I've finally been properly diagnosed. My brain feels like mud. I can hardly think anymore. Talking is difficult, and concentrating on anything is pretty much a nightmare. I feel so incoherant. Because of my HPPD, I find it hard to see things, and a lot of my visuals cause more anxiety.
No anti-depressants have worked on me so far. I've been on Fluoxetine, Fluvoxamine, and St. John's Wort. I'm trying Wellbutrin now, but so far it doesn't seem to be doing anything.
I'm wondering if there's anything else I can try to possibly alleviate some of my symptoms, because it's almost unbearable and I really don't know how much longer I can take this. My life has been completely put on hold.
I've finally been properly diagnosed. My brain feels like mud. I can hardly think anymore. Talking is difficult, and concentrating on anything is pretty much a nightmare. I feel so incoherant. Because of my HPPD, I find it hard to see things, and a lot of my visuals cause more anxiety.
No anti-depressants have worked on me so far. I've been on Fluoxetine, Fluvoxamine, and St. John's Wort. I'm trying Wellbutrin now, but so far it doesn't seem to be doing anything.
I'm wondering if there's anything else I can try to possibly alleviate some of my symptoms, because it's almost unbearable and I really don't know how much longer I can take this. My life has been completely put on hold.
Crossing my fingers on this one.
I have noticed in your signature that you are from a northern area of the world. The only thing that works here in the tropics, is exercise, lots of fresh water, fresh fruit and veggies and filling ones life full of happy reminders of people and plans and goals. If you have not tried vitamin therapy it would be worth a try. Also if you have a doctor in your area that does chelation therapy, that has worked before. I do not work for anyone who promotes this but I have had people tell me that getting certain toxic chemicals out of the blood stream worked miracles for them. I know it is hard to change your life, when the thing that is messing up your life is coming from inside you body. Take care and good luck
Tigersuit, I had to look up the HPPD. It seems that this is from your drug use. Hopefully, with time it will resolve itself. The panic/depersonalization/derealization is all from anxiety. Do you think that your depression is from your anxiety? If it is, to simplify things (which I love to do for myself because this makes problems easier to tackle) you really only have anxiety to work on. Have you been anxious your whole life?
I've been somewhat anxious my whole life, but it's gotten worse in the past few years. Over consumption of caffeine 2 years ago set me off into the disorder, which I worked hard on getting ride of, and had gone away for a really long time, until I took shrooms over last Christmas. It all came back, and worse than ever. My life is full of regret.
Tigersuit, the only thing that you have control over now is your present and your future. If anxiety is the root to a lot of your issues, I would suggest counseling to learn what is causing it and how you can get rid of it. I overcame my anxiety with counseling.
I go to a therapist every week, and neither of us can figure out why the anxiety is being caused other than my bad mushroom experiences. I'm thinking it's somewhat of a post traumatic stress disorder, but I haven't talked to her about that yet.
I felt a little better today than normal, but I'm sure this is only temporary. There's no way the wellbutrin is kicking in this fast.
Tigersuit, I recovered from anxiety. I saw my first counselor when I was in my mid 20's. She helped me with boundaries and my fear of intimacy but together we never got to my anxiety (I had 5 visits with her). I worked on those issues for a bit of time until my life got unbearable again (always the trigger to work on issues - when they caused trouble). With the next counselor I worked on my self worth. Had 1 visit! This kept me busy for awhile but still never touched on the anxiety problem (I guess you work one issue at a time). A few years later, major anxiety! Okay, time to work on it! Finally did, took probably 1 1/2 years of on and off therapy with a few counselors. Got to the bottom of it. Ten years had passed since the first counselor. My anxiety was not from what happened to me it was from what DIDN"T happen to me - nurturing from my mom. I think that some people grow up in their families and they think that everything was perfect because no bad traumas happened. It's harder to understand when it was something that simply didn't happen. Do you want to share your upbringing?
Tigersuit, I could see how that would cause anxiety. Did you always worry about being bullied? This would cause someone to be hypervigilant about others.
I did...but this was a long time ago. Up until a few months ago I was perfectly fine, and having a great time with my life. I was confident and didn't worry about anything. Everything came crashing down shortly after I had my bad trips, so I'm putting the blame on them.
Tigersuit, this is the way that I look at issues like this. Our personality is formed as we grow up, starting from birth. We are born a certain way but then we are further affected by our environment. As you were growing up in elementary school you were continuing to develop mentally and emotionally. We learn or we do not learn all sorts of life skills depending on our environment. We learn problem solving, we learn if we have any power, we learn that others are supportive and fun or we learn that people can be cruel. The list goes on and on. Later in life if we come upon any challenges or traumas, we pull from within ourselves to cope with these difficulties. If we were fortunate and we filled our personalities with good coping skills and a strong identity, etc., we will be better able to meet these challenges. If we were less fortunate and we didn't get to develop ourselves fully or learn good problem solving and coping skills, these challenges will be more difficult. This is my take on stuff like this. We can always at any point in our lives develop ourselves more fully. I developed myself much more fully starting in my 20's and continuing on still today at 43. I was one of those less fortunate folks when I was growing up.
Hi Tigersuit, you are going to a therapist. This is where you can work on these things. Also, I think it is helpful for people to post specific issues here. This is how I saw my journey to mental/emotional health - it was a journey filled with taking each issue that I had and analyzed it with a therapist to figure out how I had to solve it. I still do it today but I can do it on my own and posting it here helps a lot. What is the most pressing issue that you are having right now?
Well, I have exactly the same symptoms as you do! The feeling that I can't escape my own body!!! These symptoms did not occur until I took mushrooms(not a bad trip). I did not know about HPPD though. I'm not sure what to do anymore(almost 2 years), but my diet change seems like it has helped. I think my problem has to do with my digestive problems from the mushrooms though(candida, leaky gut, random infection, etc...). Brain fog is the worst, it just don't seem like it is from an underlying past problem or whatever, but you never know. Ill keep you posted on what helps me, I read a lot and want to resolve this. Peace
