# Triggers, symptoms & cures



## Guest (Mar 6, 2005)

I'm nineteen years old, and I started experiencing the symptoms of Depersonalization/derealization last summer. I'm surprised at the amount of cases that have been associated with drug usage, and mine's another one. I took a really high dosage of magic mushrooms last summer. They took me completely out of this world, dissolved my sense of self and physical being, and was basically the scariest thing I have ever experienced. I honestly thought I was going to die. 
Well, it all sounds terrible, but I actually have a love-hate relationship with my depersonalization. I consider it to be a gift in many ways, and I wouldn't swap it for the world. But I also wish it wouldn't get so overwhelming and scary. 
So what do I experience? Well, for 90% of my day I'm totally fine. I keep busy, do my essays, go to my lectures... but occasionally things will trigger my dp/dr off and thats when things get really frightening for me.

---Things that often trigger it: ---
Being in big crowds of people
Being alone and thinking deeply about existance
When I'm sleepy or havent had enough sleep
When it gets dark
When I'm scared of something
When I feel isolated in a social situation
When I smoke weed/pot
When I'm stressed out, or daydreamy.

---What Happens: ---
Things around me don't feel 'real'. I wonder what reality is. It feels like I could slip through it any second. Reality feels like a veil, and I can almost see what's behind it but not quite. 
I don't feel 'real' and I wonder if I exist or not
I get scared worrying about reality/existance
People in the street look alien-like, robotic. I think it's strange that they have 'arms' and 'legs', it seems so strange, like some kind of sci-fi fantasy. 
My parents faces become unfamiliar and obscure. I know who they are but they don't look right. They feel alien to me. 
I am amazed by normal objects - a mug, my phone - they seem incredibly complex in their existance. 
The idea of 'life' or 'a world' seems unimaginable 
I have no words to describe my feelings
I feel totally isolated - wondering if I'm the only person experiencing this 'reality'. I feel disjointed from my body - my mind seems as though it is seperate, like a ball of consciousness floating around. 
I feel LOST in the world, and I ask questions like 'what's going on?' 'where am i?' and 'who am i?'. 
I feel like I'm just living out 'what I'm supposed to do'. I carry out daily tasks but I recognise them as systematic, robotic, maintenance, and I feel dissassociated from them. 
The simply creases in my duvet cover become unimaginable complicated and almost threatening in their complexity. 
I feel isolated from my environment. I feel lost wherever I go. Wherever I am I will still ask myself 'Where am I?'
Communication and socialising becomes pointless because I'm not sure if these other people are real. They don't understand anyway. 
Life, the world, everything seems obscure, like a dream. 
I feel completely, helplessly alone. I don't trust that anything exists apart from myself, and I don't even know what that is.

---My ways of dealing with it: ---
Spend time with my best friend, chat, watch a movie, eat food, normal stuff. 
Get busy, go shopping, but avoid big crowds, avoid being alone. 
Look at colours, shapes. Indulge myself in my surroundings - allow things to feel sensual. I can touch and feel things, it feels good. Look at things, observe, find beauty in things. 
Write about my feelings
Cry - let out my emotions, anger, FEAR, aloneness. 
Read about dp/dr in books or online.

MOST IMPORTANTLY - (these are the two ways I really keep myself here):
1. I make a conscious CHOICE to live in this reality, whether or not I believe it to be real. I MAKE it real. I make the CHOICE to be me, whoever I am - and I accept the weirdness of existance. 
2. Laugh. Just laugh - god, it's all f***ng strange/obscure/unreal - sometimes we can either laugh or cry, and laughing is a very good option. I have no idea what's going on, and I'm gonna laugh at the fact that I don't have a clue.

---Why I think dp/dr is a gift: ---

-When I'm experiencing dp/dr it feels more like the 'truth' than when I'm not experiencing it. dp feels REAL. It feels organic. I feel surprised that everyone in the world doesn't feel like this because the feelings seem so obvious to me... 
-I have perspective on life all the time. It's like the feeling you get when you look at the stars. You can always see the bigger picture. Mundane problems are less likely to get you down because they seem so trivial compared to the big reality-question. 
-I see how beautiful things really are. A falling leaf becomes so wonderous. How how how, and why? It's amazing. 
-The world can seem extra sensuous if you let it. Dipping my fingers into water becomes an extraordinary experience. I don't understand any of it, but it's beautiful.

I hope some of this has helped.

Julia xx


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## Guest (Mar 6, 2005)

Wow































I sometimes think a great majority of art was inspirted by DP or possibly 'higher perception'. Your post was almost like reading a piece of artwork in places.


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## Guest (Mar 6, 2005)

Hehe, thankyou. I didn't mean for it to sound arty.

Julia xx


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## skEwb (Mar 5, 2005)

Well that's cool that you enjoy it and feel gifted, but I just want the clarity back I used to have. I also did the whole mushroom thing and thought I was going to die same as you, but that was years ago. I don't know maybe the damage was done back then and it's coming out now?


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## Guest (Mar 16, 2005)

Julia i really enjoyed reading your post. i can totally relate to you. the world has become much more beautiful to me since my dp/dr. some music and movies touch me in ways i can't describe. but that is the only thing i feel i have gained from this crazy disorder.

btw have you seen american beauty? because i swear that Ricky Fitz suffers from dr


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## Guest (Apr 11, 2005)

Which one is Ricky? Is that the guy?
I've just started reading a really good book called 'Mysticism: a study in the nature and development of Man's spiritual consciousness' by Evelyn Underhill. Underhill was a Christian who was really interested in mysticism in all religions. The first chapter of this book is amazing. It is everything I always think about, written up perfectly so that it actually makes sense. She talks of reality as a chalkboard.
Heres a little bit that I like:

On reality...
'....you are only asked to acknowledge that it is but a slate, and that the white scratches upon it which the ordinary man calls facts, and the Scientific Realist calls knowledge, are at best relative and conventionalized symbols of that aspect of the unknowable reality at which they hint. This being so, whilst we all draw a picture of some kind on our slate and act in relation therewith, we cannot deny the validity - though we deny the usefulness - of the pictures which others produce, however abnormal and impossible they may seem; since these are sketching an aspect of reality which has not come within our sensual field, and so does not and cannot form part of our world.'
I guess I've seen this summed up as 'I'm not crazy, my reality is just different from yours'. 
Obvious stuff, but I'm finding mysticism very interesting - especially in relation to DP.

Julia xx

'Did some mischevious Demiurge choose to tickle our sensory apparatus in a new way, we should receive by this act a new universe'


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## Guest (Aug 28, 2005)

I also have went through the same thing where i thought i was gunan die didnt no what people were that was when i was 16 but I was fine for 3 years then I took diet pills which maybe could have triggered something dont really no but you can get through it! because its just yout mind playing tricks on you..
I no exacuallu how you feel because I feel the exact same

do you have medicine to make you feel better?


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