# PTSD from weed/psychedelics. Cause of my DP



## golferdude619 (May 23, 2008)

Wanted to see if anyone could relate at all to my story and recent feelings of DP.

I have been smoking weed quite often for the past two years and enjoyed it alot. Never got in the way of school and loved to do anything while being stoned. About two months ago I decded to try shrooms. I did a moderate dose on a friday nite and nothing too bad happened. The next nite I was sucked in and decided to do it again. Doubled the amount. I won't go into detail about the whole trip, but long story short it scared the shit out of me to the point I really thought I was going die and life would not be worth living.

Finally came out of it and chilled out for a few weeks, not that much different, still smoking a good deal but it was like it never happened and back to normal. THEN. One night smoking normally I was watching tv with my friends and all of a sudden a mad anxiety attack that led to a flashback for about 15 seconds. Literally the tv and my friends faces were morphing. I calmed down a bit but it took a good hour to really get out of the mindset. I tried to stop smoking but five days later my buddies and I took some bong rips and were off to play basketball. Again, while playing, morphing happened all over again!!

Havent smoked since. 3 weeks. But after that had rush where I didn't feel real at all. Cough cough DP. Before I found out it was that boy was I a wreck for a week. I mean I practically tried to make myself schizo. After somewhat letting go of that I have been in decent spirits, except when DP flares up in full force.

My question is do you think you can have PTSD from a shrooms trip and be the reason for my DP? Anyone go through similar?


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## Pablo (Sep 1, 2005)

I went through something similar but with ecstasy. You can get traumatised by bad trips but for it to be PTSD you would have to keep getting regular flashbacks and nightmares, if the memory of the event freaks you out and gives you a panic attack where you think you are back in it then it is PTSD. It is diffcult for such states caused by drugs to fall into categorisation because the trauma occurs in a abnormal drug induced state so it will be unlikely to fit the symptoms written in a psych text book but that doesn't meant that the bad drug expereinces cant mess you up and traumatise you its just hard to put a label on exactly what it is that has done it.


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## golferdude619 (May 23, 2008)

ya. Thinking about the trip doesn't scare me that much, but things that are similar freak me out. I had the bad trip at my friends house and have only been by on two occassions. The first time I went back I got super anxious and the walls started twisting slightly just like I was going to be on the trip again. The next time I was over was the same day I last smoked weed. It was to get the weed. I didn't see anything but I got so anxious I wanted to just get out as fast as I could

Also, my friend let me use his sweat pants during the shrooms and I still have them to this day. The few times I've tried to wear them I have got panicky and now I can't even look at them without freaking. Also, watching tv occassionally puts me on edge b/c during the trip the tv was freaking me out and doing crazy shit

So I don't know if this is PTSD but obviously the trip has scared me shitless. Something I hope fades with time


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## golferdude619 (May 23, 2008)

ya the first pot flashback was a major anxiety/panic attack so I think that defintely starts and spurs the DP overall. Funny thing us that I havent smoked in 3 weeks and randomly last night I started researching about shrooms/weed and if anyone had ever had visuals from it. Basically I had my mind off that subject for a while. Then after being so keyed in on it last night while watching a little bedtime tv
I swear peoples face morphed for maybe 1/2 a second at most. Got super panicky for a good minute but calmed
myself down enough.

Again adding to the fact it might be PTSD. Anything at all that triggers that mindset puts me back into the paranoid/anxious flashback mode of that awful trip. Just as a note, today was a bad DP day as I felt super unreal and dream like. I am certain that slight flashback stirred up some unconscious anxiousness inside of me and led to an off day. About to drift to sleep right now pretty thought free, I'll hopefully have a bright day tomorrow and let you know how it goes


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## Islander1 (Mar 25, 2008)

my dp was because of shrooms, i had a bad trip with severe anxiety that i thought i was going to die, i actualy thought i was dying, i called up family n freinds to wish them goodbye, 7 hours later when the trip was subsiding it started to wear off, and i was suddenly slammed back into reality with a rush of "thank god it was just a bad trip" and iv never felt so alive and have more respect for my life since then. Now i am drug free and alcohal free however i do suffer from DP and generalised anxiety disorder because of that one decision i made, however i am fighting it and will continute to fight it till my mind is free again.


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## Guest (May 28, 2008)

Islander1 said:


> however i do suffer from DP and generalised anxiety disorder because of that one decision i made, however i am fighting it and will continute to fight it till my mind is free again.


Wrong wrong wrong, the very essence of anxiety and DP is NOT to fight it, let your body and tired mind heal itself, the more you 'fight' the more you tire your mind ending up in a vicious cycle. I really really recommend 2 books:

1) Paul David's book on anxiety, available from http://www.anxietynomore.co.uk
2) Claire Weekes 'Self help for your nerves'

Both have really helped me to let go and just accept, float along and let time pass.


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## golferdude619 (May 23, 2008)

my shrooms trip was exactly the same. I thought I was gonna die and had terrible anxiety. And true, when it ended I was so happy just to be alive and be able to take advantage of that. For the next few weeks I worked out crazy, ate well, and kept in great contact with my parents. I felt like shrooms had made me a better more gracious person until the night of my weed panic attack flashback. Since then I've felt very unreal and dream like and have had a harder time getting through school at college. I felt I used to be very smart with a really good memory and a quick learner. Today I must go much slower and have a hard time being interested in any of the subjects.

I'm at my best when I'm around alot of good friends just laughing and doing mindless things. But when I need to be individually focused I really struggle. By the way, how long after your shrooms trip did you start feeling DP? Like I said it wasnt immediate at all. Took about 3 weeks and just hit me hard


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## Islander1 (Mar 25, 2008)

Phasedout24 said:


> Islander1 said:
> 
> 
> > however i do suffer from DP and generalised anxiety disorder because of that one decision i made, however i am fighting it and will continute to fight it till my mind is free again.
> ...


Thanks i will look into it, and also what i ment by fighting was, that i wont let it win, if you read some of my previous posts i explain that i have already accepted it and on my way to defeating it.



golferdude619 said:


> By the way, how long after your shrooms trip did you start feeling DP? Like I said it wasnt immediate at all. Took about 3 weeks and just hit me hard


Yes i am much the same, I find it hard to concentrate and be intrested in things, proir to being diagnosed/feeling the effects of the badtrip/flashback i was very smart, quick learner, ver outgoing and generaly the class clown, but now i have gone withdrawn and very quiet. For me it took about several months till i noticed my anxiety increase and DP incease after the bad shroom trip, before this i was generally my normal self. Maybe this is the brains way of adjusting and healing itself, some sort of overdrive.


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## golferdude619 (May 23, 2008)

So couple more things I wanna ask. Do your DP symtoms come and go with intensity? And from the previous post about shrooms, do you still get flashbacks or is that done? For me I thought it was only brought on by weed but have been feeling very "on edge" to a flashbacks where everything will morph again and a panic attack. It kinda bugging me and now when I think about it more lately the whole trip is almost impossible to think about whereas before when I thought weed could only do it I never feared thinking about it

Also, my sensitivity to light is really bad since this all started and I was wondering if anyone here felt the same. And I feel I'm always looking at things and feeling like they might be off but the way of thinking has led to heightened anxiety and fear that things could turn worse. For me my worst days ate the ones where I feel hopeless and think I will get worse, where my better days are full of fun things and I can't think about those things.


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## Islander1 (Mar 25, 2008)

Yeah my DP/anxiety fluctuates from day to day. Some days i would wake up and feel absolute fine while other days i would wake up and id feel like absolute shit (i would wake up with extreme dp/anxiety/social axiety) 
As for flashbacks i hardly get those anymore i usually just get panic attacks where i get the same type of feeling that i had when i had my bad shroom trip which usualy consits of the feeling that "im going to die".
I suppose that is kind of like a flashback but its not as intense as say the "visual effects" of the trip, rather the psychological after effects. It gets kinda annoying because its hard to keep appointments and just live your day to day life. I can connect with what you said before on your first post of 'how you would be with your mates watching tv and suddenly you get that panic attack' feeling onset, and everything morphs, i get that sometimes but with the no morphing, just the "negative death thoughts" lol dude its the worst thing but i guess i have to take responsibility and accept what has happened because i was the one that chose to eat the shrooms in the first place. These things take time...its been about 7 years since my shroom ( and other drugs) began effecting my mind which caused the onset of DP and anxiety ilness... but only over the last couple of years iv accepted it and ignored it and its not as bad now as it used to be, its slightly going away, so stay positive even tho its hard mate.

Also i wanted to add i to get that sensitive to light, somedays i would look outside and it would be 2 bright and it when i would be outside i would constantly need to wear sunglasses, my eyes would become very dry to and puffy.


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## abyss (May 27, 2008)

I just wanted to comment here. Sometimes I read posts on this site and really just cant relate. I have had DP for a while now. For me I think it was a defense against certain things that I did not want to face from my past, but I cant really know until I come out the other end of this. If anything, though, I do not have flashbacks. I wish I did because they can be a gateway to recovering feelings. MY DP does not waver. It is always there. It sucks... I used to experiment with drugs, but havent really done that much in a while. I wonder if the shrooms just stimulated some really scary experience that you are not used to or perhaps gave you an insight into your past that may have been repressed or something and it was just too scary so you went DP. Although could you explain more what your DP experience is like? Are you numb? Cant feel feelings? In addition to all the distortions...


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## golferdude619 (May 23, 2008)

when it comes hard I feel like my life is pointless to live because it feels too much like a dream. As if I'm just gojn through the motions and then thinking why do I need to do anything, its pointless. This usually leads to some guilt period and the overall thought process can last anywhere from a couple hours to a few days. When this is going on I feel as if the whole world in general is just "fake", not 2d like people with DR say, but just adding to the dreamlike feel of living. I basically get super depressed during these times and don't
like living. But it comes in waves of intensity. So that is me and call it whatever. What's your experience
been like?


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## abyss (May 27, 2008)

Thanks for the reply. I was just curious... For me, I have that 2d experience where everything looks flat. My emotional self is flat also. I wouldnt say that I am depressed...although everyone seems to think I am because based on what I say "MY life is pointless" or do - sleep, dont function..it seems like depression. But I tell them that I am REPRESSED. When I say that there is no reason to do anything it's because I feel nothing while I am doing it. I also have what I call like a vice in my brain that seems really tight and blocks my thoughts so I am primarily blank and cant really critically think. I know it sounds like a contradiction because you could argue that I am being thoughtful on this post, but its complicated. I just know that I want out if you know what I mean. Do you mind telling me about your flashbacks? Are they flashes to when you were tripping? I know that if you see a good therapist (and the emphasis here is on good therapy) they might be able to help you resolve some of those flashbacks so they are not flashbacks but integrated parts of yourself...


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## golferdude619 (May 23, 2008)

I've really only had one true panic flashback, but a couple of other stories that are like mini-versions. My first one came about three weeks after the awful shrooms trip. I smoked a lot of weed, felt normal high for about an hour. Then while watchng tv with my friends, a sudden huge rush of andrenaline hit me, then hear rate skyrocketed. Big panic anxiety quickly followed accompanied by visuals. The tv swirled and my friends heads did as well. ( their heads morphed crazy during the trip) then five days later we smoked and went to play basketball. While playing, again about an hour after smoking during the game I had visuals. Beause it was during exercise my panic was reduced and I played through it. About a week later I had a dream about sitting in the livingroom having the first flashback with a face morphing that was someone from our bball game. Since them I have not smoked. Three weeks today, and I have recently been bothered watching tv always thinking it might morph. And always think it has a couple times. Starting to bug me


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## Islander1 (Mar 25, 2008)

abyss said:


> Are you numb? Cant feel feelings? In addition to all the distortions...


Absolutely, at some points i feel Very numb, and i have absolutely no feelings whatsoever. Sometimes when im conversing with people, (which is hardly ever because i find it hard to string together sentences/ have convo's) they think i am being stand-ofish or rude. This can be extremely depressing sometimes especially when the other person does not know what condition you have. Only 3 people in my life know i have this condition.



abyss said:


> it seems like depression. But I tell them that I am REPRESSED.


This is exactly how i feel, also sometimes i would become very reclusive. I'm 100percent sure its not depression we are suffering, but rather the blocking of feelings of being happy/positive because of the symptoms of DP.



abyss said:


> in my brain that seems really tight and blocks my thoughts so I am primarily blank and cant really critically think. I know it sounds like a contradiction because you could argue that I am being thoughtful on this post


I know exactly what you mean, i think the best interpretation is that you are using a different part of the brain whilst typing and being on a computer, and it is not effected by dp as much as your other day to day activities.



golferdude619 said:


> when it comes hard I feel like my life is pointless to live because it feels too much like a dream. As if I'm just gojn through the motions and then thinking why do I need to do anything, its pointless. This usually leads to some guilt period and the overall thought process can last anywhere from a couple hours to a few days. But it comes in waves of intensity.
> been like?


I too get this frequently. At some points it all seems worthless, then at other times im like.. why was i thinking like that? then it is at that point i realise that this disorder is just one big vicious cycle.


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## golferdude619 (May 23, 2008)

I know this may seem obvious but I just had a terrifying realization. I'm having an awful morning right now, I got way too drunk last night. Felt amazing at the time but right now my thoughts are all over the place and not good.

So I realized while being on shrooms that if I thought that way for the rest of my life why would I live. I also was freaking that the thought or feeling would never go away. Well, after coming off the drug I was relieved and felt amazing for a few weeks. But after getting DP, or whatever I have, I have realized that my thinking is way too similar to that night. Obviously 1/100 of the strength of a shroom trip, but just seeing how I perceive life and the world is just too similar. Its like I'm on shrooms 24/7 with a bad trip and that the only way my mind wants to think. I think that's why I think about the old me, prior to shrooms, because before no one ones that you can think that way.

For anyone with a bad shroom experience can any of you kinda relate to what I mean. I feel like its not as similar or noticeable during most times but I'm having a bad morning with this hangover. Drinking just brings out the worst in me. So hard to stop with it friends around but it beats feeling as bad as I do right now


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## watermonger (Jun 8, 2008)

I had something very similar happen to me, Although my psychedelic usage started with salvia and ended with mushrooms. The first time I did salvia I cant really remember much of what happened but I do recall having the feeling that a being of some sort was trying to tell me that reality is just a joke and that I was waking up from the dream basically. And I remember seeing this train roller coaster thing that was morphing and made out of my friends looping over and over for what seemed like thousands of years and I thought it would never end, though at the time I didn't really see things from a human perspective, so I wasn't very concerned. After I came down, which was no more than 2 - 3 minutes after I had exhaled the hit, The trip comes on right after you exhale. I had this feeling that if I reached up into the corner of my vision I could pull back the curtain as it were and reveal the true reality, which made me very anxious so I had to go onto my friends lanai and his mom helped talk me down. A few days later we were trying to get some of our other friends to try it and they wanted one of use to go first so my friend who had smoked it with me the few days earlier tried but didn't trip so I was like, " okay I guess I will". So I tried to take as small a hit as possible while still getting some effects. And as I exhaled I again saw that train roller coaster and beings telling me again, Though it wasn't nearly as strong and I was able to tell them that that I was getting intense deja vu and I kept saying that over and over. Well skip a few months ahead, still smoking pot regularly, occasionally using E and Pure cocaine. And some of the older (20 - 23) friends we have had bought 2 eights of shrooms. So the next day me and my friend decide to buy and eight to split. Now the reason I described in detail my salvia trips was because I think it was a contributing cause in my bad trip. I've always been a bit of a light weight when it comes to some chems, like booze and to a lesser extent pot. However I larger tollerance for E than my friend dose. So I thought I might have a mild trip from the shrooms. Skip ahead a few hours and everything I hear is reverberating and speech is becoming intelligible gibberish and peoples faces and objects were morphing like crazy and I can hear someone speaking in my head and it feels like my body is melting, seconds seem to take hours, and I'm seeing people in two places at once while disappearing and reappearing elsewhere. From there it becomes so strong that the room I'm in folds together and fractalizes and starts spinning faster and faster, and I'm thinking to myself reality never was real and this is how the dream ends and I get this feeling that when the final spin and fractalization that I will cease to exist. So I just stay still and wait for the inevitable, after millions of years, my trip just sort of stops and I'm back in the room I was in. And I wonder how this is possible, I then come to the realization that I must have recreated reality as I had known it to save myself from ceasing to be. At this point I sort of felt like the world was my sandbox and I could do what ever I wanted without consequence, I almost stabbed my friend with scissors and would have broken another friends moms piece if I had lacked some self control. after maybe 20 minutes this quickly passed. I didn't feel quite back to normal, but I no longer thought I had made reality and sort of felt better. A few weeks later I'm smoking with some friends and I get really paranoid that my drink had been laced with acid when I wasn't looking, and I start to get the feeling that I'm sitting inside my own head. It wasn't a full blown freak out but I didn't feel safe so I bid them farewell and went back to my house. A few days later I'm smoking by myself at about 12 at night while my mom is asleep. Having gotten quite high and experiencing dry mouth I go out into the kitchen to get something to drink after a few minutes it feels like I've swallowed something so I start panicking and go and wake my mom up and sort of have a break down, After crying for a bit I'm calmed down and went to sleep, Then it started happening sort of infrequently and eventually I started taking St. Johns wort. I also had a harder time eating non cooked food when not around my immediate family (IE mom and dad, or my moms friend who lives with us.) Although I can still eat cooked things when by myself. After some time the freakouts happened less frequently and I started taking Prozac and Seroquel. Then I was also prescribe welbutrin. As of now I refuse to touch any mind altering substance, And I cannot eat or drink anything while by myself and also need a 2 hour period after eating or drinking that immediate family needs to be around me, actually this applies to pretty much anything that gets on my skin or in my body. This started as a fear that I would eat something laced and now it has become I fear that reality might break down while I'm by myself, Its started has getting annoying and is seeming less and less likely daily. Although it's like and ingrained habit that I'm afraid to break because of the "what if" thing. Its been about 1 year since then. I still hang out with my friend when he comes over to my house but I've become a lot less social than I was and the things that keep me from doing stuff by myself or with friends is starting to become a pain. My friend hangs out with a lot of people and some fine chicks, I however don't feel comfortable going out and doing things and its getting in the way of me hooking up with or dating girls. Anyways, that was my experience, and first post, inb4 TLR.


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## larry412 (Apr 9, 2008)

Same shit happened to me I was in a unimart, I smoked before school with my friend. We were getting some food before class. I walked up to the counter with my food and drink and remember looking at the guy, handing my money to him and falling backwards not aware of anything and unable to get up or have a steady breathing cycle.. Scary


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