What Is HPPD After LSD
In this post
Most people who have heard of LSD know that it changes what a person sees during a trip. Colours look brighter, shapes seem to move, and ordinary scenes can look strange or beautiful or frightening. What far fewer people know is that for some people, those visual changes do not stop when the trip ends. Instead, they return, or they never quite go away, and the person is left seeing the world in a way that feels wrong, distracting or frightening for weeks, months or even longer. This condition has a name: hallucinogen persisting perception disorder, usually shortened to HPPD.
HPPD is a lasting change in vision that appears after using a hallucinogen such as LSD. It is not the same as being high, and it is not the same as an eye disease. The eyes themselves are usually healthy. The problem lies in how the brain processes what the eyes see. After LSD has disrupted the brain’s visual system, that system can remain unsettled, so that visual disturbances keep appearing even when the person is sober. This article explains, in plain words, what HPPD is, what it feels like, how it affects daily life, who is more likely to develop it, whether it can improve, and when to seek help. It is general information, not individual medical advice. If you are experiencing lasting visual changes after using LSD, a qualified health professional is the right person to talk to.
What HPPD Means in Plain Words
HPPD stands for hallucinogen persisting perception disorder. The name is long and technical, but the idea behind it is simple. A hallucinogen is a drug that changes perception, and LSD is one of the best-known examples. Persisting means that the effect continues after the drug itself has left the body. Perception means how the brain interprets what the senses report. Disorder means that this change is causing distress or difficulty in daily life. Put together, HPPD means that after using a hallucinogen, a person keeps experiencing visual disturbances that interfere with how they live, work and feel.
It is important to understand what HPPD is not. It is not a flashback in the usual sense of a brief, vivid memory of a trip that comes and goes. Flashbacks can happen after LSD use, and they are usually short, lasting minutes or hours, and then fading. HPPD is different because the visual disturbances are present much of the time, or return very often, and they continue for weeks or months. It is also not a sign that the person is still high, or that they have taken LSD again. The drug has long since left their body. The visual system itself has been left unsettled, and it is that unsettled state that causes the symptoms.
Health professionals usually divide HPPD into two broad types, although the line between them is not always clear. In the first type, the visual disturbances are milder and come and go, and the person can often carry on with daily life, even though the symptoms are annoying or worrying. In the second type, the disturbances are stronger, more constant, and more distressing, and they interfere seriously with work, study, sleep and relationships. The second type is less common, but it is the type that most often leads people to seek help, because it makes ordinary life genuinely hard. Knowing that there are different levels of severity can be reassuring, because it means that not everyone who develops HPPD will have the worst form of it.
The exact cause of HPPD is not fully understood, and that is worth saying honestly. Researchers believe that LSD changes the way certain brain cells process visual information, and that in some people those cells do not return fully to their normal pattern after the drug wears off. The visual system becomes more sensitive, or more easily triggered, so that it produces visual noise even when there is nothing unusual to see. Anxiety, tiredness and stress can make the symptoms worse, which in turn can increase anxiety, creating a cycle that is hard to break. What is clear is that HPPD is a real condition, recognised by health professionals, and not something a person is imagining or exaggerating.
What the Visual Disturbances Feel Like
The most common way people describe HPPD is that the world looks wrong. It is not that they see things that are completely different from reality. It is that ordinary seeing is overlaid with extra visual effects that should not be there. A plain wall may seem to shimmer or breathe. A still object may seem to move slightly at the edges. The air itself may seem full of tiny dots or static, like the snow on an old television screen. These effects are often called visual snow, and they are one of the most reported symptoms of HPPD. For some people, the static is faint and only noticeable in dim light. For others, it is present all the time, in bright light and in darkness, and it makes it hard to see clearly.
Another common experience is that colours look wrong. They may seem too bright, too dull, or slightly shifted, so that familiar objects look unfamiliar. A white wall may look slightly pink or blue. A person’s face may look oddly coloured. This can be unsettling, because colour is one of the main ways we recognise things, and when it changes, the world feels less familiar and less safe. Some people also report that lights seem too bright, or that they see halos or starbursts around lights at night, which can make driving or walking in the dark difficult and frightening.
Movement is another area where HPPD shows up. A person may see trails or tracers behind moving objects, so that a hand waved in the air leaves a faint trail, or a car passing in the street seems to leave a ghostly image behind it. This is sometimes called trailing, and it can make fast-moving scenes confusing. Some people also feel that the world is moving when it is not, or that the ground is shifting under their feet. This can cause dizziness, nausea or a feeling of being off balance, especially in busy places such as shopping centres or crowded streets, where there is a great deal of visual information to process.
It is important to say that these experiences are not the same for everyone. Some people have only one or two symptoms, and they are mild. Others have several symptoms, and they are strong enough to dominate their attention. The symptoms can also change from day to day, or even from hour to hour, depending on tiredness, stress, lighting and mood. That variability can itself be distressing, because the person never knows whether today will be a good day or a bad day, and they may start to avoid situations that they fear will make the symptoms worse, which in turn makes their life smaller and more restricted.
Tracers, Halos and Flashes
Tracers are one of the most distinctive symptoms of HPPD, and they are worth describing in detail, because they are often the symptom that first makes a person realise something is wrong. A tracer is a trail left behind a moving object, like the trail of a sparkler waved in the dark. In HPPD, a person may see a faint trail behind their own hand when they move it, or behind a car, a ball, or a person walking past. The trail is not real. It is the visual system holding on to an image for longer than it should, so that the past and the present overlap. For most people, this is annoying rather than dangerous, but it can make it hard to follow fast movement, to play sport, or to drive safely, because the world seems to smear or blur when things move.
Halos are another common symptom. A halo is a ring of light around a bright object, such as a street lamp, a car headlight, or the moon. In HPPD, halos can appear around ordinary lights, even in daylight, and they can make lights look larger, brighter or more dazzling than they really are. This can be particularly difficult at night, when headlights and street lights are already bright, and the extra glare can make it hard to see the road or to judge distance. Some people find that they have to stop driving at night altogether, which can affect their work and their independence. Others find that they need to wear sunglasses more often, even indoors, because ordinary light feels too harsh.
Flashes are brief, sudden bursts of light or colour that appear without warning. They may look like a flicker at the edge of vision, or a sudden flash across the whole visual field. They can be startling, especially if they happen while the person is driving, working, or crossing a road. Some people also report seeing geometric patterns, such as grids, spirals or lattices, overlaid on ordinary scenes. These patterns may be faint or strong, and they may move or pulse. They are sometimes called geometric hallucinations, but that phrase can be misleading, because the person usually knows that the patterns are not real. They are a disturbance of vision, not a loss of touch with reality, and that distinction matters, because it means the person is not losing their mind, even though the experience is frightening.
Afterimages are another symptom that many people with HPPD report. An afterimage is an image that stays in vision after the object itself has gone, like the bright spot you see after looking at a camera flash. In HPPD, afterimages can last much longer than normal, and they can appear after looking at ordinary objects, not just bright lights. A person may look away from a person’s face and still see a faint image of it, or look away from a book and still see the shape of the page. This can make reading, working on a computer, or watching television difficult, because the visual field becomes cluttered with images that should have faded.
How HPPD Affects Daily Life, Work and Sleep
HPPD is not only a visual problem. It affects how a person lives, works and feels, and those effects can be just as important as the symptoms themselves. At work, the visual disturbances can make it hard to concentrate, especially on tasks that involve reading, looking at a screen, or following moving objects. A person may need to take more breaks, or may find that they make more mistakes because they cannot see clearly. In some jobs, such as driving, operating machinery, or working at heights, the visual disturbances can make the work unsafe, and the person may have to change jobs or stop working altogether, which can cause financial stress and a loss of confidence.
Study is affected in a similar way. Reading can become tiring and frustrating when the page seems to shimmer, or when afterimages clutter the text. Following a lecture can be hard when the visual field is full of static or trails. Some students find that they have to read more slowly, or that they need to take frequent breaks, and that they fall behind their classmates. Teachers may not understand why the student is struggling, because the problem is invisible to them. That misunderstanding can be painful, and it can make the student less likely to ask for help, which makes the problem worse.
Sleep is another area where HPPD can cause difficulty. Many people find that their symptoms are worse in the dark, or when they are tired, which is exactly when they are trying to sleep. Visual snow, flashes and patterns can make it hard to relax, and the worry about the symptoms can itself keep a person awake. Poor sleep then makes the symptoms worse the next day, because tiredness increases visual sensitivity, creating a cycle that is hard to break. Some people also report vivid dreams or nightmares after developing HPPD, which can make them dread going to bed, and can leave them feeling exhausted and anxious during the day.
Social life can also be affected. A person with HPPD may avoid crowded places, bright lights, or busy visual environments, because those places make their symptoms worse. They may avoid driving at night, going to the cinema, or attending social events, and over time their life can become smaller and more isolated. They may also find it hard to explain their condition to others, because it is invisible and hard to describe, and because many people have never heard of HPPD. That difficulty in explaining can lead to loneliness, and to a feeling that no one understands what they are going through, which can make anxiety and low mood worse.
Who Is More Likely to Develop It and Why It Is Hard to Predict
One of the most frustrating things about HPPD is that it is hard to predict who will develop it. Some people use LSD many times and never experience lasting visual disturbances. Others develop HPPD after using LSD only once or twice. There is no reliable way to know in advance whether a particular person will be affected, and that uncertainty is part of why HPPD is so worrying. A person cannot assume that because they have used LSD before without a problem, they will be safe next time, because the risk does not work in that simple way.
That said, researchers have identified some factors that seem to increase the risk. Using LSD often, or in larger amounts, appears to raise the chance of developing HPPD, although it is not a guarantee. Using other hallucinogens, or using LSD together with other drugs, may also increase the risk. People who already live with anxiety, or who have a history of visual problems such as migraine with visual symptoms, may be more vulnerable, although the evidence here is limited and more research is needed. Age may also play a role, with younger people, whose brains are still developing, potentially at greater risk, although HPPD can affect people of any age.
It is also worth saying that HPPD is not caused by a lack of willpower, or by doing something wrong during a trip. It is not a punishment for using LSD, and it is not a sign that the person is weak or foolish. It is a medical condition that can happen to anyone who uses a hallucinogen, and it deserves to be treated as such, with understanding and with proper medical support. Blaming the person does not help, and it can make them less likely to seek the help they need, which only makes the condition harder to live with.
The unpredictability of HPPD is also why it is so important to talk about it openly. Many people who use LSD have never heard of HPPD, and they have no idea that lasting visual changes are a possible risk. If they had known, they might have made a different decision. That is not to say that everyone who knows about HPPD will avoid LSD, but it is to say that people deserve to know the full range of risks before they decide, and that HPPD should be part of that conversation, alongside the more familiar risks of a bad trip, anxiety and impaired judgement.
Can HPPD Improve Over Time?
The question most people with HPPD ask first is whether it will get better, and the honest answer is that it often does, but not always, and not always quickly. For many people, the symptoms gradually fade over weeks or months, especially if they stop using LSD and other hallucinogens, avoid other drugs that can worsen the symptoms, and look after their general health by getting enough sleep, eating well, and managing stress. The improvement is usually slow, and it may not be steady — there may be good days and bad days, and the symptoms may seem to get worse before they get better. But for a significant number of people, the visual disturbances do become milder over time, and in some cases they go away altogether.
For other people, the symptoms persist for longer, sometimes for years, and they have to learn to live with them. This does not mean that life has to stop. Many people with long-lasting HPPD find ways to cope, such as avoiding triggers, using sunglasses or tinted lenses, taking regular breaks from screens, and learning relaxation techniques to manage anxiety. They may also find that their symptoms become less distressing over time, even if they do not disappear completely, because they learn what to expect and how to manage it, and because the fear of the unknown fades as they become more familiar with their own pattern of symptoms.
It is important to be honest that there is no specific medicine that is guaranteed to cure HPPD. Health professionals may suggest treatments that can help with the symptoms, particularly if anxiety, low mood or sleep problems are making the visual disturbances worse. These treatments are aimed at the whole person, not just the visual symptoms, and they work best when they are part of a broader plan that includes stopping hallucinogen use, looking after sleep and stress, and getting support from family, friends and professionals. Anyone who is offered a treatment for HPPD should discuss it fully with their doctor, including what it is expected to do, what the risks are, and how long it may take to help.
What seems to make the biggest difference, according to people who have lived with HPPD, is time, patience, and support. Time, because the visual system often needs months to settle. Patience, because the improvement is rarely quick or linear, and it is easy to become discouraged on a bad day. And support, because living with a condition that is invisible, poorly understood, and hard to explain is lonely, and having someone who believes you and is willing to listen can make a real difference. If you are living with HPPD, you do not have to face it alone, and seeking help is a sign of strength, not weakness.
When to Seek Help and What Support Looks Like
You should seek help promptly if you are experiencing lasting visual disturbances after using LSD, especially if they are affecting your daily life, your work, your sleep, or your mood. You do not need to wait until the symptoms become severe, and you do not need to be sure that it is HPPD before you ask for advice. A doctor can listen to your symptoms, check your eyes and your general health, and help you to understand what is happening and what your options are. They can also rule out other causes of visual changes, such as eye disease or migraine, which is important, because some visual symptoms can have other causes that need different treatment.
When you seek help, it helps to be as honest as you can about your drug use, including what you took, how often, and when you last used it. Health professionals are not there to judge you. They are there to help you, and they need accurate information to do that properly. If you are worried about telling a doctor, you can ask about confidentiality, and you can bring a trusted friend or family member with you for support. The conversation may feel difficult, but it is an important step, and it is often a relief to talk openly about something that has been causing worry and distress.
Support for HPPD is not only medical. It can also include practical help, such as advice on managing light sensitivity, taking breaks from screens, and avoiding triggers that make the symptoms worse. It can include talking therapies, which can help with the anxiety and low mood that often accompany HPPD, and which can teach coping strategies for living with persistent symptoms. It can also include support groups, in person or online, where people with similar experiences can share what has helped them. Knowing that you are not alone, and that other people have been through the same thing and have found ways to cope, can be enormously reassuring.
For family and friends, the best support is often simple: believe the person, listen without judging, and be patient. HPPD is invisible, and it is easy to dismiss it as unimportant or to suggest that the person is exaggerating. That response is hurtful, and it can make the person less likely to ask for help in future. A better response is to acknowledge that the symptoms are real and distressing, to ask what helps and what makes things worse, and to offer practical support, such as helping with tasks that are difficult, or accompanying the person to a medical appointment. Small acts of understanding can make a large difference to someone who is living with a condition that few people have heard of.
My Take:
I will be honest with you: HPPD is the part of LSD that I think is most often left out of the conversation, and I think that is a serious failure. When people talk about LSD, they talk about the trip, about whether it was good or bad, about insight or fear or wonder. They rarely talk about what happens afterwards, when the trip is over but the vision does not return to normal. That silence matters, because it means people make decisions about LSD without knowing one of its most lasting and distressing risks. If you are considering using LSD, or if you know someone who is, I think you deserve to know about HPPD first, not after it has happened.
What stays with me most is how ordinary the symptoms sound at first, and how serious they become when you live with them every day. Visual snow, tracers, halos, afterimages — these words sound technical and almost harmless. But imagine seeing static over everything you look at, all day, every day. Imagine that every time you move your hand, it leaves a trail. Imagine that lights at night dazzle you so much that you cannot drive safely. Imagine that reading a page is tiring because the words seem to shimmer and shift. That is not a minor inconvenience. That is a change to how you experience the world, and it affects everything from work to sleep to simply walking down a street. I think we underestimate that, because we take clear vision for granted until it is disturbed.
I think the unpredictability of HPPD is what frightens me most. There is no reliable way to know who will develop it, and no dose that is guaranteed to be safe. A person can use LSD once and develop HPPD, while another person uses it many times and does not. That randomness feels unfair, and it is unfair, but it is also the truth, and pretending otherwise would be dishonest. I would rather people knew that truth and made an informed choice than believed they were safe because they had used LSD before, or because a friend had used it without a problem. Your brain is not your friend’s brain, and what happened to them tells you very little about what will happen to you.
The effect on daily life is something I feel strongly about, because it is so practical and so often overlooked. We talk about drugs in terms of highs and lows, of trips and comedowns, but we talk less about the quiet, everyday costs: the job that becomes harder, the course that is failed, the drive at night that is no longer safe, the sleep that is broken, the social life that shrinks because crowded places are too much to bear. These are not dramatic events. They are the slow erosion of a normal life, and they add up to a real loss, even if no one outside the person’s family notices it happening. I think that is why HPPD deserves more attention, not less. It is not a dramatic crisis, but it is a lasting one, and lasting problems deserve lasting support.
I also think about the loneliness of HPPD, and I think it is one of the hardest parts of the condition. It is invisible. You cannot point to it. You cannot show someone what you are seeing. And because so few people have heard of it, you may find that even health professionals do not immediately understand what you are describing, or that friends and family think you are exaggerating. That feeling of not being believed is painful, and it can make a person stop talking about their symptoms altogether, which only makes the loneliness worse. If you know someone with HPPD, I would ask you to believe them. You do not need to understand exactly what they see. You only need to accept that what they are experiencing is real to them, and that it is affecting their life. That acceptance is a form of help in itself.
Anxiety is closely linked to HPPD, and I think the link works in both directions, which makes it particularly hard to break. The visual disturbances cause anxiety, because it is frightening to see the world in a way that feels wrong. And anxiety makes the visual disturbances worse, because stress and tiredness increase visual sensitivity. So a person can become trapped in a cycle: the symptoms cause worry, the worry makes the symptoms worse, and the worse symptoms cause more worry. Breaking that cycle requires more than willpower. It requires support, and often professional help, to learn how to manage anxiety and to reduce the fear that the symptoms will never improve. I do not think we talk about that cycle enough, and I think it is one of the reasons why HPPD can feel so overwhelming.
I want to say something about hope, because it is easy to read about HPPD and feel that there is none. There is hope, and it is real. Many people’s symptoms do improve over time, especially if they stop using hallucinogens, look after their sleep, and manage stress. The improvement is often slow, and it may not be complete, but it is real, and it is worth working towards. And even for people whose symptoms persist, life does not have to stop. People learn to cope, to avoid triggers, to take breaks, to use glasses or tinted lenses, to find work that suits them, and to build a life around the condition rather than being defined by it. That is not the same as a cure, and I do not want to pretend that it is. But it is a form of recovery, and it is one that many people achieve, with time and with support.
If you are a parent, I would ask you to think about HPPD when you talk to your children about drugs, not because you want to frighten them, but because you want them to have the full picture. It is easy to talk about the dangers of a bad trip, because a bad trip is dramatic and easy to describe. It is harder to talk about a lasting change in vision, because it sounds less urgent. But I think it is worth talking about, because it is a risk that lasts, and because a young person who knows about it may think twice before using LSD, or may seek help sooner if they do develop symptoms. A calm, honest conversation is more useful than a lecture, and it is more likely to be remembered.
If you are living with HPPD yourself, I would say this: you are not imagining it, you are not alone, and you deserve help. The fact that your symptoms are invisible does not make them unimportant. The fact that few people have heard of HPPD does not mean it is not real. And the fact that there is no simple cure does not mean there is nothing that can be done. Stopping hallucinogen use, looking after your sleep, managing stress, and talking to a health professional are real steps, and they can make a real difference. You do not need to have all the answers today. You only need to take one step, and then another, and to allow yourself the time and patience that recovery requires.
I also think it is important to say that HPPD is not a punishment, and it is not a sign that you are a bad person. It is a medical condition that can happen to anyone who uses a hallucinogen, and it deserves to be treated with the same understanding as any other medical condition. If you developed a lasting visual problem after an illness, no one would blame you for it. The same should be true here. Blame does not help anyone to recover. Understanding, patience and support do, and they are what I would want for anyone living with this condition.
Finally, I would say this to anyone who has never used LSD and is thinking about trying it: please include HPPD in your thinking. It is easy to focus on the trip itself, on what it might feel like, and to forget that the effects can last long after the trip is over. It is easy to assume that you will be the exception, that you will use LSD once and come back unchanged. Some people do. But some do not, and you cannot know in advance which group you will be in. The safest choice is not to start, and the wisest choice is to listen to the people who have lived with HPPD and wish they had known about it before they began. Their experience is not a warning to be ignored. It is information, offered in the hope that someone else will not have to learn the same lesson the hard way.
I think about the practical help that matters most, because it is often the help that is easiest to give and easiest to overlook. A person with HPPD may need someone to drive them at night, or to help them with reading and paperwork, or simply to sit with them in a bright place and understand why they are struggling. These are small things, but they are not trivial. They are the difference between a person who feels supported and a person who feels alone, and that difference can affect how well they cope from day to day. If you know someone with HPPD, ask them what helps. Do not assume. Ask, listen, and then do what you can. That simple act of asking is itself a form of respect, because it says that you believe their experience is real and that you are willing to take it seriously.
The link between HPPD and sleep is something I keep returning to, because it shows how one problem can feed another in a way that is hard to escape. A person whose vision is disturbed finds it hard to sleep. Poor sleep makes the visual disturbances worse. Worse symptoms make sleep harder still. It is a cycle that can leave a person exhausted, anxious and unable to think clearly, and it can affect every part of their life, from work to relationships to their general health. Breaking that cycle is not easy, and it rarely happens quickly. It takes patience, and it often takes professional help, to learn how to relax, how to manage light and screens before bed, and how to stop the worry about sleep from becoming another source of stress. I think that is worth saying plainly, because people who are living with HPPD sometimes blame themselves for not sleeping well, when the truth is that the condition itself makes sleep difficult, and that difficulty is not their fault.
I also want to talk about work, because for many people with HPPD, work is where the condition hurts most. A person who cannot read a screen comfortably, or drive at night, or follow fast movement, may find that the job they trained for is no longer possible, or that they have to work more slowly and take more breaks than their colleagues. That can be humiliating, and it can lead to a loss of income and a loss of confidence that is hard to recover from. Employers do not always understand, because HPPD is invisible and unfamiliar, and a person may be reluctant to explain it for fear of being judged or losing their job. I think employers, like families, need to hear about this condition, so that they can offer practical adjustments instead of judgement. A different screen, a change in lighting, a shift that avoids night driving, a little extra time — these are not unreasonable requests, and they can make the difference between a person keeping their job and losing it.
Above all, I think HPPD should be talked about more openly, in the same way we talk about other lasting effects of drugs, because silence helps no one. A person who knows the risk can make a better decision. A person who develops the condition and knows its name can seek help sooner, instead of wondering alone whether they are imagining things. And a family that understands what is happening can offer patience instead of doubt. That is why I have written about it here, plainly and honestly, and why I hope this article reaches someone before they need it, not only after.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is HPPD after LSD?
HPPD, or hallucinogen persisting perception disorder, is a condition in which visual disturbances continue after the effects of LSD have worn off. The eyes are usually healthy, but the brain’s visual system remains unsettled, so a person keeps seeing effects such as visual snow, tracers, halos, flashes or afterimages while sober. The symptoms can last for weeks, months or longer, and they can interfere with work, study, sleep and daily life. HPPD is recognised by health professionals as a real condition, not something a person is imagining.
How long does HPPD last?
HPPD varies a great deal from person to person. For some people, the symptoms fade gradually over weeks or months, especially if they stop using LSD and other hallucinogens and look after their sleep and stress levels. For others, the symptoms persist for much longer, sometimes for years, although they may become milder or less distressing over time as the person learns to cope with them. There is no fixed timetable, and anyone with lasting symptoms should talk to a health professional rather than waiting indefinitely.
Can LSD cause HPPD?
Yes, LSD is one of the hallucinogens most commonly linked with HPPD. It changes how the brain processes visual information, and in some people that system does not fully return to normal after the drug wears off, leaving lasting visual disturbances. HPPD can develop after a single use or after repeated use, and there is no reliable way to predict who will be affected. Using LSD often, or in larger amounts, appears to increase the risk, but it can happen even after limited use.
What does HPPD look like?
HPPD can look different for different people, but common symptoms include visual snow, which is a fine static over the whole visual field, tracers or trails behind moving objects, halos around lights, sudden flashes of light or colour, geometric patterns overlaid on ordinary scenes, and afterimages that last longer than normal. Colours may look wrong, and lights may seem too bright. The person usually knows that these effects are not real, which distinguishes HPPD from losing touch with reality, but the effects are still distressing and distracting.
Does HPPD affect daily life?
Yes, HPPD can affect daily life in many ways. It can make reading, working on a screen, driving at night, or following fast movement difficult. It can disrupt sleep, because symptoms are often worse in the dark or when a person is tired. It can lead to anxiety and low mood, and to avoiding crowded or brightly lit places, which can make social life smaller and more isolated. The practical effects — on work, study and independence — are often just as important as the visual symptoms themselves.
Can HPPD be treated?
There is no specific medicine guaranteed to cure HPPD, but help is available. A health professional can check for other causes of visual changes, offer advice on managing symptoms, and help with anxiety, low mood or sleep problems that make HPPD worse. Stopping hallucinogen use, getting enough sleep, managing stress, avoiding triggers, and using practical aids such as tinted lenses can all help. Talking therapies and support groups can also help a person to cope. Anyone with lasting symptoms should seek professional advice rather than trying to manage alone.
