Interesting, I used to have an extremely strong visual memory. It was like you said, seeing the words on the page of my textbooks (if not verbatim then largely).

That was mostly when I was 13-18. I can’t say it’s causal, but around the time I discovered weed (17/18) I pretty much lost this ability. I was never a particularly heavy or regular user, but it’s pretty easy for me to segment my memory acuity into before/after age 18. Of course at that age many things are changing, all very quickly. So who’s to say what the cause was. Maybe it was destined to decline with age anyways.

I do fine for myself now, but now I tend to rely on process and flow states rather than memory recall for getting things done.