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To TheW0rm and Others w/ "comedown" issues

Zebrafish, I remember when I first saw you start posting here. You and I were in the same place at exactly the same time. 8 months later it makes me legitimately saddened to see you turning into a mini FirstBadComedown. I think long term comedown BLers should realize that their obsessive desire to scour the Internet for an answer, the very trait of their personhood that brought them to BL in the first place, is the exact reason why they are continuing to prolong their suffering.

More so than a bad experience with MDMA, I would wager that the one thing we all have in common here is that we are smart, inquisitive, forward-thinking people. And yes, perhaps slightly prone to anxiety though it might not have proven an actual hindrance to our lives until now. It is these positive attributes that have driven us to the Internet in an obsessive search for answers thereby creating the horrific symptoms of the long term comedown. Double edged sword. Be proud of who you are and understand that it is the good things in yourself that have driven you to the place you are in now. Find solace in that as you work toward your recovery. Everyone in this situation always wonders "why me?" Why are hundreds of thousands of people rolling every day and experiencing no consequences? The reason is the mass majority of these people don't have the insightful, inquisitive nature as many of us.

I'm not trying to sound snotty. I'm just pointing out the obvious. Anxiety often comes with a slew of positive attributes - creativity, intellectualism, insight, etc. I believe that is how many of us drive ourselves into this state of suffering, scouring medical journals, etc., and it is how many of us perpetuate this anxiety.

It took me six months of CBT with a psychologist and four months of 10 mg of Lexapro to get where I am now. Not 100%, but INFINITELY improved from where I was even a month ago. In the end, it was the combination of an SSRI and the help of a therapist that led me to the realization that the way out of this mess was my choice alone. Sure it's going to take time, sure there are lingering symptoms, but as my therapist explained it... You're feeling the way you are whether you like it or not. Why not ACCEPT the feelings. I PROMISE YOU, that mere gesture to yourself will make life so much more pleasant and enjoyable. It terrifies me to reflect upon some of the things I once believed. That I would be damaged forever. That I was such a fucking idiot for taking 100mg of untested molly. That I was doomed. That my career was flushed down the drain. That my vision, balance, cognition, and speech would be fucked forever. THat the only way out of this situation would be to take my life...

Goddamn. Eight months later and I'm so thankful to be alive. Don't believe the hype, ya'll. There is hope and it's in your hands. I'm feeling better every day. But more importantly, the best thing I've realized is SO WHAT. You might feel like shit one day but who knows about tomorrow. Just accept where you are and let the healing begin.
 
Zebra, with all due respect, I believe that telling fragile people who are terrified of this predicament they find themselves in that they likely have brain damage might be doing more harm than good.

I respect the fact that you have done a lot of research and stand by what you believe. However, I have not seen one BLer come back with an actual diagnosis of brain damage from a doctor. FBC caused himself a lot of grief with his obsessions and in my opinion is the epitome for the dangers of internet PhD/self diagnosis.

When I treated my comedown as "anxiety", I took a very palliative approach to my problems. Instead of fretting about academic medical journals that I was not trained to read and understand, I went about trying to put myself in the best mindset to make me as comfortable as possible until I felt better. I very well could have had "brain damage" but I went to doctors from the top medical universities in the world, whom study the effects of drugs on the brain, and they told me that I was suffering from a general form of anxiety from a traumatic stress on the brain.

I cannot explain what that means, all I know is that I felt fine then I took MDMA and was in complete hell for 8 months afterwards. By applying palliative care to my condition in the form of mindfulness, CBT, and staying the fuck off the internet reading about shit that I did not understand, my life got better.

It is not the "brain damage" that is hurting you, it is the obsession with trying to diagnose what is wrong with you. You are not letting your mind relax in the way it needs to. By constantly trying to figure out what is going on or why you feel a certain way, you are obsessing and not moving on.

The feedback from myself, cope, futurea, herenow, Maya and the others who have recovered is to just relax and ride it out. Once you can let go of the idea of a comedown, your mind will sort itself out. By freaking out about every up and down and trying to attribute it to brain damage, you are harming your recovery. Your recovery is about 100% acceptance of your situation. When you stop fighting it life gets better.

Life is too short to spend it obsessing about a comedown.

At the end of the day, reading medical journals is not going to cure your comedown. If you convince yourself that you have brain damage, you will feel like you have brain damage. However, if you dedicate your time to treating the symptoms of your comedown you will maybe improve your quality of life.

Until there is medical evidence (not abstract medical journals, I am talking about a diagnosis from a licensed neurologist) that acute MDMA intoxication caused brain damage and that brain damage is the source of a comedown, I think suggesting that comedowns are brain damage does much more harm than good.

People with comedowns are extremely scared and look to BL as the only source of information. By throwing it out there that people with comedowns suffer from brain damage, it can really set people off. I know it did for me.

I think (no evidence, just my opinion) that with the longer cases (1.5 years plus) of comedown, the MDMA use and the subsequent comedown triggered a latent mental illness such as GAD or depression. Obsessing about brain damage will not help someone recover who suffers from mental illness. This theory is also supported by the anecdotal reports of SSRIs being useful for getting over the final hump of the comedown.

SSRIs have helped people. If you are stuck in a bad place and time alone is not healing, why not try a SSRI? Seriously. It boggles my mind that people will pretend they are a doctor and diagnose themselves with crazy shit but refuse to listen to a real doctor when they suggest a SSRI.

It took thousands of dollars of CBT to figure this advice out. I was like you at first. I was 100% convinced I had physical damage to my brain. FBC was a source of my obsession. I am only passing this information along because I care and I empathize with others who are suffering what I went through.

I am all for discourse. Harm reduction is all about having different opinions and letting people make informed choices.
 
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zebrafish said:
Like I mentioned in a previous post, it takes the proper environmental and biologic/genetic factors in addition to dosage to produce significant neurotoxicity. Given that millions of people around the world use MDMA, and only a very small proportion of people develop these problems after only a few uses of the drug, I think all these factors are not present in most people using the drug. For most people, it takes chronic abuse using "normal" dosages to see clinical differences. You and I and other people on this site may just be unlucky in that all the factors were present when we took MDMA.
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It seems to me there is only one factor, namely a genetic/biological vulnerability? Isn't this an explanation to fill the void? Or is it data suggesting that some people are significantly more prone to brain damage from MDMA? I know for a fact some people are more prone to anxiety, myself included.
Considering that every single proposed factor is present with so many of my friends, and has been for so long. It is amazing to me that one person can literally fry many parts of his brain on one recreational dose of MDMA, while others can do huge doses close to a hundred times in the worst way possible and still come out of it without, seemingly any negative consequences in the long term. I am aware of the cognitive tests done on MDMA users vs MDMA naive subjects, so I'm guessing that they are doing damage, they are just not experiencing it acutely, like us. What I've been trying to say all along is that maybe my brain has sustained exactly the same amount of damage that most people get, but the anxiety response from that damage has been greater. I do not think I have really suffered from anxiety in my life, but I am definitely prone to anxiety, much more so than most people I know. For instance, I have always gotten anywhere from mild to moderate anxiety from coffee.

BTW, your inbox is full.
 
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Zebra and Scared - I believe this conversation is very important and I think everyone has a right to state what they feel is the source of their problems.

There is medical evidence of HPPD and disassociative disorders after ingesting MDMA, mushrooms or even high levels of THC. My understanding of HPPD is that it is related to anxiety as the anecdotal reports I have seen on BL and elsewhere show a correlation between stress, time, anxiety and the level of HPPD.

My "anxiety" conclusion is based on the following:

1) It is accepted in the medical community that MDMA and other psychological drugs can trigger temporary or permanent mental health issues.

2)Comedown symptoms - DP/DR, brain fog, blurry vision, muted emotions, low sex drive, head pressure, depression, existential thoughts, mood changes, etc are all clinically recognized symptoms of anxiety.

3) Not all "anxiety" manifests itself in the same way. For example, during my comedown I did not feel "anxious" after the first 6 weeks. I dealt with the secondary symptoms - the dissassociation, brain fog, and blurry vision.

4) Neurotoxins do not selectively harm people. Chemically and biologically, everyone's brain is the same. If MDMA could damage axons to the point of noticeable brain damage, chemistry would dictate that everyone who took the same amount of MDMA would have the same brain damage. I would maybe agree with you that we had brain damage if we all had waffed 1000mg and had the same exact symptoms. However, many people with comedowns took less than 200mg, around the same dose that millions of people take every week.

A psychedelic experience can trigger mental health problems that mimic physical damage with a small percentage of people who are prone to anxiety. I think our brain's fight or flight defense system went bat shit when we took drugs. We have evolved to have emotions to help us stay alive. Fear is our brain trying to preserve itself, unfortunately can turn into a spiral.

Many people suffering comedowns tend to be highly intelligent and naturally curious people. I think Derok and PMZ are engineers, I am a lawyer. We want to know why we feel off so we start digging and obsessing. When we cannot find the answers, we try to connect the dots. Unfortunately, I think this process does us more harm in the long run.

I am not trying to be contrite nor am I claiming that I am the authority on comedowns. I feel that my approach to dealing with a comedown has helped many people successfully recover. It is not an ego thing. I am just trying to help people who are going through hell and who have nowhere else to turn.

I respect your right to your opinion and more importantly your right to voice your opinion. It is ok to disagree.
 
Dawglaw said:
4) Neurotoxins do not selectively harm people. Chemically and biologically, everyone's brain is the same. If MDMA could damage axons to the point of noticeable brain damage, chemistry would dictate that everyone who took the same amount of MDMA would have the same brain damage. I would maybe agree with you that we had brain damage if we all had waffed 1000mg and had the same exact symptoms. However, many people with comedowns took less than 200mg, around the same dose that millions of people take every week.
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I have to disagree with this. Our brains are all quite different at the structural, cellular, and genetic level. The genetic susceptibility to different drugs and toxins is different from individual to individual. Sure there is an average response to a given dosage of a drug amongst a population, but standard deviation of this response is not zero. MDMA, as will all drugs and medications, exhibit a wide spectrum of effectiveness and side effect profile among different people, when given at the exact same dosage and route of administration to everyone. We see this all the time with all medications. If this were not true, there would be no such thing as the concept of LD50. LD50 is defined as the dosage of a drug that would be lethal in 50% of the population taking it. If everyone responded the same way to a given dosage of a drug, then 100% of the population would die at a certain threshold dose, and 0% of the population would die below this threshold die. This phenomenon is never observed in pharmacology.

There are so many biological and environmental factors that contribute to the effect produced by the drug. Factors such as how well your gut absorbs a drug into the blood stream, drug-drug interactions, differences in metabolism, differences in excretion based on kidney and liver function, and many other factors, all influence how a given dosage of a drug produces a effect.

In the case of MDMA neurotoxicity, a LOT of factors influence whether the dosage ingested will produced a toxic reaction or not: whether the dosage was taken all at once or spaced out, the core body temperature at the time of MDMA ingestion, the effectiveness of your antioxidant systems such as glutathione, superoxide dismutase, and peroxidase, other drugs in your system that increase or decrease the metabolism of MDMA, and the function of your kidney and liver in regards to drug excretion.

Therefore, two people ingesting 200mg of MDMA can react very differently, where one has no comedown whatsoever, and the other has a horrible long term reaction.
 
Dawglaw said:
2)Comedown symptoms - DP/DR, brain fog, blurry vision, muted emotions, low sex drive, head pressure, depression, existential thoughts, mood changes, etc are all clinically recognized symptoms of anxiety.

3) Not all "anxiety" manifests itself in the same way. For example, during my comedown I did not feel "anxious" after the first 6 weeks. I dealt with the secondary symptoms - the dissassociation, brain fog, and blurry vision.
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Consider the following model:

Anxiety is know to produce a very wide variety of symptoms: from chest pain all the way to toe infections. It has literally been attributed to any and every symptom.

However, it is well known that anxiety produces some symptoms more commonly than others. Lets say feelings of dread, shortness of breath, chest pain, and irritable bowel syndrome are present in 80% of people who have anxiety.

Now lets say there are 5 people who have taken MDMA and are suffering a comedown due to anxiety. The probability that all 5 people will have feelings of dread will be 0.8^5 = 32.7%. Not unreasonable. Alternatively you can say that on average .8 x 5 = 4 out of the 5 people with anxiety fueling their comedown will have feelings of dread. Seems believable.

Now consider symptoms like visual snow or HPPD. These are much more rare in the general population of people who suffer from anxiety. Lets say 1% of anxiety sufferers have these symptoms.
So among the 5 people here who have taken MDMA and are suffering a comedown due to anxiety, the probablility that all 5 people will have HPPD is .01^5 = 0.00000001%. So very very unlikely at all 5 people have HPPD.
Alternatively, on average .01 x 5 = 0.05 out of 5 people, or 1 out 100 people, with anxiety as the cause of their comedown will have HPPD. However, why do we see MDMA comedown sufferers with a greater frequency of HPPD than this? Perhaps because there is another process fueling these symptoms besides just pure anxiety.

The flaw to this model is that I dont know exactly the frequencies of feelings of dread and HPPD in the general population of people who have anxiety. If someone wants to look them up, we can plug the numbers into this model and see what we get. Then we can compare that number to the percentage of people on Bluelight who have HPPD after MDMA use, and see if the numbers agree even roughly at all. The other flaw is that the pool of people on BL with anxiety fueled comedowns may not be representative of the entire population with MDMA induced anxiety. However, the numbers should still be roughly within similar orders of magnitude if anxiety is really the culprit behind all these symptoms.
 
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Wow this is really turning into quite the debate.
In other news, my symptoms have been receding to some extent. The panic attacks, lack of emotion, loss of libido, etc, They all seem to have lightened up over the course of the last week or so. Interestingly, I have been experiencing light bouts of tinnitus and jaw/eye pressure, whereas they were not part of my cluster of symptoms in the first two months. They are not severe, but they are noticeable. My vision has gone downhill over the last two weeks, and I am pretty near sighted in my right eye. My sleep cycle has stabilized and last night I slept deeply for nearly ten hours. I have also been getting bouts of hyperactivity and energy in the evenings. I think that all of this with the exception of the visual troubles are good signs, and are indicative of my psyche recovering.
 
That's really good news THeW0rm. The hyperactivity thing was something that I got a lot right before my improvement skyrocketed. I still have it, though not as intense. It would get really intense for me, making me worried that I had become bipolar/manic or something, but it is slowly but surely returning to normal. You can actually take advantage of it some times with work/training etc.
 
Hey guys, haven't been on here in a while but this post really caught my interest.

I'm sure some of you are familiar with my story (1/4 tab LSD, half an MDMA pill and alcohol at a party, 5 days later crushing symptoms). I actually thought I was recovered for well over a month, and was going to come over here and post a success story. In the month of January I had little to no symptoms, and never even though about brain damage, unlike the previous months where it occupied my mind most of the time. I became interested in the outside world once again and couldn't even believe how I was previously so obsessed with a subject as boring as brain damage!

Unfortunately a lot of my symptoms have re-emerged in the last few week or two, along with new symptoms including head pressure, and just feeling completely spaced out/out of it. Mild depression/apathy has also come back into the picture but this may be because I haven't worked in three weeks, and my diet has been very poor, but i'm not sure.

I'm just wondering if this could be due to brain damage? Last time I used MDMA was June 2013, haven't touched anything since, although I still do go out drinking some weekends. I have a history of anxiety before MDMA, but it wasn't really that restricting or crippling. I was going to start a new thread, but I thought i'd ask here instead cos this seems to be the most unbiased thread i've seen on the subject to date, and it's relevant.

Basically after reading Dawglaw's post I felt really reassured and could relate to what he was saying. After reading Zebrafish's posts it made me question whether I was really experiencing brain damage and kinda scared the shit out of me (no offence Zebra, I know you post this stuff with good intentions). If I read these posts a few weeks ago when I was less sensitized I would have been far less suggestible.

Edit: I guess what i'm asking is, from what I have experienced is it more likely anxiety or brain damage? I find it hard to believe it is brain damage because I had roughly 1-2 months of no depression and little to no anxiety, but i'm still not 100% sure.
 
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Did you do anything to induce these symptoms again? Did you actually feel recovered during the last month, or did you just feel that your symptoms was at an all time low? I'm thinking that an alcohol binge or something could spike it again.

About whether it is damage, I am pretty sure that some sort of damage occurred to cause the reaction you had to the drugs. Whether it is long lasting brain damage that's causing your current symptoms I'm not sure of though. I think there is some anecdotal data that points out that psychological issues can linger a while even after your brain is "healed". What is the list of symptoms you are experiencing currently?

Edit: I scrolled through some of your old posts and I see that you've been taking 5-HTP? For how long did you take it, and are you still taking it? If you are still taking it you should stop immediately.
 
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Hmmm, well I haven't taken any other drugs, but I had a few nights of heavy drinking for sure. Yeah I felt fully recovered about 90% of the time, I felt really content, although I still experienced the normal stresses of life of course. I would still get anxiety attacks from time to time, but they were existent before my MDMA use anyways.

I was prescribed Proxan (which has 5-HTP in it) and took it for a few weeks, but I stopped because it didn't do shit for me. I actually started feeling better after I stopped.

Currently the symptoms i'm getting are: Depression (this isn't as strong as it used to be, and it's also due to shit going on in my life), feeling of dread, lightheadedness/feeling spaced out, head pressure now and again, and just anxiety in general.

The amount of MDMA I took would not have exceeded 80mg, especially because I live in Australia (our MDMA is comparatively weak). Also the lines we did were very small. I guess i'll never know if I have damaged myself or not though, I certainly feel like a different person at the moment that's for sure, compared to last month.
 
Not really a big history. I've done MDMA around ten times in my life i'm guessing? I may be overestimating though, because I rarely dropped whole pills, I would usually just drop half. I've smoked weed recreationally on and off for years, averaging once a week, sometimes once a month, sometimes once every three months. And i've taken LSD 5 times, usually dropping half tabs every two years or so. I've never ran into any problems before with my previous use, although one time back in 2012 I did roll two nights in a roll (which was a bad idea) and as a result I had horrible anxiety and feelings of suicide for like a week, until the doctor reassured me I would be fine, as soon as she said that I was fine.

That's pretty much it in a nutshell. I'm more worried about the depression that has returned as opposed to the anxiety.
 
I agree 100% with dawglaw. Try to live your life as best as you can DESPITE everything that happens. Before MDMA/Drugs you had no problems. Then you took it and all these things arose. Try to live normally and if you notice slow incremental progress then you are getting better and eventually heal. However don't always be paranoid looking for signs of recovery. Sometimes things get worse and you freak out but they eventually level out.



That being said I'm not recovered yet and I'm still suffering to a degree. Right now my depression and sex drive problems have passed. The only lingering issue is anxiety. Sometimes about specific things sometimes generalized. In my case drinking made me MUCH MUCH worse. I started getting SEVERE panic attacks after drinking a few times that didn't go away for nearly a month after my last drink. Now I have anxiety but it's not to the level of where I panic and think I'm going to die. It's just very frustrating because I can't seem to enjoy a moment of just peace and tranquility. Focusing on anything technical is a complete bitch and my cognition is impacted greatly. I don't think there's any actual "damage" done because occasionally I have a day I feel normal and I can code at a high level(Computer science major). Then I get a bad day and I feel very tense and can't think at all.

Like Dawglaw caffeine makes it much worse for me. I actually feel fine while on it but the week after I'll get terrible DR.


Additionally I would advise against taking a variety of supplements or reading everything you see on the internet. Supplements just add another variable. Your hoping and praying that this can make you feel a tiny bit better but you don't really know what they will do to your body.

I still come on blue light occasionally every time I feel like shit but I make sure to read posts only by dawglaw, futura, or maya that post positive shit and not fear-mongering that can psych me out.

I do agree that all of us here are decently intelligent people and if anything that works against us. We are very adept at researching and reading high level medical information. However since our minds are not being rational we will try to make all these connections between everything you read and form conclusions that are NOT based on hard scientific data.

It's clearly visible in FBC's case. You look through his old threads and he did TONS of research all the time and what good came of it? Nothing. All the frantic reading and posting did nothing for him. It was only time that made him feel somewhat better.

Assuming that you went to the doctor and your blood work came back normal then physically your fine. So just wait. It's tough to do so but the only real solution is to practice mindfulness and either ignore or distract yourself.
 
I wanted to add some additional things:

For those going through this try to get support. I honestly think I would have committed suicide the first 3-4 months if it wasn't for my dad supporting me the entire time. The hollow 24/7 depression is probably the worst feeling on earth, don't try to deal with it alone.

2. Read good books that help you build a tough positive mentality. I read a lot of stoic philosophy which has helped me stay present, endure my situation without catastrophizing about it.


Interesting fact : CBT which helped dawglaw is actually just a modern application of stoic philosophy. It was originated by this guy called Albert Ellis who took the ideas from stoicism and applied them to psychotherapy. Start with meditations by Marcus Aurelius. I swear that book is better than xanax at calming me down. Then read mindfulness in plain english, start meditating and work at being mindful in every moment.
 
FluxRider said:
That being said I'm not recovered yet and I'm still suffering to a degree. Right now my depression and sex drive problems have passed. The only lingering issue is anxiety. Sometimes about specific things sometimes generalized. In my case drinking made me MUCH MUCH worse. I started getting SEVERE panic attacks after drinking a few times that didn't go away for nearly a month after my last drink. Now I have anxiety but it's not to the level of where I panic and think I'm going to die. It's just very frustrating because I can't seem to enjoy a moment of just peace and tranquility. Focusing on anything technical is a complete bitch and my cognition is impacted greatly. I don't think there's any actual "damage" done because occasionally I have a day I feel normal and I can code at a high level(Computer science major). Then I get a bad day and I feel very tense and can't think at all.

.
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Awesome dude. Keep fighting. Rocknroll
 
I'm also suffering from a long-term comedown. Not from MDMA, but 5-MAPB, which I'd consider to be reasonably similar.
Most of my symptoms pretty much relate to (severe) anecdotal SSRI-withdrawals, which I accidentally realized browsing an SSRI-forum.

So one symptom, which was the worst for me, was that you felt like you permanently screwed yourself up and could never become 'normal' or lead a real social life again. Very resilient hopelessness, which btw. can be hard to imagine for a healthy person. If you feel that way, check out the site, which I hope I may link, paxilprogress.org. There are plenty of reports of people (almost) fully recovering (from SSRI-withdrawal), with timelines from a few months to even 1-2 years. So recovery is possible, it just takes a whole lot of time in some cases. Again, I assume that long-term SSRI use can cause damage similar to short-term use of serotonin releasing drugs, like MDMA. Just read those reports, it all sounds awfully similar.

Now for me, I read scientific papers on the issue (once I started being able to understand things again), and ordered and tried lots of supplements to varying degrees of (mostly temporary) success.

That way I actually did find a combo, which at least for me, seems to propel lasting recovery. It's simply taking a choline source + a nootropic every second day. For which I use Noopept ~8mg and Alpha-GPC ~150mg or like 250mg CDP choline.

That combo almost makes you feel the recovery live, and on various levels. Btw. noopept has been shown to be beneficial in various forms of brain injury, which may be part of our condition.

http://examine.com/supplements/Noopept/:
In humans, one study[4] investigated 53 persons with cognitive ailment (37 with vascular cerebral damage and 17 with post-traumatic damage; 41 finishing the trial) at two daily doses of 10mg compared to the active control of Piracetam (1200mg daily) over 56 days noted universal improvement on parameters of vascular cerebral damage and improvement on half of measured parameters of trauma. Fatigue, anxiety, irritability, apathy, and affective lability were improved in both groups while further benefits were noted on mood, sleep, and wakefullness in those with cognitive ailment stemming from vascular damage.[4] Noopept was more effective over 56 days in improving the MMSE score relative to Piracetam, while it was effective in post-trauma patients (Piracetam was not) although when comparing all scores on MMSE, BPRS, and CCSE there was no significant difference.[4]
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That study may seem a little far fetched, though searching for drugs that help with damage from serotonin releasing drugs, this is the closest I got. If anyone knows more, I'd be delighted to hear it.

Also this is not meant to be medical advice of any kind.
 
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