For people interested in experiencing closed eye visuals without drugs, try
sitting in a dark room with eyes closed facing a strobe light. ~3-10 Hz seems
most effective.

(Should go without saying, but this is not recommend for epileptics)

The vague regular input to the whole eye causes your brain to look for
patterns in the noise. Tested this on several friends and they all start
seeing geometric fractal-ish patterns within 60 seconds.

I've been hoping someone would manufacture affordable "strobe glasses" with a
bunch of white leds that pulse at a rate adjustable with a simple knob, but
I've looked for years and all of the options I've seen have been pretty pricey
and include features of questionable utility. Seems like they could be made
for ~$20 if there was enough of a market to make them at scale. I think they
would be great for meditation.

(See
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_machine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_machine)
for more info. The turntable-driven Dream Machine was a particularly cool
design)

------
mikorym
The one thing that that picture of HPPD does not adequately explain is time.
In my opinion you should think of the (distorted) square as a superposition of
the total time spent, not a snapshot.

Another thing to mention for (some?) people with some sort of psychoactive or
hallucinatory experience is that "real" things can complicate matters. An
example: If you wear glasses with coloured reflections and are not used to it,
then it can compound your paranoia about the _other_ things that are "not
real" that you are seeing. A similar thing about streetlights: Foggy or misty
nights already do funny things to the lights and you can overexaggerate this
effect by confusing real and not real things.

One should be careful about these things. In my case I had these kind of
experiences at university and without psychoactive substances. Doing abstract
mathematics certainly can complicate matters, but it is not a prerequisite.
Also, crazy people may be crazy, but often their fears are logical in the
sense that you can't really disprove them. I mean, how do you really prove to
someone that they were not kidnapped by aliens? In the end you just need to
show the value of Occam's Razor in your own life.

I think the best case scenario is maybe analogous to eventually writing an
interesting movie (I think the _Twilight Zone_ was inspired by such
experiences) and NOT getting to some super hyper special plane of existence. I
do also think that the creative cycle has both a logical and an illogical
component. The latter is like training the model, where you cycle through
senseless things with funny connections until the logical part takes over and
makes it concrete. It's like the difference between "OMG what is this weird
static electricity thing OMG it's so weird" (which is a fair observation) and
going to "So, what we can say about electricity is that x, y and z. And this
is how to build a circuit."

------
whiddershins
I’m just not sure whether or not some of the things I see were always there,
and I just didn’t notice, or just didn’t care.

Like, for example, blurred after images (“trails”) when I wave my hands
around.

I see them all the time. I’m just not sure they are new. I suspect I
experienced that visual effect prior to doing psychedelics, then when on
psychedelics they looked really cool and “trippy” and now I’m just conscious
of it as a result of that.

Or else permanent low grade hallucinations.

But it really doesn’t seem so.

I see patterns in the dark visual space that occurs when my eyes are closed.
Pretty sure everyone will see something - subtle colors, moving shapes, etc if
they stare at the backs of their eyelids for a bit. But you don’t really
notice unless you deliberately pay attention to it while meditating, or while
on some drug, or even feverish, or go into or out of sleep, or whatever.

I wonder if it’s all just a matter of taking common and inevitable visual
distortions a little too seriously.

~~~
afiori
> I see patterns in the dark visual space that occurs when my eyes are closed.

I never took any psychedelics, but also experience this; it can get a bit
trippy sometimes when they coalesce into shapes or patterns.

------
Schiphol
> mild hallucinations like seeing a flower growing on a person’s face or
> seeing the legs of a chair walk

Wow, I would have said those are rather substantial hallucinations.

------
wdroz
I read a lot of comments about people recommending the use of psychedelics. I
don't understand why some people with a healthy mind are so eager to alter
(often definitively) their precious mind/self/brain.

------
npo9
> Hallucinogen Persisting Perceptual Disorder is a condition marked by visual
> or other perceptual disturbances typical of psychedelic use that continue
> for weeks and months after coming off the psychedelic, in some cases
> permanently. Have you ever had this condition?

‘Visual or other perceptual disturbances’ is very different than
hallucinating.

HPPD is probably real, but also probably not a big deal for most people. It
most likely just results at staring at empty space a bit more from time to
time when something odd pops up.

There are bigger risks with psychedelics such as trigger an underlying mental
condition or suffering emotional trauma (‘bad trip’).

------
yohsii
after drinking ayahuasca a couple of times in large quantities and meditating
full time (16 hours a day on average) for a year i also see things. it's not a
hallucination though, i'm certain this energy is really there. it doesn't
bother me and i hold down a job as a software engineer despite the funky
visuals. i also find myself playing with this energy at times. for anybody
else with this issue, hopefully you'll just get used to it like i have

~~~
aphextim
One thing that stuck with me is how when you do mushrooms or LSD, everyone
experiences their own personal trip so to say.

Ayahuasca on the other hand, although I don't have any personal experience
with, I have heard accounts of groups of people experiencing the same
visualizations/hallucinations which to me seems pretty trippy!

~~~
yohsii
i'd say an ayahuasca trip is also deeply personal and personal issues will
come to the surface like any unresolved issues from the past. there are
commonalities experienced too though, like experiencing death (ego death),
meeting with/becoming god if you're lucky and a deep feeling of love. it can
also be terrifying at times but overall my first ayahuasca experience was the
most profound experience of my life and an amazing exploration of
consciousness.

------
h43z
I think it's no question that psychedelics are mind opening. But maybe a
psychosis is something that happens to an open mind too. Personally I
explained some mildly strange visual effects/thoughts (long after my acid
trips) to the fact that I know what's possible to happen with my mind and my
mind knows it too. And only for that reason that weird place is just a another
new option now. If I wouldn't have experienced them, my mind may never come up
with them.

~~~
scottlocklin
>I think it's no question that psychedelics are mind opening.

Having used more than my share: there's plenty of question that psychedelics
are mind opening. Just because something feels profound doesn't mean it is.
People in the 1800s used to think nitrous and ether sniffing was profound.

You'd think after all these years of people experiencing profundity there
would be some great work of art or philosophy that people are able to take
back to reality from their drug experiences, but as far as I can tell it's
just burn out "trippin balls" stories, people losing their minds in various
unedifying ways, and weirdos like Kerry Mullis talking to aliens.

~~~
h43z
Isn't there some great deal of art coming from psychedelic experiences. Many
bands of the sixties and seventies or art of Alex Grey. Shamans had an very
important role in groups and tribes for a long time. Religious revelations
could have been results of altered states of consciousness (eg moses 10
commandments).

On a more personal and emotional note I always had the feeling when tripping
of great profundity but being unable to take the wisdom to the other side. I
guess I would make be a bad shaman.

~~~
scottlocklin
Yeah, that's kind of my point. Alex Gray and Deep Purple aren't exactly
Vermeer and Mozart.

If psychedelics are all that profound, rather than just a drug producing
chemical simulacrums of profundity, you'd have better examples than these.

~~~
h43z
Aren't they in a way the Mozarts of their time? I'm not sure what you expect
and demand of psychedelics. When will be something profound enough for you?
For many it was and is.

~~~
scottlocklin
>Aren't they in a way the Mozarts of their time?

Absolutely not. Avro Part and György Ligeti are the Mozarts of their time. And
they were very, very far from being Mozart.

I expect and demand that drugs which people tout as some amazing breakthrough
in human consciousness demonstrate something beyond "I thought it was cool."
If something you can buy for $4 in pill form really creates higher states of
consciousness, and the words "higher states of consciousness" actually means
something, you'd expect there to be 1000 Mozarts by now, rather than ...
dipshits saying Iron Butterfly's drum solo is, like, totally cool man.

~~~
h43z
It's all very subjective what you state.

------
agota
I have heard several people with massive audiences discussing positive effects
of psychedelics.

However, I don't recall any of them discussing potential negative side
effects, except for briefly mentioning a possibility of having a bad trip that
might cause PTSD.

It would be great if they would mention that there's a possibility of
permanently altering your perception, to the point of seeing severe
hallucinations for the rest of your life.

I'd also like to see them discuss the risk of inducing an onset of
schizophrenia that someone mentioned in this thread.

Sure, maybe people who developed schizophrenia after taking psychedelics were
predisposed to it already, but what if they could have avoided an onset if
they had not taken the drugs? Wouldn't it make sense to warn people about
this?

It just seems extremely irresponsible to talk about the potential positive
effects without addressing the potential negative effects.

Especially considering that the main potential positive effect, resolving
psychological issues that the person isn't able to resolve on their own, is
likely to appeal to people who I'd guess are at a higher risk of the potential
negative side effects due to already being mentally unstable.

------
_Microft
Somewhere I read the theory that persisting trips might be a _learned_ thing.
Very simplified example: everyday experience makes us convinced that walls can
not warp. The experience during a trip might show one otherwise. Now the brain
can accept the concept of warping walls in even in everyday life.

A very quick search did not turn up anything useful. Anyone knows what theory
I am talking about?

~~~
_Microft
It might have been in the comment section of
[https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/06/06/hppd-and-the-
specter-o...](https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/06/06/hppd-and-the-specter-of-
permanent-side-effects/)

------
golergka
Psychedelics effect is very dependent on your mind state. I would never advise
psychedelics to someone who's not stable, or predisposed to schyzophrenia, or
in general to anyone under 25 - but for me personally, using LSD and shrooms
have had very significant and long-lasting positive effects on my life.

I do see patterns sometimes, and one time when I was posing for a artist and
have stared at the same trees outside the apartment for 3 hours straight, I
have gone into a very heavy trip state, but it's never disrupted my life in
any way. The key is, every time I saw hallucinations unders psychedelics (or
without) I could easily "feel" my imagination creating them, and just allowed
it. Now I'm so used to the tripping state that I even take LSD when I go out
clubbing and dancing - I've stopped taking all other "club culture" drugs
(alcohol, cocaine, MDMA, mephedrone) because of their health effects, and LSD
has very gentle stimulating effect, and you don't have any kind of hangover
afterwards.

------
newnewpdro
Having experienced both microdoses and full blown hallucinatory trip doses,
I've arrived at the conclusion that hallucinatory doses are arguably overdoses
of these substances.

They're both active and useful at micro dose levels, I highly doubt anyone has
ever experienced HPPD from a psilocybin microdose in their breakfast smoothy.

As with any powerful drug, dosage matters more than anything.

------
grawprog
Ever since I did LSD I see strange ripples sometimes when I watch moving
water. I ended up coming down watching the waves as the tide came in. Every
time a wave crashed the water would ripple strangely in all directions. I
don't know really how else to describe it, but it's been years now and it'll
still happen. Not always, but still sometimes.

------
ngold
Ate a couple tabs a day for a couple months in high school. It will stick for
a couple years. When I say stick. If you look at wallpaper, it would slightly
swirl.

Take everything said about these thing with a massive grain of salt. The
entire point is exploring how you are an individual from the rest of a time
churning universe.

~~~
blotter_paper
I'm tempted to do some unpublished science with a sample size of one on that.
Given the ridiculously rapid tolerance one builds to LSD, I'm a bit skeptical
and taking the claim with the grain of salt you prescribed ;)

Assuming good faith, do you regret eating all that acid?

------
BryantD
I'm not sure you can draw that kind of conclusion from a survey administered
to a self-selected group of people, and I'm pretty sure that talking about it
like that to the group of people who will be filling out the next survey will
tend to shape the responses. Interesting topic, though.

------
towaway
Really interesting to see this on HN!

I got HPD from a fairly large dose of 4FA once. I had persisting light
sparkles pretty much exactly like the first image in the article.

I researched online and discovered the term HPPD but information was extremely
sparse then. I see there's a fair amount more now which is encouraging.

From the advice I found I got myself some Lion's Mane supplement, meditated
and exercised a few times a week. A few weeks later I just kind of forgot
about it and noticed one day that the HPPD had disappeared.

The effect wasn't hugely detrimental on a practical level, but it was very
strange coming to terms with the fact that this may well be a permanent
change.

------
mikelyons
Some people have "Profound Life-changing spiritual experiences" and it would
be nice if those stuck around for longer than the week or two afterward. IME
they seem to fade as you get wound back up in the culture and everyday grind.

~~~
alexanderthe-
IME, this.. however, not everyone who experiments with psychedelics is
fortunate enough to experience them. I know it's cliché, but integration is
key. Our work is here, so you have to make use of those lessons as best you
can.

------
mikedilger
Perhaps similar (I had this for months):
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mal_de_debarquement](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mal_de_debarquement)

------
anythingnonidin
Dang, perhaps change the title on this to reflect the title of the post? That
said, HPPD is an important topic.

> Otherwise please use the original title, unless it is misleading or
> linkbait; don't editorialize.

------
joshspankit
As I don’t have a direct contact for the author, I’m noting here that I added
this to a Kialo argument about differences in human experience:
[https://www.kialo.com/some-people-may-be-experiencing-a-
perm...](https://www.kialo.com/some-people-may-be-experiencing-a-permanent-or-
long-term-alteration-of-their-senses-due-to-psychedelics--
30317.60?path=30317.0~30317.1_30317.60)

------
PaulHoule
I thought that there was just one clinic that had most of the HPPD cases and
that was in Israel and specialized in giving people a way to get out of the
IDF.

------
olivermarks
Limmy ...still
trippin'....[https://youtu.be/BHbZD68SGoE](https://youtu.be/BHbZD68SGoE)

------
0x8BADF00D
> A Reddit user helpfully illustrated what his (particularly severe) HPPD
> looked like (note especially the subtle square grid in left picture):

I have always seen artifacts around light, even before psychedelic use.
Ordinary things would have an aura. This is probably due to how visual
information is processed by your optic nerve.

~~~
NamTaf
Astigmatism can potentially contribute significantly to that, depending on the
pattern seen. Mine causes it and it's particularly noticeable at night with
street lights.

~~~
0x8BADF00D
That definitely could explain it. Having taken LSD a few times in my life, I
sometimes wake up and see form constants and tracers. But it’s only
immediately after waking; then it disappears. This too is a rare occurrence,
maybe once every 100 days or so.

------
makz
Anyone sees halos or starbursts around lights? I've developed that and a bit
of visual snow. It freaked me out in the beginning, but now it's like meh.
Vision is fine, I had it checked.

------
finnmagic
That’s a terriblY misleading headline. Did you even read the article?

------
lawlessone
>Many people reported that if they stared at a textured area like a carpet
long enough, illusory geometric patterns would start to form.

I have always had this, is this not normal?

------
Agebor
This sounds quite in tune with some of Daniel Dennett's ideas also, especially
from 'Consciousness Explained'.

The gist is that our consciousness is only, and all, that we can say, or in
any other way act on the world. So if people really believe in the things they
say, those things must be quite real to them.

And perhaps visual hallucination come from some incomplete separation of the
'inner' visual loop - thoughts, memories - from the outside visual
information.

------
rolph
psychedelics are not toys.

neural systems are prone to hysterisis. past experiential history modulates
present response. It Is Possible To entrain your wetware to respond in very
inconvenient ways, if you delve to deeply[HPPD]

------
doggydogs94
Now I know there is a name (HPPD) for this.

------
womitt
Free rounds!

