My HPPD has been REALLY scary!

First of all, I have been diagnosed with hallucinogen persisting perception disorder via my psychiatrist. I don't have any underlying mental conditions besides social anxiety and on and off depression.

I've had HPPD from mescaline, then as it was improving (I thought I only got it from being naive and mixing medications, hence tapering off my meds and taking more psychedelics) I got it from magic mushrooms. The mescaline-induced HPPD was terrifying but the worst of it was over in a week or two, leaving me with scary night-time symptoms (day time was normal albeit the odd floater) I learned to manage with no medical help.

My mushroom-induced HPPD begun at the very beginning of February this year. I'd taken DMT and aborted a bad mushroom trip with benzos prior. It was actually a microdose that set this off. This HPPD was so scary I couldn't function as a human being and I was put on clonidine and 4mg klonpin which only helped for 3 months before I was back in HPPD hell anyway. My mushroom-induced HPPD has slowly shown improvement over the past few months as I've discovered self-hate, insecurity and my upbringing etc has been escalating it. I still have really scary days around my period. I have just begun to very slowly taper the klonpin.

I wanted to list all of my symptoms from ALL of my HPPD, mescaline and mushroom-induced combined (some symptoms I no longer have, some I still have, a couple symptoms I think the klonpin is still blocking, some symptoms I got from both of the psychedelics combined and one or two have only happened a couple of times.) The purpose of this is for those who are truly suffering and only read about floaters and visual snow. Feel free to add any of the symptoms you've shared that I've listed or others that go beyond the basic ones commonly read. HPPD can be "stuck in a bad trip." It has been for me.

-I hallucinated my whole world rotting and decaying. The grass would just turn psychedelic/animated like I was in a trip, but the plants and trees blackened and wiltered outside. Black ink dripped from the cartoons on the TV. The walls began to decay. At the same time scary demonic images were flashing vividly in my mind's eye.

-I'd get this sinking feeling in my stomach and the trees outside would turn hideous and terrifying to look at.

-Every time I tried to sleep I was thrown into a tornado of visual and audio energy. I would wake up terrified and confused, thinking I'd never left my mescaline trip--that it had never ended.

-Pictures of people's pets on Facebook looked wrong. They didn't look cute. They looked eerie and weird. Not right.

-My partner looked like a corpse at night, my cat looked too large and my dog's face looked too long.

-I opened my eyes kissing my partner and his face became one black gaping hole.

-The grass, holes in the ground etc. It all seemed wrong and scary. So wrong. So ominous.

-Intense fear of inanimate objects. Eg. My brain was telling me to stay away from a fish food packet. I forced myself to approach it hoping it would curbe the dread and when I touched the packet my brain freaked and I involuntarily was thrown to the ground. I got fear of blenders, mirrors, road cones, heat packs etc.

-Food also looked very disturbing. It looked very creepy, yet I can't explain how. It was just so wrong. I was crying trying to eat a burger and then just gave up and lost my appetite entirely until I was put on benzos.

-Peripheral hallucinations (usually creepy hallucinations, not always).

-Severe pareidolia.

-Nature and the beach appeared forbidding. I felt like the world had died a vengeful death and been bought back to life 1000 years later only to never be the same again.

-Sharp, bright, highly saturated, bubbly 'mushroom vision'. My vision was stuck in a mushroom trip.

-Olfactory hallucinations.

-Gustatory hallucinations.

-Feeling myself turn into a creepy clown (visualizing it and 'knowing' psychologically that it's happening.

-Feeling myself turn into a blobby, hideous witch with painful physical sensations across my face.

-Sensing my animals rotting from the inside.

-DMT PTSD.

-Being made uneasy and also feeling repulsed by patterns, especially on animals.

-Derealization.

-Light beams in the dark.

-Scary closed-eye visuals.

-Random photographic memory.

-Sleep paralysis.

-Vivid psychedelic nightmares.

-Wavy air/patterns in the air after sleeping or when turning on the light/change of light.

-Waking up and seeing energy connecting everything in the room.

-I heard a loud static voice in the bathroom tell me something about the universe that I understood clearly at the time, then instantly forgot in my terror.

-I got thrown in a trance watching energy in an infinity sign showing me a message that I understood at the time, but when the message was over and I was no longer in the trance I was confused and trying to piece the message back together properly.

-A couple times hallucinating my cat, dog and boyfriend eerily distorted (minus the times when they changed at night which was from the mescaline).

-Waking up in the night, closing my eyes and watching a colourful movie/conscious dream (often turned ominous).

-Terrifying, vivid intrusive mental images when trying to sleep.

-Scary flashing images not in my mind's eye, nor in front of my eyes... incomprehensible. In between?

-Scary flashing images fleetingly flashing on the phone or TV screen.

-An eye emoticon that didn't exist on my phone constantly showing itself fleetingly.

-My mind playing creepy visual tricks on me until I view the picture or object up close.

-My mind reading a sentence in a sinister way the first time, then reading it correctly the second time.

-Words in messenger fleetingly dripping creepily like on Goosebumps.

-Looking in the mirror and not recognizing my reflection or it looking evil/creepy.

-People's faces morphing slightly.

-Red lines on the wall, licking a vitamin C sachet, seeing only half of my partner's body etc nearly sending me into a panic attack.

-Blood/gore even on cartoons sending me into an absolute panicked state.

-Floaters, including closed-eye floaters that morph and bleed.

-The sensation of being spun or shook with my eyes closed.

-Tinnitus.

-VERY MILD visual snow. I don't really count this as a symptom. I only notice it in some lights and only if I pay attention.

-Movement in my peripheral.

-Blinds/lined patterns appearing to move.

-Trailing

-Words dancing/bouncing out of/overlapping in a quote poster when I get up in the morning from change of lighting.