# By now, only clonazepam (my d/r story)



## Roderer (Oct 17, 2008)

Well, for those who didn't read my _say-hello-topic_, my name is Ignacio, I'm from Buenos Aires - Argentina, and I've just turned 24 two weeks ago.

Let's start from the beginning, which is from it all should start.

The night of November the 30th of 2007 (I will *never-ever* forget that bloddy date) I was at this party with some friends from the university, and in a moment they offered my some pot.

I had never did drugs before, but I won't deny it though: after years of a anti-drugs posture, I finally got curious about it. So I accepted.

In total, there were three joints, which we share among the five or six who were there. But what it comes to myself, I only took no more than six drags.

At first it was alright: laughter and all that stuff. But all the hell broke loose when I decided to take a taxi home. I won't tell you how I felt, 'cause everyone who had been through a marijuana-induced panic attack can figure it out. It just scared the hell out of me, I swear. No words can define that terror, you all already know it.

The thing is... That night I just could not sleep. I thought that if I closed my eyes for just a second, I won't open them never again.

"If I make it through this night, if I hold on 'til the dawn break, I will survive".

I repeated this to myself over and over again. Meanwhile, I was having a lot of horrible sensations... I could feel my heart pumping faster and faster, louder and louder... It was like if my whole body would be pumping. My left arm, it was like it would _literaly_ set on fire from one moment to other.

It doesn't embarrass me to say that I also felt like if I would defecate and urinate in my pants: this thing scared me the most because I read that when death occurs, the body loses control of its esphincters.

Laugh at it if you want (after all, with time, you learn to take certain things with humour; it's a part of being alive, of growing up and older and wiser I suposse): my penis shrunk to the size of a grain rice!

Most terrifying experience ever.

Which I regret the most was to not ask for help in _that_ moment. But I didn't want to wake up my family to announce them that I was dying. (Or having the certainty that I was dying, which during a panic attack is the same thing).

Nevertheless, don't know how and don't know when, I finally fell asleep.

Next morning, I woke up in a state of alarm like I never experienced before and feeling paranoid as hell.. My heart was nearly to pop out of my chest. Awful, awful, awful.

Immediatly, I commited the hugest mistake I could commit after having smoked weed: search information on the web about drugs and its sequels on both nervous and cardiovascular system.

Who didn't read about that _THC-triggers-squizophrenia_ thing and felt his world crashed down?

November the 30th was a Friday. That Saturday, at night (and after telling my parents I smoked weed -something they didn't cared about at all), I had a second panic attack.

On Sunday I was ok again, back to normal. And so the next week. Even though, on Monday I took the chance to ask my therapist about the probable sequels that THC could leave in the brain. (Note: I was undergoing psychoanalytic therapy since May 2007). He told me there was nothing to worry about, and that the panic attack happened because of my own guilt, guilt of having done something "forbidden".

Anyway, his answer didn't satisfied me at all. I was *sure* the were sequels. I took the habit of checking my pulse in my wrists and stuff like that.

Another bet: how many of you didn't pay attention to everything that happened around you in order to verify if you were alucinating or something like that?

Besides all of this, my life was still as normal as it always was. But just to make sure there was nothing wrong with me, I decided to attend a general medical check. Blood samples and stuff. Once they were ready, I showed them to my doctor and he found all values were not normal but *perfect*. I told him about the weed episode and my worries about its sequels, and he (just as my shrink did) explained me that weed produces no damage at all, nor neuronal or cardiovascular.

The torture began on in mid-January, one afternoon while I was coming back home from the street.

Suddenly, I had that horrible feeling again. I could hear my heart pumping in my ears. My legs started to feel like jelly. I was sure I was going to pass out right there, in any moment.

But there was one extra thing, some sort of new symptom: I wasn't able to recognize my own neighborhood, and both people and objects seemed to me like if they were unreal, or alucinations of my mind.

The following months were the hell itself.

I quited psychotherapy after my analyst explained me that that symptom (derealization) simply belonged to anxiety: no more, no less.

My God! I almost lost my contact with reality and you say that it's just anxiety???

Hummm, maybe I'm making this thing way too long.
I'll resume the sensations I had from that moment on:

-People started to look like ghosts or mannequins
-Buildings and walls and forniture looked like if they were painted in a bidimensional surface, with no volume at all
-One night, during dinner (and this thing happened just once, and was terrifying), I suddenly had the certainty that I just wasn't there at the table with my family, and that my whole life had been a virtual simulation, a lie, an ilussion, a dream, etc. My past was not real anymore. It lasted half an hour, not much more, but was enough to scare the hell out of me.
-I could have any object (the computer screen, for example) right in front of my nose and doubt about if it was really there.
-In some occasions, objects seemed to look incomplete, or disappear from my field of vision, and most of the time I couldn't tell how far or near were things from me.
-Have you ever felt like if your self would disolve? Well, it happened to me too.
-And the sensation of watching everything like it was a movie, and sometimes don't understand what was going on. (And that feeling of being on the street, or even in your own bathroom and wonder "how the hell I got here?" or "how is it possible for the outside world to exist?")
-Oh, and the famous fog / veil... How could I forget to mention it? My apologies, oh, lovely fog.

Do you know how painful and sad is to wake up every morning with the fear of maybe not recognize the members of your family no more, or even forget your own name?

None of these ever happened, but being affraid of it every day and every hour is almost the same thing.

So...

I gave up my carreer. They called me for several jobs, but I did not even show up on any of those jobs interviews. I stopped seeing my friends and doing the things that I used to enjoy: reading, writting, playing and listening to music, drawing, painting, etcetera. (The later could have been due to the lack of emotions I was going through).

Well, you know how it goes when you suffer d/r. (D/r is a term that most of us knew from the Linden Method webpage, am I right? :lol: The same bloddy list of symptoms and explanations are copy-pasted in almost every single web page around, even in Wikipedia; you don't know whether laugh or cry... Let's better laugh).

In April (this year, of course) I decided to give psychotherapy one more try.

And it made me feel way lot better.

My new analyst (yes, another Freudian/Lacanian) told me that THC ain't harmful at all, specially if you only consumed just once. "There are several authors", he said, "that even defend its therapeutical use".

It took me some time to get rid off the marijuana ghosts. But I did it, eventhough I kept feeling like crap.

May the 17th is another date I will never-ever forget, but for different reasons that the bloddy November the 30th. May the 17th, a Saturday, I saw the first light flashing at the end of the tunnel: I dated the girl who a month later became my girlfriend. We knew each other in a forum (I never told her about my situation but last week) and fell in love the first time we met.

Since that day, things started to get better and better, with some relapses, but definitely way lot better than never.

Nevertheless, last week I decided to visit my doctor once again, because I was tired not only of d/r, but all the other symptoms I had to cope since the very beginning: palpitations, fear of going outside, nausea, choking (each meal used to be a challenge), headaches, blurred vision, muscular tension, insomnia, etcetera.

He prescribed me clonazepam, 0.5mg a day, divided in two doses, one after breakfast and the other right before going to bed.

The first 0.25mg did their magic in a matter of hours. Except d/r, all the other symptoms desappeared all of a sudden. (Even the fog!)

A week later (yesterday) I found your forum and decided to register myself to share my experiencie. I have just taken 8 pills and a half and d/r is starting to give away.

My doctor says that it's very soon yet to increase the dose, because a) like this is doing well and b) it's necesary to let the body get used to the medication (I never took any kind of meds before). He also says that, with time and as long as I keep taking my clonazepam, I will feel better and better.

What it comes to me, I'm starting to feel alive once again. The memories of all my life are coming back again to me (I forget to mention that they used to seem strange, like if they belonged to someone else), and my possessions are recovering their sentimental/emotive values.

Ok, this is my story. I hope things will keep improving from now on.

If someone has a similar story to mine, I would like to share it. We all know that in what it comes to anxiety and specially d/r and d/p is way too relieving to share experiencies and not feeling alone in this struggle.

Greets and thank you *so much* for your patience and your time.
And my apologies for any grammar or syntax error


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## Roderer (Oct 17, 2008)

Bump


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## Roderer (Oct 17, 2008)

Ok, thanks so much; you've been of great help.

Sorry for being an argie :roll:

Bye.


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