I will never forgive myself

Haumea said:

The "you" you want back was so fragile that it couldn't handle some pot.

You don't want that "you" back. You want a better you. So get to work and become the better you!

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Based on this the true test to see how strong and emotionally stable you are is to take drugs? lol I know I'll be inviting hell fire on me but this is absurd. This statement is typical drug apologist babble. In your scenario pot is harmless and once again the results of the drug taking are on the user and not the substance.

Why is pot minimized in such a fashion so often?

Do people not realize it is classified as a mild hallucinogen?

Its not the soft drug it's perceived to be. I can't handle some pot like little Timmy with the peanut allergy can't handle peanuts.

When you make this statement you ignore the almost endless variables associated with smoking a drug regardless of how rare triggering DP may be. While we may have the predisposition to mental disorders, weed is clearly doing something to us that we all end up in the same boat. Ignoring what it possibly did within our brains and nervous system is ignorant.

I have an identical twin brother that grew up with the same trauma as me, same fears, same temperament, same father, same mother, witnessed all the horrors in my home I witnessed, experienced the same dogma, same addictions, same passions, same neurotic issues. We are as alike as any two people can be yet he does not suffer depersonalization. He is not numb and tired all day. He does not suffer HPPD. He does not get ghost images, or trails. He does not get horrible migraine headaches every week. He has not been to a psychiatrict ward in the last year. He is engaged in life like I used to be.

What could be the difference? My brother has never smoked weed, ever, not one hit!!! I on the other hand have smoked it 3 times with the second and third triggering depersonalization. The second time it lasted a night and the third has essentially lasted 8 years.

I've been on and off this site for eight years and I will never understand why so many people minimize the act of inhaling or digesting a substance that is clearly 'mind altering' and talking like it holds no power.

If it can't change your perception or get you high then why the fuck do people smoke something that does nothing?

I guess when a heroin addict gets high he's only feeling that way because of past trauma or he's fragile? nope.

I've went through surgeries and bullying and a violent anxious home. Did/ do I have issues? For sure, and what person wouldn't or doesn't. No one is confident in every aspect of life, no one. But the ONLY thing that has ever sent me into a depersonalized state was pot. That is the truth and it's too bad so many just can't fucking admit that drugs play a big role in what would really be the rarest of disorders.

I can really relate to this thread....I beat myself up pretty bad for "ruining my life" by overdosing on pot brownies. For almost a month, I was a complete wreck with fairly constant DP/DR and anxiety. In particular, I had obsessive thoughts that this would never go away. Since then, it's gotten MUCH better, to the point where I feel completely back to normal. I've had some mild anxiety every few days, but this is also going away. People recover from this at different rates, but I think the basic fact is that most people do recover completely.....particularly from substance induced DP/DR. I had a pretty massive overdose of THC, and I believe this would have knocked anyone's brain out of whack. I never had any anxiety issues before in my life and I had smoked pot plenty of times. I'm also in my mid 40s and I'm a mature, stable professional guy with a wife and kids. I've dealt with a lot of things in my life without any trouble, but I was completely unprepared for DP/DR. I see a psychologist to help me deal with this and he confirmed my suspicion that you do not need to have "underlying issues" or a sensitivity to pot/drugs to get long-term DP/DR/anxiety from marijuana, particularly if you have a very large dose or are unaccustomed to its effects. Mine lasted almost two months and I had to make serious lifestyle changes to recover from it (mostly exercise and diet). I hate to sound like an old fuddy-duddy, but it's only the stoners that keep saying pot is harmless and people who panic from it are somehow unusual. Although I don't think it should be strictly illegal, I do think people need to be made aware of the risk of long-term DP/DR/Anxiety as a result of overdosing. I'd take the worst alcohol hangover I ever had over an hour of DP/DR any day. Long-term DP/DR is a much more common side-effect of pot than people think. My Dr. tells me that there's been quite a spike in ER visits and therapist hours due to this issue, particularly in states where it is legal, mostly due to overdoses on edibles (brownies, candies, etc.) It's only a matter of time before the prevalence of this horrifying and long-lasting side-effect becomes widely known and I suspect it will cause increased regulation of marijuana. Nobody should have to go through this hell because nobody told them about a common and terrible side-effect.

It runs in my family. My dad has it and he has never smoked weed. I smoked weed and had it for like a week. I didn't smoke for 10 years and after 10 years it happened anyways. You can trigger it from deep stress or from taking medication. I got the H1N1 virus and was on codine and stressing out and it just happened. My brother still smokes weed. My other brother doesn't. We all apparntly have this same bullshit. Lights look strange. all that crap.

So yeah it may have been in you all along. don't beat yourself up too much. I can relate though. You know I just said how I experienced it for a while when I was younger when I smoked weed right. Well My best friend got me high and he kinda fucked with me and we smoked way too much because I didn't know how much to smoke. I just didn't know what I was doing. I wasn't getting high so I kept smoking (note I had not actually drank much either). so I kept smoking and then it all hit at once and I had a panic attack (didn't know what it was at the time) and freaked out. I told people i felt out of body and they said I would go back to normal and I basically did. 10 years later no weed or nothing and I DP'd. and it stuck. And when I found out much of it is weed related I totally flipped out. I even talked to my best friend about it. I was angry. I was angry at society for not having social norms for marijuana the way that they did for Aclohold. For instance I am 35 and I have drank a lot and I have never once puked or gone over my limit... this is because we understand and takl about alcohol. But back when i was 18 nobody talked about pot that way and i didnt know what I was doing. So I smoked too much on accident the first time and freaked out. I was fucking pissed. I was already sucidal and had nothing to lose so I was just fucking mad as hell. I asked my friend if it was laced. It wasn't. But I kept pushing on about it being laced. I hated myself for smoking it and I felt like what I did back then fucked me up for life. And that my friend didn't care that I was jacked up. And I was pissed that my family was so strangely hidden about our condition. And i was angry about society (kinda still am) cause of the stigma . And I was fucking pissed about pot culture and stoner culture and how I grew up in a town where everybody hot boxes garages and takes huge bong hits. I've never ONCE seen a joint and I've seen 1000 bongs. And because I wasn't a stoner, the few times I smoked was like a teetotaler driking a 5th on the first night.

But in the end... My whole family has this. And quite a few people do. many of them never touched marijuana. I remember when I was first on this site there was a lady who triggered dp/dr just flying to another country. No pot in her life ever....

If it helps. I'm doing really good. The whole ordeal really started in 2010 and it was hell for about 5 months. Shitty for almost a year. But I do really damn good these days. I have shit that comes and goes and I have stuff I have to deal with in relation to this condition. but in general i'm fine. Though I am lucky in that this hit me when I turned 30. Not 20. Not 15 (though I can recall moments of it when I was a child!). But still you can rebound and do fine. The first 5 months are fucking hellish. Eventually you will hardly even think of it and honestly you will start to notice people around you that are the same. (look for people wearing hats that wont look you in the eyes. LOL!)

missjess said:

I'm sorry but I think this is bullshit ...not everyone is fuking fragile who smokes pot. My brother has been smoking pot since he was 12 and I would say he is worse the me and has many fuked up issues...he isn't dpd..

There's got to be something more to why weed can cause dp not a bunch if underlying issues and crap

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Maybe you misunderstood that comment? I don't think the writer said people who smoke pot are fragile. He said, basically, the "you" before dp was fragile. I didn't really agree with the idea that you wouldn't want to be the same you agian, but I think I see a point there. There are certain personality traits, thought processes, and maybe even a genetic predisposition (?) that usually lead up to chronic DP/DR. Maybe he was referring to how you'd want to change those things as a way to get better. At least, that's how I would see it.

So, about your brother though. The situations that lead to DP/DR do not lead to DP/DR for everyone. On the same note, smoking weed might trigger DP/DR in some people, but not in everyone. It's not like alcohol, which is, at some level, definitely going to make any human intoxicated. This disorder is just a coping mechanism that the brain chooses from among many options. Also, the kind of stressors that lead to DP/DR can be pretty subtle. It doesn't have to be an obvious trauma. Maybe you just have a hard time saying no to your friends or family. Maybe you stay in toxic relationships too long. Maybe you were kind of ignored as a kid, but not actually "abused" as we usually think about it. Just because it appears that your brother has had a much harder life than you, that doesn't mean he would dissociate in the same way as you. If you say he has "issues," then it sounds like he didn't get off scott free. In any case, I hope you're not comparing yourself to him in a way that makes you feel guilty or silly for having an intense reaction to the stress in your life. That stuff just makes the dp/dr worse.

Man. I've been writing some long responses lately. Please, excuse the so-many words, and I hope you find your way back soon.

RafinhaBrasil said:

the same happened to me 5 months, the fear of becoming schizophrenic consumes me every noise that I can not identify from where it is, is an intense fear I'm only 16 and with hard ta get through it, but I hope to get back to my life again, a word of support? : s

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Wow, I thought I was the only one who had fear to become schizophrenic, but I see is not so.
It is very frightening to imagine that you can lose your head in a horrible way, but I've been reading about the disease and there are two things that keep me on earth: 1) The symptoms of schizophrenia are involuntary and unpremeditated so if you had symptoms of schizophrenia, they just would be so, even in the prodrome, and 2) it is a biological condition, that is, which has origin in the 'wiring' of brains.

Another very important thing that made me calm down about this fear is that the symptoms of schizophrenia have two 'arms': psychotic (hallucinations and delusions) and disorganized (disorganized thinking, disorganized speech, careless behavior, etc.) so if that illness scares me to the point of seeking information and talk to my friends and organizing my thoughts around it, it's because I really don't present symptoms of the disorganized 'arm'. Besides, that hallucinations and delusions are involuntary and unreflective: a schizophrenic simply has them in the same level as their other senses and perceptions, they're not 'thinked'.

And Becca98, it is the hardest thing I've ever done, but that's it. It has end. I'm in the middle of this 'nightmare' and I don't fear this anymore, because I've read too many stories about this process to know that it ends. At some point, you just move on. And I have not only read (and known) stories of weed as a trigger, I've known of people who started DPDR out of coffee, out of sleep deprivation, out of simple anxiety. So don't blame yourself for having triggered this with weed, it makes no difference to other triggers.

So chill out. Think of how thick your skin will get once this is over.
(I apologize if my grammar sucks, he he)