Background info:
I'm going to attempt to make this a short post but I'm willing to go more in depth if anyone wants me to. I have a ton of experience that I feel would be very helpful as far as medications go (ie what has worked and what hasn't). I also am willing to go more in depth with my nardil experience as that was the most life altering and positive medication experince I've had in my entire history of pharm drugs.
My DP/DR experience started as what seems to be the norm; an anxiety provoking or traumatic hallucinogen experience. I felt odd the day after the experience and the feeling never went away. I was a fairly long term marijuana smoker at the time so I continued using that after the experience not knowing it was making everything worse. I felt "off" but generally OKAY after all of this and just thought the experience exacerbated my fairly benign social/general anxiety to a large extent. I figured everything would go away over time but it got worse and worse and using marijuana to try and mask the feelings made things substantially worse. I eventual got to the point where smoking caused such extreme anxiety that I would have panic attacks (like I did the night of the trauma incident that induced my DP/DR).
I'd naturally turned into a mental health hypochondriac, searching for hours on end to try and figure out what the heck was wrong with me. Unfortunately I was doing my research high and in a fearful state of mind so I hadn't found out about DP/DR until it had gotten very severe. My mild OCD tendencies turned into intense purely obsessional OCD (pure O OCD), my anxiety around others was tremendous, and my confidence/sense of self were essentially non-existent. After approx a year and 8 months later I did research after being sober for 3 and a half weeks and found out (the stories on this forum are what really saved me...they described my experience as if I were to try and put it into words myself) what DP/DR were. After reading hundreds, if not thousands, of others' experiences I utilized troubleshooting and deductive reason to come to the conclusion that I had DP/DR. I really wish I'd found out sooner (thought I was going mad for a while during all this) but I'm glad these forums exist or I'd probably be completely lost.
/background info\
Med experience:
Nardil: At one point of being oblivious to the existence of DP/DR, I was under the impression that I simply had aquired severe social and general anxiety. I researched for the best possibly medications to lift the awful burden I carried with me everywhere and decided Nardil had the best success rate out of everything out there and promptly had the med prescribed. After reading some of the success stories I was disapointed at first when trying doses of 30 and 45mg. Once I got on 60mg everything had changed entirely. I wasn't avoiding anyone at my workplace, my job performance was improved dramatically, my anxiety was so intensely reduced that I would say it was non-existent. I could strike up random non-awkward conversations with strangers and attractive girls, flirt again, be as confident as I'd ever been in my life, and so much more. I was 100% connected to others around me, could make them laugh again (in random public places where I'd otherwise be far too anxious to even make a joke or think of one), could focus on conversations easily, and nothing was mentally exhausted like living life is normally with DP/DR. All of my thoughts flowed naturally like they normally would without effort. The other huge advantage was that all of my emotions were in tact, and all of my memories that were emotion based memories (and from what I remember the vast majority of memories are stored emotionally) returned and I had a much better recollection of my past. I feel if I'd been taking lamictal along with nardil that my memory would actually superceed my pre DP/DR memory.
It bothered me that I still had visual snow and still had DP/DR to an extent (mainly DR), but the positives were so intense it was hardly noticable (even the VS was greatly reduced) and not anything I was concerned about. The best part of the entire nardil experience was that it gave me hope again. I was extremely depressed because I thought I'd lost my personality forever due to drug use and that I'd remain a shell of my former self for the rest of my life. No charm, assertiveness, confidence, sense of humor, playfulness, happiness, etc. Having the experience of completely regaining my personality was so profound after being without it for nearly two years that I not only appreciated myself as a person for the first time in a while, but going through the whole process resolved any self esteem issues I'd previously had.
Although coming off the drug resulted in most of the benefits being lost, the self esteem repair (I'm phrasing it that way because it really was as if it'd repaired it entirely) stayed with me and I'm not sure I could've done that without having gone through all of this. The other thing that's stayed with me is the loss of depression, loss of hopelessness, and the knowledge of who I am. I'd forgotten who I was from DP/DR and nardil brought out every part of my personality that I not only thought was lost, but didn't fully appreciate until having it stripped away.
I stopped taking nardil because I upped my dose to 75mg (in hopes that the other "weird" things would go away entirely.. I didn't know what DP/DR were so I was a bit confused at that time) and became hypomanic. I ended up in the hospital from a drug overdose and decided to stay off of it because of how incredibly effective it was for me. By that I mean the drug worked so incredibly well that all I wanted to do was socialize, do activities I enjoy, and live my life the way I normally would. The only problem with doing so is that I realized I couldn't fix something that didn't exist. Turns out the med worked TOO well for me and there was no way I'd be able to make progress in treating my DP/DR if I had zero anxiety and no issues.
Will either make another post later or update but just real quick I'll list my current meds:
Lamictal (100mg x 2 daily)
Remeron (sleep/appetite/weight gain - 30mg at night)
Focalin (10mg x 3 daily - typically don't do more than 20mg depending)
Valium (10mg x 3 daily - try to avoid taking as much as possible but helps w/ stressful situations.. trying to substitute w/ l-theanine + pharmagaba when I get the money)
Nicotine (e cig form.. helps w/ cognition and can either be a sedative or stimulant which is convenient... very healthy for brain)
Gabapentin (300mg x 2 daily - don't take unless I can't sleep as this makes my VS much worse and leads to trippy thoughts/undesirably closed eye visuals)
