# A year later and I remember this forum!



## lilywho (Sep 13, 2016)

I can pinpoint the exact time I triggered my hidden magic ability ( or curse ) of Dp/Dr. I smoked weed as a one off, I was curious to try it as I never had before, and thus induced my first ever horrible panic attack, bearing in mind I had no previous mental issues like anxiety, depression etc. so this was truly magnified to be 10x worse in my mind. After I had calmed down, my bad trip wore off after a few hours, I went to sleep and brushed the whole thing off as a lesson in why I shouldn't ever do drugs ever again. Fast forward to a few days afterwards, I feel fine, no panic attacks, I wasn't really thinking about what had happened, and how fucking weird I felt during my experience with weed, and by that I mean it was my first real taste of Dp/Dr, apart from maybe when I was a child and had a fever (pink Floyd anyone?).

Then one fateful night, I woke up at 3Am, and I had the strangest feeling ever, it was like I was on weed again, nothing felt real, I had this strange sense of Deja Vu, like something just wasn't right, and it disturbed me. After watching the tv for a while, I started thinking maybe I was still aware of being stuck in some hellish dream, and this was a false awakening, now I was REALLY starting to freak out. My body was numb,I was seeing things through a lense, and it all just escalated from there with even more symptoms, trains of thought that scared me to death, existentialism you all know the drill. It stuck with me, and lingered, I told my family and friends, but nobody seemed to "get it", I felt I was going crazy and of course if it weren't for the internet I would probably still be thinking that.

But now for the positives! I am just as I was before all this happened, perfectly happy, comfortably, and feeling like an actual part of this world and my own body again. How you may say? I will get to that

I saw multiple counsellors, none helped. They all reckoned it was stemming from social anxiety, they couldn't fathom that my worries were from how I was perceiving the world and feeling within my body at the moment, and how I couldn't stop obsessing over the grander questions in life. I took to the internet, and I made it my sick hobby to scour the internet every single day for new information, for proof I wasn't crazy, for how the hell I can get rid of this thing. Trust me when I say I was stuck in a rut for a solid one and a half years before I made any progress, and my symptoms got much less scary.

It all boiled down to when I started accepting the fact I was bringing all this upon myself, I was creating a vicious cycle in which I worried about my symptoms, and then made them worse as a result. I checked in on myself every day, waiting for something bad to happen, for me to suddenly wake up from some dream or whatever, I was always freaking out over my own ludicrous theories that had no logic, rhyme or reason.

Then one day, I stopped giving a shit. Now writing this now, I know how pissed off my younger self would have been reading this when I was suffering with this awful thing, you cant just tell a depressed person to "stop being sad", but realise that no amount of medications and counselling will work on its own, its on you to start realising that ALL of this craziness your brain is doing is JUST a coping mechanism. We are creating it to be what it is, and when you get rid of it (and you will) you will realise this, because even though you may feel enlightened or like you're on to something big now, its all bullshit that your mind runs away with when it faces something it doesn't understand.

I kind of just thought to myself "ok so I feel like I'm in the matrix? well I've decided I don't care if I'm in the matrix or not, I would much rather just stop torturing myself over the what-ifs, go about as normal, and immerse myself into my own daily life." and that I did, sure I still had all these thoughts about existentialism and how big and scary it all is, but I realised that worrying about it wasn't really achieving anything, worrying about it wasn't going to give me any answers, I cant be bothered to be scared of something all my life, to the point that it BECOMES my whole life. Its been a few years since then, and I cant say dp/dr has left me permanently, because its my own brains coping mechanism. But now I can honestly say it barely shows up, and when it does, I'm so over it that it doesn't scare/worry me anymore, I barely notice its there, and the weird sensations don't even feel weird anymore, they are much lessened even, its like a small nagging worry I can push to the side, unless I give it the time and thought.

I know this won't help everyone, and maybe it doesn't help anyone, I don't know how best to put it into words without feeling like I'm being ignorant to how hard it is to just "forget about it". I really do care for anyone struggling with this, because I've been there, and I know how shit it is. I just want to offer my own personal story, maybe to bring a little comfort. Hopefully one day your brain gets bored with dp/dr and realises that its much easier to just accept the crazy thing that is life, and make of it what you will. :mrgreen:


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## masksacrafice (Dec 9, 2013)

Awesome to hear! Did you have a thought of having a brain and not being able to touch it bother you or something similar? Did you use the same method of not giving a damn? Thanks and Congrats!


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## lilywho (Sep 13, 2016)

masksacrafice said:


> Awesome to hear! Did you have a thought of having a brain and not being able to touch it bother you or something similar? Did you use the same method of not giving a damn? Thanks and Congrats!


It sounds ridiculous to me now, but yes, I thought a lot about my own brain and how it essentially was "me", and it did freak me out, I sometimes felt trapped in my own head. My answer to this now would be that although your brain stores all the information and is basically the pilot, it isn't "you", it's just the "controller", you're experiences, your physical being, interacting with the physical world, is what makes you, well, you. I hope this helps? Everyones experiences are different of course since everyone gets a little freaked out and starts thinking about things that really aren't that scary when talking about it rationally. So you have a brain, big deal. : )


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## lostit (Sep 12, 2016)

I am so happy to hear that u are good.Did u have fear of your own existence? I feel so weird to have a thoughts, like I don't know who am I.


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## masksacrafice (Dec 9, 2013)

lilywho said:


> It sounds ridiculous to me now, but yes, I thought a lot about my own brain and how it essentially was "me", and it did freak me out, I sometimes felt trapped in my own head. My answer to this now would be that although your brain stores all the information and is basically the pilot, it isn't "you", it's just the "controller", you're experiences, your physical being, interacting with the physical world, is what makes you, well, you. I hope this helps? Everyones experiences are different of course since everyone gets a little freaked out and starts thinking about things that really aren't that scary when talking about it rationally. So you have a brain, big deal. : )


I gotcha. I've been in this for a few years now and have made some progress, but still feel like I'm at that point where I'm missing something, but I don't know what. Can you say how you accepted it?(I assume it was more natural) and any other tips? I'm still excited from every story thinking I will be done for good, but who know when. Thanks for your awesome story!


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## lilywho (Sep 13, 2016)

lostit said:


> I am so happy to hear that u are good.Did u have fear of your own existence? I feel so weird to have a thoughts, like I don't know who am I.


All the time! I felt weird to be alive and I felt like I didn't recognise myself as myself anymore. As you start to get out of your own head by focusing on the world around you (external) as opposed to all these thoughts about yourself and your own mind (internal), you'll probably start to reconnect with yourself again, and the whole weirdness wont be so weird to think about anymore haha. I think when you get dp/dr you become hyper-aware of your own mind, and get so lost in it all, you lose your sense of self and stop focusing on the actual physicality of everything like your own physical body, and the environment, so it becomes unfamiliar feeling and strange. Sucks, but its also something not everyone has the ability to do I dont think. : )


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## lilywho (Sep 13, 2016)

masksacrafice said:


> I gotcha. I've been in this for a few years now and have made some progress, but still feel like I'm at that point where I'm missing something, but I don't know what. Can you say how you accepted it?(I assume it was more natural) and any other tips? I'm still excited from every story thinking I will be done for good, but who know when. Thanks for your awesome story!


Its hard to say how I accepted it, because I know this method of thinking may not work for everyone, but I just kinda stopped caring. For example I freaked out that I was a person and found my existence scary, but then I kind of said that yes, existing is scary, maybe that's just a fact of life that I need to move on from. It benefits me in no way to ponder on this for so long, I kind of just have to deal with and accept the fact that life is strange and even though there are unanswered questions in the world, everyone else has to live with these questions too. I want to enjoy my life not be scared of it, so yeah I'm never going to know the answers to these questions and that's okay by me, because I would rather just watch a good movie and eat some chocolate right now.

I wish I could put it in better words, but I'm no poet. As you start to stop caring and focus on whats happening in your life right now, you'll notice that derealisation just kind of takes a backseat, and eventually you just sort of...forget about it? Sometimes it might come back and I might have a thought like "am I even real?" but then I shoo it away by suddenly realising "wait I dont care if I'm real or not, I'm watching my favourite TV show."


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## Jwd12 (Jun 27, 2015)

Awesome post! Just wondering if you experienced any visual symptoms? Floaters/ visual snow etc just any kind of weird vision if so how is that now that your feeling better?


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## lilywho (Sep 13, 2016)

Jwd12 said:


> Awesome post! Just wondering if you experienced any visual symptoms? Floaters/ visual snow etc just any kind of weird vision if so how is that now that your feeling better?


Thanks! : ) I got visual symptoms like tunnel vision, things looked flat, i had a white fog kind of thing going on. All disappeared when I started recovering, I never get that anymore, its hard to ignore at first because its literally your vision thats being affected, but i used to pretend that dp/dr was putting a filter over my eyes and to get rid of the filter i would have to get rid of dp/dr.


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## Jwd12 (Jun 27, 2015)

Thanks for the reply. That's a good way to look at it without stressing about it constantly


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## JakePlaysDrums (Oct 4, 2013)

> But now I can honestly say it barely shows up, and when it does, I'm so over it that it doesn't scare/worry me anymore, I barely notice its there, and the weird sensations don't even feel weird anymore, they are much lessened even, its like a small nagging worry I can push to the side, unless I give it the time and thought.


Can you explain this in more detail?


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