# Is this how everyone here feels? I'm not me anymore, I want out.



## Youngster14 (May 31, 2014)

I don't know if I'm posting in the right area, if I'm doing this right, or if this post is too long. I'm on mobile and I just joined the site so bear with me. Okay so about a month and a half ago I tried marijuana and freaked out really bad. Ill assume you all know how it goes but I'd like to elaborate. So when it all first happened I was in bed for a week and scared out of my mind. After going back to school for a week I started to feel better. Then one day I come home, take nap, and BOOM! I wake up with the full nine yards and more. Since then I just feel like its been getting worse. I feel like I am not me. Nothing around me feels real or genuine. I don't know who I am. I have these thoughts that make it all worse. I will think things like, "why am I me?" "Why am I not someone else?" "Do I even exist?" "Is anything really real beyond my own mind?" I have no personality. Also, my memories don't feel as they actually happened. I will go out and do something, come home and look back on it and I can remember it (though it is hard), but the memory seems so distant, like it happened years ago, or like it didn't even happen at all. I am so buried in my thoughts 95% of the time and it makes it worse. I will sometimes have these "wake-ups" where I will wake up from my thoughts and its like I was sleeping the whole time before. Everything I was used to seeing before this all happened seems different, and off. I have good days and I have bad days. I'd like to think that I'm getting better. 5 steps forward and 4.7 steps back. School is over in a week and I'm seeing a doctor then. My mom said that the doctor might prescribe a medication like Paxil or something. I hope that will help. I have heard medicine can make it worse. I just want to be me again. I want to enjoy life and not question my own reality. I understand that this will not go away overnight but I don't know how long I can live like this. Thank you for any responses.


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## Youngster14 (May 31, 2014)

Thank you for the links Solomon. I have already been looking at this forum as a guest a lot but I just now decided to make my own profile. Usually when I'm feeling really bad it makes me feel better to read recovery stories and such.

I am hoping having people who understand my situation will help me to stay positive, but also don't know if being on these forms and dwelling on how I feel is really of any help to me . I don't want to be one of those people who have depersonalization for life. I just wish I had never tried marijuana ????????????????. Have you heard of people who have triggered depersonalization with marijuana and gotten through it? Do people ever completely feel like themselves again?


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## Youngster14 (May 31, 2014)

Good to know. I'm sorry I feel like I'm asking questions you've answered many times and that I'm keeping you here. But on the topic of recovering, what is to say the feeling wouldn't just keep coming back? I mean, a lot of depersonalization is people's thought process right? If that is the case, then I can't help but think that when you are feeling better, you would just fall back into it because of these thoughts. I feel that even if you were to stop feeling the worst of symptoms, you would be like a war veteran who never forgets what he went through. I can't understand how you can go back to how you were once you have experienced this unreality. I'm sorry I know I'm rambling and it's fine if you don't feel like answering.


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## flipwilson (Aug 19, 2006)

You will never fully forget this experience. As with anyone going through trauma you will not necessarily be the same person afterward, just as someone who gets in a car wreck is different because of that experience. You will look at life differently and actually may be come wiser for it.

However underneath this hell exists the same passions, love, hate, and fears. Our connection to ourselves makes us whole and allows those feelings and emotions to come through. Right now we are disconnected. There is no one way to beat this disorder and the truth is that it may haunt you your whole life...even after remission. That is not to scare you, that is a truth you must prepare for. BUT...that also doesn't guarantee you will be depersonalized until death either. If your experience is anything like mine it will be the hardest thing you have encountered and you will have to dig deeper within your resources of survival to make it through; but when you do it will be so worth it.

Even when all seems bleak or lost you must move forward. Remember this key point in regards to the existential thoughts that come with DP: THEY ARE A LIE. No matter what your beliefs on who may have put us here, what put us here, or why we're here, we have an undeniable need for connection to ourselves and to others. Once the connection heals all those thoughts automatically dissipate in my experience.

I was triggered by weed. I went into remission for 2 years after 4 years of dealing with it. Even after 4 years of hell, being me again was natural and it was fucking wonderful. Get information and learn from this site and then limit your visits to once a month. Just live, even when every fiber of your being is telling you not to.

-with respect


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## Youngster14 (May 31, 2014)

thank you both for your replies. It's really nice to have people who can relate. flipwilson, i am curious of your story because you mentioned your depersonalization was also triggered by weed. did you have any sort of panic attack when you were high? had you ever felt depersonalization before? did remission start on its own after time, or had you been taking medication? how are you feeling now? When people say they are recovered, I cant help but think the symptoms have just lessened and they got used to it. What does it feel like to come out of it?

-thanks


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## flipwilson (Aug 19, 2006)

Youngster14 said:


> thank you both for your replies. It's really nice to have people who can relate. flipwilson, i am curious of your story because you mentioned your depersonalization was also triggered by weed. did you have any sort of panic attack when you were high? had you ever felt depersonalization before? did remission start on its own after time, or had you been taking medication? how are you feeling now? When people say they are recovered, I cant help but think the symptoms have just lessened and they got used to it. What does it feel like to come out of it?
> 
> -thanks


I had a horrible childhood. Very rigid and violent and sad with lots of arguing between my parents. My dad was a product of an alcoholic father and passed that family system on even though he didn't drink. He permeated my house with fear and ruled by an iron fist. He was always right and tried to live his lost childhood through me. I remember being numb a couple times and I sure as hell was not good at being social or emotionally well, but I did not experience dp, or at least dp in my current way.

I never did drugs unless you count getting drunk. At age 25(Ill be 34 in July) I took ONE hit off a joint while drunk. Within the hour the world around me became a dream. I will remember to this day saying to my buddy while I was looking at a chair, "dude what the fuck, it feels like that chair has no meaning." That was my first experience with DP as I've come to know it. I did not have a panic attack nor was an anxiety associated with that moment. I woke up the next morning after puking my brains out for the night and I was totally fine.

Fast forward a year later and I'm sitting with a different friend taking a break from working on my drawing all day. He pulls out a joint and asks if I want to hit it. I really didn't, but I was at this place in my life where I was trying to change myself to an extreme level. I didn't want to be this scared, sheltered kid anymore especially at 26 years old and decided to smoke not because I wanted to do drugs or was even curious, but because I wanted to be a different me. I took THREE hits and unfortunately I would get my wish.

Within five minutes of smoking and coming inside the same feeling to the year prior flooded me. I was in a dream and everything was without meaning. But unlike the year before the sensation during the change from my reality to this skewed reality was intense and not subtle. Immediately it felt as if a switch went 'off' in my head and all the blood in my body was pulled at light speed to the front of my skull. There was a dull throbbing in my skull and I ran upstairs to splash cold water on my face. The anxiety in me rifled up to an extreme level within seconds, feeling as if my heart would puncture my sternum and fall out to the floor. At that moment I was coursing with so much adrenaline that I could have probably lifted a car over my head. The friend I had smoked with ran upstairs to see if I was alright to calm me but I would have none of it. I went to my couch and pushed my head into the pillow closing my eyes and holding my head. It felt like a box of thoughts came rushing out, like a dam had broke. But the thoughts were not specific and essentially 'inaudible' which is when I thought I may be going psychotic. I remember saying " what the fuck, what the fuck, my head man, my head. What the fuck was in that thing? Oh fuck my head!!"

After my friend reassuring me it would end after about 3 hours I calmed down enough to pass out. During that sleep I had the most vivid and odd dreams of my life. They felt so odd, like computer animation instead of paintings if that makes any sense. When I woke up the next morning my heart was still racing. I was in my dark ass basement and the only lights were coming from computer. As I looked at them in the dark they trailed as I pulled away and I began to have another panic attack. Right then I knew something was not right, and later I came to find out I was experiencing HPPD.

Three days later I went to play tennis which was my passion. I couldn't focus on the ball that well and under the lights at night the court had the same dream quality. I ignored the visuals but realized as I was playing that I didn't have a care for what I was doing. Making a good forehand shot didn't excite me. Losing a point didn't bother me. That's when I knew something even more horrendous had occurred. That was my start of DP.

I have only taken anafranil for a 3 month span and klonopin for one month. Both made me so depressed I stopped.

Right now I am doing pretty bad as I was triggered again a year and a half ago by a break up. Similar reaction to that as the joint except it was a touch more gradual.

When you go into you remission or recover, whatever word you'd prefer, it is not just getting used to milder symptoms. I couldnt draw the first 4 months of DP, my brain couldn't construct the shapes and line, it was devastating. I couldn't orgasm and my ejaculation was a drop. Music didn't have the same feeling. I was powerless essentially.

During remission I had full body orgasms with a good healthy amount of semen. I could do all my art with no problem as you can see here if you'd like....www.itsmyblood.carbonmade.com. I had a great girl. I could enjoy reading again and get sucked into a book. There were no more ruminations about existential things or about suicide. Music inspired me. Whatever turned 'off" before turned back on.

My recovery was gradual for sure, as it is for most. Around 2010 I just started feeling more connected and the numbness was less and less. By the end of 2011 i felt like me again. 2012 turned out to be hands down the best year of my 33 years on this planet. I cried at one point in 2012 because I was so close to killing myself a half dozen times but I didn't and it was beyond worth it.

In August it will be 8 years since I said, "oh fuck my head". Im trapped in this state again. But I know I will thaw because I did it already. There is nothing special I did except keep living and the maybe get lucky enough to fall in love. I don't deny that helped thaw me.

You can recover. It may take time. Be patient with yourself and your situation. You are you. You happen to be dissociating. But you're still you.

-peace


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## Youngster14 (May 31, 2014)

thank you for taking the time to type that out. I cant imagine going through this for the amount of time you have, but i fear it is what might happen. I just wish i could have enjoyed my life for longer. I am so young. I want to be that person i was. It has only been a month and a half but feels like it has been an eternity. i'm tearing up as i type this. I now know it is possible to live without a soul, but it really is not living, I threw my life away in minutes because of weed. I have some hope for remission/recovery because of stories like yours, but with how long it seems to take, I know that part of my life is wasted. Years of my teenhood that i should be enjoying, will be spent in constant fear and sadness. I'm sorry to pour out all my feelings to you, but i can't help it.

-much respect.


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## flipwilson (Aug 19, 2006)

Pour away man, its fine. You can only base your actions on how well you are informed and whatever is within the realm of your experience.

DO NOT beat yourself up over the weed. What is done is done and I'm sure if anyone who had this triggered by weed was aware of what depersonalization was we may have avoided it. Also the fact that I was triggered by a break up shows weed is not the only trigger.

My story is mine. DO NOT assume it will take as long to feel better. We are all different. If you keep living and accept your symptoms now, not fear them, you could be out of this in a year. The younger the mind I've been told the better chance for recovery.

I felt the same way in regards to the time. I had it for three months and couldn't fathom even two years of this and here I am on eight. Millions of people are suffering right now. You are one of them. Now you are faced with either living or dying. LIVE!!!!

One of the things that kept me going was putting a picture of myself as a baby on my nightstand. When I felt like swallowing a shotgun I looked at that picture and cried and said "I will not let this kid down". Remember one thing about suicide in case you feel like going there.....it fails to give relief. If you kill yourself and give up you will never feel the relief you so desperately seek to feel. Death will cheat you from that glory. 2012 was my glory.

Don't put undo pressure on yourself. You need time to heal. Hang out with friends, meet girls/boys you may like, do it all, even if it feels fake do it. See a good therapist and unless really needed I recommend no meds, but thats just my opinion.

Yes you will lose time to this. It sucks but thats a fact. But imagine two years from now sitting with a lover making out...it won't matter. The moment matters.


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## Youngster14 (May 31, 2014)

Thanks man, you really did make me feel a bit better. I might just be the sappy type, but i did cry reading that, and it felt good. I am glad there are people out there that really do understand. It's not always easy to think positively, but I just have to face the music.


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