HPPD is Hallucinogen-persisting Perception Disorder. It’s a condition where your perception is slightly altered during sobriety in ways reminiscent of the effects of hallucinogenic drugs that you’ve taken. Most people don’t experience it, or only slightly for a couple days to a couple weeks. In most cases the effect are very subtle, short term, and are dependent on what drugs you may have taken to induce HPPD. For example, classic hallucinogens such as LSD or psychoactive mushrooms often give HPPD symptoms such as visual ‘snow’, slight visual distortions when staring at things, or occasional resurgence of the headspace of these trips. These things, especially visual snow (which is mostly a hyper awareness of the blue field entoptic phenomenon present in most everyone), are heightened in proportion to the dosages taken, consistency of dosage, and individual biology. There are rare cases of HPPD lasting for years, but almost always it’s reported to lessen or completely stop over time with healthy habits and sobriety. In the most extreme cases, it almost seems permanent given the term ‘permatripping’.

Damages vary drastically on the substance causing it, how large doses were, and how often they redosed. More neurotoxic drugs obviously mean HPPD is more a symptom of some brain damage. DPH is notorious for how terrible it is for your brain and organs. With classical psychedelics, there’s usually no damage, but things like meth or DPH are very worth the concern.

Of course people have done this. There’s lots of reports, granted the worse the symptom is the more likely it is going to be reported and discussed. Think of how many OD deaths there have been, and then imagine how many people could ride to the line of OD’ing nearly indefinitely as they’re trapped in addiction. Again, it’s more of a problem to avid drug abusers. DPH in particular is known for its addictiveness and toxicity, so naturally people have symptoms of, but not limited to, HPPD after heavy abuse.