Can it?

Asking for a friend haha ha ha

I don't think so.

I think cognitive behavioral therapy is probably most effective here.

I have no experience with HPPD myself, but i wonder if it is real. Maybe psychedelics simply make you more aware of how your own mind works. Maybe people with HPPD have merely become aware of a way of perceiving things, that has always been there.

If that is the case, all they have to do is to learn is not to be affraid of it.

I think that is a brave but true insight. Thank you.

It is very real!!!

There's also quite some scientific work about it, but it's still not fully understood.

IMHO it's probably several different effects contributing. E.g. a study has shown, that for some percentage of people HPPD gets significantly less if dopa levels get increased.

I also have HPPD, and it is really like that for me: If I take a strong dopa stim, the HPPD immediately stops, but after the stim effects are over, I get a stronger HPPD for some time (maybe depleted dopa levels?).

I personally think that usually the brain has several "awareness filters", and somehow you can "unlearn"/disable them (on psychedelics, but probably also otherwise).

E.g. the typical tracers of HPPD: That's actually basically how the eye delivers the data (as I saw once in a scientific documentation about research of artificial retinas for people who got blind)! But the brain has learnt to compensate and hide this, so that you're not aware of this sensory limitation of your retina regarding fast contrast changes, and get the picture as reality really looks like.

Also the sensor noise of the eye is not insignificant, but it seems the brain has learnt to hide it from you. But on HPPD you get the unfiltered "visual noise". IMHO simply a filter has been removed.

But these filters are very helpful in your daily life, that's why they are there. And lacking them is mostly an impairment, IMHO.

Again these personal derivations are just my POV. That's what it seems to me, from my personal experience...just a guess...

Lol, I once had the theory, that psychedelics switch many such filters off. And if you then consciously get aware of them, and even find them disabled very fascinating, that the brain then basically concludes you like this version better, and switches off the filter.

So I wouldn't give too much credit on my guesses...

I have this as well, but i can switch it off. Or actually the other way round: if i want to i can see tracers. Or what i even like more: i can make objects "breathe in and out" by focussing my eyes. I just use the memories i have of psychedelic experiences, to deactivate some of these filters. But i can go back to normal in a second.

So that's why i thought it was purely a psychological thing.

I wonder what the dopamine relation is exactly. It does tend to make you feel more confident and in controll of things.

i must say that i can only do this when i am very relaxed though. I have to be in a sort of "disengage mode" to deactivate these filters. I cannot do it when i'm busy or occupied.

Aum_Shanti, that is a very useful and informative post, thank you!!!

I looked up (L-)DOPA, and found that it is the precursor to
Dopamine,
Norepinephrine, and
Adrenaline

I wonder if there is a plant medicine OR an activity, that stimulates and re-calibrates these neurotransmitters (and possibly, by extension, that visual filter you are talking about.

Riding a rollercoaster comes to mind for some reason, although that may have the opposite of the intended effect.

L-Dopa isn't a good source to increase brain dopamine levels as "brain bio-availability" is bad, as it gets mostly converted periphery, unless you take additional stuff to increase it (e.g. a decarboxylase inhibitor). But then it becomes kinda dangerous, for as 5-HTP with serotonin, the body converts uncontrolled all L-Dopa (so dosages have to be well chosen). Also longer term L-Dopa usage gets you very severe problems, which is unfortunately well known for people with Parkinson's disease, as this is the major treatment.

L-Tyrosine is safe OTOH and is the precursor of L-Dopa.


Yep,I can do that too. Now just imagine, that some amount of this is there always, that's HPPD.

Hmm, but do you think that what you have is mostly neurological, or mostly a psychological thing...i mean, ofcourse it's both because everything that's psychological is also by definition neurological, but what i mean is, do you think it is a neurochemical imbalance or a kind of neurological damage, or rather a sort of mental habit, an automatism?

In the first case, you would need some kind of chemical support indeed. But in the second case you would somehow have to find a way to reprogram yourself if you want to get rid of it. A form of cognitive therapy would be a more logical approach then.

Things like anxiety are often being treated with chemicals, but cognitive therapy, though it is way more uncomfortable, is also way more effective. Anxiety is something that you can just get stuck in. It can completely overpower you. But even the most crippling fears often do have a mental "off switch" somewhere. Once the anxiety kicks in, it is almost impossible to turn it off, because of the crippling effect it has. But if you can find a way to turn it off before it kicks in, then you could defeat it in most situations.

It is surely hard to tell. For me, it's definitely not an anxiety issue, but it just sucks sometimes during daily activities, especially if you do something where you need perfect vision...

And you just get used to it, that in the dark you can hardly see anything, as you mostly just see other stuff (visual snow and patterns).

The big question would be: How would you train deliberately to unlearn the conscious awareness of this "unfiltered sensor data"?

So far the advice is, to ignore it as best as you can, to slowly let it fade out of the conscious awareness. But this seems to take a very long time...

I dunno, my nightvision is pretty great; perhaps improved from psychedelic use.

I agree with dragonrider: I'm much more interested in finding a way to solve the root cause--a kind of reprogramming, if you will--rather than daily supplementation, which almost always leads to either dependency or side effects.

Filtering is somethimg that normally should happen automatically. So maybe forcing the brain to start doing it would be enough. Complex visual tasks could be a way to do it. Something like learning to joggle maybe. Or boxing. I think learning something new would probably have more effect than doing something complex that you already know.

An example, which is IMHO very similar, if not partially the same as HPPD:

Basically my whole life to a certain point, my brain filtered visual data which was not in the correct plane of focus out of my conscious awareness. E.g. if there's a dirt speck on the window and you look out of the window. When I did look out, I was completely unaware of the dirt speck. This information did not get to my conscious awareness. Also if I looked at the dirt speck, I was not aware of what was behind the window, but only the speck got my awareness...(I think you got the idea)

Then came up the "magic eye" books, with these autostereogram pictures. It just didn't work for me...Anybody was able to get it, at least after about 15Mins, but not me... That really frustrated me...

The reason for this was, that with these pictures your have to do something, that naturally never would make sense: Your eyes position must focus another plane than the focus of your eyes (lenses) itself. This was such a strong automatism for me, and as said, the filtering was that strong, that I wasn't even aware what is on another plane of focus...

I was so frustrated...I really wanted to see these pictures. And so I trained and trained over many days, and finally it worked. I disabled this automatism. Not only that, but I could now deliberately place my eye focus and lens focus on specific different planes. So these pictures were now much easier to see for me, than for the other people, as I could consciously do it.

BUT: Now I was suddenly aware of stuff, that is out of focus. Since then I can never again look out of a dirt specked window without getting aware of the dirt. This information has now found it's way into my conscious awareness.

How would you now "detrain" that again!!!

I think it is very hard, once an information found a way into your conscious awareness, to reverse it.

E.g. I could well think that generally the data from any sensory processing stage of the brain can be made aware consciously (routed to the self awareness construct). And maybe that is partially what HPPD is? The self conscious learns that there is also other data available (during the psychedelic session) and you get aware of data not on the end of the sensory processing, but somewhere in the middle (patterns), or at the beginning (visual snow, tracers).

Maybe the dopamine forces more the abtract logic thinking, and therefore the focus gets placed an a specific thing on the end of the processing line (no more HPPD)??? Plus you would have more focus...