# My Visual Snow/ DP Experience



## mikejp (Apr 16, 2011)

Hey all! My name is Michael.
For a while I thought I was the only person suffering from these symptoms, but to find a whole community devoted to treating the disorder fills me with hope. I've gone from suicidal to homicidal delusions, panic attacks and chronic grainy vision. Just got out of a 3 week hospitalization and have had the craziest dreams. Early this morning, I had the craziest dream I've ever experienced in my entire life.

Self-Analysis - Sunday April 17th, 2011.
I used to be extremely active, a compulsive exerciser. Whether jogging, pull-ups or handball, that's how high school was for me.

First onset of symptoms about 2 months ago, were excessive grogginess. Brain Fog, Verbal slops in conversations where I used the wrong words for meanings. Right around the time relationship with girlfriend was ending. I still had my identity intact, despite how fearful I was becoming. 
Weeks later I buy a playstation 3. Play Metal Gear Solid 4 10 straight hours until it's beat. On a tiny television screen away from my mattress while laying down, room is dimly lit. Roommate is constantly smoking weed through his vaporizer. Room is caked with smell. 
Days after awkwardness and all the game playing (without much fun on my part) 
I wake up seeing static, aura, snow all in my vision. This vast pit of emptiness follows me wherever I go. The only thing I know how to tell my friends is that I feel like "a floating pair of eyes" literally a "thought entering a room". There were moments the graininess would go away. This was approximately a month ago. After seeing the static for two days I go to the NYU health clinic and am prescribed celexa. The same time the static comes my gums begin to bleed and I get gingivitis. 2 weeks prior I had began seeing this girl Jenna. I'm noticing how I'm becoming anxious all of the time. Increasingly impulsive. In a course of 2 weeks I see more doctors at once than probably all the years of my life. (Never went to doctors, like ever growing up) The dentists gave me a pretty good cleaning, the bleeding stopped for maybe 2 weeks and my teeth looked whiter than ever. I was even told I had pretty good teeth for someone who's never gotten a cleaning in over 15 years. The depression gets worse as the weeks go on. I feel as if I'm talking without meditation and being led through events for the first time in my life. I even did a presentation to score Greek housing for my fraternity, following a script we had drawn up on powerpoints. Communication never falters verbally. I'm getting upset stomach during classes. Feels almost like diarrhea. Faints of dizziness & almost vomiting. One midterm I called home before going to 30 minutes late. I had to write an essay on the film Au Revoir Les Enfants. I feel so disorganized while doing it. Like mentally dyslexic. I stand over my bed having panic attacks. During Spring Break I see a therapist again, and psychosis is mentioned as a possibility and I'm prescribed risperdal. The word "psychosis" triggers inner anger and a homicidal impulse. At the same time tension builds up in my neck and shoulders. Actually throughout these weeks most of my tension is built up in the right side of my neck around both shoulders. After this Thursday during Spring Break I cry at Church. The following Monday I see another therapist explaining wild imaginings and not being able to make it through train rides. Fear of killing myself or others governs my thoughts during this period of time. It's like the word "psychosis" triggered all the new symptoms. I'm then sent to Beth Isreal for 3 weeks. First Risperdal is used. The gingivitis also returns. I've never had a history of gingivitis in my entire life. I wonder if there is some toxin in my body causing all these problems. My dosage is upped for 2 weeks. I have wild nightmares, then for the third week Geodon is usedand I feel slightly better, but the compulsions and fears never go away. There was an incident where I had a sitter, because I thought I would attack a roommate without any cause. Just this emotionless pit and then anxiousness, loneliness. The whole stay I go to a few groups and read my bible. I read from Genesis to Second Samuel during my stay. Fears about my sexuality and recurrent pornographic nightmares repeat themselves during the stay. Some involved family members. When I'm taken off the risperdal those dreams stop. The whole time, my ability to communicate never falters, but I feel like I can't fully express myself there. I break down and cry on the car ride home back with my father. I cried the morning I typed this self-analysis while listening to Kirk Franklin. I put it on after dreaming that I was scratching my under my crotch to mentally disturb a former roommate who used to do similar things to get under my skin at Beth Isreal. I then hallucinate that I'm being choked on a school bus by a kid I knew in high school. When I try to breathe out my nose, I almost can't, then I realize it's because I'm congested and my eyes clear or open up and I'm back in my room. Yesterday I had a much more involved dream, which I will attach with this letter. Crying has become a little bit like an exercise, but I can't always justify why I do it. I had gone years prior to college without crying or breaking down like this. The workload wasn't necessarily the problem. Maybe the social aspect. But still, something doesn't add up. 
I have a feeling, hope, this time in my life will pass, but I wish doctors would consider other options besides JUST drugs. Drugs are probably what got me in this mess and I don't think they'll get me out. Maybe just maybe there's a deficiency not just neurologically, but in my respiratory system. I got an MRI at Beth Israel, just of the brain. I'd like to have something done to check up the full body. Sometimes I feel like this suffering could stop by a simple act and I don't mean suicide. I sincerely want help. The gum bleeding thing doesn't stop. Could this be mercury, I don't know? But my intuition says something else is up. I don't think I have schizophrenia. There hasn't been enough time to diagnose, but the depersonalization along with everything else seems too much all at once for it to JUST be psychological. Dealing with my thoughts the entire time toll in ways I don't even know how to verbalize, but please when you read this, think constructively on how to help outside of medicating. I felt a little better after a jog in the cold, and a few hours of sleep yesterday. Most of the time when people mention things like current events, reading the newspaper, television, anything like that I feel disconnected from it and I read almost too fast. That's about all the detail I know how to relay in this long letter. To the doctor that reads this, please help. And if medication is still your primary concern, please prescribe something better. I've researched that naloxone injections have a pretty good success rate at achieving total remission of depersonalization. The actual Russian study I'd have to buy, but I have read excerpts online. The static vision, depersonalization, bleeding gums, and hallucinations all onset at once. Plus I can't go a day without headaches in some form. Like prickling on my forehead, like a brick is layered on top of my head, and sometimes a burning sensation on my neck. These were all symptoms prior to medication. My intuition says something must have been missed. 
Below is a dream journal

In my dream world I thought I had fallen into a coma for 2011. All of these weird chambers and audience halls. And there was this voice that kept reaching out to me whenever I thought something was wrong reassuring me of the opposite or something completely different about me. I had a three-way with Aril Laving and a bunch of other movie stars/singers. The dream ended with the question "Am I bisexual" I woke up with the nagging thought again "Do I want to/will I commit murder" I think the answer is no, but still just the speed at which my hands are typing or the way time is flowing seems unbelievable. What is this construct called God, and how beautiful can he possibly be. The leader of the realm I entered seemed to be rather nonchalant about all the souls who traversed this realm it was incredible. I had to write this down as a testimony. If I'm ever to recover who I am or was this is necessary. I desperately want to recover now more than ever. If wanting is an emotion that I can even equate to anymore. These words flow from a river of infinity and I don't know when, how, or why the faucet just turned on. All those years I said I wanted to become a writer; well this is my first entry. In a probable string of many i have no other choice, but to commit to myself this task. I will not hurt another human being!!!! My mind must have entered this realm though the meditation music I fell asleep listening to. OMYGOD First, I didn't know my up from down. Then slowly I gained and lost the ability to speak. It seemed on command whoever controlled this world was taking away my ability to speak. Then this elaborate space opened up to me. Kind of like a lecture hall with students all women or mostly women were who I was paying attention to. Tried to open up a conversation with one in a group and they all scattered. There were so many dimensions I was transferred to it's hard to make sense. I was under the distinct impression that I would enter a coma for 2011, but that everything would be alright. I still wonder if this will happen or if this is just my mind's way of repairing itself during sleeping hours. There is so much wonder to explore in the glory that is and MUST BE GOD. I STATE THIS OUTLOUD AS A CONFIRMATION YTO CONFIRM AND EXTEND MY FAITH. To expand its depth. There is no other solution. This was so intense. It was like whoever was in control knew me like my father does, or maybe better. There were times my voice, when I spoke sounded like it does to me on tape record. This was so unlike hearing myself speak out loud in the material plane. It was like I was much more connected to my natural self, in a blue doctor's scrub. Perhaps this is the beginning of the therapy I'll receive at home channeled through the love of my parents for the next few months. This was the most intense dream of my entire life and I feel bad for not remembering all of it. So detached, such like an out body experience. If you've ever seen the end of Men In black where the universes seem to expand, expand, expand, and roll around like marbles in the ball of an alien's hand, that's the sensation I got from this dream. If this is all a test, (this life thing), then a test for what and for whose amusement? Or maybe that's my own resentment at the process. But I had to have been shown that to extend my faith. This Zen Buddhist music continues to play as I type. The same music that was playing during the dream. Called Sapphire Blue, from Llewellyn, from the album Indian Head Massage. This is soooo weeeeiiiird. Exciting/scary this dream was a dream of dreams so random, and yet so pleasant. My static vision the snow was also present during the entire dream. What the hell is up with me?

Fast forward 2 days of a day treatment program in nyc, an irrationally suicidal panic attack on the subway about time moving too fast, another hospitalization, being weeded of antipsychotics and put on lithium here is it as it now stands

I've had persisting visual snow and depersonalization since February of this year. (Depersonalization/derealization symptoms first) This was first triggered during a marijuana induced panic attack after I broke up with my first girlfriend. I would then get these bouts of depression and detachment in certain instances through the weeks that followed. Whether going to the gym or trying to watch a movie I felt unreal and couldn't get excited about anything I was doing and it troubled me to no end. I started having purely obsessional thoughts about my sexuality, whether I'd become a pedophile, and eventually, after playing a videogame nonstop in my dorm room for a weekend I woke up seeing static in the air and on the walls around me. When one therapist suggested psychosis I slipped into a deep depression mounted on top of the depersonalization that had me worried that I would murder a family member. It was thought I was schizophrenic like my mother and I was drugged up on risperdal, then geodon, only furthering my disassociation from myself. After being admitted to a day treatment I had a panic attack that time was moving too fast, and was admitted to another hospital (NY Presbyterian) where I was weeded off the antipsychotic (geodon) and rediagnosed as manic-bipolar. I've learned to treat the purely obsessional thoughts as contents in my mind and constantly weed out the irrational ones. This is mostly through the aid of Harris Harrington's DP Recovery Program My question is whether you know of any medicines, nootropics, methods, or remedies to treat visual snow/and or depersonalization.
I'm especially concerned about the snow (though less noticeable in the daylight and public centers that are well lit. I've heard iodine may work?

Sincerely,
Mike P.


----------



## Jeremiah (Mar 1, 2011)

wow ok first of all if all you have was dp and visual snow then you should of realized that it was the result of the panic attack you had from weed. second of all you did not have psychosis. i think you are just panicking, anxious, and scared that you have something serious. your not so special and dont let your anxiety tell you that. but you may be doing something else that you didnt mention. Not sleeping and having a panic attack on weed can definitly result in the symptoms you have and by you freaking out about it all the time is sustaining it. thats when you get in disorder territory.


----------



## mikejp (Apr 16, 2011)

when it was happening no one knew I had dp or what dp was, shit was ridiculous. I don't think the lithium is even doing anything. I've had pure obsessive thoughts for a while now and they've got me on some 6 week bullshit program.


----------

