Depersonalization Experiences/Stories

Hey all. I'd like to make a thread dedicated to depersonalization. It seems as if this is a commonly diagnosed symptom/disorder and I'd like to gain some more knowledge on the subject as it is such a foreign thing for me to understand.

I've been a daily pot smoker for the last year and a half, smoking to a very huge excess most days and spending all my money on high grade weed... basically it was a problem, but I loved it anyways. Recently I had decided to try DXM and I did it twice last week and I was an amazing experience, but I've decided to not do it again. But eight days ago today I did Salvia with no inclination of what it was like, and it put me over the edge into a breakthrough trip that scared the living fuck out of me.

It showed me during my trip that I was the center of the universe and that everyone in the world was involved in a pre-determined plot to teach me life lessons and all kinds of terrifying feelings. Everyone was fake except for me. The next day I smoked a lot of weed and I had an intense panic attack - this was the onset of the depersonalization and ever since (it's been a week), I haven't felt right I've just been in a haze of depersonalization (scary shit) and general dysphoria, which leads to more anxiety of the depersonalization.

I've decided to make a thread out of this, because this is such a puzzling symptom and bluelight did a have a few things to offer me in terms of understanding it - but not enough.

I'd love for everyone to post their first hand experiences of depersonalization - how it came to be, how you dealt, when it went away, what made it better, etc. etc.

A few things that I have learned from bluelight is

1. it's induced by drugs (most likely psychedelics)
2. it works off of anxiety/depression
3. it can go away (some people say it takes months/some people have it forever)
4. it's just a very unpleasant feeling - not really a sign of mental illness (although it feels like it)

A few things that I've learned from personal experience

1. it's something that causes fear/depression/other shitty feelings
2. it's been a week and everytime I smoke pot (I did once a few days ago) the feelings come back really hard (causing a panic attack)
3. intense feelings of unreality - constantly wondering and worrying
4. denying everything you feel with your senses
5. feeling as if life is a game/dream w/out significance.
6. feeling a little better at night/worse during the day/at night.
7. feeling as though I have O.C.D. and being very inattentive - horrible short term memory.

I'd really love for everyone to chime in and tell your story if you have one, a long with some advice that you would have given someone with depersonalization, that you had come to learn. Thanks bluelighters!

that is about all weed does to me... though ive got some major anxiety and depression issues for along time

Many afficiandos of cannabis will stop their ears and shout loudly when people say this kind of thing about their 'precious'.
Most people don't suffer any mental problems from cannabis use BUT a significant amount do!

I know ! I was once in a similar position , brought about from heavy psychedelic use, the weirdness transferred effortlessly to the cannabis mindstate turning me into a semi psychotic paranoid. No fun !

^^yea i've had a similar expereince, which just makes the headspace of cannabis an awful place nowadays.

I used to fuck around with DXM alot i've done it least 100 times, its loser mystique enthralled me in highschool, quite silly actually. But i think that nothing has contributed more to the depersonalized, amotivated shell I fell myself to be nowadays.

Ego loss is not always a positive change especially if it occurs when you are seeking individual recognition the most from the outside world. Feeling oneself a part of the universe can result in horrible sensations of inadequacy and mediocrity.

I think that drug use is not the only contributing factor however some are more prone to feelings of depersonalization and derealization than others. Also in my case depersonalization et al has also been accompanied by intense moments of hyperpersonalization and hyperealization as those attested to by my frequent bouts of intense paranoia where I think that everyone is out to get me, that i lack a je ne sais quoi that everybody has, i feel personally defective and secretly grandiose and delusions of self reference are rampant. I feel as if an Eye is watching me at all times and always negatively judging, such that my pleasures are soiled in the making and are revealed to me as petty masturbatory acts. And then back to flatness of affect, feelings of inadequacy, etc.

Both hyperealization and derealization along with their attendant changes in personal reality seem to me however, to be a step forwards in spiritual maturity, i feel as though i being dragged against my will towards a greater understanding whether i like it or not im getting an education in reality itself.

Also their is a certain sense of purgation i get from an overly intense bout of depersonalization where i feel my vanities, my certainties, and my little noetic crap holes have been overturned. Yes, I am only a part of something greater, yes i am merely a point on a continuum.

We are constantly being told not to feel this way in our culture and that adds to the loneliness of this schizoid vision. But these feelings are proof that it doesnt work, that we wont be doped into stuporous satiety so that the powers that be may commence in their agenda making.

I am humbled by these experiences and i think they have made me a better person.

Fuck Certainty and sorry for the lousy punctuation throughout

Yep, I've had depersonalisation sporadically since smoking a herbal mixture containing a low-dose of DMT. Prior to this I'd only smoked weed and only occasionally over a period of around 6 months. So I guess I reached for the secret too soon to quote Pink Floyd. The initial breakthrough ego-loss experiences with the mixture were actually interesting and mildly ecstatic, and I tried it about 5 times, often accompanying cannabis. It wasn't until a few weeks after I'd first tried the DMT mixture that I got really stoned on just weed alone, like the OP, and experienced a terrible panic attack complete with paranoia, the realisation that I am God, confusion, terror, feelings of unreality and going insane, doubting my whole reality, especially the sensation of time, feelings that my memories were false or not even there etc- the classic depersonalisation symptoms. Since then (around a year ago now), I've had bouts of depersonalisation. I still smoke weed, but its not always assured that I'll have a good time on it- it sometimes brings those unreal feelings back. Despite all this, I'm not all sorry that I decided to smoke DMT mixture (even though I never panicked on it, I'm sure it was this that put the shadow of doubt in my mind that made be panic on weed), its been a bit of a double-edged sword. I feel like if I can sort my life out a little more, get out of the depressed phases I periodically go through, that my depersonalisation will fade, and the realisations I've had due to it will actually make me a wiser person.

What I've read about it suggests that it is a protective mechanism, kicked in under extreme stress. Seeing a horrific scene is somehow made more bearable for the mind when it doesn't seem real. Many people will have had an experience of derealisation/depersonalisation, for example time seeming to move in slow motion during a car crash. Most people come out of it almost straight away, and for others, it's like your mind gets stuck in it...

My experience with this last year made me feel like I was going insane. It was part of a whole episode of anxiety last year that made me suicidal for 5 months. I like to attribute it back to a bad mushroom trip I had but who knows? It was probably a combination of a lot of things and the mushroom trip is just a useful scapegoat to blame. It's hard to describe now because things that freaked the hell out of me back then, just seem normal, obvious, now...

It had unique ways of freaking me out each week. I couldn't figure out whether I was real or not. I thought about was 'I' was. I couldn't put a location on myself, not my physical body, but my mind, 'me'. And if I didn't have a location, how could I exist? And it went on and on...The thing that freaked me out the most, I think, was that if the world wasn't real, if all there was was this 'me' floating around in nothingness, was that I would be trapped like this for eternity. These thoughts seemed to be of the utmost importance at the time...but after months of this I began to realise that thinking of them didn't get me anywhere...that the feeling of having to think about them was just another symptom of my anxiety, and that feelings don't equal reality...

However I feel like I only really was able to lift myself out of this when I started on mirtazapine.

This site http://www.dreamchild.net/ is an excellent read about one woman's experience with it, I highly recommend you read it!

I've experienced it during prolonged heavy drinking binges. I mean, drinking morning noon and night for 3 - 4 days.

Hmm.. interesting.

I have felt depersonalization from drugs such as Ecstasy (MDMA), Mushrooms (Psylocibin), and Marijuana..

What I can say though is that it changed my personality in a beneficial way, I am much more positive, open-minded, and happier throughout my day-to-day routines then I was before I did these drugs..

I have had times where I would over-do it with the Ecstasy, and I would feel bad for months, but over time it got better. Now I only use drugs in moderation, and I am very responsible about my drug use, I am very healthy (multi-vitamins, protein powder, daily workouts and exercise, sports, etc... this encourages natural endorphin release).

I think it all depends on the individual, and how much drugs they are doing, and what kind of state their body/mind was in before they did these drugs..

Just adding my two cents.

Has anyone here had depersonalization/derealization prior to using psychoactive drugs?

Yes, first year in high school. . then I started self medicating just to feel something/be 'myself (more outgoing, etc)' . . now I'm coming off of effexor. . which along with cipralex and luvox, all at different times, mind you, slowly led me into a numbness and lethargic mindspace.

I'm now on the quest to find myself~! Who joins me?

the same thing happened to me from abusing cannabis badly ( i smoked all day every day and alot of it) for little over a year. it got to the point where every time i smoked i had a sever panic attack. i experience depersonalization, breathing problems, and intense anxiety ever since. taking SSRIs (im currently on cymbalta) and perscribed benzos help the problem but i've had anxiety problems like permanent ones since i stopped smoking cannabis. sorry to hear that happened to you. yeah cannabis lovers will deny deny deny that the drug has any long term problems associated to it, but i have friends and i myself can attest to the fact that it will fuck with your mind.

branflakes said:

Has anyone here had depersonalization/derealization prior to using psychoactive drugs?

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i never had DP/DR until a heavy dose of MDMA one night.

DXM screwed my head up real bad. I posted a thread about it just now so it should be here in the Dark Side.

Weed did that to me too. I had to stop. It started getting really bad.

depersonalisation....interesting cos i was just at an ampetamines workshop yesterday and they mentioned this.

i had heard of it before but i related heavily yesterday when they were talking about it.

they did not know i am an ex user of drugs so i couldnt say anything then!!

i sometimes even get it now...i think its the lasting effects of being a heavy weed smoker since i was 13...plus all the other hallucinegens i went onto take...

i sometimes look in the mirror and cant believe this is who i see the world from, that i am my vehicle....i have thoughts of is this really real alot and general spin out moments.

i am over 18months clean from it all and i think it will be with me for ever...my mind has seen things and experienced intense states not normally encountered...

Yes, I have had experiences of depersonalization before any drug use. When I was a teenager, I went through serious anxiety and depression that made me feel like I couldn't feel my body, I couldn't feel like I had any place in the world or among other people, everything was vague and distant, and such... This lasted usually a few days at a time.

The worst one happened last year, after I took pure MDMA, without taking 5htp afterwards. I got such a huge drop in serotonin that I became separated from myself - couldn't feel my body, my vision changed so that everything seemed fake and clay-like, huge anxiety to the point of paranoia. I believed that people were talking about me, saying bad things or planning to hurt me, that the world would end soon, that I was a ghost repeating images of a past life... I was prescribed zyprexa at the time, which only made things worse.

It took months to fade away, although the worst of it went away after a few weeks. Luckily I was somewhat back to normal by the time I took a trip to Ireland a month later, but the anxiety and distant-from-world feelings remained for a long, long time. I haven't touched MDMA since.

wingnutlives said:

Yes, I have had experiences of depersonalization before any drug use. When I was a teenager, I went through serious anxiety and depression that made me feel like I couldn't feel my body, I couldn't feel like I had any place in the world or among other people, everything was vague and distant, and such... This lasted usually a few days at a time.

The worst one happened last year, after I took pure MDMA, without taking 5htp afterwards. I got such a huge drop in serotonin that I became separated from myself - couldn't feel my body, my vision changed so that everything seemed fake and clay-like, huge anxiety to the point of paranoia. I believed that people were talking about me, saying bad things or planning to hurt me, that the world would end soon, that I was a ghost repeating images of a past life... I was prescribed zyprexa at the time, which only made things worse.

It took months to fade away, although the worst of it went away after a few weeks. Luckily I was somewhat back to normal by the time I took a trip to Ireland a month later, but the anxiety and distant-from-world feelings remained for a long, long time. I haven't touched MDMA since.

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Did you ever feel like you got back to feeling completely normal again, before you used? What you described is the same for me. I've had it for about 2 months now and the worst of it went away after 2-3 weeks but i still have slight DR. It doesn't effect my day to day life and does not prevent me from doing the things i like/want to do but i still feel like im not connected to my "old self and reality" Like i was before this happened.

shaolin bomber i feel exactly like that
when i get myself healthy i start feeling better even after a few days, but everytime i smoke weed it gets worse again. i live in bc where there's nothing to do but get high most nights, and as a cause of my dp i've had insomnia, which makes it hard not to give in. I've only just seen help about this in the last couple days, but i'm seeing results quickly. i can't stand this feeling, i've been suicidal for the last couple of months since abusing mdma for several weeks. i've been encouraged because i've seen such quick results (people have commented that i've seemed more normal again and i haven't told anyone about my dp) did you start feeling better this fast also, then flatten out? Or was it more drawn out?
i feel confident that this will pass in time, but was worried by bomber's experience. are there people who get over this completely?

I've had anxiety and depression issues for my whole life really. They reached a peak after a train wreck LSA trip, and a subsequent marijuana session. For the next few weeks I felt as though my brain wasn't functioning. I couldn't think, understand, comprehend anything. I would have serious bouts of depersonalisation, where I didn't know who or what I was, and simple things like trees, and my own mother would confuse and frighten me. I went clean for a few months after that, and started taking lexapro (long overdue). Here I am a year later, feeling alot better. My personal problems still remain, although I am alright with the world. I'm also back to being a drunken scumbag. Life....