Recent from talks
Knowledge base stats:
Talk channels stats:
Members stats:
Hallucinogen persisting perception disorder
Hallucinogen persisting perception disorder (HPPD) is a non-psychotic disorder in which a person experiences lasting or persistent visual hallucinations or perceptual distortions after using drugs. This includes after psychedelics, dissociatives, entactogens, tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), and SSRIs. Despite being a hallucinogen-specific disorder, the specific contributory role of psychedelic drugs is unknown.
Symptoms may include visual snow, trails and after images (palinopsia), light fractals on flat surfaces, intensified colors, altered motion perception, pareidolia, micropsia, and macropsia. Floaters and visual snow may occur in other conditions.
For the diagnosis, other psychological, psychiatric, and neurological conditions must be ruled out and it must cause distress in everyday life. In the DSM-5 it is diagnostic code 292.89 (F16.983). In the ICD-10, the diagnosis code F16.7 corresponds most closely. It is rarely recognized by hallucinogen users and psychiatrists, and is often misdiagnosed as a substance-induced psychosis.
It is divided into two types HPPD I and HPPD II. The more drastic cases, as seen in HPPD II, are believed to be caused by the use of psychedelics as well as associated mental disorders. Some people report symptoms after their first use of drugs (most notably LSD). There is little information on effective treatments.
The underlying mechanisms are not well understood. One hypothesis suggests that anxiety may amplify existing visual disturbances and potentially trigger these visual phenomena. Many report that their visual distortions become more pronounced or even emerge during periods of heightened anxiety or stress.
Typical symptoms of the disorder include halos or auras surrounding objects, trails following objects in motion, difficulty distinguishing between colors, apparent shifts in the hue of a given item, the illusion of movement in a static setting, visual snow, distortions in the dimensions of a perceived object, intensified hypnagogic and hypnopompic hallucinations, monocular double vision, seeing an excessive amount of eye floaters, the morphing of multiple objects into one texture, and blue field entoptic phenomenon. The visual alterations experienced by those with HPPD are not homogeneous and there appear to be individual differences in both the number and intensity of symptoms.
Visual aberrations can occur periodically in healthy individuals – e.g., afterimages after staring at a light, noticing floaters inside the eye, blue field entoptic phenomenon or seeing specks of light in a darkened room. However, in people with HPPD, symptoms seem typically to be worse, but complication comes from the additional roles played by anxiety and fixation. Indeed, anxiety has been implicated in visual perceptual effects similar to HPPD, and authors have recognized the crucial role of attending to underlying anxiety and panic in recovering from the disorder.
There is some uncertainty about to what degree visual snow constitutes a true HPPD symptom. There are individuals who have never used a drug which could have caused the onset, but yet experience the same grainy vision reported by those with HPPD, like people with the closely-linked neurological disorder known as visual snow syndrome. There are a few potential reasons for this, the most obvious of which being the theory that the drug usage may exaggerate the intensity of visual snow. At the same time, beyond the characteristic visual snow symptom, there is considerable overlap between the conditions, including after-images, palinopsia, tinnitus, dissociation and free-floating anxiety, leading some to suggest that HPPD shares a strong relationship with visual snow syndrome. Visual snow syndrome is defined as lacking any known cause and is specifically distinguished from HPPD in its nosology, yet further research may clarify the relationship. HPPD usually has a visual manifestation, but some hallucinogenic and psychiatric drugs affect the auditory sense and can produce tinnitus-like symptoms as a side effect, and there are many anecdotal reports of people getting tinnitus with their HPPD.[citation needed]
Hub AI
Hallucinogen persisting perception disorder AI simulator
(@Hallucinogen persisting perception disorder_simulator)
Hallucinogen persisting perception disorder
Hallucinogen persisting perception disorder (HPPD) is a non-psychotic disorder in which a person experiences lasting or persistent visual hallucinations or perceptual distortions after using drugs. This includes after psychedelics, dissociatives, entactogens, tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), and SSRIs. Despite being a hallucinogen-specific disorder, the specific contributory role of psychedelic drugs is unknown.
Symptoms may include visual snow, trails and after images (palinopsia), light fractals on flat surfaces, intensified colors, altered motion perception, pareidolia, micropsia, and macropsia. Floaters and visual snow may occur in other conditions.
For the diagnosis, other psychological, psychiatric, and neurological conditions must be ruled out and it must cause distress in everyday life. In the DSM-5 it is diagnostic code 292.89 (F16.983). In the ICD-10, the diagnosis code F16.7 corresponds most closely. It is rarely recognized by hallucinogen users and psychiatrists, and is often misdiagnosed as a substance-induced psychosis.
It is divided into two types HPPD I and HPPD II. The more drastic cases, as seen in HPPD II, are believed to be caused by the use of psychedelics as well as associated mental disorders. Some people report symptoms after their first use of drugs (most notably LSD). There is little information on effective treatments.
The underlying mechanisms are not well understood. One hypothesis suggests that anxiety may amplify existing visual disturbances and potentially trigger these visual phenomena. Many report that their visual distortions become more pronounced or even emerge during periods of heightened anxiety or stress.
Typical symptoms of the disorder include halos or auras surrounding objects, trails following objects in motion, difficulty distinguishing between colors, apparent shifts in the hue of a given item, the illusion of movement in a static setting, visual snow, distortions in the dimensions of a perceived object, intensified hypnagogic and hypnopompic hallucinations, monocular double vision, seeing an excessive amount of eye floaters, the morphing of multiple objects into one texture, and blue field entoptic phenomenon. The visual alterations experienced by those with HPPD are not homogeneous and there appear to be individual differences in both the number and intensity of symptoms.
Visual aberrations can occur periodically in healthy individuals – e.g., afterimages after staring at a light, noticing floaters inside the eye, blue field entoptic phenomenon or seeing specks of light in a darkened room. However, in people with HPPD, symptoms seem typically to be worse, but complication comes from the additional roles played by anxiety and fixation. Indeed, anxiety has been implicated in visual perceptual effects similar to HPPD, and authors have recognized the crucial role of attending to underlying anxiety and panic in recovering from the disorder.
There is some uncertainty about to what degree visual snow constitutes a true HPPD symptom. There are individuals who have never used a drug which could have caused the onset, but yet experience the same grainy vision reported by those with HPPD, like people with the closely-linked neurological disorder known as visual snow syndrome. There are a few potential reasons for this, the most obvious of which being the theory that the drug usage may exaggerate the intensity of visual snow. At the same time, beyond the characteristic visual snow symptom, there is considerable overlap between the conditions, including after-images, palinopsia, tinnitus, dissociation and free-floating anxiety, leading some to suggest that HPPD shares a strong relationship with visual snow syndrome. Visual snow syndrome is defined as lacking any known cause and is specifically distinguished from HPPD in its nosology, yet further research may clarify the relationship. HPPD usually has a visual manifestation, but some hallucinogenic and psychiatric drugs affect the auditory sense and can produce tinnitus-like symptoms as a side effect, and there are many anecdotal reports of people getting tinnitus with their HPPD.[citation needed]