# What is wrong with me? Is it DPD?



## JeremiahFrost (Oct 9, 2009)

Hello everyone. I found this forum while doing research on Depersonalization Disorder, and I figured that this was probably the best place to ask for help.

I wasn't sure if this was the right subforum for my thread. If not, I apologize.

Before I jump into my current symptoms, I want to give a brief summary of the last few years of my life.

I don't really know when my issues first started. Freshman year of high school, I was fine. Well, sort of. I was a little socially awkward, as a result of several years of bullying and whatnot. But I didn't have problems making friends. I went to a private school from 5th grade until high school graduation. We had a graduating class of 20 students. We were more of a family than a group of friends. We're all still really close (for the most part), and I don't have any social problems there. Those people are honestly the only people I feel completely comfortable with, but I'll get to that later. Anyways, Sophomore year, I ended up falling for a girl who unfortunately did not return the feelings. News of this spread quickly, and within a week or so, everyone knew. Torment ensues. It wasn't malicious in nature. No-one meant harm from it. I mean, in hindsight, it was pretty funny. It just wasn't funny at the time, to me at least. I spent most nights in my room, alone, in a twisted mix of rage and depression. I because irritable and violent. Eventually, I got over it. I never moved on from the girl (we are still friends, and I would still drop everything to be by her side, but now I'm a bit more mature about it), but I learned how to cope with it. I went back to my old, jovial self, more or less. I learned to stop taking things so personally, and to shrug off jokes and insults. However, I never fully recovered. The whole affair destroyed my self-esteem and left a large chunk of my psyche permanently damaged.

Junior year passed without major incident. I am much more outgoing at this point. I easily make friends. It's not hard for me to fit in with any group of people. You would have been hard-pressed to find someone who didn't like me. I was the funny guy. Even if you were laughing at me, you were only laughing with me. Jokes made at my expense never bothered me, and I was often the one making the jokes. I knew what to say to make people laugh. Hell, I just knew what to say in any situation. It's a skill I've honed with time.

In the fall of my senior year, my step-brother was killed in a car accident. My parents had been divorced since I was 2. Every other weekend, I stayed with my dad. He was an interesting fellow. Not a bad father, but not a good role model, either. He was ex-army (and often told stories about it, even though he didn't play any significant role). He swore like a sailor and smoked almost a pack a day. He was quick to anger (never at me, though), and often made promises he couldn't deliver. I used to hold it against him, but now I more or less understand. If I had to give my father an unprofessional diagnosis, I'd say that he is hardcore ADD. Anyways, when I was in 3rd or 4th grade, he married my step-mother. She had three children from a previous marriage. The oldest, Austin, was a year younger than me. We grew up together, and we were very close. The other two were several years younger than us, but we were always a little group. We spent a lot of time roaming the neighborhood and doing normal kid stuff. Now, my father had made some... er... "unwise" career choices and so they moved around a lot. Anyways, at the end of my freshman year, he divorced my step-mother because she was supposedly cheating on him (I've learned to take everything my father says with a rather large grain of salt). I didn't see any of them until my brother's visitation. And I haven't seen them since.

After I heard about his death, I felt really strange for a while. The first few days, I was sad. Then I really wasn't. It felt completely unreal, and it was easily cast from my mind. It should have bothered me so much more than it did, than it does. For a while, I got choked up when talking about Austin, but it never really hit me like it should have.

After high school graduation, my father and I got into an argument. We haven't spoken since (that was last June). I'm not sure if I have just become so desensitized to loss, or what, but this didn't/doesn't bother me. Having to put my life on hold to go spend time with my dad was always more of an annoyance than anything else. I loved my father, and I loved my step-family, but it took me no time at all to get over the loss. Looking back over the whole situation is strange for me. It feels like a different reality, like someone else's memory. I dream about them sometimes. You know, the dreams where you wake up in a cold sweat, trying to remember why you're crying...

After my brother's death, I lost all motivation in school. Nothing felt important. I stopped caring about everything. After this, I would have depressive episodes. I would hang out with people until late, and feel normal and happy, and then as soon as I was alone again, I'd feel down. This went on for a while, progressively getting worse.

Towards the end of senior year, I started smoking marijuana. I had been reading up on the effects for a while, and came to the conclusion that all of the government propaganda was just that: propaganda. I started smoking once a week, then twice a week, then 3-4 times a week, then everyday. My parents caught me about a month before I left for college in North Carolina (I'm from Illinois). During my first semester of college, I only smoked marijuana a handful of times. I drank 1-3 times a week and ordered some Spice Gold (a blend of herbs revealed to contain synthetic cannabinoids JWH-018 on CP 47,497) several times. Over Christmas break and Spring Break, when I returned home, I smoked marijuana with my friends almost every day. During my second semester, I found a solid connection, and started smoking almost every day. I mostly only smoked at night, but sometimes I would smoke during the day. I have been smoking fairly regularly since then. I have done a number of other drugs. I only do psychedelics/hallucinogens. I've never understood the appeal of opiates/stimulants/benzos and I have no interested in getting mixed up in those.

Drugs I've Done:
- Marijuana (semi-regularly for a year and a half)
- Spice Gold [JWH-018 / CP 47,497] (regularly for 3-4 months)
- Amanita Muscaria mushrooms (3 times)
- Salvia Divinorum (6-8 times)
- LSA [Morning Glory / Hawaiian Baby Woodrose seeds] (3-5 times)
- Various ethnobotanicals [Wild Dagga / Kratom / Blue Lily / etc]
- Ecstasy [MDMA + Cocaine] (1 time)
- Psilocybin mushrooms (3 times)
- LSD (3 times)
- Dextromethorphan (15 - 20 times)

*Note:* I do not know for sure that the Ecstasy I took only contained MDMA and cocaine, but I feel like the person I bought from was fairly reputable.

I do not feel like my drug use is to blame for my symptoms. While on the drugs, I never lose lucidity, and I never have trouble separating myself from the drugs (I never lose reality testing). I also wake up the next day feeling the same as I had the previous day (before taking the drug) or the day before that. I've had mild hang over effects, but those generally pass within a few hours, and I'm back to ground zero (it'd be a stretch to call my usual state of mind "normal").

Anyways, back to the depression-like symptoms. During the first semester, I felt overwhelmed by everything. I started slipping into a depressive mindset. I ended up losing all motivation and sleeping through class or just blowing off homework. During Christmas break, I was going to talk to my doctor about it, but as soon as I returned home, the symptoms vanished and I felt like my same old healthy self. I can now see that removing stress removed symptoms, but I don't think I made that connection back then. Once I returned to school for my second semester, it happened again, same as before, only stronger. I ended up skipping most classes. Some days, I'd just sit in my room and smoke pot. Some days, I'd just sleep all day. I lost all motivation. For everything. I was heavily depressed, and I could not understand why. I was having strong suicidal thoughts almost everyday, to the point where I was planning it out. Half the time, I was really sad and I just wanted to die, but the other half of the time, it was an emotionless decision. I either felt really depressed, or I didn't feel at all. Emotional numbness. My pre-existing sleep apnea and stress-induced insomnia didn't help at all. Due to sleep deprivation, life felt like a waking dream. I was having trouble determining what was real and what was not.

Anyways, I went home for the summer, and I felt great. Due to my poor academic performance, I could not return to North Carolina. In all honesty, that was good news. I'm glad I didn't return.

Anyways, the summer went fine. I worked during the day and chilled with friends at night. I felt fine, more or less. During the summer, I didn't really have problems, but I did feel mildly depressed from time to time. I always felt a bit disconnected, though, like I was looking through someone else's eyes.

So here were are now. School has started up again, and my problems have come back. But it's not depression. And I know why. In North Carolina, I had only a few friends, and none were very close. I was completely alone. At least here, I have my friends that I've known for 5+ years. I'm not alone.

Here are my current symptoms:
- I feel disconnected almost all the time. I've come to terms with it, but it's still a bit unnerving
- The world around me feels surreal a lot of the time.
- I'm extremely spacey and I day-dream a lot.
- I have a horrible memory
- My mind constantly feels cluttered and disorganized
- My mind is almost always racing
- I feel like I'm trapped in my body. It feels foreign, almost
- I am emotionless almost all the time. I don't feel depressed, I just feel indifferent. 
- I have no motivation for anything. I know I need to care, that I should care, but I don't care, I can't care.
- Very few things interest me, and those that do only interest me for a short while.
- Social situations are uncomfortable / heavy social anxiety
- I feel unable to connect with other people. I feel like I have very little in common with others.
- I feel like being social involves acting for me. Socializing is more or less me going through the motions. I am damn good at pretending
- Almost all of my emotions are faked, and I'm really good at it.
- Everything that I am is hidden. I don't open up to anybody. No-one knows the real me, and I don't feel obligated to let others in

And another thing: Caffeine does not affect me like it affects everyone else. I can drink a lot of it, and not feel stimulated. However, I do feel more emotions. It's a bit overwhelming to go from not feeling at all to feeling everything tenfold.

Has anyone watched the show Dexter? I started watching that a few weeks ago. I am not a schizoid, but I understand *a lot* of what he describes.

Sorry if this seems disjointed. I have a hard time keeping my writing organized.


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## Garjon (Apr 4, 2009)

Man where to start. Well first of all I am certainly not a doctor and the extend of my knowledge comes from being an undergraduate pscyhology major and also from talking to a few therapists so I am only going to be able to give my perspective.

Secondly, Dexter is one of my favorite shows and I personally think everyone can relate to Dexter regardless of the fact that he has an extremely dark side.

Now, I feel, from my shallow perspective of reading what you wrote, that you aren't entirely honest with yourself. Not only do you try to not let other people get to you, but I think that you are even quite good at at keeping things from yourself. One minor example of this is at the end of your post when you apologize for the writing saying that you have trouble keeping it organized. I found the post extremely well organized.

Another example of this I think is when you say that no longer talking to your family, and the death of Austin didn't get to you. It certainly did and it is clear from your writing but you have to understand that everyone deals with things differently. You seem to deal with it by disconnecting yourself from the situation and not allowing yourself to feel the pain that should come with losing someone close to you. I believe that much of this has to do with the fact that you have trained yourself to become apathetic and this is common with depression. I think if you were to receive a diagnosis, you would be told that you have what is called anhedonia. This is a form of depression which causes bluntness or numbness of feeling as opposed to actually feeling full on sad sometimes.

Let me also say that i hope i am not insulting you in any way saying any of these things but i just thought you were looking for someone elses perspective.

Moving on, the drug use probably has had an effect on you whether you realize it or not. It will effect your perception and cause you to feel that disconnected feelings. However, if the primary question that you are wanting an answer to is whether or not you have depersonalization, it seems to me the way to answer this is to ask if you feel comfortable with the way you perceive and experience the world. If you do feel comfortable with your perception then I dont think what you are experiencing is depersonalization. If your every day perception is troubling to you then I think you may be experiencing depersonalization. Other than that I think you have some issues in your past that weren't properly dealt with and this has caused displaced pain and sadness. If anything, I think working through all this with a psychologist or counselor would be extremely helpful to you.

I hope this was at least somewhat helpful, if you have any questions you can private message me.


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