G
Guest
·For me I don't have really wierd thoughts, I have wierd sensations and perceptual distortions mostly.
It is hard for me to admit to myself that i might have brain damage and this may account for these intermittent-transient "wierd" perceptual distortions. One would think that if it was actually brain damage then these states would be more common. I mean more constant.
Years ago ( it seems these days that my whole life exists in the past) I took ten motion sickness pills with a couple of my buddies when we were in our late teens. They have/had a belladonna base ingredient. The drug was called Merazine. I had horrific hallucinations, everyone who took it seems to as well. My friend was arrested for "peeping tom" when he was found talking to a rose bush thinking it was his grandmother near someones bedroom window. We're talking total hallucination here folks. The doctor at the jail told him later that he would be lucky if he didn't have brain damage from the drug. That is what leads me to suspect I might have brain damage. I wrote about my experience while under the effects of the drug here in the past so I won't go in to repeating myself as is so often my way except to say it was "frightening!"
It was after this experience that my "breakdown" began.
It expressed itself at first primarily as intense anxiety and obssessions about my heart stopping when I went to sleep or that i would stop breathing while asleep then escalated into "shadowy spectres" creeping around in the dark hallway I could see at night from the open doorway of my bedroom. I told the doctor at the mental hospital about the "shadow forms" when i committed myself and that might be why they thought I was psychotic and gave me large doses of thorazine for awhile which made everything so much worse.
But even in the hospital the most disturbing thing to me was the perceptual distortions. Legs which seemed at times to be melting into the floor, my head stretched way out of proportion to my body and blending into the wall, or feeling that my conciousness was turning inside out, or that my feeling of being a "self" was like a ping pong ball that seemed to bounce around inside the empty chamber of my skull.
Barbiturate drugs were the only thing that semed to ease the panic associated with these feelings.
Now i realize that Barbiturates are a very effective drug in reliving anxiety and panic, but I believe they are also effective in treating a variety of neurological problems. So there effectiveness in stopping these disturbing symptoms does not rule out either neurological damage or anxiety as being the root cause for these experiences.
But one interesting thing I have been thinking about in regards to all this is that I am so much better today and have been so much better for many years than I was at the time of my hospitalization, I am left with two options; first it was intense anxiety brought about by the drug experience at that time in my life and i have learned various coping abilities in dealing with the anxiety, or similar to what I sometimes read about stroke victims where the brain has the ability to compensate lost functions by re wiring itself to some extent. So if my disorder began with brain damage as the causative factor then maybe the fact that i am doing much better these days and have been for a number of years is indicative of some sort of "healing" or re learning on an unconcious neurological level.
Also it is my understanding that benzos are pharmalogically similar in action to the barbiturates in easing the symptoms of some neurological disorders. Maybe that is why the Xanax seems to work pretty good for me?
Psychological or Physiological? Both? It's still a great mystery to me.
Thanks for being here
john
It is hard for me to admit to myself that i might have brain damage and this may account for these intermittent-transient "wierd" perceptual distortions. One would think that if it was actually brain damage then these states would be more common. I mean more constant.
Years ago ( it seems these days that my whole life exists in the past) I took ten motion sickness pills with a couple of my buddies when we were in our late teens. They have/had a belladonna base ingredient. The drug was called Merazine. I had horrific hallucinations, everyone who took it seems to as well. My friend was arrested for "peeping tom" when he was found talking to a rose bush thinking it was his grandmother near someones bedroom window. We're talking total hallucination here folks. The doctor at the jail told him later that he would be lucky if he didn't have brain damage from the drug. That is what leads me to suspect I might have brain damage. I wrote about my experience while under the effects of the drug here in the past so I won't go in to repeating myself as is so often my way except to say it was "frightening!"
It was after this experience that my "breakdown" began.
It expressed itself at first primarily as intense anxiety and obssessions about my heart stopping when I went to sleep or that i would stop breathing while asleep then escalated into "shadowy spectres" creeping around in the dark hallway I could see at night from the open doorway of my bedroom. I told the doctor at the mental hospital about the "shadow forms" when i committed myself and that might be why they thought I was psychotic and gave me large doses of thorazine for awhile which made everything so much worse.
But even in the hospital the most disturbing thing to me was the perceptual distortions. Legs which seemed at times to be melting into the floor, my head stretched way out of proportion to my body and blending into the wall, or feeling that my conciousness was turning inside out, or that my feeling of being a "self" was like a ping pong ball that seemed to bounce around inside the empty chamber of my skull.
Barbiturate drugs were the only thing that semed to ease the panic associated with these feelings.
Now i realize that Barbiturates are a very effective drug in reliving anxiety and panic, but I believe they are also effective in treating a variety of neurological problems. So there effectiveness in stopping these disturbing symptoms does not rule out either neurological damage or anxiety as being the root cause for these experiences.
But one interesting thing I have been thinking about in regards to all this is that I am so much better today and have been so much better for many years than I was at the time of my hospitalization, I am left with two options; first it was intense anxiety brought about by the drug experience at that time in my life and i have learned various coping abilities in dealing with the anxiety, or similar to what I sometimes read about stroke victims where the brain has the ability to compensate lost functions by re wiring itself to some extent. So if my disorder began with brain damage as the causative factor then maybe the fact that i am doing much better these days and have been for a number of years is indicative of some sort of "healing" or re learning on an unconcious neurological level.
Also it is my understanding that benzos are pharmalogically similar in action to the barbiturates in easing the symptoms of some neurological disorders. Maybe that is why the Xanax seems to work pretty good for me?
Psychological or Physiological? Both? It's still a great mystery to me.
Thanks for being here
john
