# DP/DR after hallucinogenic mushrooms



## frogman

Hello everyone, just a quick word about me : I am 22 years old currently in the 3rd year of college in France. I don't know any forum about this condition in French so here I am.

Like many others it seems, my DP/DR and all other symptoms (I use to vall it 'my condition') started 5 years ago after eating some magic mushrooms. I must it has been hellish ever since. With some friens we went to Amsterdam and at one point they wanted to try shrooms so we bought two boxes. Before taking them, I was extremely stressed out and basically I the only reason I took two and a half was peer pressure ... After eating them, one of them, who had already tried it said some people had gone mad after taking shrooms, and had been horribly high ever since. I remember feeling extremely scared and panicked after he said this, even if he said after that 'these guys had taken shrooms a lot and for a long time'.

About my experience, what seems incredible to me is that the experience of the drug in itself was not amazing. I have read some testimonies of people who take them (whether it has a long term effet or not) and experience incredible alterations of their sensations (colors, shapes, hallucinations, paranoia, violence, communion with nature etc). None of this happened to me, and even my friends (who enjoyed a rather good trip and had taken more than me: maybe 5 or 6) did not go through a very strong trip (by that I mean that we kept on chatting rather normallyn they just had a few laughs, none of them started to thin that they were able to flt, talk to inexistent people and so on).

But for me, the experience was traumatic because even before I could feel the effects I tried to resist the effects of the drug, and then on I had what we could call a panick attack, even if on the outside I didn't show it. I must say that in my teens I had been a rather anxious person (I couls get extremely anxious in class when only thinking that the teacher might ask me to correct an exercise in front of the whole class). In a nutshell, I had a 'bad trip', which made feel without control, as if I could not think anymore etc... Finally I managed to sleep, but the next morning, I woke up and hell started, I was feeling depersonalized (even though I have learnt about this condition very recently) and derealized, evertyhing from my body to my visual perceptions felt odd and altere. If it wasn't enough, all my perceptions are unpleasant : just to 'be' is unpleasant and uncomfortable. I have a constant kind of headache that goes with this blurry sensation of my head 'as if it were cotton, as they say in medical articles).

Everything in my body and my mind told me something was awfully wrong with me, and I got extremely scared that it had destroyed me for ever (a fear that I still have, even though having seen quite a lot of doctors, and having read many articles and testimonies makes it more complec).

Basically since then I went to a clinic where they treated me as if I were a psychotic (which I am not since my pain is not visible from the outside and I act normal etc, you know what I mean







)

Three years ago I managed to restart my studies, even though I have to work in this horrible condition, but a few months ago I have had to change glasses (I am short sighted) and the new glasses made the DR and the unpleansant feeling of the self go through the roof and since then I have dropped university again ...
I have been doing a psychotherapy for almost 4 years now (without substantial improvement - I feel like my problem has nothing to do with all the wrong things that could have happened when I was a kid, but that it is basically that I wake up everything morning feeling so bad and with DP and DR). In my everyday life, I feel altered, I have no feeling (which makes me feel guilty since I have the most girlfriend for a year now), I almost only have unpleasant sensations, I can't have any interest for anything (how couldyou when you feel so bad right ?), I have headaches, back pains of being under so much mental pressure. When I exercise, I do not feel the same positive sensations in my body, head and mind as I used to in my 'previous life'.

For a few weeks now I have beeen seing a psychiatrist (who is quite open and listens carefully to what I tell him), who tells me that I have a sort of neurotic anxiety or hysterical neurosis and gave me SSRI and a small dose of anti psychosis which works at a profound level to treat anxiety.

I think I am done, thank you for reading such a long post. Thank you to answer me if you can relate to any of what I have said (the glasses thing really freaks me out because I had already changed since I took shrooms but the fact that last time I could not upgrade my corrections without feeling ten times worse really worries me; before that it had been almost bearable for 2 years). Oh, btw, I have trouble staring at things, even if they don't move it's like my visual perceptions are analyzed by my brain in an unpleansant way, and it's uncomfortable to read books or magazines as if there was some kind of visual overexcitation.

I keep hoping and struggling against the thoughts that tell me that I have been horribly damaged, and I can't imagine that taking 2 mushrooms can destroy a person, but it sure isn't easy.

Thanks again, talk to all of you soon


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## seeingisbelieving123

Hi thanks for sharing your story. I too had a bad experience with a mushroom, and similar to you, when I grew up I was extremely shy, and had some anxiety.
So your dp/dr started 5 years ago right?
Do you feel like you made any improvement at all? I am guessing not since you are on new medication now. So does your doctor blame it all on anxiety or does he feel the mushroom triggered an anxiety disorder with you?
Are the meds helping you at all?


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## rightwrong99

ure fucked. sry.


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## frogman

@newyork : thank you for being a stupid troll

@Lisa : Thank you for your answer. Could you tell me a little more about your experience ? How it started (DI or not), how it lasted and if you have recovered or not ? Thanks

To answer your questions :
- Yes it has been 5 years and a half, even though the intensity of DP/DR and other symptoms have been going up and down. During my two first years of college it was manageable (even though it was hardly a life worth living). What caused this bad relapse was the fact I could not stand changing glasses (I have read in other posts that vision was a key aspect of DR, and it is obviously the case for me).

- I had been off any medication for 3 years and a half and I started taking some again two weeks ago. So far it has not helped but my psychiatrist is confident he will find a combination that works for me. He told me that the mushroom experience triggered the disorder (whether we call it DP/DR or anxiety neurosis or whatever) but that it is not the substance in itself.


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## rightwrong99

No, im not trolling. I am slightly kidding though.
Have u tried releasing the trauma of the shroom trip in therapy or anything?


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## frogman

Oh ok, then I apologize for taking it in the first degree. I must say that considering my degree of concern about feeling the way I feel, I have a hard time joking about it









Yes, I have doing a psychoanalysis for almost 4 years, and I have tried to establish the reason why it resulted in such a traumatic esperience.
It may be useful to give a short personal background :
- since my parents know I feel so bad, they have talked to me about the difficult experiences I have been put through as a child (and the fact that my father did not protect me at all, while my mother was constantly anxious for me - there are some severe family issues on my father's side)

- throughout my childhood and teens, I never had a problem that could be labelled as a 'mental issue', even though I was not outgoing. A year and a half before the bad shroom experience though, I develop some kind of social anxiety : each time I would be outside or with people outside of my close family, I would start sweating incontrollably (I am quite ashamed of this but I think the best is to be honest).

- about the context of this trip to the Netherlands.
Firstly, it was during a holiday with the same friends that I had had my only really bad asthma crisis (it was at around 15 and it as the first time we tried drinking a lot). Except for that, the week had gone great and I had no trouble at all with the booze.
But somehow I really did not want to go to Holland, I cannot explain it but something was really holding me back. I had even told my parents that y friends wanted to try magic mushrooms, and my mum just told me that alcohol and marijuana could be fun (when you feel fine etc) but that I should stay out of other drugs. So I went there anyway, even though until the last minute I hesitated. There was like the idea (not only for me, but also for my other friends) that there was something at stake with this trip, and the idea that some might back out at the last minute.

- the 1rst evening, we took weed (the joint was very strong, and me very unexperienced, I had only smoked once before). The effect was very strong, I felt completely slowed down and a bit shut from the others, and I do not remember half of the evening? But really no bad trip, my brain was just functioning at 10% of the normal. I just know that we watched las vegas parano before I fell asleep. I woke the next morning feeling very well, like I had not slept that well in a long time. So we went and bought the mushrooms (the most cruel part I think is that we bought them far more easily than the weed !!! It was I who paid and at the time I couldn't have looked older that 15 ...).

- the experience itself. As far as I can gather from the advice about these trips, good conditions were gathered. We had not drunk alcohol or smoked before taking the shrooms, it was in a naturally lit living room. We were 4 unexperienced and one who had already taken some. He had some kind of vitamin or I don't know what to take in case one would feel bad. I insist on the fact that I really did not feel like taking them, and that eventually I did only because of peer pressure. I took two and then half of one (less than all the others, who took well over 5). The guy with experience said something about people staying blocked in trips and psychiatric hospitals, which gave me a rush of anxiety. From this moment on, I tried to resist etc, somehow paralyzed with anxiety. In a nutshell, I got no hallucinations, no extreme alterations of perceptions but the whole experience was extremely scary and worrying. As I said, I don't think that the shrooms were very strong because the others had a 'light' trip : they just saw slight alterations in colors, shapes or movement but remained completely logic and coherent the whole time ... But then I would not never wake up the same way again :/

I think that might be the probleme is that I started being afraid even before the effects could kick in, so then maybe I was not able to tell myself calmly 'this is the product, let's just wait that the effects wear off'. I felt trapped, and it continued the morning after ...

Sorry this post is so long, but thanks for reading anyway


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## forestx5

Hi Frogman,
NY is not a troll. You can click on his avatar and research his previous posts. He was just being a bit "flippant". Sometimes the veterans of this disorder can do that.
Read some of the articles in the Links section of this forum. It would appear that your reaction was the interaction of a psychoactive substance (there is nothing special about mushrooms as anything such as cannabis, MDMA (ectasy), mescaline, can do the same thing) in combination with your "psychological frameset". Anxious people should not subject themselves to psychoactive substances. It can be difficult to "wrap your cognitive mind" around a bad trip. This leaves you vulnerable to the mind's imagination. Anxiety disorders result, in my opinion.


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## frogman

Hi Forestx5,
Yeah I checked out newyork's profile (and already apologized to him







). Though sadly it seems that I an older veteran since I have had it for 5 years ...

@newyork: I read your post about neurofeedback and I am very interested (although a part of me tells me that it seems too good to be true). Could you just tell me how your DP started ? If it was DI or not ?
And btw, I read the list of your symptons that got better, and I sooo feel the same way man, especially about the lack of integration of visuals and sound, the feeling of 'being raped by the world', as if every stimulus was analyzed in a deafly painful way ...

I hope we could discuss it here in this thread or by PM. Thx


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## forestx5

frogman said:


> Hi Forestx5,
> Yeah I checked out newyork's profile (and already apologized to him
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ). Though sadly it seems that I an older veteran since I have had it for 5 years ...
> 
> @newyork: I read your post about neurofeedback and I am very interested (although a part of me tells me that it seems too good to be true). Could you just tell me how your DP started ? If it was DI or not ?
> And btw, I read the list of your symptons that got better, and I sooo feel the same way man, especially about the lack of integration of visuals and sound, the feeling of 'being raped by the world', as if every stimulus was analyzed in a deafly painful way ...
> 
> I hope we could discuss it here in this thread or by PM. Thx


You apologized? Have you lost your mind? lol
Seriously though, sorry you have to be here but welcome.


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## kate_edwin

True Freudian psycho analysis won't help dp much. Try asking your psychiatrist or therapits about cbt, dbt or mindfulness. Sounds like you've forthe kind that could be shorter term and possibly related to anxiety and drugs. Sometimes peope think medication helps, sometimes it makes it worse sometimes it does nothing. There isn't Any medication that's been proven to help dp yet, not for sure


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## frogman

Honestly I hope freudian therapy can help since I recognize myself in all what is said about what can cause dp (emotional abuse, a bad and anxiety generating family environment, which are as many reasons why I might have shut down emotionnally and started going into dp).

I discussed this with my psychiatrist (btw there is a longer tradition of psychiatry and more generally search of cures for the illnesses of the psyche in France and Germany than in the US or UK) and he thinks dp/dr might be a new form of 'hysteric neurosis' (at the beginning of the XXth century some women suffering from hysteria were actually 'mentally' paralyzed). Some of them could experience episodes of dp/dr (even though it was not 24/7 like it is for us today.

Do any of you guys have any thoughts about this?


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## kate_edwin

Hysteria was a neurotic set of symptoms and disordersthat were thought to be from afloating uterous. Hysteria does not and never did actually exist. Those women were all miss diagnosed. They also used to use dr patient sex as therapy.

Dissociation is reallly not a Freudian thing, it's a fight or flight thing. None of the dissociation specialists use psychoanalysis or Freudian techniques anymore


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## seeingisbelieving123

Hey Frogman- interesting you had anxiety even before your bad trip. It kind of supports the idea that people who get Dp/Dr may already have been prone to it and than some major traumatic life changing event comes along and just sets it off.
I was extremely shy growing up, I would hide at the top of the stairs when strangers came over or family I had never met. I was very self-conscious of myself, my looks, how I was viewed, was good enough or not? In part this stemmed from a deep criticism I felt growing up...
As an adult I tried to break away from the constraints I always felt growing up, and started to veer off into a more experimental path. I tried hallucinogens 2 years ago and this also coincided with my spiritual path that I started exploring in more depth. I had a few really phenomenal experiences until one night I was given way too much and I hallucinated so vividly that I started to panic and went into my first ever attack! I did eventually calm myself but the feeling of terror and helplessness met me at a place I had never been before and I vowed to never do them again, I was done~
Then a few weeks later I started to see carpet patterns move, grass move and I was dizzy, having insane thoughts and all of a sudden I became very fearful and went into panic attack mode. I lost control of my mind and body and had no idea how I woke up one day feeling the way I did - my life completely changed and all of a sudden I was dealing with this panic disorder. 
How the heck did this happen? At the time I had no idea that Dp/Dr existed or HPPD, or that what I was experiencing was even remotely related to my mushroom trip....until I got visual snow...and googled it and BAM!! I made the connection...
The in between part between that time and now was really hard, painful and trying but I have managed to get my life back, my mind...and even though I still have some symptoms I did get better. My vision did change - but I had to find a way to reconcile what I did and not hate myself forever for bringing this on to myself.....it was years in the making...and we have to go back to that uncomfortable place that was the birthing ground for our anxiety and make peace with it. 
Otherwise, I post A LOT on alternative medicine, that is what I firmly believe in......and what has helped me heal!


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## Cable guy

The reason people are afraid under the effect of a drug is because they are afraid of themselves and afraid of being what they really are, because of the pressure society puts on an idividual, by a moral of what is normal. And people are afraid of not being accepted. Sexual orientation shares a big part with it. Being afraid to speak out(about everything), what others may say of you... can they figure out what i really am? Who am i? Who i really am? And so on... As a matter of fact childhood (relationship between child and his mother & father) is dependent for depersonalization/derealization in later life. Being emotionaly detached from a parent, impacts your functioning in social life with your peers etc. For a male child who cannot emotionaly interact with his father is going to fail to identify his own gender role. Same goes for a female to her mother. This will be hard for a child to identify with his peers, well you can imagine what else goes with it (insecure of his own self and stuff). So based on this insecurity a child begins to build his false personality. So yeah, problems are deeper than you think.


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## frogman

Thank you for your answer cable guy, I read your post with interest. In this perspective, I think CBT can only solve a part (an insufficient part ?) of the problem. Btw, it is not verified that freudian therapy is unable to solve DP/DR, and I would add that some of the latest research seems to indicate that DP/DR may not be accurately put in the dissociative disorders category.
Anaway, I will keep on struggling since I cannot imagine that taking 2 mushrooms can ruin a human being for ever.


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## kate_edwin

The gender while thing doesn't track anymore, there's research you don't need a male and female parent to be solid in your own gender role, aside from single parents it's been shown two male or female parents can produce just as healthy children


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