# if you are cured please share



## heartless (Apr 29, 2013)

For the cured ones: i thought it will be nice to have some
Statistical data about the recovery process from this shit.
If you can, please write as accurately as possible,
the following information:

how old are you?

what triggered dp/dr for you (drugs/anxiety/depression/etc of course it can be 2 things together or more and you may not be certain.
please write down the circumstances).

what were your symptoms, including what kind of thoughts were you immersed in.

did you have it chronic or episodic.

for how long it persisted until you started noticing symptoms reduce.

what did you change in your life before it started 
to get better (for example started working out, stopped caring, started eating tacco bell etc)

What meds and supplements were you consuming and when did you start taking them.

for how long since you started getting better symptoms were still present (in other words how much time did it take for you to heal).

Please keep in mind that im not asking you to post your full recovery story. Just a satisfying answer
to each of the questions above. The purpose is creating some statistics about average healing time since you replace your habits, to see if maybe age has an effect on duration of persistance of this disorder, etc.


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## Guest (Jun 17, 2013)

I am 22
DP was triggered randomly one day when I wasn't doing anything particularly stressful, it just hit me out of the blue. I never smoked, drank or did any drugs, but I did have a pre-existing anxiety disorder that I'd had since I was young teenager. I was going through a stressful time with my boyfriend, and living away from my family because they were abusive (neglectful). I believe my chronic anxiety and stress started it.
I felt out of my body; floaty; like as if I was watching my body do things that I wasn't controlling myself. I didn't feel real, and when I got DR the world and people didn't feel real, like I was in a dream. DP and DR caused me to become obsessive over the topic of existence, because I felt so far removed from life itself. I eventually got OCD due to my obsessive ruminations on this topic. I would question, question, question, question, question, question!!! Some of the questions were so weird and abstract. I thought that surely, I was mad, and that if I told anyone what I was thinking, I would be rejected from society for being absolutely bonkers. I wondered what life was. I felt trapped because I was a body, a human, one of many of the same thing, which wasn't my choice. Why did I breathe? Why was I me? I thought things like why are eyes so strange? and when I was in a room with my husband and his family, I felt like I was in a room full of clones because of the genes carrying the traits down. Honestly - Weird stuff. And I would get this nearly every minute of every day. It was very difficult to control without the right approach, which I eventually found (the OCD 4 Steps), tried, and it helped immensely.
My DP and DR varied throughout the time I had it. Sometimes I had it chronically over a period of months, and at other times, I would be okay but it would hit me several times per day. Whether it was chronic or episodic at the time had little to do with recovery, as I didn't know how to recover for a very long period before I actually started recovering.
My DP and DR lasted for about 6 years before I started to recover.
It was mostly acceptance. That meant living my life despite it. Just DOing. A "fuck it" attitude. Not letting any thought about DP get to me for one second. Moving on. That's it in a nutshell, and eventually I had nothing to ignore, because the DP/DR had gone. This is my recovery post, for a fuller explanation: http://www.dpselfhelp.com/forum/index.php?/topic/35658-im-now-recovered-and-i-want-to-share-what-ive-learnt/
I didn't take medication in order to recover, but I did while I had it (not for the DP or DR, but for the anxiety). In the end I gave up on meds, and went med free. Dealing with things without meds was more difficult obviously but I felt like I was facing my issues head on instead of trying to numb them and pretending they didn't exist.
Probably a few weeks.


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## Guest (Jun 17, 2013)

I'm not recovered, but I've read a ton of recovery stories and acceptance is the common thread running through nearly all of them.


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## Spencer (Jan 4, 2012)

1. 19
2. Mine was triggered by pot, the fourth time I did it.
3. Nothing was real, felt out of my body, I felt like I was losing control, felt disconnected form reality and my own thought processes, I had CONSTANT existential thoughts (what is reality, the meaning of life, origins of the universe, self existence, and lots of other really deep thoughts), familiar surroundings and people seemed strange and unreal, I felt like I was living in a dream, and I also felt physical and emotional numbness.
4. Chronic, 24/7
5. About 2 years
6. I began to accept that I was never going see things the same way as I did before I got DP.
7. Clomipramine (Anafranil). I started taking it last summer/fall.
8. This medication is what got rid of my DP. It took about a month and a half after I started taking it for my symptoms to disappear. It was a gradual process. As I raised the dosage, I began to notice my DP diminish. I believe 75mg is where I first noticed a real difference. 100 mg was the perfect amount for me. I tried going up to 125 but I couldn't take the side effects. I have a full post on my recovery if you would care to read it.


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