Treatment
As of yet, there is no cure available for HPPD. The principal treatments seek to reduce symptoms and distress without treating underlying causes. Benzodiazepines including clonazepam (Klonopin), diazepam (Valium) and alprazolam (Xanax) are prescribed with a fair amount of success. The anticonvulsant drug levetiracetam has been reported to diminish some of the visual symptoms, as well as reduce depersonalization and derealization symptoms, that can occur along with HPPD. Some medications have been contraindicated on the basis of their effects on HPPD or the concurrent mental issues. The atypical antipsychotic Risperidone is reported to worsen symptoms of HPPD during the drug's duration in some people.
Those with HPPD are often advised to discontinue all drug use, many of which are thought to increase visuals in the short-term. There are also less concrete factors that may be generally detrimental to those with HPPD. For example, sleep deprivation and stress are thought to increase HPPD symptoms. However, no published studies have investigated whether any of these recommendations are helpful.
There is no universal time course of HPPD recovery. The adverse psychological effects of HPPD (assuming these effects appeared at all) appear to lessen more rapidly than the visuals; quality of life often returns as a person adjusts. Recovery may be facilitated by a psychological habituation to the visuals, which, in effect, reduces the victim’s inclination to attend to and react negatively to them. The deleterious consequences of the visuals can therefore be reduced even if the HPPD does not disappear.
There is currently little reliable information on how often people fully recover from HPPD. There have been reports of HPPD victims having normal perception totally return. The small number of cases of HPPD that have been studied in depth make it difficult to determine how often and under what conditions the visual symptoms of HPPD resolve.
Read more about this topic: Hallucinogen Persisting Perception Disorder
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