# My Journey with Inositol (again)



## KittyKitten

Hi, everyone.

So, I've been dealing with pretty damn crippling OCD and DP/DR for roughly a year and a half now. It started after a bout of stress and not sleeping (I have a baby) and turned into 24/7 violent intrusive thoughts along with constant depersonalization/derealization. I struggled with this for about 7 months before coming across a supplement that is touted to help OCD, anxiety, panic attacks and all the other "good stuff" that I was dealing with. I began taking 12 grams of inositol powder a day September 2016 and began seeing a significant reduction in my symptoms roughly 4-5 weeks after taking it. I then upped my dose to 18 grams a day. My OCD practically went away, intrusive thoughts were all but gone and the DP/DR went away totally.

Fast forward to spring of this year, I was still taking 18 grams of inositol powder daily. I experienced two separate "trauma" issues, as I'd like to call them, and it re-triggered my OCD, panic attacks, anxiety and DP/DR. The trauma issues involved finding my mom's cat mauled outside by a wild animal (the cat is fine; but it was highly traumatic finding her with gashing wounds) and then shortly after finding out I have a personal and probably life-long defect from the birth of my daughter. I'm not sure why the inositol would "stop" working, but I began again dealing with the same old stuff as before: intrusive thoughts, 24/7 DP/DR and existential thoughts. Panic attacks regularly. Tunnel, dream vision regularly, but worse when I would go out or be overly anxious, etc.

I have looked everywhere for information on inositol tolerance, as I truly feel I built up a tolerance to the inositol and the trauma issues triggered my old anxiety and OCD, but I couldn't find anything. Regardless, I decided to take 6 weeks off of taking inositol to hopefully get my tolerance levels back down, if that was the issue.

I have just re-started taking inositol 5 days ago. I'm currently taking 12 grams of inositol powder daily, divided in two doses morning and night. I already feel a bit calmer and things aren't bothering me as much as they were. I'm also using cognitive behavioral therapy from a book I'm reading right now to help combat thoughts, etc. The only side effect with inositol is that it'll make you shit your brains out, but there's nothing else I've dealt with that I would say is a side effect of inositol.

This post is going to serve as a way for me to document my journey taking inositol again, to see if it helps or not.


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## Marisa

Do you have to talk to your doctor before taking inositol?


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## Marisa

time2wakeup said:


> It's just a B vitamin.


Oh ok thanks.


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## KittyKitten

Marisa said:


> Do you have to talk to your doctor before taking inositol?


Nope. It's just a supplement you can buy online...Walmart sells it, Amazon, etc. I'd recommend telling your doctor you're taking it, but don't be surprised if they don't know what it is. I told my doctor that I had been taking inositol and he looked at me like I had two heads; he had no idea what inositol was.



time2wakeup said:


> Hmm - I forgot that inositol makes me bloated and gives me diarrhea (though I've read that that can go away if you continue to take the huge doses), and it also makes me feel kind of numb (emotionally) and I'm already pretty numb obviously so that's not good. :/ I've also read that it lowers testosterone, which isn't good because my T is already very low. So, idk about this.
> 
> My current experiment is quitting caffeine - I'm almost 90 days off - and I'm still noticing improvements and even starting to have some pretty good days. I'm starting to feel more like my old self in many ways...and I can tell that my cortisol is dropping and T is going up...it's even becoming easier to smile/laugh/just feel more "normal." And sleep is improving. So maybe I'll just continue on with the no supplements for another month or so and see if I keep getting better just from not being on caffeine. If I stop improving then I might look into inositol again. :/ Sigh...my body's sooo sensitive.
> 
> edit: Just read caffeine lowers inositol...so maybe I'll start getting all the inositol that I need naturally now??


I'm assuming you're a guy? Just to let you know, there has never been a single study done on inositol lowering or changing men's testosterone levels. Inositol has been shown to be more beneficial to women than men, but there are many men taking it for psych issues. So basically, inositol is used for two different purposes: women who have PCOS and hormonal imbalances and people who have OCD, panic attacks and anxiety. It is currently being used and studied to treat people with schizophrenia, depression and ADHD. I still don't know why or if I developed a tolerance to the high doses because my old symptoms came back.

From what I've read, inositol helps to balance hormones and improve androgen balance. It also helps to relieve symptoms of OCD; intrusive thoughts, ruminations, anxiety, etc. Here's a link to inositol being treated on OCD and a few other conditions: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9169302

From what I know, inositol helps the brain process the "feel good" chemicals like serotonin, GABA, etc. I am assuming if you have low levels of inositol, your brain can't process these chemicals as easily. Obviously, I'm not a doctor, so I'm just going by things I've read and seen. For you, it might be something to try for a few weeks. If you see it's making you worse, obviously stop taking it. Inositol can take up to 8 weeks to fully get into your system and you begin to see a difference. It also does absolutely NOTHING at low levels. This is why people buy powder form and measure it in grams, rather than pills that typically have like 500mg. These pills will barely do a thing for you, it's better to just scoop that shit out and eat it like crack. Haha. It tastes sweet though. I just eat it by the spoonful.

Yes, this stuff is going to make you shit your brains out. The best thing I can say is that once you get to and go over 12 grams a day, you might want to divide up doses so that it doesn't "hit you" all at once. I can't say much about feeling emotionally numb as I've never had that happen to me. The only side effect I had was diarrhea. Last year when I was taking 18grams a day, I did deal with some "aggression" and moodiness, but this was also around the time I started dieting lol. So not sure which one was the culprit.

Reducing your caffeine intake is important, I did that last year too. Haven't had caffeine in a year, but I still deal with OCD, anxiety and DP/DR 

I'm going to be taking 12grams of inositol a day (divided in two doses) for two months and I'll let you guys know what it does for my anxiety, OCD and DP/DR.


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## KittyKitten

time2wakeup said:


> Nope - but I still have low T. Estrogen dominant, very high cortisol, very low T, low progesterone. Yeah idk, supplements and medications affect me IMMEDIATELY - not sure why that is - hyperactive nervous system maybe. But I took inositol last night and it made me feel numb - and I still feel like that today (though a little better). I'm sure inositol is AMAZING for most people and I was excited about taking it, but I'm also paranoid about taking anything that even seems to reduce my emotional range at all. I've been making good (but slow) progress with that since quitting caffeine; I've been able to just have a wider range of emotions and am now capable of feeling an almost child-like joy that I haven't felt since before I started drinking coffee every day, so for now I'm just gonna see if I keep getting better without taking anything that changes my brain at all. Give it time to heal on its own. But I ordered a few more giant tubs of inositol in case I wanna try it again in a few months or something.
> 
> Ughh that sucks! My anxiety has gone down a lot since quitting and I think is still slowly going away. We shall see... I just don't remember having anxiety issues before I started drinking coffee, so I wonder where I'll end up when I'm done healing. Did quitting caffeine help to reduce your anxiety/OCD a little? a lot? not at all?


Sorry! That sucks with your hormone levels. It pisses me off because I freakin asked my doctor to test my hormones. I thought all of this anxiety/OCD and DP/DR shit could be hormone-related and he told me "oh no, let's not get into that, there's too many hormones to test!" and then he threw an anti-anxiety pill at me and called it a day. The pill did nothing and I still don't know if my hormones are out of whack.

Inositol is weird because it supposedly lowers only high levels of testosterone and evens out female hormones, so from what I gather, it basically evens out the hormone levels. One article I read said it only lowers testosterone levels if they're too high. None of the studies I've seen with people taking high doses of inositol have said that the participants needed to be on hormones or had hormone issues. The most talked about side effect is gastric distress. And honestly, I can vouch for that. Inositol will clean you fully out in higher doses lol

Obviously, it won't work for everyone and believe me, now that you're saying this stuff about hormones it makes me wonder if taking such a high dose for such a long period of time is why it "stopped" working for me: aka, it fucked up my hormones. But it wouldn't explain dealing with this DP/DR stuff in the first place last year (I wasn't taking anything at all when OCD and DP/DR kicked in in the first place), which is why I basically say that it stopped working for me rather than was making things worse.

----------------------------------------------

So, my update:

Today, my husband and I took our daughter to the downtown city area. The last time I went downtown, we basically went to one or two arcades, got ice cream, I almost had a breakdown because everything around me felt unreal and off and I had to high tail it to the car. This time was oddly different and I can't complain. We got there around 11am and we walked the entire downtown area and other than it being 90 degrees and I was hot, I felt damned good. Calm, collected and not even a touch of DP/DR or anxiety. We went to two separate arcades and I didn't get that out-of-body experience I usually do and did the last time we went to the exact same arcade. I actually really, really enjoyed myself today. I had a really nice time. We stayed downtown for two and a half hours.

Then we took our daughter to Burger King for some lunch and I ate everything without feeling unreal, detached and disconnected. Any time I would get a weird existential thought "this is weird, how do I know this is real, why am I human?" it was easy for me to just flick the thoughts away and get back to just being there. Then we went to Toys R Us and for some odd reason, this store has always been a problem for me. I had a panic attack in Toys R Us months ago and I always dread going there. Today seemed different with that, too. I was walking around and just enjoying being there. We checked out and got back into the car.

On the way home, my mind did start wandering and the existential thoughts tried coming back, but I still felt pretty damn good. I'm writing this right now and feel I would say 25% better than usual. Like...I still have the weird existential thoughts and if I really focus on the DP/DR, it does come back in waves. I also know a lot of my issues revolve around boredom. When I'm out and about like I was today, nothing bothers me. The minute I get home and am able to relax, my mind won't let me. I'm combating this by using the "flicking" method, which is basically where I flick away any weird intrusive thought or sensation as "just anxiety" or "just OCD" or "just DP/DR" and keep doing what I want to do. The moment I put too much focus on any thought or sensation, the worse it gets and I've started to realize this and am slowly learning to stop it. Unfortunately, I'm a stay-at-home mom with no available car during the week, so it's often hard to keep myself busy in a non-boring way (you can only clean the floor so much during the day without realizing it's making your boredom worse...)

Tomorrow is going to be the real test as the weekend is now over and my husband goes back to work tomorrow. This basically means that I'm going to be stuck in the house (albeit going out in the backyard with my daughter throughout the day) all week. I don't have a car to get around so once hubby leaves, I'm here with just my anxiety and OCD to keep me mentally preoccupied. I'll let you guys know how it goes.

I'm still taking 12grams of inositol daily (which is roughly a heaping teaspoon worth of powder). Tomorrow will mark one week since I started re-taking inositol for anxiety/OCD and DP/DR.


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## KittyKitten

Okay, all.

So, here goes.

I am going to be temporarily off this site. I'm giving this new regimen 2 months to help and I'll report back to let you guys know how it all went.

-12grams of inositol daily eventually going up to 18grams again.

-exercise at least 4 days a week.

-no checking dpselfhelp.com (the people on here are amazing and I really have found a lot of solace in coming here, but I'm also a very suggestive person and sometimes, reading threads or posts will trigger thoughts or symptoms that wouldn't have otherwise been there)

-no caffeine

-Cognitive behavioral therapy for any/all thoughts I get relating to OCD or DP/DR.

-Stop talking about my issues so much (I'm pretty sure my husband and mom are both equally annoyed with my anxiety rants and telling them what's wrong with me lol)

See you around the holidays, everyone!


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## Patrick H.

How did it go?


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## Artmuzz

Long before I suffered DPDR, I took Choline and Inositol supplements for fatty liver disease but the side effects made me very emotional and tearful so I stopped taking them. I didn’t know Inositol was good for DPDR.


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