Hey everyone.
This is my first post on BL and my reason for doing so is because after years of suffering (yes years, 4 to be exact), I have just recently begun to look into serotonin syndrome. I understand that my case is going to be a bit unusual compared to most of you, given how long I've been dealing with my symptoms as well as what I feel may have caused it, but just bear with me please, because this is honestly the first time in a very long time that I feel like I may have found some answers as to what the nature of my debilitating condition is. The reason I even looked into SS in the first place is because in the last few weeks I had begun looking at my symptoms from a more psychiatric perspective simply because things have taken a turn for the worse and I realized that I have OCD at a level I wasn't accepting or even fully aware of before. Along with this, I also realized that I may have panic disorder, something originally diagnosed years ago but that I rejected due to the nature of all my physical symptoms. Because of this more recent perspective, I was prescribed Prozac as well as a benzo to take while I increase my dose weekly from 10mg a day to 60mg a day. SS was of course one of the warnings in the list of side effects for the Prozac. Long story short, I haven't begun taking the Prozac yet simply because of my most recent perspective (yes, that's a lot of perspective change in such a short period of time) regarding SS and, despite its rarity in the first place, the potential for symptoms to linger on for extended periods of time in a kind of "chronic SS" state, even though I'm sure almost all doctors out there would reject such a notion.
Why do I feel I may be dealing with this? Four years ago I was an ecstasy user, just like the rest of you, as well as involved with cocaine, amphetamine, cannabis, mushroom, opiate, alcohol, and tobacco use. There was also a couple of times I used DXM, but what I'd like to focus on here is mainly the MDMA, amphetamine (Adderall), and cocaine. These are the ONLY drugs that I ever had a severe problem with relative to the others I used. The first bad experience was with Adderall, though I had used MDMA several times prior to this experience with no ill effects besides the common depressed feeling you can get after coming down. To put it briefly, after I had come down from the Adderall, I had a terrifying experience that made me feel like my brain was swelling. There was no intense head pressure, but more like the sensation that my head was expanding on the inside accompanied with disorientation, disequilibrium, shaking, dilated pupils, and an increase in temperature. The panic was unbearable (feeling like I was going to die) and the agitation and excitability was equally so. My father watched over me that night and thankfully I woke up feeling better, although I was still spacy for a couple of days afterward. My next bad experience was with MDMA, though this was the only bad experience I had ever had with it. Everything I just described happened in the same way while I was with friends, except it didn't last as long and I also experienced mild hallucinations as I came down (the walls looking like they were moving). A couple months later, I began getting more into cocaine. I had done it a couple of times in the past, and it always made me feel like shit as I was coming down, but it never did what I'm about to describe. I shared 2 grams among friends (having 0.5 grams for myself) and as the friend that stayed with me and I came down, we smoked half of a dub thinking it would aid me so that I didn't feel as crappy as the coke left my system. All at once I heard this sound in my head as if the TV in the room had turned on (that sudden shift in pitch and presence). I even asked my friend what turned on because it was so loud to me. The experience I described with the Adderall took place only at an insane level. The hallucinations from the second experience were much more prevalent, like noise on a TV screen. Parts of my vision would twitch and shake, walls would move and crawl, colors would be distorted, etc. I felt this incredible sense of tension in my lower body and I cold barely keep my legs from violently twitching, as well as my left arm. I could feel that I was running a fever and my anxiety was through the roof. I thought this was it for sure. I even called the poison control center and told them what I had done. They said to go to the hospital but I had no way of getting there so I had to just try and ride it out on the sofa. The next day I was so relieved to wake up and know that I was alive. I believe that I simply passed out from exhaustion, and I vowed never to touch cocaine again. Over the next few weeks, I felt this overwhelming sense of brain fog, and whenever I smoked weed it was no longer pleasant as it once was before this latest experience. It would make me go into a state of panic and my spacial coordination was all off. I would also experience these twinging, pinching headaches that would come and go. I knew something was very off. Soon enough, I began experiencing "episodes" very similar to the ones I had after taking the amphetamine, MDMA, or cocaine, except this time, I wasn't doing any drugs, they would simply happen. Eventually I realized that my drug life was over for a period of time that I was very unsure of. I stopped everything, even cigarettes because they made me feel like I was going to fall over and they gave me a kind of tunnel vision.
Over a period of a few months and seeking answers from doctors to no avail, my symptoms that i've been dealing with for over 4 years began to manifest. They are as follows: head pressure; pressure behind the eyes; pinching/stabbing pains in my skull and inner ears; visual distortions like increased afterimages, blurriness, cloudiness around lights, visual snow, light sensitivity, trails behind moving objects (especially when there's contrast), and false perception of movement; chronically dry eyes; dizziness, false sense of motion (like rocking on a boat), balance problems, and motion sickness; intermittent low grade fevers (anywhere from 99 to 101); burning nerve sensations in my wrists, left shoulder, and seemingly from within my brain; nausea; occasional hyperactive gastrointestinal noises, especially when laying down; an often intense heat sensation from my stomach/bowel area; general fatigue; cold chills and tingling sensations; occasional tachycardia and heart palpitations (PVCs); chronic clenching or grinding of my teeth, and when trying to cease, getting the feeling of needing to clench my hands together or do something else to relieve tension; a general sense of my brain/CNS being polluted; frightening derealization; terrible depression and anxiety; extreme difficulty going to sleep (usually experiencing an intense dysphoria and horrifying depersonalization, as well as very intense brain zaps that often have me shooting straight up in my bed and having to get oriented for a few minutes); fits of incessant yawning. I've also noticed, as stated in my first paragraph, a drastic increase in mental problems, most notably OCD and what I'm assuming are panic attacks, which thus spurred me to seek psychiatric help in hopes that it could resolve more of my problems than I originally thought.
As I previously said, I haven't started taking the Prozac yet because after reading
THIS ARTICLE as well as coming to this forum and reading all of your posts, I have come to the conclusion that I could potentially be suffering from some continuous form of SS and the Prozac could very well fuck me up even more than I already am. I've recently (within the last few days) been experiencing a lot more rigidity and have had a recurring fever that has climbed up to 101 along with moderately dilated pupils and reduction in coordination. I have taken a benzo when my anxiety has gotten really bad (lorazepam) and these really seem to help, but I know I can't get too dependent on them.
I know this was a long post, and I commend and appreciate you for reading through all of it, but as you can see I am in a very desperate situation and have been for a very long time. I'm only 21 years old and my life is severely limited because of all this. I don't drive, I can't live alone, and I don't work because I know for a fact that I couldn't withstand to be placed under someone else's employment criteria and hope to survive for too long, given the severity and prevalence of my symptoms. I have better days than some, but most often I am significantly restricted from doing what I wish I could. What friends I do have come to visit me on occasion... but that is few and far between, and mostly my social life is dismal. Again, any insight would be appreciated, especially from First Bad Comedown, as it seems you really know your stuff.
Thank you, and I hope you're all doing well or better than usual.
