# drug v non-drug induced



## danny (Sep 2, 2004)

OK, see, heres the deal. I have had drug induced dr for almost 2 years now. I have definately improved from my lowest point almost a year ago but i am still only 50% better from there and i have the odd days where i almost slip back into it. I hear wonderful stories of recovery from long-term dp e.g. Janine, which is extremely positive for me and all of us sufferers here.

Yet I dont think i have come across any stories of cured drug-induced dr? Is this because the dr has come about in different ways, for example my brain has been chemically damaged v just simply patterns of thought? Or is this simply the same desiese with all of us open to recovery?

Dan


----------



## Guest (May 30, 2005)

I don't think there is really any difference between drug onset and "regular" dp states. There are SOME symptoms, such as HPPD sensations of light trailers, etc. that do seem exclusive to the drug trip set. But the inner anxiety states and feelings of unreality and/or impending insanity or that the self is vanishing, that's all the same drug-induced or not.

It's the experience you WENT THROUGH on the drug, not the drug's chemicals that caused the breakdown. Even if you didn't have a "bad trip" there is something so traumatic to a drug user's experience if he/she is a highly controlled, highly self-guarded person. The sudden SHIFT in reality and/or the sudden breaking down of self-image and status quo is enough to send the person into pre-breakdown mode.

Then a couple of weeks later, or later still, the dp starts. It's as if the mind hasn't been able to account for the bizarre leaps out of reality that the drug provided....as if it tried to re-establish a sense of "ah, all is fine again now..." and failed. The dp is the result of the brain's inability to turn back time (and to erase the "new insights" or shifts of consciousness) that the drug experience provided.

You can definitely recover from this. I assume most rec drug users dont' come back and post because 1) they're all young and have better things to do, lol, and 2) they were maybe not that "into" mental issues before their bad experience, so their interest in psychology, etc. is minimal.


----------



## danny (Sep 2, 2004)

> It's the experience you WENT THROUGH on the drug, not the drug's chemicals that caused the breakdown


This does make sense, as many of us drug induced dr-ers did not get full blown dr until a month or so after the initial episode. For me it was 3 months before it became 'permenant' (hopefully soon wont be!)

Well hopefully ill be posting in a few months or years about a long term drug induced dr recovery!! :roll:

Fingers crossed


----------



## university girl (Aug 11, 2004)

Hola to ya my fellow drug-induced DPer. As far as symptoms go, a study by Dr. Daphne Simeon actually looked at whether or not there was a significant difference in the symptoms of drug-induced versus non-drug-induced DP. They found no significant difference. Now, this does not necessarily mean the actual biochemical mechanism for the cause of the disease is the same but I think it's a good indication that it is at least similar.

There are two major theories out there as to why drugs can induce DP. One is that the actual experience of being high was in some way traumatic, as Janine mentioned. The other is that the actual drug induces the DP. I know for myself personally, the high that induced my DP was in no way traumatic.


----------



## Guest (May 30, 2005)

Uni Girl, I agree that the high from the drug need not have been traumatic. But what can form trauma to the brain are repeated failed efforts to REINSTATE status quo - the disjointed experience from the altered state versus "normal" thinking creates a disparity of such magnitude that some minds will register that as catastrophic.

IT's as if the mind is asking "WHAT IS REAL? this? or THAT?" and the inability to re-synthesize a stable sense of boundaries and self versus other, etc...can be enough to invoke dp.

It's not the experience that does it, but the mind's relentless efforts to make sense of it all. Imagine that you've never had a dream and suddenly at 20 yrs. old you have your first vivid night dream. You'd wake up and say "What the hell was THAT?" and probably spend the next few weeks totally obsessed with the bizarre expulsion from reality...how did it happen? What is real, this or that? And that obsessing would cause the mind to soon create symptoms.

We have no better explanations for dreams now, but we accept them as dreams. We can wake up and say "oh, well....that was then and this is now..." and bop off to the kitchen. THAT is dissociation, put to good use. IF instead, we spent the entire day trying to synthesize what the dream experience was from what waking consciousness is, we'd likely produce something like dp pretty quickly.

And even if the mind is not consciously trying to sort out reality after a drug trip, some people's minds just do that naturally. Folks, like us, who cannot just say "oh, well" to mental enigmas..who need to exert over-control, and to pursue the intricacies of eerie states - to the detriment of the sense of self.


----------



## university girl (Aug 11, 2004)

But does that not happen every high an individual has? For example, my DP set in on my tenth (or there abouts) high. Curious what your theory is on this.



JanineBaker said:


> Uni Girl, I agree that the high from the drug need not have been traumatic. But what can form the trauma to the brain is the efforts to REINSTATE status quo - the disjointed experience from the altered state versus "normal" thinking creates a disparity of such magnitude that some minds will register that as catastrophic.
> 
> IT's as if the mind is asking "WHAT IS REAL? this? or THAT?" and the inability to re-synthesize a stable sense of boundaries and self versus other, etc...can be enough to invoke dp.


----------



## Guest (May 30, 2005)

we posted at same time! I was adding to my other post above.

I do think you're right - but the killer is always one of degree. It's fine to sort out reality and say "is this real?" versus "is that real?" but do it ENOUGH, with enough intensity and at the exlusion of the real external world, and there you have How To Create Dp In A Nutshell. Some of us did exactly the same thing without the drug. Interesting stuff here.


----------



## bat (Aug 18, 2004)

hi danny

i got drug induced dp/dr over 10 years ago. i have spent about 85% of the last 10 years virtually dp/dr free. i say virtually because the memory of it doesn't leave me even when i am not dped.

i believe there are alot of people who experience some level of dp on come downs from drugs but mostly the dp's fairly mild and you know it's going to get better over the next couple of days or, if need be, put off for a bit.

anyway i know that it's possible to heal from dp(even if it's not to forget) and to lead a 'normal' life.

since my initial episode i finished an economics degree, resettled in a new country, trained as a teacher, bought a house, got a relationship and a dog. who said you can't have a second chance at life! hope this helps


----------



## dalailama15 (Aug 13, 2004)

> It's the experience you WENT THROUGH on the drug, not the drug's chemicals that caused the breakdown


This is absolutely true, unless, of course, it is not.

In other words, how in the world, Janine, (I ask with respect and affection) can you KNOW this?

It seems reasonable that yes, we got shocked by the borders of our ego structures being shaken, and yes, we got crippled by the conflicts between our concocted unreal, or idealized selves, and our real, or true, or core selves. Except that, for one thing, there is no real evidence that any of this stuff even exists. These psychoanalytic models of human nature were early stabs which became mature and complete while psychiatry was just advancing to the stage of frontal lobotomy, and when real brain science was virtually non-existent.

It doesn?t seem reasonable to me that introducing THC into some brains causes an ?experience? that can have the same results as the experience of living, day after day, from toddler to adult, in an emotionally un-natural home, because of a mentally ill parent, or because of an un-naturally cold or distant family. The magnitude of the difference between these two experiences, compared to the similarity of the results (DP/DR), suggest to me that the other factor, ?the drug?s chemicals,? simply can not, with any confidence, be relegated to some kind of inconsequential trigger. We can?t _know _that the chemical is not causal--uniquely, for at least some of us who report an intimate relationship between the drug and the disorder


----------



## halcyon (Nov 1, 2004)

i suffered from drug induced dr....abilify helped to cure that...cant say itll help for everyone but it did for me..you might want to give it a shot. good luck!


----------



## danny (Sep 2, 2004)

> since my initial episode i finished an economics degree


Hey pdr, SNAP! since my initial and continuing episode i finished an economics degree, well i do in 3 weeks, my finals are next week :shock:

Thinking about my initial attack, i do remember constantly racking m brain over what is reality when i was heavily stoned and wondering why i couldnt just snap back into reality

Thanks


----------



## bat (Aug 18, 2004)

best of luck for your finals


----------



## Guest (May 31, 2005)

Fine lama, I don't know it. Nor do psychoanalysts KNOW what they have learned either. nor psychiatrists. Nor any specialist. NObody knows anything 100 per cent, but when people talk, people are using their theories that have provided THEM with enough evidence to allow them to state a conclusion.

Forget it.
sorry.

nobody knows.
it's all conjecture.

i'll disclaim everything I say with that.


----------



## dalailama15 (Aug 13, 2004)

Ah god. Sorry. Did I sound that brisk or callus?

My point is not personal nor is it to debate -- I think transcending the debate itself could lead us closer to the real truth of all this. Like nature v. nurture, biology v. psychology could simply be the wrong question, a sterile question. I should have said, "how can _one_ know this?" or "how can this be known?"

That it is not known, right now, may not mean that it is unknowable. I believe it _ can _be known, or certainly can be assessed with greater or lesser accuracy, with the only methodology that, to my mind, seems to work--the scientific method.

I think, in my heart of hearts, that there is a decent chance that THC some how "gunked up" something in my lymbic system, all by itself, regardless of what I thought about it. This is a new idea for me, not a default idea, but after 30 years of being essentially a walking corpse, it probably doesn't make any difference.

Forget me. Sorry. I really wish everybody well.

-- Your friendly neighborhood dalai lama


----------



## Guest (May 31, 2005)

no, my apologies. NOT having a good day and I just heard your words wrong.


----------



## person3 (Aug 10, 2004)

I do know to an extent

I have friends that get together and do drugs together, the same batches of drugs.

some can do six or seven hits of acid at once, one can't even take more than a fourth of a hit. (not surprisingly, the 1/4 hit wonder is much more of a type A personality than the six or seven set)

some can smoke a little pot, some a lot.

etc

same stuff

just different personalities using the stuff

it's not the drug

and btw the landslide majority of my drug use...and by this i mean ecstacy every single weekend for a couple of months, DXM, cocaine, Nitrous oxide, a little pot, a LOT of pills...the majority of that came after the breakdown. The breakdown broke me down, not the subsequent drugs. My personality had already been cracked by then.

Also it's a part of some personalities to want to place the blame elsewhere. So there is a psychological side to placing the blame squarely on the drug. That way you assume you spend your whole life looking for the antidote rather than examine yourself and flaws in your own personality. Just a way to further protect your psyche from thinking YOU need to change.

I should practice what i preach a little more shouldn't I?


----------



## Da'Burgh (Apr 25, 2005)

I was doing DXM and after coming down (not completely) I smoked a few joints and that was too much I guess. It makes you trip so much harder. I had a major panic attack and the DP/DR didn't come 'til about almost a month later. I was after excessive worry and hoping I didn't F myself up that I got the DP/DR. I thought I was just "perma-trippin'" because a DXM trip feels like DR and when it gets more intense, DP. Needless to say, I don't do drugs anymore.


----------



## bat (Aug 18, 2004)

what's dxm?


----------



## agentcooper (Mar 10, 2005)

it's a hallucinogen...kind of like acid but it only lasts a short while (from what i've been told...never tried it myself).


----------



## Da'Burgh (Apr 25, 2005)

I never really felt like it didn't last long... it usually kept me up all night.


----------



## rainboteers (Apr 5, 2005)

The last time I did any drugs (well I only did LSD everyonce in awhile) was when I was 14 (10 yrs ago). All of this dp/dr anxiety depression stuff hit me 3 months ago, I highly doubt it is due to drug from 10 yrs ago(especially since I have felt perfectly fine for the last 10 yrs). The reason I wanted to respond to this though is because the way I feel now feels a little like I felt when I was doing LSD. This leads me to believe there is not much of a difference between the two. I just realized it today actually. I was thinking, "I know I have felt like this before," and I realized I felt kinda like this when I was doing LSD.


----------



## Beth (Sep 27, 2004)

Hey,

I think the fact that we all seem to obsess about the same ideas 'proves' what Janine is saying, if anything can. A feeling, like a drug high, or similar, can't be the same thing as a thought about reality or existence. It can provoke it, or come from it. But they can't be the same thing. Like some people can take mushrooms and feel spiritual and come down and say that was great, and start recycling, and other people 'feel spiritual' and analyse that in terms of their normal experience and break down because it doesn't fit and so their old models crumble.

I'm not sure if I've said very clearly what I meant to. But I used to feel very strongly that something physical had happened in my brain, that drugs had caused irreversible damage. Now I feel just as strongly, more maybe, that that was over-simplistic reasoning and that accepting that words like 'obsessive thought' can describe what's happening don't mean that the experience is less real or intense.

In response to the original question - I have been out and back in again, and when I was out I couldn't remember what this felt like. And if I wasn't doing a philosophy degree I'm pretty sure I'd have stayed cured! :? (And I'm drug-induced for the most part)


----------



## jft (Jan 10, 2005)

Rainboteers. How are your symtpoms similiar to LSD? 
jft


----------



## rainboteers (Apr 5, 2005)

Well for one thing when I did LSD I felt weird when I looked in the mirror because I felt like it wasn't me. For another thing I had a lot of anxiety when I did it, and I do now. It always freaked me out when I did LSD, not because of what I saw (because I did not hallucinate when I took it), but because of my thoughts of myself and reality.

It is defineately not exactly the same, but it is the only thing I can compare it to.


----------



## jft (Jan 10, 2005)

The reason I asked rainbo is becasue my symptoms are mnay times almsot identical to what I experienced while on LSD. I relate very well to most of what others describe on this board (I have moderate dp and nasty dr as described by others). My theroy is that I was experiencing dp/dr while tripping. I for years jsut thought I was having flashbacks from the drugs. It was not until reading soem journal articles of d/dr and reading much on anxiety that I realized drugs may be only part of the problem, a catylst of course. I do not think I would ever have had dp/dr without the drug ingestion (none of my other anxiety ordered siblings have dp/dr). All this being said, it still confounds me jsut how similiar my current syptoms are to what lsd did to me. I still play with the idea that I indeed have dp/dr/anxiety/depressiion. but I also just feel like I am tripping. Simple things like the speedy chemical feeling one got while coming on to acid, the gritty (sand in brain) sensations, the visual envormental changes is hues and clarity, the quasi
shut down of normal thought process, the introspection, the quasi paranoia, the inbility to communicate or understand well, even the extra laughter at times. Spatial realtions and disorientation (where did I park my truck in the mall parking lot), the light sensitivity. It actually feels more like when I was coming down off of acid, when my head was tired but I was still feeling very chemically. I know msot here claim dp/dr is dp/dr no matter how you got it. And I guess evidence leans toward that. But it behooves me to understand the similiarity of experience between lsd (or even pcp) and what others here describe as dp/dr, as how it was and is for me.
jft


----------



## Da'Burgh (Apr 25, 2005)

That's mostly the same worry for me, like that I hit a dissociation switch and became dissociated permenantly. Taking DXM or coming down from it was often referred to as "Afterglow". It feels like I'm in a constant (but varying) come down from this drug. They are very similar. That's why I was so petrified when these feelings started coming back a few weeks after I had the whole panic-attack-while-on-it ordeal. :x


----------



## squish_is_me (Jun 5, 2005)

WOW! OK jft I think that is exactly how DR feels! In fact the first time I tried to describe it to someone I dsescribed it as comming down of LSD!! WOW

Ok so Janine I have a question! 
I did smoke a lot and I mean a freaking LOT of pot between ages of 13 and 20! I did X once or twice... not sure I think just once when I was 17. The summer that I turned 18 I did a lot of acid! I did it every two weeks for a few months! The last time I dosed I actually was at red river gorge and one of the guys who was with us went into a bad trip and was more or less delusional and freaking out the whole night! As a result of this I was forced to be awake the whole time I was comming down! Something I really did not like! I thought it felt horrible! It was as if I was watching reality repixelize in! All the while listening to someone screaming and freaking out which just made me jittery as all hell! 
I did have one time shortly after that that Ihad smoked a small amout of opium with some pot and I had what I thought was the drug affecting me badly and as it turns out a DR evening from it. 
Well I got pregnant in August of 01'. I quit smoking pot all to geather then. I didnt get high again till about 4mo after I had my lil girl. I smoke occasionally after I had her though not alot. I'd say maybe 4 or 5 times a week... maybe. Then when she was about 8mo old me and her father moved into our own place. Our girl was gone for the night (never smoked around her) and we had friends over. Well I was pretty well on my way to drunk and BF was sparking a joint and asked if I wanted some? I was on my way outside to smoke a cigg. So I just took 3 quick drags and went outside. Between the time I walked out the door to my apt and the time I came back in I got this horrible unreality feeling... I guess the two didnt mix well! I spent the rest of the night sitting in the bedroom staring out the window chainsmoking cigs waiting for company to leave and for my buzz to wear off! It truely freaked me out.
I smoke a few times after that but every time I did I got that same unreal feeling and began hating it! I think I even had a panic attack one time! So that was it for me! In very April or very early may of 04' I got pregnant again. I had been very very(fever of like 103) sick 2 days before my friends wedding... I was in it! Well the day before we were supposed to do the rehersal. I was feeling a lil better and took an excedrin and a tylenol. On my way to the rehersal I got a very confused disoriented feeling and I ws freaking out! I had to pull over and stop and breath and tell myself I was ok! I think that was my first real true anxiety attack! I told myself it was all because of the meds I had mixed together... though I truely did not feel right the rest of that day! The next day I went to get my hair done and was feeling horrible! I decided to take some dayquil. I felt seriously drugged! I know dayquil isnt supposed to make you feel anything... that is the point of it, but I did.
For the next week I felt entirely off kilter! I thought I was fine I just thought I had some weird reaction to the medacine and passed it off. For the most art I didnt think about it at all. I had a little anxiety but I was fine. 
Then about a week or so after the wedding ... maybe 10days... I was sitting in a restaraunt with BF's family. I was telling a story and in the middle of my story reality just floated away! I suddenly felt as though things were wrong! I ended the story quickly and began feeling as though I may have just said something stupid. I sat there freaking out! I excused myself and went to the bathroom and told myself I was ok and took some short breaths and tried to relax. sadly when I went back to the table things were not ok. I felt just as jft said that I was on LSD. An unwanted trip! I actually wondered if possibly I was having a flashback!
Since then I have been entirely anxiety ridden and trying to cope and understand these feelings of non-reality and as you put it obsessions over what is happening. What is right and what isnt! Selfmonitoring and all that crap!

So here is my question. I think 3 years is far to long for my DR to be drug induced ... at least by LSD or pot or opium. Wouldnt you agree? So my question is what then? What caused this? Was it possibly that anxiety attack I had? That feeling like the world was caving in? It messed me up so much that my brain couldnt compute? I mean until I was wighting this I hadnt considered it because I just sorta forgot about it after that! Possibly my mind didnt? Or maybe the day after when I took the nyquil? ... of course I did feel out of sorts before I took the nyquil! Sigh. I dunno. I just have been wondering forever what caused this change much like the rest of the people here. Now reading what you have said here I am even more curious!

Any insights Janine?


----------

