# On my way out



## PauG (Oct 5, 2016)

Hello everyone! My name is Paula, I am 20 years old and I'm from Chile. Yay. I'll start saying that english is not my first language. I probably sound like Tarzan, but to hell with it.

My experience with DP/DR (mostly DR) is like something that probably everyone has heard about by now. One word that is like heaven for almost everyone around my age; marijuana. It all started before that, though. Marijuana was only the trigger of my living hell.

I remember being 6 years old and ending in the ER because I thought I was dying. My father thought it was a heart attack. The doctor said it was gas. I now say panic attack. 
I also remember being 9 years old and looking at my hands and feeling like they were so strange. Why did I have a body? How can I exist? How can anything exist? Back then this kind of thoughts lasted only seconds, a minute tops. I used to think I was the only one thinking this way.

When I was 14 I had a panic attack in a concert, there were over 50.000 people and I felt like I was going to vanish, during the panic attack I remember being "slightly" derealized but after it stopped, the feeling stopped aswell.
After that episode nothing happened until earlier this year when my parents separated. At first it was like nothing mattered to me. It wasn't like I was trying to hide my feelings, I just didn't have any. Then I started studying for a big test so I could get into med school (I'm still studying, the test is in november), and I blocked everything.

Hence the partying, the buzz, and obviously, marijuana. I think everyone knows the drill by now. I ended up in the emergency room, they gave me fluids, lorazepam, they ran some tests and asked me a hundred times if I had used cocaine. My heart beated so freaking fast that in my head I only heard a buzzing sound. I spent the whole day feeling like I was on a different planet or dimenssion. I didn't give it any thought because I attribute it to being high.

The next day everything was back to normal. But then the panic attacks started, my anxiety was really high and I started to feel really depressed. I couldn't sleep, so I obssesed over studying. It went like this for about 3 months.

One day I was readying, when I felt a "switch" in my head. I freaked out. Nothing seemed right. It was like I wasn't supposed to be here, that I belonged to somewhere else. Every second was torture. My chest hurt and I cried a lot. There wasn't a single moment where I could think of something else. I fell asleep hoping that in the morning I would wake up "normal" again, and I woke up wanting to die. I thought that I would be like that for the rest of my life. 
I kept thinking about how can we function or how small we are in the universe, that we are practically nothing.

There where moments when I was talking and I had to stop myself because my voice didn't feel like my own. Nothing felt right. Not my house, not my mother, not even my own body.

I was like this for three days before I realized it was dp/dr. It's nothing comparing to most people who even struggle with it for years before realizing what the hell is. But it was torture.

I had heard before of dp/dr because my brother suffers from it and my mom did when she was my age ( I strongly think that genetics had something to do here), so at least I felt understood.

I felt like I was going to go crazy and at any moment I would start hearing voices or I would go mad. I tried to manage it by keeping myself busy but it was not working. Every hour, every second was hell. I couldn't go to classes, I couldn't get on a bus, I could barely leave the house.

One night I was thinking that life was way to long and I couldn't bare to live like this any other second. I felt capable of doing something crazy like killing myself. So I cried, a lot. And then I asked for help.

I visited a doctor. He knew what dp/dr was. He put me on escitalopram (lexapro) and clotiazepam. I started to hang out more with my friends and family even when I didn't feel like it. I'd go out for a walk or to the beach or anything. I told myself that everything was fine even when I felt like an alien. I also started therapy. I started to meditate (I used to hate it, but somehow it gave me some peace), and I even got a job.

The dp went away first, but is because I barely had it comparing with how bad I suffered with dr. I was on the third week with escitalopram when I had the first 15 minutes without depersonalization or derealization. This was while doing some handcrafted box. I was so focused that I forgot about dp/dr. As soon as I lost the focus, the dr was back. But it didn't mattered, I was fucking relieved. Those minutes gave me hope that this thing was going to go away.

I've been now for more than 9 weeks with the meds, and I feel so much better. I am not nearly where I want to be but I'm getting there. On my good days I would say that I'm 75% cured and on my bad days I would say 50%.

This site helped me a lot when I was in my living hell, fully derealized. I would come here and read stories about people who recovered. I told myself that I could do it, I could be that person.

So here I am, being that person to someone like me. I know I am not fully recovered, but I know for certain that someday I will be. And faith is the most important thing, so don't lose it.

 just keep fighting


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## Stevemc92 (Jul 31, 2016)

My story almost same as yours in 7 weeks on lexapro and feel so much better thanks for sharing


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