# New here and thinking of starting medication, advice?



## hopefuluk2 (Aug 20, 2015)

Hello everyone,

I am new here. 33 years old. I already have post-traumatic stress disorder which did not bother me much in life except with nightmares. Last march, I was in Amsterdam and I smoked half a joint with my girlfriend. I really inhaled strongly hoping to enjoy. We both got a panic attack. Our vision was distorted. We could not see anything in front of us. We THOUGHT that we were dead. It took us four hours to get back to the hotel after looking for many many trains. We ended up taking a taxi. I was really like a restarted person. My girlfriend was more conscious person and she managed to get us back to the hotel safely. We woke up the next day with numb brain and numb hands. It was really scary. Since then, life has been like a dream for me. After three weeks, I had a lot of stress at work and developed brain fog as well which was catastrophic for me as I could not focus on my research. I decided to beat all this without medication. So, I travelled to Japan and Australia for a whole month but believe me, I never enjoyed a single day of the trip. All the trip felt like a dream and the brain fog was so intense sometimes that I could not focus on talking to people. It has been five months now and the only medication that I took twice was diazepam (14 pills) (five MG) and that helped substantially with the brain fog but I read a lot about how dangerous it is to take on the long run and how addictive it could be. Now, after all my attempts to beat this for five months without medications, I seem helpless and I feel that I should do something about it. Thinking of seeing my GP tomorrow and probably asked to be referred to a psychiatrist. Anything you recommend as a start for medication? Besides, I am planning to go to the US on October 15. Is it risky to start any medication now? I really wanna enjoy my trip but I am also worried that taking any medication now will make me worse and probably lead me to cancel my trip which is work related. Advice please?

Cheers,

Hopeful!


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## servadei (Aug 20, 2015)

Please please don't. I am telling you this from personal experience. I have had DR before but now I am in antidepressant withdrawal and I am in hell. I got DP too and they are over the roof. Don't use anything it might get even worse.


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## servadei (Aug 20, 2015)

http://depersonalizationrecovery.com/articles/should-i-use-medications-for-depersonalization-and-derealization/

This is about medicationx but browse through other articles they might help you. It's very easy to understand and you just might recognize yourself.


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## TDX (Jul 12, 2014)

> I already have post-traumatic stress disorder which did not bother me much in life except with nightmares.


There are clinical trials that suggest that topiramate might help with nightmares in PTSD. Unfortunately it can have awful side-effects which may be worse than the nightmares. There are some theoretical reasons that it might also work against depersonalization in some cases, but it's unknown if this is true and which patients would benefit from it.


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