It’s interesting to me personally that you mention the “airbubble ring”, as this sounds like a rare aura I too have. I’ve noticed that if I see it (against a light background) and then look at a dark background (or close my eyes), mine appears as a “positive afterimage”.

Thank you for including your experience here.

Take care.

Your comment concerning underlying migraine is important. Indeed, I suffer since 12 years from “silent migraine”, i.e., a migraine ‘without’ headache but with the appearance of a flickering zigzag line beginning centrally and migrating to the periphery. But this occurs for very, very irregular: sometimes once every five months, sometimes once every two months and, now and then, twice in one week.

Concerning my experience of sensory disturbances, there two others that I forgot to mention. Occassionally (one or three times a day) I see a blue flash (very short, only during a split second and, when the light is very clear (e.g. in a sunny environment or in the dentist’s office), I see sometimes, about 1.5 meters before my eyes and during 20 seconds, a kind of ‘airbuble ring’ (not larger than a cherry pit) with in the middle of it a black point.

May I first say how very sorry I am to hear of the terrible times you are having. I can only hope things improve for you in the future.

I am not medically trained and am just a sufferer of “complicated migraine”, but the symptoms you describe sound much like those of chronic aura. From my research these typically have one of two causes (rarely a third being due to a complication of multiple sclerosis): persistent migraine aura (PMA), in patients with diagnosed underlying migraine; hallucinogen persisting perception disorder (HPPD), in patients with even a one-off history of taking (or being prescribed) hallucinogenic drugs, such as LSD. I’ve not heard of Risperidone before, and don’t recall ever hearing anyone prescribed it talking of PMA/HPPD like chronic aura. I’ve had a quick look on Wikipedia and, unsurprisingly, can find no mention of these as possible side-effects (I say unsurprisingly because PMA/HPPD is not commonly understood in the medical profession it seems). But that’s not to say it’s not a possible trigger either. It’s always worth exploring a diagnosis of migraine, as you are describing typical PMA symptoms and have headaches, I guess.

Take care.

P.S., an afterthought – have you tried the visual snow forum? You can find a link to it from the “PMA & Visual Snow FAQs” page (above) or one of the PMA/migraine forums. The main visual snow forum is: http://thosewithvisualsnow.yuku.com/

People in general, journalists and many healthcare professionals (who have no excuse for such ignorance), seem to take the referee’s stance: no harm, no foul – as though psychological abuse is just something people have a right to do to you. They still make nothing of psychological abuse and think it is nothing compared to a physical blow. That notion is deplorably simplistic: psychological injuries are real.

Because hard evidence and witnesses are lacking, making prosecution impossible, the abusers get away with it. They commit the perfect crime – the one so incredible nobody believes it. Because it’s wanton, bizarrely evil. As spiders they enmesh their prey in a web that is a Catch-22: Nobody will believe the victim. So, when I said, at the time I was being stalked by the government (and this was even publicly fairly well known): “the government is stalking me”, the typical reaction was: “I don’t believe a government would waste time or money on anyone that isn’t a real threat.”

In 1991, as libertarian, I was an enthusiast member of the new Flemish liberal party (VLD). His leader, Guy verhofstadt, said he stood for a classical liberal policy and I believed him (he even told me that his ‘libertarian’ beliefs were uncompromising). Though now a middle-of-the-road politician, in his early political career Verhofstadt was even nicknamed by leftists “Baby Thatcher” for his “free market credentials.” He was also a freethinker and as such a critic of Islam. As atheist I appreciated this much. But once elected Prime Minister in 1999, it became obvious to me that he was pushing the party into a leftist agenda.

Having betrayed his own principles and values for the sake of power, I wrote a few protest letters to the Party office to give expression to my disappointment and addressed him in these letters as “ex- libertarian”. He was furious! Since then he tried to break me mentally. How? By stalking, because victims suffer mental and emotional trauma which at times causes them to break down mentally.

I have already heard of stalkers being locked up in a mental hospital. But here in Belgium, in my case, it happened the other way round. I was the victim, the person being stalked. The stalker was… the Belgium state itself – i.e. the secret services at the order of the Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt who became obsessed with me – and, after a relentless 4-year campaign of harassment, illegal actions and malpractices (such as spreading vicious lies about me, street theatre, psy-ops assaults), after having been bombarded with sexually explicit and pornographic emails, (but not even close to being broken mentally), it was me (and, mind you, three months before the end of his legislature), who was sent to a mental asylum for six months because of the turmoil in the wake of my political incorrect letters about the multicultural madness and the dangers of Islam to the editor of local newspapers and magazines and occasionally also to….. the Cabinet of the Prime Minister.

In that mental hospital, I have been deliberately misdiagnosed with psychic disorders and was forced to swallow anti-psychotic meds [Risperdal (Risperidone)] simply to try to space myself out and no longer to pay attention to the stalking (or to give in to the pressure of it and, enter a ‘dialogue’ with the perpetrators of this psychic violence?) nor to focus on the danger of Islamization!!

In the course of taking these meds I began to suffer from strange sensations in my head. However, since I have stopped taking these, the sensations became daily chronic and have slowly become worse and worse (turned into a kind of ‘not severe’ headache). Also, very shortly after I had stopped taking that ‘medication’ I started having persistent visual disturbances. I have been getting now and then a blue flash of light before my eyes; it is only a tiny light (about the size of a pea) and as soon as I see it its gone again, but I can have this up to about 5-10 times a day. Or I get a quick white flash in the field of my vision, not in front of my eyes but to the side of it (not in the direction I’m looking) but either in the left corner, or in the right corner of my eye. Sometimes it is not a flash but rather a white bright spot. I also have various perceptual distortions such as bluish, shadowy shapes or whitish shapes when I look to a wall depending on the strength of the environmental light.

There are also situations in which I have optical illusions and afterimages. For example, when the moon is visible in the sky, and I look at it, I see a ‘double moon’, and I can’t read teletext anymore because after a few seconds I have before my eyes ‘black notelines’, which are hindering my reading – when I turn around my head, those lines are even projected on the wall for about ten seconds.

I have always hoped that after stopping taking meds these symptoms would go away after a while. But this did not happen. The strange sensations became even worse with time! I have constantly a tight feeling around the temple area. Sometimes, throughout the day, I also have a pulsating artery (on both sides, but it is much more pronounced on the left side ) and have also occasional twitches around the temple. When it’s at its worst, I feel a squeezing sensation against my temples.

Sometimes ( very seldom, perhaps once in a month) I also experience a quick, sharp, stabbing pain in my head, I can barely stand it. Both a CT scan and an MRI showed nothing wrong with my brain, such as a tumor. The psychatrist denies there is a connection with the medication Risperdal, but… can’t give an explanation either!! I cannot get a diagnosis!!