Joined
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21 Posts
Hello everybody!
I have decided that it will probably be helpful to join the forum as I have been lurking as a guest for the past month and a half. My only reason for being apprehensive about joining is that many other users say the forum can be 'toxic' due to the negativity of some users but I've already seen most of the negative posts.
I'm a 19 (soon to be 20) year old male from England. I am yet to get an official diagnosis but I'm pretty certain that I have been suffering with depersonalization and derealisation (DP/DR) for the past two months, with many of the symptoms that come along with it. I'm going to give a bit of insight into my life which I feel may be relevant in contributing to the DP/DR then explain my symptoms, how it all started etc.
Backstory/Past traumas
I've always been an anxious person about certain aspects of life. Not social anxiety or a phobia of a particular thing or scenario but performance/career anxiety. I don't want to come across cocky or arrogant but I am/was a very high performer intellectually at school. But I was also the kid that would stress out about getting 97/100 on a test when I know I could be getting 100/100. I don't think that wanting to achieve the best of your ability is a bad trait, but looking back I know that it was actually detrimental as I would get so anxious and stressed about not being perfect or being the 'best'.
My mother was and still is a bad alcoholic. I've seen her hit my sister, throw knives at my Dad and a plethora of other truly fucked up things no child/teen should ever need to see. I would be lying if I said it hasn't had an effect on me over the years, but I am reluctant to say how much it is contributing to my current DP/DR as I have really tried to not let it get to me or paid it much attention as I've gotten older. I am going to mention this to my doctors/therapists/psychologists (only referred to a psychologist so far) as I realise it may potentially be a big part of the DP/DR.
Last October, so October 2015 at the time of posting this I was involved in a bad car accident that very nearly killed me. I suffered a broken nose, 3 broken teeth, a large cut on my forehead and worst of all I nearly lost my left eye. The first 3 have been fixed/healed. I have had one surgery on my eye and I have got one more to go sometime at the end of 2016 as the muscles behind my eye need as long as possible to build up their strength (my eye was pushed back into my head, called an 'orbital floor blowout').
DP/DR Onset
After my car crash I found myself unable to work and I had to defer (push back) my current university year until I was healed, so from October 2015 to now (May 2016) I have essentially had no commitments and more free time than I would have liked. The majority of my home friends are away at university themselves and some of the only people I knew currently in my city are my stoner friends. So being bored I would go over to hang out with them pretty much every day from December to Mid March and I had begun to smoke marijuana/weed as it was the thing to do with this group of friends. I must have smoked every day for those 3/4 months not thinking about any potential side effects, especially as their seems to be this culture around weed that it is the greatest thing ever, "Zero people have ever died from weed ever dude" etc etc
I am not going to lie, I enjoyed getting high all the time initially. But then near the end of my 3/4 month weed binge I started to get really weird, super panicky highs which I now realise were the warning signs for incoming DP/DR. My first hint was I remember I had smoked half a joint and I felt really spacey, like I could see everything ultra clearly, almost hyper-aware in a sense. I remember thinking "wow, that was strange" once I was sobered up enough but stupidly thought it was probably just a one off.
I decided to have three weeks off from smoking as I knew that wasn't a regular high to be experiencing but I stupidly thought it wasn't anything serious. The next time I smoked was March 31st 2016 after having a 3 week long break. Looking back I think my next action will be something I will regret forever. I decided "ahh, it's been 3 weeks now I'll be fine", went over to my friends house and smoked some weed out of a bong.
I felt fine for about a minute. Then after that it all went downhill. The first thing I noticed was a falling sensation, similar to when you're swinging on a chair and you begin to tip backwards too much. The next thing I noticed was I felt like my field of view had been pulled back into my head, almost like I was watching my life through a VR headset or on a TV screen. My heartrate had also skyrocketed during this time and I was also hyperventilating, I tried to count my pulse using my neck and 15 seconds on my phone and I swear it was 160bpm at the peak of the panic attack. I remember my surroundings looking surreal, lights looked extra bright, objects looked off. The next thing I noticed was my hand, which I was using to hold onto a window during the panic attack. I felt like somehow it wasn't mine, it looked foreign to me. After about 30 minutes of having a panic attack I began to calm down a bit but the visual problems persisted and so did the detached VR feeling. I thought I'd be fine in the morning once I'd been to sleep but I woke up feeling the same, if not worse.
I realise this post is becoming huge so I will attempt to summarise my symptoms between week 1-2, Week 3-4 and how I feel now in my 8th week living like this.
Week 1-2
-My vision is distorted, the world looked different, surreal or dream like. Indoors and outdoors, outside was more distorted and weird.
-People looked distorted heavily too, I remember my parents both appeared to have huge heads.
- 2D Vision, I remember I went for a walk with my dad and he looked almost flat beside me (scary)
- Whenever I went to pick up an object, I would watch my hands pick the item up, I still felt detached from my hands.
- I kept waking up after 3/4 hours sleep
- I remember when I was talking I felt almost robotic, detached from my own speech.
- Complete emotional attachment/numbness
- Random panic attacks throughout the day
-Severe Anhedonia/lack of pleasure in anything. Ejaculatory anhedonia, i.e. couldn't feel orgasm.
- Complete loss of sex drive
- Memory/concentration/ability to think heavily impacted upon.
- Suicidal thoughts.
- Tingling all across my head.
Week 3-4 was the same as Week 1-2 but a few things changed.
- Panic attacks stopped.
- Didn't feel robotic talking anymore
- Began to sleep for longer
- People slowly began to look less distorted
- My house began to look less distorted
- I wasn't watching my hands pick things up as much
- 2D vision began to subside.
- Head tingling stopped
One of the major changes between Week 1 and 4 was I developed Visual snow and afterimages. I was lying on my bed during the 4th week and I suddenly had a random burst of intense colour over my vision, I'm not sure if this has been a kind of seizure or something. Afterwards I noticed visual snow/tv static/grainy vision and afterimages if I looked at something bright like a TV for a while.
Now at week 8.
-extremely emotionally numb/detached.
- still have visual snow/afterimages. They appear to change in intensity.
-Vision is still distorted, derealized heavily outside. Inside my house is better but still not normal. Everything including people is still off but not as bad as the first weeks.
-Still have severe anhedonia. Sex drive is non-existent.
-Cognitive function still impaired, not as badly but still not normal.
Sorry for the extremely long post guys, just thought I'd share. I'm trying my best to get on with life, distract myself and not think about how bizarre everything looks, the visual snow or how I have literally zero emotion. I want to eventually be in the recovery story section of the site talking about how I beat this horrible disorder, yet I know that potentially a long journey lies ahead of me. I've had many bad days and many good days during DP/DR, I think I need to focus on getting more good days where I'm distracted for most of it =)
I will come on this forum as often as I remember too, I don't want to be glued to the computer and the forum, so if I receive any replies or questions it may take a few days or a week to reply.
Thank you very much for reading if you did.
- LoveYourz
I have decided that it will probably be helpful to join the forum as I have been lurking as a guest for the past month and a half. My only reason for being apprehensive about joining is that many other users say the forum can be 'toxic' due to the negativity of some users but I've already seen most of the negative posts.
I'm a 19 (soon to be 20) year old male from England. I am yet to get an official diagnosis but I'm pretty certain that I have been suffering with depersonalization and derealisation (DP/DR) for the past two months, with many of the symptoms that come along with it. I'm going to give a bit of insight into my life which I feel may be relevant in contributing to the DP/DR then explain my symptoms, how it all started etc.
Backstory/Past traumas
I've always been an anxious person about certain aspects of life. Not social anxiety or a phobia of a particular thing or scenario but performance/career anxiety. I don't want to come across cocky or arrogant but I am/was a very high performer intellectually at school. But I was also the kid that would stress out about getting 97/100 on a test when I know I could be getting 100/100. I don't think that wanting to achieve the best of your ability is a bad trait, but looking back I know that it was actually detrimental as I would get so anxious and stressed about not being perfect or being the 'best'.
My mother was and still is a bad alcoholic. I've seen her hit my sister, throw knives at my Dad and a plethora of other truly fucked up things no child/teen should ever need to see. I would be lying if I said it hasn't had an effect on me over the years, but I am reluctant to say how much it is contributing to my current DP/DR as I have really tried to not let it get to me or paid it much attention as I've gotten older. I am going to mention this to my doctors/therapists/psychologists (only referred to a psychologist so far) as I realise it may potentially be a big part of the DP/DR.
Last October, so October 2015 at the time of posting this I was involved in a bad car accident that very nearly killed me. I suffered a broken nose, 3 broken teeth, a large cut on my forehead and worst of all I nearly lost my left eye. The first 3 have been fixed/healed. I have had one surgery on my eye and I have got one more to go sometime at the end of 2016 as the muscles behind my eye need as long as possible to build up their strength (my eye was pushed back into my head, called an 'orbital floor blowout').
DP/DR Onset
After my car crash I found myself unable to work and I had to defer (push back) my current university year until I was healed, so from October 2015 to now (May 2016) I have essentially had no commitments and more free time than I would have liked. The majority of my home friends are away at university themselves and some of the only people I knew currently in my city are my stoner friends. So being bored I would go over to hang out with them pretty much every day from December to Mid March and I had begun to smoke marijuana/weed as it was the thing to do with this group of friends. I must have smoked every day for those 3/4 months not thinking about any potential side effects, especially as their seems to be this culture around weed that it is the greatest thing ever, "Zero people have ever died from weed ever dude" etc etc
I am not going to lie, I enjoyed getting high all the time initially. But then near the end of my 3/4 month weed binge I started to get really weird, super panicky highs which I now realise were the warning signs for incoming DP/DR. My first hint was I remember I had smoked half a joint and I felt really spacey, like I could see everything ultra clearly, almost hyper-aware in a sense. I remember thinking "wow, that was strange" once I was sobered up enough but stupidly thought it was probably just a one off.
I decided to have three weeks off from smoking as I knew that wasn't a regular high to be experiencing but I stupidly thought it wasn't anything serious. The next time I smoked was March 31st 2016 after having a 3 week long break. Looking back I think my next action will be something I will regret forever. I decided "ahh, it's been 3 weeks now I'll be fine", went over to my friends house and smoked some weed out of a bong.
I felt fine for about a minute. Then after that it all went downhill. The first thing I noticed was a falling sensation, similar to when you're swinging on a chair and you begin to tip backwards too much. The next thing I noticed was I felt like my field of view had been pulled back into my head, almost like I was watching my life through a VR headset or on a TV screen. My heartrate had also skyrocketed during this time and I was also hyperventilating, I tried to count my pulse using my neck and 15 seconds on my phone and I swear it was 160bpm at the peak of the panic attack. I remember my surroundings looking surreal, lights looked extra bright, objects looked off. The next thing I noticed was my hand, which I was using to hold onto a window during the panic attack. I felt like somehow it wasn't mine, it looked foreign to me. After about 30 minutes of having a panic attack I began to calm down a bit but the visual problems persisted and so did the detached VR feeling. I thought I'd be fine in the morning once I'd been to sleep but I woke up feeling the same, if not worse.
I realise this post is becoming huge so I will attempt to summarise my symptoms between week 1-2, Week 3-4 and how I feel now in my 8th week living like this.
Week 1-2
-My vision is distorted, the world looked different, surreal or dream like. Indoors and outdoors, outside was more distorted and weird.
-People looked distorted heavily too, I remember my parents both appeared to have huge heads.
- 2D Vision, I remember I went for a walk with my dad and he looked almost flat beside me (scary)
- Whenever I went to pick up an object, I would watch my hands pick the item up, I still felt detached from my hands.
- I kept waking up after 3/4 hours sleep
- I remember when I was talking I felt almost robotic, detached from my own speech.
- Complete emotional attachment/numbness
- Random panic attacks throughout the day
-Severe Anhedonia/lack of pleasure in anything. Ejaculatory anhedonia, i.e. couldn't feel orgasm.
- Complete loss of sex drive
- Memory/concentration/ability to think heavily impacted upon.
- Suicidal thoughts.
- Tingling all across my head.
Week 3-4 was the same as Week 1-2 but a few things changed.
- Panic attacks stopped.
- Didn't feel robotic talking anymore
- Began to sleep for longer
- People slowly began to look less distorted
- My house began to look less distorted
- I wasn't watching my hands pick things up as much
- 2D vision began to subside.
- Head tingling stopped
One of the major changes between Week 1 and 4 was I developed Visual snow and afterimages. I was lying on my bed during the 4th week and I suddenly had a random burst of intense colour over my vision, I'm not sure if this has been a kind of seizure or something. Afterwards I noticed visual snow/tv static/grainy vision and afterimages if I looked at something bright like a TV for a while.
Now at week 8.
-extremely emotionally numb/detached.
- still have visual snow/afterimages. They appear to change in intensity.
-Vision is still distorted, derealized heavily outside. Inside my house is better but still not normal. Everything including people is still off but not as bad as the first weeks.
-Still have severe anhedonia. Sex drive is non-existent.
-Cognitive function still impaired, not as badly but still not normal.
Sorry for the extremely long post guys, just thought I'd share. I'm trying my best to get on with life, distract myself and not think about how bizarre everything looks, the visual snow or how I have literally zero emotion. I want to eventually be in the recovery story section of the site talking about how I beat this horrible disorder, yet I know that potentially a long journey lies ahead of me. I've had many bad days and many good days during DP/DR, I think I need to focus on getting more good days where I'm distracted for most of it =)
I will come on this forum as often as I remember too, I don't want to be glued to the computer and the forum, so if I receive any replies or questions it may take a few days or a week to reply.
Thank you very much for reading if you did.
- LoveYourz
