Andrew Callaghan

speaker

2,527 appearances 8 recordings 6 series first heard Apr 2024 last heard 22 Jun

Andrew Callaghan’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 3 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 3.

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The Jordan Harbinger Show · 1156: Andrew Callaghan | Documenting America's Shadow Self · 20 May 2025 podcast

Yeah. And actually, so according to HPPD science, the brain has a self-correcting mechanism that clears it up before exporting the final high res.

Yeah. It's not necessary. It's not real. And so I see that and I see extreme eye floaters. Like I probably see a hundred black squigglies right now.

What I've done is I've trained myself to prioritize other senses. So I'll try to live a lot through hearing and sensation. Like when you're doing through HPPD therapy, they say, be grounded, feel the earth through your toes. Just don't look at eyesight as the main way to perceive the world. It's generally the most important sense.

But if you start to prioritize others, that's the conscious way to retrain.

Yeah. So the first person to research HPPD was Dr. Henry Abraham, was from the American Psychiatric Association. He lives in Massachusetts. He theorized in the 80s and 90s that it was benzodiazepines, particularly diazepam and Xanax, that could help you not think about HPPD. It doesn't take it away, but it stops the anxiety mechanisms. And alcohol works as a suppressant.

But the problem with alcohol is it makes you forget you have HPPD, but it makes the symptoms worse over time. And this alcoholism is generally bad. Oh, okay. There are scientists now who are pointing to a couple different treatment options. One of them is over-the-counter magnesium every night, which apparently has worked for some. And the other is an epileptic medication called lamotrigine.

Have you tried these? I have, and I have to go to a doctor to get it. But it's shown some promising results, especially for kids because there's a lot of kids who are prescribed Ritalin who develop HPPD.

Yeah, it seems to be totally random. A lot of people say, man, you must have done a lot of mushrooms. I'm like, I did mushrooms three times.

And there's got to be a way to fix it. But the problem is you got two lobbies. You got people trying to make drugs look as beneficial as possible, you know, doing clinical trials to use MDMA to treat PTSD and anxiety. Then you have the other crowd who are just not trying to help drug users with anything. We're like, why would we help these brain fried people? Here's the solution.

And I look at HPPD much like that. It's a harm reduction conversation because right now psychedelics are decriminalized in nine different states. And in Colorado and Oregon, a psychiatrist can give you them for supervised use. So obviously if it follows the same trajectory as marijuana legalization, in 40 years, there's going to be mass legalization of psilocybin mushrooms.

So I think it's important for people to know about HPPD so we can figure out how to cure it and how to prevent it.

It's got to be a simple mechanism if, in fact, it disinhibits the processing center in the occidental lobe.

Oh, yeah.

That's the best question I've ever been asked in history. Really? Yeah. Yeah, because you asked about, no one's ever figured that out. I don't know how you did that. Just because of, I don't know, I watched a lot of your stuff. I've never said it. You thought of that? Yeah, I wrote it down. So basically, depersonalization is the main symptom that accompanies HPPD symptoms.

Because of the unreality created by your visual symptoms, oftentimes you become depersonalized. And depersonalization is similar to the second symptom, which is derealization. So the difference is that when you're depersonalized, you get the sensation that I am not real. I have no connection to my body.

I am a nebulous soul being held prisoner in a skin suit and particularly trapped in an escape room behind my eyes and trying to figure out how to escape the hell of self.

that's super terrifying once you come to terms with the fact that you are stuck in the skin suit derealization comes which is okay i am real but the rest of the world is not everything that i'm seeing is a non-sensory object and everything in my visual field and in the world is a hallucination or a figment of my condition and i'm the only conscious being on the planet that's like the loneliest thing i've ever i wouldn't wish the feeling on my worst enemy and i hate my enemies

After filming content for years, the derealization just left me. So it goes HPPD in my experience. It's first HPPD, then depersonalization, then derealization. And in the fourth stage, you can just break it and accept your broken eyes.

Like you're saying, being on camera and filming stuff in the field is proof to me that I'm living in a shared reality and on the same 3D plane as the other people. So it helps with derealization, not HPPD, not depersonalization, but that third symptom I was able to treat by filming people in the streets.

What sucks about it too is like when you try to talk to people about it, oftentimes it gets mistaken for an existential crisis or like a philosophical musing. Like what if I'm the only person? No, it is a sensation. I am the only person. Your brain is telling you that. And so when people try to talk you out of it, they're typically not doing it well. They're like, what do you mean?

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