Ed Prideaux is a freelance writer, journalist, and forthcoming graduate of the University of East London in Psychology. Ed lived with the effects of HPPD for seven years, and worked as a public advocate and operations lead for the Perception Restoration Foundation, a nonprofit that raises awareness about the condition. Ed has written on psychedelics for the BBC and VICE, and topics in music, culture, history, psychology and religion for The Independent, The Financial Times, UnHerd, The Spectator, The i, and others.
Colloquium Presentation: 09 June 2023 – 2.30-4pm (WS 105)
HPPD and ‘flashbacks’: disorders of prohibition?
Abstract
Hallucinogen Persisting Perception Disorder, or HPPD, is one of the more disturbing and far-out side-effects of psychedelics discussed amid the high waters of the ‘renaissance’. Characterised by sustained visual disturbances – often akin to the visions glimpsed while high – that can last for years, HPPD is implicated in significant distress and occasional suicides, and little is known for certain about how it occurs and whom it tends to affect. Ed Prideaux, a journalist and forthcoming Master’s graduate of the University of East London, lived with HPPD for several years after a (semi-)bad trip on 1P-LSD while a teenager. In 2020, he became a public advocate for more research into the condition, and by the following year he was doing research on HPPD himself. What Ed found struck him: the link between HPPD and hallucinogens is fraught, the visions needn’t be distressing (and can be the opposite), and the entire conceptual structure of HPPD could be helping to fuel the very distress it categorises. Sharing findings from his recent research, Ed will ask important questions around a very real risk, and motivate a broader dialogue about the way we make sense of disorders in a disordered world.