So basically I have what I believe to be a typical case of drug induced DP/DR. Long story short, I overdosed on an edible and had (what I believed to be) a mild panic attack about a month and a half ago. I ended up eating and drinking and brought the high down before going to bed, calming my nerves. When I woke up, I didn't feel quite right. I had a pretty intense pressure in my head, particularly on the right side. As well, I felt mentally slow and had a hard time with my short term memory for a while, although both of these symptoms have since faded. I find this odd because many here describe the brain fog as being the last symptom to fade for them. I also have very little of the DR symptoms, I feel; this seems to be primarily DP. The only DR sensations I really had were a subtle sense of "disconnect" from my surroundings, but it involved nothing visual and was short lived. Sometimes in large open areas such as malls or under lights at restaurants I get mild DR sensations, but they seem to betting more and more faint. For the DP aspect, the sense of detachment for my actions and words has almost completely diminished as well. However, one thing that has persistently lingered is a sense of feeling "off" when I'm walking at times, which seems to come on in an episodic manner. When I'm distracted, I don't seem to notice it, but whenever my mind wanders and I'm reminded of DP/DR, I start to feel as if I'm almost wobbling back and forth when I'm walking, which is a bit annoying. The "acute phase" of this seems to have only lasted a few weeks for me, so I'm pretty sure I have a mild case here. The sense dread and anxiety left me for the most part after that period (existential thinking was also never really a part of this for me, just apprehension about the future). I read a post by ManOnTheSilverMountain, another person who suffered from drug-induced DP/DR, and his story really resonated with me and gave me hope that I could recover from this. He mentioned that his anxiety threshold was reduced for a while, but luckily I seem to have gotten out of that as well. I even have started slowly introduce caffeine back into my diet and it seems to have no negative effect on me. I was just wondering if anyone else has had seemingly random mild symptoms like the ones I described above persist in waves when you feel about 99% recovered? At times, I also feel 99% with a more subtle spacey feeling - almost like how you would feel if you were congested during a head cold. I know that the answer is definitely yes here, but it helps to at least talk about it. I never confided in anyone about DP/DR other than my mother a few days after I started to feel this way. However, this was before I found out about DP/DR and it was chalked up to simple anxiety. I also don't feel like it's really necessary to bring it up to anyone in real life and worry them since I seem to be handling it well.
This experience has also lead me to the conclusion that the idea that there has to be some underlying condition present to react this way to a drug overdose is bullshit. Almost anyone could suffer a panic attack under certain stressors. Maybe a lot of people like myself who get this have a panic threshold below some majority of the population, but a lot of us most likely don't have it at a point where it's clinical. I think a good way to conceptualize this is that anxiety triggers exist along a sort of continuum. The majority of people may have a panic trigger at a level that is rarely, if ever reached, while those with anxiety disorders have a threshold lower on this continuum than most, making them easily and continuously triggered by everyday events that most people are naturally adapted to handle. However, psychoactive drugs are potent enough to trigger people higher in this continuum who are otherwise well adapted to everyday life, since people don't naturally deal with the extreme effects that they often bring. If we lived in a world where we had to adapt to odd bodily sensations all the time, our subset of sufferers might be more likely to develop a long lasting anxiety disorder, but we don't live in a world like this, which is why a lot of us didn't show any signs of anxiety before and after a certain period we developed this disorder. Most psychologists don't seem to know jack about dissociative disorders, which is disappointing but unsurprising. They seem to be 1). rare and 2). poorly understood. It's easier to throw in a diagnosis of drug induced psychosis or schizophrenia and send people on their merry way. Hopefully the increase in edible usage will help spread information about this disorder and spur more research into the neurological side of things, since this area of psychology in the clinical setting seems to be in an almost Freudian stage - full of arcane bullshit, misinformation, etc. more so than actual science, at least based off of what I've seen.
Sorry if that was wordy, I just feel the need to contribute my perspective to this forum since it has helped me a lot. I also will never touch marijuana again, which really doesn't have an effect on my life that much. I much prefer to drink, anyway. The only time I ever really smoked was when I hung outwith a certain couple of friends who did it fairly often. But I never actively seeked it out. I had smoked maybe 30 times prior to this, and I had never had problems with it. But I still won't risk it. Ironically, I actually seemed to be more resistant to weed than most of my friends were, and also have a pretty high alcohol tolerance, so this came as somewhat of a shock to me.
This experience has also lead me to the conclusion that the idea that there has to be some underlying condition present to react this way to a drug overdose is bullshit. Almost anyone could suffer a panic attack under certain stressors. Maybe a lot of people like myself who get this have a panic threshold below some majority of the population, but a lot of us most likely don't have it at a point where it's clinical. I think a good way to conceptualize this is that anxiety triggers exist along a sort of continuum. The majority of people may have a panic trigger at a level that is rarely, if ever reached, while those with anxiety disorders have a threshold lower on this continuum than most, making them easily and continuously triggered by everyday events that most people are naturally adapted to handle. However, psychoactive drugs are potent enough to trigger people higher in this continuum who are otherwise well adapted to everyday life, since people don't naturally deal with the extreme effects that they often bring. If we lived in a world where we had to adapt to odd bodily sensations all the time, our subset of sufferers might be more likely to develop a long lasting anxiety disorder, but we don't live in a world like this, which is why a lot of us didn't show any signs of anxiety before and after a certain period we developed this disorder. Most psychologists don't seem to know jack about dissociative disorders, which is disappointing but unsurprising. They seem to be 1). rare and 2). poorly understood. It's easier to throw in a diagnosis of drug induced psychosis or schizophrenia and send people on their merry way. Hopefully the increase in edible usage will help spread information about this disorder and spur more research into the neurological side of things, since this area of psychology in the clinical setting seems to be in an almost Freudian stage - full of arcane bullshit, misinformation, etc. more so than actual science, at least based off of what I've seen.
Sorry if that was wordy, I just feel the need to contribute my perspective to this forum since it has helped me a lot. I also will never touch marijuana again, which really doesn't have an effect on my life that much. I much prefer to drink, anyway. The only time I ever really smoked was when I hung outwith a certain couple of friends who did it fairly often. But I never actively seeked it out. I had smoked maybe 30 times prior to this, and I had never had problems with it. But I still won't risk it. Ironically, I actually seemed to be more resistant to weed than most of my friends were, and also have a pretty high alcohol tolerance, so this came as somewhat of a shock to me.
