‚My religious education teacher always said that clouds are the visible part of the sky. For us, the sky represented the soul, and clouds were our visions. Only that when too many clouds gather, you no longer see the sky…’
Quote from the movie “das weisse Rauschen”
A brief outline:
I won´t get into too much details about my drug career, in order to focus on the actual theme, the time at the end of my consumption phase, when I got stuck on a trip. I have included short extracts from reports made by the two clinics where I stayed, in which doctors and psychologists give their opinion on the subject.
By no means do I wish to make myself look important with this report. I just felt like putting everything down on paper, spent much time writing this. Apart from that I thought this report might be interesting for users, because it just shows an example of all the things that can happen and what risks you take when you decide to venture on the psychedelic path.
Drug career:
Up to the beginning of my adolescence I enjoyed a relatively easy-going childhood and grew up in a happy home. When schoolwork became more demanding, however, there was the transfer from high school to junior high, at the same time as my parents got a divorce. My first contact with illegal drugs occurred when I was 15 years old. During a school excursion another student took out a piece of hash and we smoked a joint, but this had absolutely no effect on me.
But my curiosity had been roused and so new experiences with THC soon followed, which I liked, because I had never been able to see the fun in drinking alcohol.
The next two years ran along pretty unspectacularly, Imanaged to finish junior high, smoked pot on weekends, but was still able to uphold myself quite well, actually everything went satisfactorily…
After graduating from school I decided to do alternative civilian service. I simply wanted to get out of the village where I lived, and as coincidence would have it, ended up in the city which is said to have the officially highest criminal rate in Germany, in Kehl on the Rhine, directly by Strasbourg.
There I quickly met many people and began smoking pot every day, then got into the techno party scene and made my first experiences with XTC.
So on weekdays I did my civilian service and on weekends I mostly went home to the village where I used to live, where I had a lot of friends… In Kehl there was an abundance of hash,and I just travelled back and forth. Had good contacts and much fun doing drugs, everything was surrounded by an enchanting magic. Boredom was a word I no longer knew…
Hanging out with friends, at Goa parties, or just smoking pot outside in nature when the weather was nice…, fun was our constant companion. It seemed that all intelligent people smoked. The others, whom we nicknamed „farmers“, how pathetic they appeared to us, always just drinking alcohol, always only this one numbing drug, we almost felt pity for them. If only they could experience one of our sessions with us… to feel the magic just once…
It became my declared goal to get all people to try out drugs. My motto was: who drinks alcohol drowns his sorrow, who takes drugs takes an alternative adventure journey…
I don´t mean to glorify drugs with these sentences, I merely want to give expression to my feelings of that time…
I was now smoking pot daily, often already in the mornings before work. On weekends I went to parties, chemistry from Friday to Sunday, made my entry into the Goa scene. In familiar circles I became more and more important and achieved a positive image. I floated on cloud nine, my life was perfect just like this. Basically it was all one huge party. I was totally enthusiastic about this way of life. Doing drugs was our life style, our general attitude toward life.
An acquaintance of mine had his own house at that time, and it became like a home for all of us, a legendary place where we celebrated numerous sessions, laughed and were just happy with life.
All of this went on for about one year. During this time I made my first mushroom experience.
Then the addition of magic mushrooms changed everything. We went on trips every weekend, for about half a year. After this time we were all pretty blown away, mentally, yet on the other hand we had made some incredible experiences.
I had started an apprenticeship in Kehl, but kept getting more and more problems there. Smoked hash even before beginning the day´s work, and at times actually went to work on mdma, cocaine or even mushrooms. It worked for a while, my superiors were even pleased with my performance.
After a change at my work location, still with the same employer but in a different department, everything went kind of overboard and I became noticeable, ended up getting called for several talks with my boss and was given two reprimands due to absences from work. At that time I had a girlfriend with whom I lived, she was suffering from borderline illness, which presented an additional burden.
After all that I felt like quitting my apprenticeship, I was 20 years old, dependent on THC, amphetamines, cocaine and was consuming a lot of other drugs, typical case of multiple dependency.
The carefree times about which I reported just a short while ago were forgotten. It was winter 2004, no one in our group of friends was fairing very well, everyone more or less lost having fun whilst consuming, but that doesn´t exactly mean that everyone stopped and started acting responsibly. Many promises were made, hardly any were kept, the drugs had a very tight hold on us, but that fact I realized only much later.
My employer tried persuading me to begin a therapy, and so it came about that I visited the addiction counseling service. I agreed to go into therapy. At least 80% fall into relapse in spite of therapy, according to my counselor, but it´d be up to me whether I belonged to the 80% or to the 20%.
The waiting time of three months I spent in my home village with my group of friends, kept on consuming, but mostly THC, stabilized mentally somewhat. About two weeks before beginning therapy I went to a Goa party, where I bought two trips together with a couple of buddies, with the intention of taking them at a lonely spot in the forest. It was meant as a kind of farewell from the drug scene, a trip to say good-bye, as appeared worthy to me…
On exactly this trip I´ve been for eight years now… The trip itself started out relatively normal, I first took half, then later another quarter blotter. When I came home somehow, early next morning, and wanted to lie down to sleep, I started having wild hallucinations and spent several hours in an LSD-doze. It was strange, but I reckon everyone who has repeatedly taken trips has also had such an experience…
Then I almost came back down from the trip, next day I felt good, even though I was rather confused, but a feeling of happiness rose within me that kept getting stronger and stronger.
It was June 2005 when I began my therapy in Frankfurt (two weeks after the experience with LSD). I felt somehow odd, had slight panic attacks, but did get off to a fairly good start.There were some really friendly people there and altogether it somehow turned out to be a nice time. I can only recommend to anyone who wants to stop, but thinks he can´t do it on his own, to get into a therapy program.
A week into therapy the feeling of happiness, which I´d had constantly since taking the trip, became even more powerful. I was incredibly active, hardly slept anymore. The trip came back with full force, but this I realized again only later on. At that particular moment I didn´t understand what was happening, but I was feeling fine, I was feeling way too fine…
I almost didn´t sleep anymore at all, still stayed active the entire day, talked from morning till night, mused over the other patients who were there with me, and even felt superior to the psychologists there. I thought all patients were there for only one reason: to have conversations with me in order for me to further my education to become a super-healer. What I liked best were the group sessions, which was credited in a therapy report where a psychologist wrote:
„In the reference group Mr. M. seemed interested and actively engaged from the start, whereby he stood out by contributing especially constructive and reflecting feedbacks to others.”
I had such an outrageous amount of dopamine inside of my head, I had never before, regardless of the drug, experienced such an ingenious state of intoxication. This increased further and further, until I began losing the connection to reality altogether. I considered myself a super-healer. I thought that all staff members at the clinic were on cocaine and that I would soon be taken into their inner circle, due to my “special abilities”, and be offered a job as psychologist, earn good money, and with the assistance of cocaine would soon run the clinic together with the other members of staff.
Apart from that I thought that the BILD newspaper might soon report about me. Another female patient I was thinking of as my future wife.
Even later I considered myself to be Jesus, and in the end God personally. Really and truly, this frame of mind was the most divine thing one can imagine. I didn´t tell the doctors, at that time, that I considered myself to be God or Jesus, because this point-of-view lasted for only one day.
Nevertheless I got doped with medications to the maximum, as I had voiced fear of suffering an epileptic attack. I believe they gave me Tegretal juice then. The doctor quickly noticed that something was the matter with me and ordered me to be given neuroleptics. And I told the doctor that I felt as if I had an entire kilo of cocaine inside of my body, and indeed this is how I felt.
Nobody knows exactly what state of being I was in, some guessed it was a mania with psychotic traits, others thought it was more so a real psychosis. In my own opinion it was the trip itself, coming back at me with full force! Here a few clippings from the therapy report:
„The interaction with the young and always friendly patient, who however seemed rather passive and for the most part emotionally untouched, was especially marked by the appearances of unexpected and bizarre happenings within the course of treatment, which remained not clearly distinguishable even for ourselves up to the end.”
„Within two weeks it seemed that his mood was not merelysubeuphroric, but tending towards prepsychotic. Inner tensions as well as a kind of delusion with ego-misperception („that something was happening round about him, that he felt different”), bizarre ways-of-thinking and a setting-on of grand ideas (“that everything would fall into place now, that he had clarity about everything, knew what was going on inside of his fellow patients and that he demonstrated the successful experiment of his parents”).
This was followed by a first psychiatric counsel with the chiefdoctor and a medication was prescribed. As the patient showed a clear stabilization and distancing from psychotic perception already by the following day, the suspicion of substance abuse arose from our side, even though all screenings without fail proved negative…”
“After the discontinuation of the medication, after the patient expressed that he wished to do so, his mood worsened, whereby he described being in a panic-like state, especially his fear of becoming „psychotic“.
He constantly described new anxieties: „to have gotten stuck on drugs; to have brain damage; to have burned his brain structure due to LSD.” Along with that he lamented further lack of motivation and hope, even thoughts of suicide, as „everything was too late anyway, he no longer felt able tomanage with daily life.”
Interpersonal contact and connection to reality however were always easily made, and he showed himself to be responsive.
An incredibly awful depressive phase followed, during which a lot of LSD-like symptoms suddenly appeared. During this phase it dawned on me just how much further this last LSD-trip might be accompanying me. That was really the worst situation one could imagine. After several weeks the depression ebbed away and I was given regulatory medications. These were Zyprexa 10 mg and Mirtazapin 30 mg.
Still those symptoms similar to LSD lingered, at least most of them. The worst hallucinations, which I had during moments of tranquility, luckily soon became less, so the situation became more bearable.
I finished therapy according to schedule and regulation. But I never got off that trip since.
I was now living back at home by my mother and tried to manage as best I could. I recovered quickly to some extent, went to therapy on a weekly basis, but there was no chance of getting off. Since that time my pupils are unbelievably huge, as a result of which people often ask me, when I attend a party, if I have put anything into them…
A rather uneventful year followed, I was clean, took medication, but was unable to work. I tried to arrange myself as best I could, which did involve many unpleasant tasks. I had to explain to all of my friends and family members, basically everybody I knew, what was the matter with me, even though I wasn´t even sure myself about what exactly it was.
About one and a half years after these events I decided to try to go to work again. I wrote several applications in my home village and was soon offered a 400 Euro job in a metal processing factory.
I worked there for a year. Many a times I felt overburdened and was always afraid to make mistakes, but I persevered and my supervisor was very kind to me, and I must say that I did the work properly even though it was hard sometimes, e.g. in particular communicating with others and so on. Just imagine being on a trip and going to work in a metal processing factory and having to somehow manage four hours there, as inconspicuously as possible.
I came back down very slowly, was mentally stable and stopped taking Mirtazapin. After changing to another physician I went to a psychologist, by whom I mentioned that I was feeling okay but that I felt very tired from taking Zyprexa. She changed my prescription to 15 mg of Abilify. This was the biggest possible mistake that you could imagine, as it turned out after two weeks.
At first I was enthusiastic about this medication, was totally fit and active. Stayed up all night, was like high on that stuff. After taking that for two weeks, the trip that was working inside of me suddenly jumped to dizzying heights, from one second to another!
Just like that I was riding high once again, but not in a positive sense. Anxiety disorder, social phobia, a general feeling of being “on” something, hallucinations, thinking (not hearing) voices.
Of course I immediately stopped taking this medication, but the new symptoms which had come along with the Abilify lingered and have hardly regressed up to this day.
I was forced to give up my job and basically wasn´t able to fit in with society anymore. Couldn´t sit at a table with other people and have a meal together, hardly ever dared to leave the house for fear of meeting people I knew and embarrass myself in front of them. In addition I had stimulus satiation and a light depression due to my deteriorated condition, however the depression wasn´t very bad.
Two stays at clinics followed. Doctors and psychologists were at a loss as to where my condition was concerned, they did record my explanations, but somehow they didn´t actually know from experience how to deal with this. Nobody had everheard of HPPD.
Formal thinking is ordered at large, sometimes leaps of thoughts and highly concrete thinking. Fear of embarrassing oneself in front of other people, of making mistakes. Self-esteem and self-confidence strongly reduced. Delusional thinking and experiences negated by the patient. The patient´s social fears (fear of „embarrassment“, rejection or repudiation) however were exceeded and have taken on a drastic dimension (“I don´t dare to do anything anymore”). In particular, narcissistic-tending thinking disorders in regards to contents, (“psychedelic thinking about life”). Mood somewhat somber, emotions lethargical. Motivation and capacity clearlydepleted, stimulus satiation in complex situations. Psycho-motorically strongly tensed and restless, trembling. „Nervous conditions“, panic attacks, stereotypical movement.
The patient credibly distanced himself from imminent risk of committing suicide. Extreme social withdrawal, isolation.
Friendly and cooperative when communicating.
Diagnostically we tend towards assuming that this is a case of undifferentiated schizophrenia with formal thinking disorders in regards to content, hallucinations, state of tension and anxiety.
Since this last stay at a clinic two years have passed. I have stabilized fairly well, am only slightly depressive, state of anxiety got better. Am living in an assisted living facility, but want to move to a larger city (Stuttgart) soon. There is nothing really standing in the way. The persons in charge are pleased with my current development.
Since last year I carry a severely handicapped pass with a degree of 100%.
I´ve been clean for over eight years now, well since that time I got stuck, am trying to master my life as best as I can, which altogether is working quite well. Every once in a while I go to parties, was at the Nature One last year and will most likely go again this year…
Alcohol doesn´t do me well at all since over two years. That´s a shame, because it had always been helpful to see my situation from a different, not sober point-of-view every now and then. Even with only a small alcoholic intoxication that had been possible.
Our group of friends from that time actually still exists. However, in the meantime five of us have spent time in a psychiatric ward due to substance consumption, and right now one of us is there stationary. One of us died in a car crash three years ago. But all in all, we stick together. Sometimes I wonder if that was the dream we had of the exciting life on drugs? Did the dream burst or are we in the middle of it, just that the dream turned out completely different to what we had expected… I will never get an answer to that, because there isn´t any…
Society now expects of me to demonize everything that is related to drugs, due to my personal history, according to the motto: “You see what can happen”.
But if I demonized drugs I would at the same time refuse my complete “self”. Yes I had to experience a lot of suffering, but because of these things and due to the deep venturing into the psychedelic world of thoughts I have received an insight into the incredibly complex and sublime occurrences of life. I stick to this opinion of mine, even if the doctors describe this as “narcissistic-tending thinking disorders in regards to contents.”
This report can be viewed also as warning: be aware that hallucinogenic drugs may change your life possibly more than you could imagine.
If anyone has questions or comments, you can write to me: [email protected]
I want to end this long-term report with another quote from the movie “das weisse Rauschen”, because it fits my situation only too well:
„Doctors considered me to be schizophrenic, most others considered me to be just a mad guy. Actually I didn´t care what people called me. What I was searching for was a life I could be leading.
The white rush, this means all visions, of all people, of all times, within one moment, that´s what Eno explained to me. Something like God or the entire universe all in one.
Who experiences the white rush has achieved the state of highest elevation. And do you know what else he said?That the white rush would be the ultimate trip. Who experiences the white rush goes crazy immediately. Except he is crazy already, then he will become normal.
The trick is to walk the path to enlightenment backwards so to speak. At the end of this path the chaos inside the head stops and the totally normal life begins. I am sure of that…”
Quote from the movie “das weisse Rauschen”
Quote from the movie “das weisse Rauschen”
A brief outline:
I won´t get into too much details about my drug career, in order to focus on the actual theme, the time at the end of my consumption phase, when I got stuck on a trip. I have included short extracts from reports made by the two clinics where I stayed, in which doctors and psychologists give their opinion on the subject.
By no means do I wish to make myself look important with this report. I just felt like putting everything down on paper, spent much time writing this. Apart from that I thought this report might be interesting for users, because it just shows an example of all the things that can happen and what risks you take when you decide to venture on the psychedelic path.
Drug career:
Up to the beginning of my adolescence I enjoyed a relatively easy-going childhood and grew up in a happy home. When schoolwork became more demanding, however, there was the transfer from high school to junior high, at the same time as my parents got a divorce. My first contact with illegal drugs occurred when I was 15 years old. During a school excursion another student took out a piece of hash and we smoked a joint, but this had absolutely no effect on me.
But my curiosity had been roused and so new experiences with THC soon followed, which I liked, because I had never been able to see the fun in drinking alcohol.
The next two years ran along pretty unspectacularly, Imanaged to finish junior high, smoked pot on weekends, but was still able to uphold myself quite well, actually everything went satisfactorily…
After graduating from school I decided to do alternative civilian service. I simply wanted to get out of the village where I lived, and as coincidence would have it, ended up in the city which is said to have the officially highest criminal rate in Germany, in Kehl on the Rhine, directly by Strasbourg.
There I quickly met many people and began smoking pot every day, then got into the techno party scene and made my first experiences with XTC.
So on weekdays I did my civilian service and on weekends I mostly went home to the village where I used to live, where I had a lot of friends… In Kehl there was an abundance of hash,and I just travelled back and forth. Had good contacts and much fun doing drugs, everything was surrounded by an enchanting magic. Boredom was a word I no longer knew…
Hanging out with friends, at Goa parties, or just smoking pot outside in nature when the weather was nice…, fun was our constant companion. It seemed that all intelligent people smoked. The others, whom we nicknamed „farmers“, how pathetic they appeared to us, always just drinking alcohol, always only this one numbing drug, we almost felt pity for them. If only they could experience one of our sessions with us… to feel the magic just once…
It became my declared goal to get all people to try out drugs. My motto was: who drinks alcohol drowns his sorrow, who takes drugs takes an alternative adventure journey…
I don´t mean to glorify drugs with these sentences, I merely want to give expression to my feelings of that time…
I was now smoking pot daily, often already in the mornings before work. On weekends I went to parties, chemistry from Friday to Sunday, made my entry into the Goa scene. In familiar circles I became more and more important and achieved a positive image. I floated on cloud nine, my life was perfect just like this. Basically it was all one huge party. I was totally enthusiastic about this way of life. Doing drugs was our life style, our general attitude toward life.
An acquaintance of mine had his own house at that time, and it became like a home for all of us, a legendary place where we celebrated numerous sessions, laughed and were just happy with life.
All of this went on for about one year. During this time I made my first mushroom experience.
Then the addition of magic mushrooms changed everything. We went on trips every weekend, for about half a year. After this time we were all pretty blown away, mentally, yet on the other hand we had made some incredible experiences.
I had started an apprenticeship in Kehl, but kept getting more and more problems there. Smoked hash even before beginning the day´s work, and at times actually went to work on mdma, cocaine or even mushrooms. It worked for a while, my superiors were even pleased with my performance.
After a change at my work location, still with the same employer but in a different department, everything went kind of overboard and I became noticeable, ended up getting called for several talks with my boss and was given two reprimands due to absences from work. At that time I had a girlfriend with whom I lived, she was suffering from borderline illness, which presented an additional burden.
After all that I felt like quitting my apprenticeship, I was 20 years old, dependent on THC, amphetamines, cocaine and was consuming a lot of other drugs, typical case of multiple dependency.
The carefree times about which I reported just a short while ago were forgotten. It was winter 2004, no one in our group of friends was fairing very well, everyone more or less lost having fun whilst consuming, but that doesn´t exactly mean that everyone stopped and started acting responsibly. Many promises were made, hardly any were kept, the drugs had a very tight hold on us, but that fact I realized only much later.
My employer tried persuading me to begin a therapy, and so it came about that I visited the addiction counseling service. I agreed to go into therapy. At least 80% fall into relapse in spite of therapy, according to my counselor, but it´d be up to me whether I belonged to the 80% or to the 20%.
The waiting time of three months I spent in my home village with my group of friends, kept on consuming, but mostly THC, stabilized mentally somewhat. About two weeks before beginning therapy I went to a Goa party, where I bought two trips together with a couple of buddies, with the intention of taking them at a lonely spot in the forest. It was meant as a kind of farewell from the drug scene, a trip to say good-bye, as appeared worthy to me…
On exactly this trip I´ve been for eight years now… The trip itself started out relatively normal, I first took half, then later another quarter blotter. When I came home somehow, early next morning, and wanted to lie down to sleep, I started having wild hallucinations and spent several hours in an LSD-doze. It was strange, but I reckon everyone who has repeatedly taken trips has also had such an experience…
Then I almost came back down from the trip, next day I felt good, even though I was rather confused, but a feeling of happiness rose within me that kept getting stronger and stronger.
It was June 2005 when I began my therapy in Frankfurt (two weeks after the experience with LSD). I felt somehow odd, had slight panic attacks, but did get off to a fairly good start.There were some really friendly people there and altogether it somehow turned out to be a nice time. I can only recommend to anyone who wants to stop, but thinks he can´t do it on his own, to get into a therapy program.
A week into therapy the feeling of happiness, which I´d had constantly since taking the trip, became even more powerful. I was incredibly active, hardly slept anymore. The trip came back with full force, but this I realized again only later on. At that particular moment I didn´t understand what was happening, but I was feeling fine, I was feeling way too fine…
I almost didn´t sleep anymore at all, still stayed active the entire day, talked from morning till night, mused over the other patients who were there with me, and even felt superior to the psychologists there. I thought all patients were there for only one reason: to have conversations with me in order for me to further my education to become a super-healer. What I liked best were the group sessions, which was credited in a therapy report where a psychologist wrote:
„In the reference group Mr. M. seemed interested and actively engaged from the start, whereby he stood out by contributing especially constructive and reflecting feedbacks to others.”
I had such an outrageous amount of dopamine inside of my head, I had never before, regardless of the drug, experienced such an ingenious state of intoxication. This increased further and further, until I began losing the connection to reality altogether. I considered myself a super-healer. I thought that all staff members at the clinic were on cocaine and that I would soon be taken into their inner circle, due to my “special abilities”, and be offered a job as psychologist, earn good money, and with the assistance of cocaine would soon run the clinic together with the other members of staff.
Apart from that I thought that the BILD newspaper might soon report about me. Another female patient I was thinking of as my future wife.
Even later I considered myself to be Jesus, and in the end God personally. Really and truly, this frame of mind was the most divine thing one can imagine. I didn´t tell the doctors, at that time, that I considered myself to be God or Jesus, because this point-of-view lasted for only one day.
Nevertheless I got doped with medications to the maximum, as I had voiced fear of suffering an epileptic attack. I believe they gave me Tegretal juice then. The doctor quickly noticed that something was the matter with me and ordered me to be given neuroleptics. And I told the doctor that I felt as if I had an entire kilo of cocaine inside of my body, and indeed this is how I felt.
Nobody knows exactly what state of being I was in, some guessed it was a mania with psychotic traits, others thought it was more so a real psychosis. In my own opinion it was the trip itself, coming back at me with full force! Here a few clippings from the therapy report:
„The interaction with the young and always friendly patient, who however seemed rather passive and for the most part emotionally untouched, was especially marked by the appearances of unexpected and bizarre happenings within the course of treatment, which remained not clearly distinguishable even for ourselves up to the end.”
„Within two weeks it seemed that his mood was not merelysubeuphroric, but tending towards prepsychotic. Inner tensions as well as a kind of delusion with ego-misperception („that something was happening round about him, that he felt different”), bizarre ways-of-thinking and a setting-on of grand ideas (“that everything would fall into place now, that he had clarity about everything, knew what was going on inside of his fellow patients and that he demonstrated the successful experiment of his parents”).
This was followed by a first psychiatric counsel with the chiefdoctor and a medication was prescribed. As the patient showed a clear stabilization and distancing from psychotic perception already by the following day, the suspicion of substance abuse arose from our side, even though all screenings without fail proved negative…”
“After the discontinuation of the medication, after the patient expressed that he wished to do so, his mood worsened, whereby he described being in a panic-like state, especially his fear of becoming „psychotic“.
He constantly described new anxieties: „to have gotten stuck on drugs; to have brain damage; to have burned his brain structure due to LSD.” Along with that he lamented further lack of motivation and hope, even thoughts of suicide, as „everything was too late anyway, he no longer felt able tomanage with daily life.”
Interpersonal contact and connection to reality however were always easily made, and he showed himself to be responsive.
An incredibly awful depressive phase followed, during which a lot of LSD-like symptoms suddenly appeared. During this phase it dawned on me just how much further this last LSD-trip might be accompanying me. That was really the worst situation one could imagine. After several weeks the depression ebbed away and I was given regulatory medications. These were Zyprexa 10 mg and Mirtazapin 30 mg.
Still those symptoms similar to LSD lingered, at least most of them. The worst hallucinations, which I had during moments of tranquility, luckily soon became less, so the situation became more bearable.
I finished therapy according to schedule and regulation. But I never got off that trip since.
I was now living back at home by my mother and tried to manage as best I could. I recovered quickly to some extent, went to therapy on a weekly basis, but there was no chance of getting off. Since that time my pupils are unbelievably huge, as a result of which people often ask me, when I attend a party, if I have put anything into them…
A rather uneventful year followed, I was clean, took medication, but was unable to work. I tried to arrange myself as best I could, which did involve many unpleasant tasks. I had to explain to all of my friends and family members, basically everybody I knew, what was the matter with me, even though I wasn´t even sure myself about what exactly it was.
About one and a half years after these events I decided to try to go to work again. I wrote several applications in my home village and was soon offered a 400 Euro job in a metal processing factory.
I worked there for a year. Many a times I felt overburdened and was always afraid to make mistakes, but I persevered and my supervisor was very kind to me, and I must say that I did the work properly even though it was hard sometimes, e.g. in particular communicating with others and so on. Just imagine being on a trip and going to work in a metal processing factory and having to somehow manage four hours there, as inconspicuously as possible.
I came back down very slowly, was mentally stable and stopped taking Mirtazapin. After changing to another physician I went to a psychologist, by whom I mentioned that I was feeling okay but that I felt very tired from taking Zyprexa. She changed my prescription to 15 mg of Abilify. This was the biggest possible mistake that you could imagine, as it turned out after two weeks.
At first I was enthusiastic about this medication, was totally fit and active. Stayed up all night, was like high on that stuff. After taking that for two weeks, the trip that was working inside of me suddenly jumped to dizzying heights, from one second to another!
Just like that I was riding high once again, but not in a positive sense. Anxiety disorder, social phobia, a general feeling of being “on” something, hallucinations, thinking (not hearing) voices.
Of course I immediately stopped taking this medication, but the new symptoms which had come along with the Abilify lingered and have hardly regressed up to this day.
I was forced to give up my job and basically wasn´t able to fit in with society anymore. Couldn´t sit at a table with other people and have a meal together, hardly ever dared to leave the house for fear of meeting people I knew and embarrass myself in front of them. In addition I had stimulus satiation and a light depression due to my deteriorated condition, however the depression wasn´t very bad.
Two stays at clinics followed. Doctors and psychologists were at a loss as to where my condition was concerned, they did record my explanations, but somehow they didn´t actually know from experience how to deal with this. Nobody had everheard of HPPD.
Formal thinking is ordered at large, sometimes leaps of thoughts and highly concrete thinking. Fear of embarrassing oneself in front of other people, of making mistakes. Self-esteem and self-confidence strongly reduced. Delusional thinking and experiences negated by the patient. The patient´s social fears (fear of „embarrassment“, rejection or repudiation) however were exceeded and have taken on a drastic dimension (“I don´t dare to do anything anymore”). In particular, narcissistic-tending thinking disorders in regards to contents, (“psychedelic thinking about life”). Mood somewhat somber, emotions lethargical. Motivation and capacity clearlydepleted, stimulus satiation in complex situations. Psycho-motorically strongly tensed and restless, trembling. „Nervous conditions“, panic attacks, stereotypical movement.
The patient credibly distanced himself from imminent risk of committing suicide. Extreme social withdrawal, isolation.
Friendly and cooperative when communicating.
Diagnostically we tend towards assuming that this is a case of undifferentiated schizophrenia with formal thinking disorders in regards to content, hallucinations, state of tension and anxiety.
Since this last stay at a clinic two years have passed. I have stabilized fairly well, am only slightly depressive, state of anxiety got better. Am living in an assisted living facility, but want to move to a larger city (Stuttgart) soon. There is nothing really standing in the way. The persons in charge are pleased with my current development.
Since last year I carry a severely handicapped pass with a degree of 100%.
I´ve been clean for over eight years now, well since that time I got stuck, am trying to master my life as best as I can, which altogether is working quite well. Every once in a while I go to parties, was at the Nature One last year and will most likely go again this year…
Alcohol doesn´t do me well at all since over two years. That´s a shame, because it had always been helpful to see my situation from a different, not sober point-of-view every now and then. Even with only a small alcoholic intoxication that had been possible.
Our group of friends from that time actually still exists. However, in the meantime five of us have spent time in a psychiatric ward due to substance consumption, and right now one of us is there stationary. One of us died in a car crash three years ago. But all in all, we stick together. Sometimes I wonder if that was the dream we had of the exciting life on drugs? Did the dream burst or are we in the middle of it, just that the dream turned out completely different to what we had expected… I will never get an answer to that, because there isn´t any…
Society now expects of me to demonize everything that is related to drugs, due to my personal history, according to the motto: “You see what can happen”.
But if I demonized drugs I would at the same time refuse my complete “self”. Yes I had to experience a lot of suffering, but because of these things and due to the deep venturing into the psychedelic world of thoughts I have received an insight into the incredibly complex and sublime occurrences of life. I stick to this opinion of mine, even if the doctors describe this as “narcissistic-tending thinking disorders in regards to contents.”
This report can be viewed also as warning: be aware that hallucinogenic drugs may change your life possibly more than you could imagine.
If anyone has questions or comments, you can write to me: [email protected]
I want to end this long-term report with another quote from the movie “das weisse Rauschen”, because it fits my situation only too well:
„Doctors considered me to be schizophrenic, most others considered me to be just a mad guy. Actually I didn´t care what people called me. What I was searching for was a life I could be leading.
The white rush, this means all visions, of all people, of all times, within one moment, that´s what Eno explained to me. Something like God or the entire universe all in one.
Who experiences the white rush has achieved the state of highest elevation. And do you know what else he said?That the white rush would be the ultimate trip. Who experiences the white rush goes crazy immediately. Except he is crazy already, then he will become normal.
The trick is to walk the path to enlightenment backwards so to speak. At the end of this path the chaos inside the head stops and the totally normal life begins. I am sure of that…”
Quote from the movie “das weisse Rauschen”
