• MDMA &
    Empathogenic
    Drugs

    Welcome Guest!
  • MDMA Moderators:

long term comedown vs social drinking - opinions

I

India111

Bluelighter
Joined
Apr 18, 2014
Messages
120
Hey everyone, as you all know i just passed the two month mark of my LTC, suffering from derealisation, anxiety, depression, sleeplessness, among an array of other things. ALL of my symptoms are slowly improving, however all the worst symptoms are still very much present, which is annoying.

I've been trying to eat healthy and exercise and generally do the things that assist my recovery. The other day however, was my day off from work and i just got mega pissed off with both my comedown and how it limits me in my daily life and thought 'fuck this, I'm going to spend the day doing what i want'. I went out for a nice meal and ate the fattiest food and my favourite dessert (been trying to cut out sugar though i have such a sweet tooth), i drank a load of cocktails, probably more than i should have, and spent the day lazing in the sun with my friends. I didn't bother with my usual exercise routine or meditation. Luckily neither the alcohol or the food triggered a panic attack or even anxiety, all my symptoms were still present but i felt the closest to normal than i have since this whole thing began, which was really nice

My question to you all is how you all balance living a normal life between treating your life as a recovery period. I did feel a bit rougher than i normally would after that day, but it taught me that it is just as important to do things you normally would do as it is to focus on recovery (within reason obvs, normally there may be drugs involved but not now)

I'm going to take it easy as i don't want to prolong these symptoms, especially the Dr/dp and fatigue for a second longer, however i'm strongly considering drinking socially again, as not being able to drink isolates me a fair bit socially, which i think is of massive importance to recovery.

Did any of you drink socially on a long term comedown, or with Dr/dp? I know it helped dawglaw, and i think the same is the case for me
 
Hello india.

For me the only things that relieved the anxiety and pain during LTC were the following:

Benzos
Opiates
Alcohol

I think all three provide temporary relief for acute anxiety but offer no form of cure and in fact in many ways can be very harmful and dangerous.

Of the three alcohol is perceived as the least worse but sometimes this can make it the most dangerous if you know what I mean.

I think with all of these things only you really know the answer to the "should I?" question but..

all I say is be careful :)
 
It's a real balancing act. Going out to the bars and drinking offered me so much relief by allowing me to forget about the hell I was in.

On the other hand benzo booze and opiates can cause long term addiction that is far worse than a ltc.
 
I think the worst thing you can do if you have a 'long term comedown' is focus too much on trying to recover from a problem that probably doesn't exist. Live live normally, have fun, drink with your friends, do something creative that makes you feel fulfilled - just do anything but spend your time worrying about 'recovering' and having to follow some strict schedule or routine. That kind of mindset is what will really delay your recovery. The best thing you can is just not think about it and distract yourself. I wasted way too long believing I was damaged from MDMA use. Once I relaxed, stopped worrying about recovering and even started using drugs again I felt so much better, and all my 'symptoms' miraculously vanished.
 
I'd say drinking in moderation is ok, but it's also about knowing how things affect you. I have dropped coffee since I got sick as it makes me feel really anxious, as does fast food and greasy stuff in general, sadly. But alcohol seems to have no negative effect on me in small quantities, so I'm ok with drinking. I think a bit of tlc is beneficial for our ltcs, but I agree we should all just live our lives and get a good balance between recovery and fun, rather than worrying and wasting time focusing solely on recovering.

I went to Rio de Janeiro in March, just after starting my ltc. I was so worried about being forced to drink by friends and the effect it would have on me that I thought about cancelling the trip. Thankfully my parents convinced me to just go and have a good time. I went and was knocking back the caipirinhas and had an awesome time, although I drank less than I would've if I wasn't ill.

I've never been one to go pub everyday after work, or to sit with a bottle of wine in the evenings. I usually leave drinking to the weekends and have now cut down to 2-4 drinks on a night out. I haven't been drunk once since my ltc started 4.5 months ago and I've learned to enjoy nights out and music sober and still have a good time. Of course this means that I have no idea how larger quantities alcohol may affect me but I'm not interested in experimenting.

I think it's also about avoiding people who drive you to excess. I have one group of friends who went to an all you can drink cocktail night for £60 for a birthday last year, where we all got absolutely slaughtered. no way will I be doing that again this year.

A member of another group of friends thought it would be funny to give me a drink spiked with mdma. This was a while before my ltc started. I'm meant to be going to the holi one festival with said group of friends and I know mdma will be around, as well as the temptation to drink loads. As I recover I feel in no way obliged to match anyone in drinking.
 
You answered your own question. Going out just having fun, indulging in a few drinks and calorie heavy food and then just relaxing on the beach is the most normal you have felt right?

LTC's are IMO mind over matter. Focusing and obsessing over the fact that you feel off and not like yourself leads your mind to believe that it will never be the same again. That concept is a truly stressful thing, and it becomes a vicious circle. It's 99% psychological. When you can let go and learn to just accept your current psychological state, and not stress about it, that's when you recover. The brain is very complex, it can turn a thought or worry into physical symptoms. You are tricking your self into thinking you fucked your mind over forever, but just accepting your current state and just making it a none issue any time you think about it will get you back to normal so quickly .

I always had issues with depersonalization and not feeling like myself, especially after my first experiences with weed many years ago, until I just decided to say fuck it, it is what it is, and never stressed about it again. ( my first experiences with weed had me obsessing over how I never felt quite the same after smoking it, for days or weeks after. This at the time made me vouch to never ever do any other psychologically altering drugs. Eventually I released it was the concept of thinking I was losing complete of my normal reality that lead me to feel mind fucked for weeks / experiencing depersonalization daily)

Haven't had any mind issues since I learned to accept that you are no longer fully in control when you use any mind altering drugs, but once you stop obsessing over how you may feel different afterwards, you will always get back to feeling like yourself incredibly fast. And I've abused psychs and mdma and many other drugs since my marijuana "perma high" mind fucked days, but once you can learn to accept that you may come out of an experience feeling like a different person or foggy, or whatever else, and can just ignore it, you will conquer those symptoms in days. It's almost all psychological.
 
Last edited:
I still drink here and then, just as much as I used to, it's what makes me feel normal. I overdid it one night about 2 months ago (1 month into drug-induced anxiety) and paid the consequences with feeling ill. I'm pretty sure it was just a normal hangover though.
 
IMHO going out with friends on the weekend and drinking a bit of alchy (not to the point of getting smashed but just enough to be relaxed) may actually help your recovery.
Don't drink too much tho, that could very much worsen your symptoms in the long run.
 
ScaredFirstTimer said:
Dawglaw,

Could you explain your derealization exactly?
Click to expand...

Yeah. Unfortunately, it is pretty hard to articulate derealization. I would sum it up with: a general feeling of being extremely disconnected from reality, almost stuck inside my head. I had major vision issues such as light sensitivity, blurry vision and a form of tunnel vision - but I could still read and process information. It is hard to describe but it is extremely uncomfortable - almost like being super stoned where you detach from reality. Because I felt so disconnected, I could not get out of these depressing extensional thought loops. It almost felt as if I was underwater. I had a terrible time focusing and overcoming my brain fog. I really had to just continue in auto-pilot during my LTC.

You know in war movies when there is all sorts of carnage going on and the frame rate slows down and there is a dull hum that drowns out what is actually happening - life moving in slow motion.

Another example is when you are giving a speech or something and you get the "tunnel vision" out of body feeling where you just run on auto pilot instead of fully feeling in control and connected to the situation. I was stuck in various degrees of that for about 9 months.

Drinking helped me relax and just live life and gave me a temporary break from the prison inside my mind.
 
Dawglaw said:
Another example is when you are giving a speech or something and you get the "tunnel vision" out of body feeling where you just run on auto pilot instead of fully feeling in control and connected to the situation. I was stuck in various degrees of that for about 9 months.
Click to expand...

This is what I have, though it has lessened significantly, I still get waves of this very intense. I do not get "tunnel vision" in those situations though, it just feels like my perception suddenly shifted to 30 cm above or besides my head. I know it sounds crazy, but that's what happens. I feel as if "I" reside outside of my body, and that my body acts, speaks etc on its own, and that "I" lag about 1 second behind. I'm a teacher, and I used to get this quite a lot in the early months.

Does this sound familiar to anyone else?
 
ScaredFirstTimer said:
This is what I have, though it has lessened significantly, I still get waves of this very intense. I do not get "tunnel vision" in those situations though, it just feels like my perception suddenly shifted to 30 cm above or besides my head. I know it sounds crazy, but that's what happens. I feel as if "I" reside outside of my body, and that my body acts, speaks etc on its own, and that "I" lag about 1 second behind. I'm a teacher, and I used to get this quite a lot in the early months.

Does this sound familiar to anyone else?
Click to expand...
I had that exact feeling when I made myself have my first ever panic attack by worrying so much about everything I read online about a month in. I was at my university room at the time and that lag feel hit me along with tunnel vision. I had to get to the train station as fast as possible crying my eyes out all the way home. Luckily it didn't stay. My sense of derealisation is not totally being there, and I have to focus on being there when I want to be, but that's getting so much better and doesn't really bother me right now.
 
haha dawglaw that comment about derealization and hang overs not being fun made me laugh, i know exactly what your talking about , its like having dr then x10, its pretty fucked up.

india you felt better saying screw it and enjoying that day you had with drinks and friends etc, thats exactly how you recover by doing that every single day. the more you do it, the more you forget how you feel, and then the symptoms become less and less, its all it is to it really, but it does take practise and patience, let recovery come to you my friend.
 
also getting drunk never really bothered me, it actually made me feel better most of the time, id feel my old self come back, trying to chat up girls in clubs etc. Alcohol is a depressant though, some nights when i first got my ltc and i got drunk with my friends at a club i would get down about it, i just felt like going home, that was the wrong thing to do but i just did't realise at the time, the worrying and the feeling down about it all is what prolongs recovery.
 
surfer179 said:
also getting drunk never really bothered me, it actually made me feel better most of the time, id feel my old self come back, trying to chat up girls in clubs etc. Alcohol is a depressant though, some nights when i first got my ltc and i got drunk with my friends at a club i would get down about it, i just felt like going home, that was the wrong thing to do but i just did't realise at the time, the worrying and the feeling down about it all is what prolongs recovery.
Click to expand...
I get that too sometimes, some nights I'm completely the happiest person alive to be feeling normal, then other nights I just want to leave and go to sleep for a month. What you said about saying 'screw it', do you have to try to forget or does it naturally get easier to do so? Breaking the thought pattern is so hard, I can manage to do it for a good couple of days then I head back into sheer panic. It's hard to leave this site too which reminds me, but it's soothing in a sense on the brain knowing people are getting better.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top