# How I got better



## Psg (Apr 3, 2010)

I have recovered fully from depersonalization. Hopefully my experience and possible insights may be of value for others. Mind you, this is a "short" summary of what could be a very long story.

For a long time, how long I'm not sure but a number of years, I had the worst depression and anxiety. I was "jumpy", my mind wouldn't keep quiet, I would obsess about things. Then very suddenly, over a day, this changed. Instead I became completely numb.

During my worst anxiety attacks I guess I had hoped for such a thing, but it turns out numbness was worse (at least for me) than depression because at least when you can feel you are able to have purpose. If listening to music makes you feel nothing, why listen to it? If getting a great job or being fired seems to make no difference, why bother? Basically I felt like a vegetable. I was numb. I had no feelings, positive or negative. No love, hatred, anger, empathy. Nothing. Nothingness. There were other symptoms as well, such as tingling / pins and needles sensations in my hands and feet and generally a sense of "feeling less" from physical touch. This problem disappeared three times before the last time when it seems to have disappeared completely.

The first time I was abroad. Suddenly while sitting on a train, I realized I was *feeling*. Very significant for me. The effect stayed for about a week. The only cause I can think of was that while being abroad, I had been doing something differently from what I was normally doing. Unfortunately I can only speculate as to what that might have been. One thing I can think of is diet. I was eating at Burger King several times a day for various reasons (something which I never normally do - unhealthy). I know the oils used for the fries lower serotonin levels in the brain (there is a lot of literature about "bad" fats causing depression by lowering serotonin for those interested). Since I've been on SSRI:s previously I knew the effects of SSRI:s, which raise serotonin, was to make me numb. Could it then be that the lowering of serotonin was having the opposite effect? Perhaps, but of course it's speculation.

The second time reality opened up for me I was smoking pot. I got a strange strange sensation of suction in the back of my head and all of a sudden I was feeling again. That is, I wasn't just feeling stoned and all the other effects of pot, but I was experiencing reality again. Unfortunately when the pot wore off the experience disappeared and I was back in oblivion. Repeated experiments with pot did not reproduce the effect.

The third time I "got back" was when I was put on wellbutrin, which, like pot, increases dopamine. Again I got the sensation of suction in the back of my head. The difference this time as compared to when I was on pot was that I could drift in and out of numbness and into reality at will, by focusing my mind. If I focused on an object it would become more real. At the same time the sensation of suction would increase. The experience is highly subjective, but the best way I can describe it is that it felt as if my mind was fighting to hold me back. The wellbutrin would allow me to see reality, but only if I focused. Meanwhile while focusing, the sensation of suction would increase, as if holding me back. A soon as I would "let go" (by not intentionally focusing), my mind would pull me back into numbness and the sensation of suction would decrease. Unfortunately, although I tried to achieve the same effect without wellbutrin I was not able to break through. Still, it had showed me that it was at least technically or theoretically possible. Unfortunatly I had to quit wellbutrin due to its huge number of scary side effects (whole other chapter...).

Since then I was put on buspar (buspirone). It had the strange effect of making me feel numb in certain ways and not in others. Mainly, however, I felt even more numb when on it. The interesting effect happened when I quit. Suddenly, I was back! It was as if buspar had made my mind even more numb, thereby forcing it to compensate. Perhaps if a certain receptor for some chemical had been blocked, it had compensated by becoming more sensitive. Then when I quit that increased sensisitivty remained and translated to incresed activation of that receptor when it was no longer blocked by buspar. Afaik, not much is known about the mechanism of action of buspar, but from what I've found it is a seratonin agonist (which would explain the numbness) but a partial dopamine antagonist (blocker). In short, for me, the solution was to introduce a chemical that made me more numb, not less.

On a sidenote, eating plenty of fruit and vegetables seems to improve my mood somewhat.

Good luck
// Psg


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## FoXS (Nov 4, 2009)

Psg said:


> The first time I was abroad. Suddenly while sitting on a train, I realized I was *feeling*. Very significant for me. The effect stayed for about a week. The only cause I can think of was that while being abroad, I had been doing something differently from what I was normally doing. Unfortunately I can only speculate as to what that might have been.


i notice this, too







going out where you have never been before and enjoying the new environment really clears the mind!


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