I want to know if anyone else is having my experience? I recently got diagnosed as having: Anxiety, depersonalization, & De realization. I am now put on Xanax & Lexapro.

I have actually been clean of all drugs for quite some time, as compared to when I used to post on Totse, where I was always doing something/experimenting.

I had a major breakdown on Christmas night, where I didn't know if I was dreaming or if it was reality. Over the last few days I've been getting a little better but I can still feel it in the back of my head.

I am being told also that it could be atypical seizures if anyone knows what that is, setting this off.

I know the derealization and depersonalization can come from drug abuse, but atypical seizures? Anyone here suffer from seizures in any way?

Or just have the same experience as me?

thanks!

i kinda know what you mean, the derealization/depersonalization kinda deal. happened at the tail end of a long run getting down as a job. its kinda shitty too when you start to feel again, kinda overwhelming at first...


but in your situation, iunno if its the same. i mean your off the drugs so you'd expect to be already better but your not. you should tell your doc about the seizures, because well, maybe you should evaluate the whole lexapro thing...

I have, I woke up shaking non stop last night. He lowered my dosage of lexapro to half. He agreed that Lexapro can trigger seizures, etc - but I am still on it. I have an EEG and what not I need to schedule tomorrow morning. Shit sucks.

i never knew there was a term to define that. i have the same trouble distinguishing reality from my dream consciousness. hope you are doing well haze

edit- this isnt much help but it may help you feel better- my cousin actually suffers from the same type of seizures. he actually predicts when he will have one. he has strange dreams the night before in which something happens to him that he has already experienced but when he wakes up he can't remember the dream anymore and can't stop trying to figure out what the dream was. sure enough sometime through out that day he has a seizure and winds up in the hospital. they've tried various meds but this has happened to him like 6 times in the last few years.

thats some heavy shit man i wish i had some advice , but the only thing i can say is things will probably get better over time but man depersonalization and derealization jusus christ. best of luck man and lay off the fungi fa sho .

I feel like depression/anxiety pills only depress depression/anxiety. I'm sure some regulation of whoremoans or whatev can be good for certain people butnot4me. K thx bye.

Hazey, bro, with all the craziness you've done? I'm surprised that's all, man.

If you still got my info, hit me up on AIM or something sometime. Been way too long, champ.

too much k

I had those exact same side effects when they put me on Celexa(similar to lexapro), I woke up in the middle of the night in a puddle of sweat and I couldn't stop shaking. I just stopped taking it cause I decided I was better off without it, it seems to help some people out a lot though so hopefully you'll get past the side effects and it'll do something for you.

When I was abusing xanax it really seemed to alienate me from everyone else, I don't know how much that'll help with derealization and all, though if you're taking it as prescribed it could be different. Well, that and the fact that everyone's different, maybe it'll help you more then I feel it could help me.

Ummm....had something else to say but I can't remember what it was now :(

Hope I helped a little, and hope you start to feel better somewhere along the road.

I remember when you said that you wanted to try EVERY drug in the world at least once, and then went on a quest to fulfill this dream. Yeah, not such a good idea there.

I sometimes can't distinguish from reality or dream too.
Example:

I used to live in the basement of my parents house when I use in H.S. My bedroom was down there.
One august day we had a huge rainfall and I got flooded out.
I remember that I had a fishtank down there with a few fish in it. After the water receded, I cleaned but never slept down there again. I kept the fish down there too. I had these small black fish in there. They kept having babies and new fish would appear every so often, little black fish swimming around. Eventually all the fish died except this one flat silver looking fish that stayed alive for a long time.

I know I had a tank at one time.
Did the black fish keep multiplying?
Did I even have black fish?
What happened to the last silver fish?
Was it even real? Or was it a dream?

For the most part it seems half real and half made up, like my mind invented something to put with the memory of the fishtank to make it more interesting. But I just can't be sure.
I have more memories like this, but this is one that sticks out.

Sorry, I have nothing to add about the seizures. Hope you feel better soon :)

Peace.

If you've been hitting the k pretty hard, it's not really surprising. I know for a day after k binges for me, I feel incredibly chilled and dissociated.

Other than that, benzo withdrawal caused derealization for me, and SSRIs can cause some pretty weird stuff in the adjustment phase. Not uncommon for people to go a bit psychotic on the more potent ones.

hope your mental issues work out man, ive had almost the exact same thing (depersonalization/derealization) even before i touched a drug...so i can see things getting even weirder in the future now that im a daily smoker who dabbles in pyschedelics, abuses pharms to no end, and is still on zoloft

it will get worse, better stop now and start looking at other things for recreation

I don't want to say that I have seizures... but since I started smoking weed everyday and doing other drugs here and there, I have noticed sleep paralysis.

I thought I would mention that because you said you had a "breakdown" and didn't know if you were awake or dreaming.

I dont know what you mean by that. But it sounds like what happens to me when I am in paralysis. I have seen some shit! the stuff I expect to see when I smoke DMT.

I have heard, felt and seen things in my paralysis and I had a good friend say to me "Drew, how sure are you that you AREN'T having a seizure?"

Any chronic abuse whether it be short-term or long-term can lead to that because of the relationships made to the substances and results. That's what I've found anyway.

i am now put on xanax & lexapro.


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Ahahahahahahhahahahahah

Edit, ow ya, i just remember your that ass who did a fake, I'm going to kill myself on the internet thread years ago.

^^

Sorry, bro, that wasn't me. I never gotten into the fake suicide thing.

I read over everyone replies, and I wish I could respond to all of them, but I don't want to feel like an ass for not responding to one of them. They all helped though, made me feel a little less alone.

I haven't done any recreational drugs in a long while, so I don't know why this is all happening now.

And yes, I did wake up in a pool of sweat the other night, with cold shivers, and I couldn't stop shaking - that must be the effect from Alprazolam & SSRIs. It feels good, once again, knowing I'm not alone in waking up covered in sweat, shaking, and feeling like shit.

If I take an hour rest and wake up, like I did at 4:00pm this evening, I wake up shaking non stop. My muscles are trembling. Fucking SSRIs. Such bullshit.

I'm taking half of the dose I'm supposed to on Lexapro now and just after taking HALF this morning I already feel as though I can feel the derealization and anxiety creeping in again. Placebo? I've only been on this shit for 4 days.

It's been 4 years since I've been on any SSRIs, and now I remember why I stopped taking them last time. However, I can't seem to figure out if I'd rather have anxiety or feel like shit. If this takes away my anxiety but I still feel like shit in the next week or two, I dunno which I'll decide to keep.

FUCKING LAME.


I haven't had a seizure, well, a physical body seizure, like grand maul, since I overdosed on MDMA/Methamphetamine a few years back. Atleast, I don't think so. But the idea of these atypical seizures, seizures of the brain, are fucking crazy. A doctor of mine, whose a family friend, believes I'm having these atypical seizures, which set off the rerealization, I become anxious, and I have a panic attack. Pretty good hypothesis, if I do say so myself.

I can't predict when their going to happen, unfortunately. These feelings happen at any moment. When I'm at home, watching TV, or when I'm out at a club - even to when I was at a family dinner with my grandparents. It's quite intimidating to want to go out in public without knowing when it's going to happen.

But I won't live in a box.

DOC - I know what you mean about not distinguishing the dreams to reality, or if you're having fake memories, I can't quite put my finger on it to make a response out for you, because my brain is really clouded right now, but when this feeling goes away I have something to relate to you with, that you'll understand. It's hard finding anyone who knows how that feels.

What I mean by if I don't know if I'm dreaming or not, is that I get this feeling, out of nowhere, of being IN a dream. Certain things don't look and feel right, I don't feel like it's actually me talking to someone, etc. It's strange. I can't tell you exactly. I have a hard time telling people.

I have a schedule for an EEG coming up soon so I will definitely keep you guys updated.

.. I no longer want to conquer the world of drugs, I just want my fucking head back on my shoulders.

I appreciate everyone wishing me the best. I really do. Telling me it's going to get better. It really helps.

HAZEY, holy shit I was wondering what happened to you. You helped me out so much back in the day with my little meth problem. Glad to see your still alive.

I have constant visual distortions like I've taken a light dose of some type of hallucinogen. I also have permanent tracers/trails over everything and I've developed mild but noticeable night blindness.

I've tripped quite a lot since my earlier youth, but it only gets worse as the years go on. I'm afraid one day the visuals disturbances are just going to become more dominant than the feedback I get from reality, and it'll just fuck shit up or I'll need to go on anti-psychotics.

if it's HPPD, it's all visual. I don't really have negative psychological effects (if anything, it's been all beneficial).

I remember when I was withdrawing off of GBL, the first day they really kicked in I had an absence seizure and forgot who I was and where I was, and was just stumbling around the house trying to figure out what the fuck was wrong. I had horrible delusions where I would become immobilized and transported into some lucid nightmare. -shudder- don't do GBL kids.

hazey, I thought you were dead. uhhhhhhh happy being aliveness! :p

I know the derealization and depersonalization can come from drug abuse

Define that further. Are you saying you look at the world differently or yourself? Are you saying you feel nihilistic/hedonistic after drug abuse? Reality's pretty damn complex. It doesn't take much to overstimulate a weak mind.

good to see your still alive and free hazey. keep on truckin.

whats good lotek

word. just rollin thru life seein what i can and not seeing what i miss.

quite good actualy

Xanax & Lexapro

I remember reading about how you overdosed on something. I vaugely recall something about a seizure. The way I see it, your history is the most important factor in determining why you're having seizures.

My personal advice is to put down the government pills. Maybe use them if they're really doing good, or X to help sleep. MAtter of fact, play up that 'script, everyone always wants some Xanax bars, they're harder to get a prescription for. But if it's disrupting your life's natural rhythms, stop taking it. A Xanax hazey over everything will cloud your mind.

-Start taking small doses of 5-htp on a regular basis, about 100mg a day with a meal. This will help you sustain a healthy resivoir of serotonin.

-Supplement this with Rhodiola Rosea extract.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhodiola_rosea
The Rhodiola will optimize serotonin and dopamine levels.
Like 5-htp, you should easily find an extract of this at your local vitamin spot, take one a day with the 5-htp.

-PERHAPS MOST IMPORTANTLY, find a supplier for L-Huperzine.
uniquenutrition.com might have it, maybe it can even be found at a doupleplusgood vitamin store.

L-Huperzine is an NMDA receptor antagonist that also stimulates nerve growth. A NMDA receptor antagonist is the opposite effect of NMDA damage done by K, PCP, DMX and others.

-A Calcium/Magnesium supplement is good, too. Most ion channels in the brain are mostly Ca(+) ions, Na(+) ions, and some K(+) ions. The essential calcium can't be absorbed without the magnesium (vice versa? someone correct me), so most supplements combine the two. A few months supply should cost less than $10, it's a basic mineral after all. Magnesium treatment allegedly a cure for acute depression. Minerals are very important to sustain human life. Think about all those third world countries where people are born Cretins from lack of Sodium, zinc, etc.

-Fish oil, to the order of ~1500mgs.

-Vitamin C, B6 and B12 are also useful in acetylcholine production, as they are necessary for the breakdown of it's precusors.

-Speaking of acetylcholine precusors, a Choline supplement may help. If memory serves, I believe they have been successfully integrated into alzheimer's recovery, as well as other degenerative brain diseases.
-----This lends to the next chapter of other various nootropic regimentation, Piracetam, ALA, Aniracetam, etc.


Above all else, begin eating a healthy, well balanced diet. This is better than taking a multivitamin, so that you're not affecting your body's natural capacity to adapt to your environment.



"Chew Valerian root and get more exercise."


AIM is in my profile. Message me sometime.

I have seizures actually. And I get high all the time.

Sometimes, when I go clean, the real world is both terrifying, overwhelming, and ecstatic. I call it living. Sometimes I get dissassociative thoughts at night. But it does go away with time. The longer you stay clean, it goes away. Some things just linger, though, and you accept them as life.

Currently, I'm smoking weed often because I got a vaporizer, but other than that I'm not doing any real drugs, except the odd hallucinogen when it comes my way. And the world is a great place to be :)

Wouldn't want to quit weed, though :P