# My road to recovery



## peanut_eater (Sep 4, 2011)

Hi folks,

first of all, sorry for my English. I'm from Germany and so it's a little bit creepy. I want to tell you about my experiences with derealization and how I got through this. 
It all began when I was preparing for the exams. A really stressful time. In order to chill out at the weekend, a friend of mine and I cooked a hash cacao. An hour after I drank it, it started to work. Suddenly I felt the strongest anxiety in my whole life. I wanted to run away but I didn't know where I should go to. At the same time my perception was really weird. The surrounding seemed unfamiliar to me and my short-term memory was totally fucked. This condition made me even more anxious and I felt like I could get a heart attack every moment. I ate tones of sweets because someone told me once that would help. But it didn't help at all. The next morning the anxiety was still there. Less stronger but there. During the day it got better and two weeks later this was nothing then a bad memory for me. One week before the exam I studied really hard and suddenly the anxiety and the weird perception came back and this time I didn't get over it. It all felt dreamy and unreal and I thought: 'Man, if I have to stay in this condition any longer, I will kill myself'. Bright light in shopping malls and sunny days boosted this condition.

All my thoughts were about this condition and the meaning of life. Like 'Who am I, just a accumulation of neurons?', 'Do I have free will or is this just my brain that pretends it?', 'Am I already dead and all this a crazy situation like on Lost?' or 'What is me, the voice in my head?'. All these questions nearly scared me to death. All these questions remained unacknowledged because from a objective point of view life is crazy. We're living on a huge rock which is moving around the sun with super-speed and maybe we are all the descendants of apes.

After two weeks of staying in bed the whole day, I finally saw a psychiatrist who prescribed me 20mg of Citalopram. I began smoking normal cigarettes which helped me a lot to deal with this situation. However I quit drinking alcohol and smoking cannabis. At first the improvements came very slow. I was still afraid of my one voice and derealization was still there. I forced myself to go on and I met my friends and went to university even it was really hard. Sometimes I woke up and the anxiety was so strong, that I was sure that I will end up in the psychiatry soon. My doctor said that I should increase the dose of Citalopram to 30mg. I smelled ammoniac or stood on one leg, when the derealization got worse (tips from the internet) and bought an audio book with a mindfulness program.

Today, 5 months after the beginning, I'm okay. The derealization has totally gone and anxiety is rarely present only. So my message for you is: Even if you think, you would never get through this, you can get through this! Keep on fighting every day, no matter how desperate your situation is. It helped me a lot to read the comments on this forum. So I knew, that I'm not alone. You are not alone! I wish you all the best. If you have any questions, feel free to ask.


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## henndunn (May 26, 2011)

peanut_eater said:


> Hi folks,
> 
> first of all, sorry for my English. I'm from Germany and so it's a little bit creepy. I want to tell you about my experiences with derealization and how I got through this.
> It all began when I was preparing for the exams. A really stressful time. In order to chill out at the weekend, a friend of mine and I cooked a hash cacao. An hour after I drank it, it started to work. Suddenly I felt the strongest anxiety in my whole life. I wanted to run away but I didn't know where I should go to. At the same time my perception was really weird. The surrounding seemed unfamiliar to me and my short-term memory was totally fucked. This condition made me even more anxious and I felt like I could get a heart attack every moment. I ate tones of sweets because someone told me once that would help. But it didn't help at all. The next morning the anxiety was still there. Less stronger but there. During the day it got better and two weeks later this was nothing then a bad memory for me. One week before the exam I studied really hard and suddenly the anxiety and the weird perception came back and this time I didn't get over it. It all felt dreamy and unreal and I thought: 'Man, if I have to stay in this condition any longer, I will kill myself'. Bright light in shopping malls and sunny days boosted this condition.
> ...


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## henndunn (May 26, 2011)

hi!!! thanks for the post. The one thing that is holding me back is all those same scarey thoughts that you had.... I am doing a lot better then i was a few months ago but was wondering do all those thoughts go away too, they ar pretty hard to deal with. I know its just a side effect of dp/dr but still having trouble with them thank you\


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