# ok so i've decided to do this. post some vague recovery story



## brianjones (Sep 14, 2011)

Recovered.

Ok I don't know how to put this.

But I'm basically recovered.

I became DP'd almost instantly on September the 3rd 2011, and after that my life completely stopped. I contemplated suicide, I couldnt eat for weeks, I couldn't sleep, I lost my girlfriend, I dropped out of university, I quit my job, I even was homeless for some nights when I couldn't afford rent. Most of my friends, who are all philosophically inclined were pretty certain I was done for--I mean i was a fucking wreck.

I was also a raging alcoholic, drinking everyday out of necessity--I mean I needed to slow down my central nervous system and alcohol was the easiest and best thing at the time. ALl that jazz.

I felt alone, and its not even that i felt alone, I knew I was always stuck with my consciousness, and the way I viewed the world was on my own. I didn't only feel alone, but I KNEW I was alone in a meaningful sense.

I had all the epiphanies and fears about mortality, infinity, the fact that were on a rock spinning in a vacuum--all the cliche things we all seem to experience.

What I did?

I started playing music again after 3 months of doing nothing. I started swimming, I started socializing and playing pool, I went on camping trips, I got drunk and had sex with random woman. I also opened up a bar and started booking shows and been doing that full time.

I dont know how I got over it, and to be honest, there is no cure, but recovery is possible, which means its all in your hands--and you have two choices. To persevere and hope it will end, or not persevere... Of course there are no guarantee's. But please don't read these posts hoping for some quick fix solution, some miracle tea, some awesome diet, some piece of spiritual philosophy, or some religious awakening. And when I say there's a choice between persevering and not perservering, that doesn't mean you sit in your room all day and hope one day you'll wake up and things will return as they were. For many of you, this is not possible. I mean DP is an intense experience, very intense--we cannot hope to go back to be normal. What we can do this, is do something. Anything. If you think life is absurd and meaningless, then go outside and do cartwheels, run down a street naked. Find ways to re-engage with the outside world--anything. I know I did and that was instrumental in helping me have a role in the outside world.

Here is a digression.

The problem is not that everything is foreign and weird and peculiar and scary and strange when you real think about it, that is not the problem. You think you are the only people to realize things, because you are 'so intelligent' or inclined to be more perceptive of things, or because you smoked pot or because you suffer anxiety. The problem is pure consciousness. THe problem is that your conscious of these things. The problem is that things are not absurd, the problem is that YOU know they're absurd.

And here's a story so I can try communicate this idea.

Ok, so there's this young girl, and she lives in a comfortable house with two loving parents. They've just built her this beautiful bedroom, with all her favourite teddy bears, and glow in the dark stars on the roof, and fairy lights and a goldfish too! This darling young girl loves her room so much, its her special safe place.

After sleeping in this bedroom for a year, one night she sees a spider. A big hairy huntsman, She sees it only for an instant though, and before she can even look at it, its scurries off behind the wardrobe.

This spider, we'll call him harry, has been living with her for the entire year--but she never knew--so she slept peacefully and happily through the nights. But now that shes just seen it--shes terrified, she cant get to sleep, and for the next couple of months shes worried about this huntsman crawling on her in her sleep. She is staying up till 4am with the lamp on paying attention to her field of vision, just in case she sees it coming for her.

Now obviously, the spider had been there for years before, and it was very nice and stayed in his spot behind the wardrobe (even ate some creepy cockroaches and bugs for her) and never bothered her. But only because she was ignorant of its existence. Now thats she has seen it, she is finally conscious of something.

But the day she sees it, the spider decides to move place, and leaves her room forever. So the spiders not even there anymore, the spider has left. What remains in a conscious awareness of a potential for danger, when in the outside objective real world, there is none at all. Harry has left. But it doesn't matter if Harry is there or not there. What matters is how this young chooses to pay attention to her room, how she chooses to pay attention. Once she chose to see her room as her special little kingdom where anything was possible (in an imaginative sense of course) and she chooses to see her bedroom as a source of insomnia and fear and anxiety and all that jazz. But both types of awareness happen in her mind, they are movements she makes inside.

Now --here what im trying to explain is that something has happened to us which freaks us out. But we need to learn how to pay attention to what is immediately infront of us, what is real, and true, what is outside of us, and inside of us. We need to re-learn how to pay attention to this things, and this all happens are a movement of consciousness.

Sorry-- I dont even know if I'm explaining this correctly--and hopefully it will get through to you--somehow.. Suffering is suffering, it won't be forever.

I should also mention that recovery doesn't mean IM SUPER RECOVERED LIKE RIDICULOUSLY NORMAL. Some days are hard to get through, but they are few and far inbetween. For now though, I can participate in the world once again.


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## brianjones (Sep 14, 2011)

I should also mention, I got DP from prolonged anxiety (I have anxiety issues since I was born).

I also have been seeing a psychologist who was of great help. She assured me that I wasn't mental, nor was I deluded, In fact a lot of my assertions were quite right. She told me that if everything is meaningless, that consequentially the assertion that everything is meaningless is meaningless too.

I never took meds, I think I did gardening (thats a good substitute I hear) I didn't really stop drinking, I mean I still drink 3-4 times a week (not heavily) but I run a bar for gods sake!!! And I'm from australia, if you don't drink you basically lonely cause everyone is at the pub.

And I should also mention that I wish you way more than luck in your own battles with DP. It will be interesting to see that variety of ways people carry themselves out of a very deep and dark void.


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## BabyBak (Feb 8, 2012)

Dude ur fucking awesome hahah. Inspirational


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## kate_edwin (Aug 9, 2009)

Getting drunk and sleeping with strangers is recovered.....?


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## brianjones (Sep 14, 2011)

Kate your silly.

If all you can get out of that story is 'sleeping with strangers' and 'getting drunk' than that's fine, once again its your choice to choose how you pay attention to this story. But you would still be in danger of being a wee bit reductive.

Can I also add one more thing, this video, and most of david foster wallace's literature, has been a great source of inspiration. Please Watch it (both parts).


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## Midnight (Jul 16, 2011)

kate_edwin said:


> Getting drunk and sleeping with strangers is recovered.....?


Better that than stopping living your life because of this whole thing.


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