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Hello everyone,
I've come to this site many times over the past several years to lurk around but I've never posted anything of my own. Things have significantly worsened though, so I'd make a start here.
Back in September 2007 when I was sixteen, I was play wrestling with a cousin of mine. While doing so, my head was pressed into the ground by most of his weight and a rounded rock pressed very hard into my right temple. At that moment, I felt a hot rush through that side of my head along with some pins and needles. It didn't hurt terribly, I even went on to wrestle him around a bit more before stopping. When I did, there was a pulse in my temple and with a strange heated sensation, both under and on the skin. On top of that I could hear a strange rushing sound in my right ear, as if it were under water. This worried me a bit, but I carried on as if nothing had happened. The next day, something was off about the world. I couldn't really put my finger on it, just that something wasn't right and the skin over my temple remained hot and felt full of pins and needles. The day after, the headaches came and boy were they awful. A constant throbbing pressure in my temples so powerful that sometimes I thought my head would burst. But there was something much worse going on, and that was that the world suddenly looked different. It's hard to explain even to this day, but it all seemed fake, surreal, and lifeless. Gone were the beautiful landscapes I used to enjoy looking at and instead they looked like barren wastelands with nothing to offer. It's like everything I was seeing was being put through a filter that stripped everything of emotion.
My parents booked me a doctor's appointment and I received a CAT scan. Everything came back normal, and the doctors sent me on my way. The headaches went away after three months, and the pressure died down after a year. Still though, my derealized state remained, and even worse was that no one had a clue what I was talking about when I tried to explain it to them, even the doctors. Two years later, I had a 5-hour Energy and the headaches returned, along with further derealization. Three years later, I was in a car accident that left me with another bout of headaches and worsened derealization. Finally, five years on (just nine months ago) I started looking for a pick-me-up, something to get me out of the funk of feeling so detached from the world. I settled on a "nootropic" called Phenibut. Probably the biggest mistake so far since my injury. After taking this supplement my derealization sky-rocketed. I went back to the doctor for the first time in years to find some relief and was prescribed Adderall to help "ground" me. Another mistake that while not as bad as my Phenibut mishap certainly did my brain no favors. So that's where I'm at now. While my derealization started out as making the world look lifeless, now it truly looks like a nightmare.
Anyway, that's my story. Sorry for the wall of text but I guess I just had to vent a little bit. Everyone else thinks I'm crazy when I try to explain it to them. I think the worst part about all of this is that my life seems emotionally dead. I used to be able to look back on my life before the DR and it seemed full of flavor and color while my life after it is just...blank, lacking any nostalgia. Let it be known that after I took Phenibut my ability to conjure up old nostalgia also disappeared. I know most of you have DP, often brought on by anxiety and weed (oddly enough, weed didn't bother my DR at all, though I don't think I'll try it again; I certainly don't need to add DP into the mix) but I wonder if any of you have a similar story to mine in which their DR/DP was set off by an injury involving the head. At this point in time I feel it has something to do with nerve damage, simply due to the type of pain I have. Anyway, I'm just not sure where to go from here. Knowing that this problem is probably incurable, along with the fact that it's only getting worse, is a very tough pill to swallow. I just wish I could go back.
If you got to the end of this, thank you for taking the time to read it.
I've come to this site many times over the past several years to lurk around but I've never posted anything of my own. Things have significantly worsened though, so I'd make a start here.
Back in September 2007 when I was sixteen, I was play wrestling with a cousin of mine. While doing so, my head was pressed into the ground by most of his weight and a rounded rock pressed very hard into my right temple. At that moment, I felt a hot rush through that side of my head along with some pins and needles. It didn't hurt terribly, I even went on to wrestle him around a bit more before stopping. When I did, there was a pulse in my temple and with a strange heated sensation, both under and on the skin. On top of that I could hear a strange rushing sound in my right ear, as if it were under water. This worried me a bit, but I carried on as if nothing had happened. The next day, something was off about the world. I couldn't really put my finger on it, just that something wasn't right and the skin over my temple remained hot and felt full of pins and needles. The day after, the headaches came and boy were they awful. A constant throbbing pressure in my temples so powerful that sometimes I thought my head would burst. But there was something much worse going on, and that was that the world suddenly looked different. It's hard to explain even to this day, but it all seemed fake, surreal, and lifeless. Gone were the beautiful landscapes I used to enjoy looking at and instead they looked like barren wastelands with nothing to offer. It's like everything I was seeing was being put through a filter that stripped everything of emotion.
My parents booked me a doctor's appointment and I received a CAT scan. Everything came back normal, and the doctors sent me on my way. The headaches went away after three months, and the pressure died down after a year. Still though, my derealized state remained, and even worse was that no one had a clue what I was talking about when I tried to explain it to them, even the doctors. Two years later, I had a 5-hour Energy and the headaches returned, along with further derealization. Three years later, I was in a car accident that left me with another bout of headaches and worsened derealization. Finally, five years on (just nine months ago) I started looking for a pick-me-up, something to get me out of the funk of feeling so detached from the world. I settled on a "nootropic" called Phenibut. Probably the biggest mistake so far since my injury. After taking this supplement my derealization sky-rocketed. I went back to the doctor for the first time in years to find some relief and was prescribed Adderall to help "ground" me. Another mistake that while not as bad as my Phenibut mishap certainly did my brain no favors. So that's where I'm at now. While my derealization started out as making the world look lifeless, now it truly looks like a nightmare.
Anyway, that's my story. Sorry for the wall of text but I guess I just had to vent a little bit. Everyone else thinks I'm crazy when I try to explain it to them. I think the worst part about all of this is that my life seems emotionally dead. I used to be able to look back on my life before the DR and it seemed full of flavor and color while my life after it is just...blank, lacking any nostalgia. Let it be known that after I took Phenibut my ability to conjure up old nostalgia also disappeared. I know most of you have DP, often brought on by anxiety and weed (oddly enough, weed didn't bother my DR at all, though I don't think I'll try it again; I certainly don't need to add DP into the mix) but I wonder if any of you have a similar story to mine in which their DR/DP was set off by an injury involving the head. At this point in time I feel it has something to do with nerve damage, simply due to the type of pain I have. Anyway, I'm just not sure where to go from here. Knowing that this problem is probably incurable, along with the fact that it's only getting worse, is a very tough pill to swallow. I just wish I could go back.
If you got to the end of this, thank you for taking the time to read it.
