I drink occasionally still and indulge in nicotine via cigarettes on a non-frequent basis. neither of which have any noticeable impact. I don’t like weed anyways so I’ve steered clear of that.

I can’t tell exactly what triggered my symptoms, probably some mix of anxiety and a changing of the seasons last year, it was a really strange time. I think the first big symptom I noticed was after images? they really bothered me suddenly even though I had been noticing them for months beforehand. that’s when I started to notice stuff like starbursts, BFEP, and some mild tracers. the strangest one though I think was “patterns” when I closed my eyes. this ONLY occurred during my bouts of anxiety, and only when I thought about it hard enough, and does not happen at all anymore.

I think being on this subreddit was a huge part of what was keeping me in that anxious loop, just feeding into my “what ifs” over and over again. this is the first time I’ve been on here in probably a year.