MDMA Recovery (Stories & Support - 7) [ALL LTC posts go here]

[ZeroLuck]

I believe so. Anxiety can cause memory problems, probably from the fact you aren?t focused on what you are doing, rather focusing on the anxiety and that prevents your memories from being logged. I wouldn?t worry about it too much.

I saw a therapist recently for my anxiety and she stated that anxiety can cause all the problems of LTC, including visual disturbances.

Everyone?s symptoms here could be an after effect of an anxious state the drug has put your mind into. Once you get passed he anxiety all the other symptoms will pass.

CBD oil has helped me tenfold. Pretty much anxiety free 80% of the day. Miracle stuff.

My hypothesis is that memory issues due to anxiety is the opposite mechanism of learning via the rewarding system.

You do good, you're rewarded and motivated through the brain chemistry to keep up. You do bad, your experience is mostly useless and it will drag you down emotionally so like self-defensive mechanism. It's a wild guess, but from evolutionary point didn't we went through A LOT of stress and anxiety, there should be coping mechanisms like this one.

 

[ASX]

My hypothesis is that memory issues due to anxiety is the opposite mechanism of learning via the rewarding system.

You do good, you're rewarded and motivated through the brain chemistry to keep up. You do bad, your experience is mostly useless and it will drag you down emotionally so like self-defensive mechanism. It's a wild guess, but from evolutionary point didn't we went through A LOT of stress and anxiety, there should be coping mechanisms like this one.

I agree. Kind of how your body forgets pain, for example getting a tattoo.... hurts at the time then you forget the pain until you have another. I have read the same about child birth.

Anxiety isn?t just worrying about something. It can manifest in many ways. Mine manifested in the form of health paranoia, insomnia and physical symptoms such as tight throat, difficulty swallowing, clenched jaw. I would also get after images from bright light but I believe that is just me looking for it.

One thing I also noticed during my most anxious periods are that my eyes can play tricks on me. I will think inanimate objects are moving or shadows appear out of no where but it?s just the flight or fight response.

I have learned to accept anything that comes with LTC and I feel in a much better place because of it.

 

[ZeroLuck]

The question is if the anxiety is manifested from biological disorder that could actually be considered damage from the MDMA, is it chronic or is it just imbalances... it SUCKS.

 

[lionheart90]

I've always had social anxiety pre-ltc, and maybe worry a little extra over stuff, but nothing like after the LTC. Anxiety and Depression even stripping you from happiness aren't as such concern as cognitive decline, what's in my case, because they put me in competitive disadvantage in the world. :/

https://www.anxietycentre.com/anxiety-symptoms/memory-loss.shtml

Is anxietycentral legit? According to this article anxiety can be the reason for my bad memory. :/

yeah man, anxiety can make it seem like you have cognitive decline. So can depression.

It doesn't mean your brain is messed up or you have somehow lost brain power. It's more like your brain has selectivly shut off certain areas and so you lose the power they used to bring to the brain. With time and treatment you will get them turned back on though, so it's only a temporary issue.

when I think of cognitive decline I think of alzheimers or dementia, permanent and irreversible decline. Which the LTC might seem like because its so long lasting, but from everthing I've read it does get better after the 2-3 years mark. 2 for some, 3 for others.

 

[lionheart90]

a walk outside makes my head spin because my vision is all wonky

Give it more time then, sooner or later that effect will go down and it will feel peaceful and relaxing to be in nature. but yeah don't try that practice if it's not working for you, look for other ones that work best for you.

 

[lionheart90]

Personally I don’t think it’s anxiety. I have no anexious feeling st all and both my heart rate and BP have dropped significantly since all this. Not to mention the physical symtoms (head pressure, visual, etc.) some even report sexual symtoms like genitial numbing, ED, and lower quality orgasim. How can this all be anxiety?

It's not the usual anxiety, it's something new that's caused by the drugs.

In life before the drugs, anxiety was conditional upon other things. we get anxiety because we have to go to work we dont like, or anxiety about your crush walking over to you, anxiety about the neighbors big scary dog, etc. The anxiety was always tied to a stimulus or trigger, and it was very over-bearing but once the stimulus and trigger was gone it passed very quickly.

in life after the drugs, the anxiety is caused by chemical imbalances (most likely, not 100% sure but this is the general consensus). Because these chemical imbalances are persistent you don't really feel it come and go like before. Anxiety and depression become the normal state so they almost become invisible. You have to really train your brain to see them or they will remain invisible.

they also say that it could be brain receptor down-regulation and dysregulation, which basically mean your chemicals might not be low or high but the receptors are in the wrong areas so you have these long lasting and persistent effects while the receptors try to recover (which takes years).

Either way, the anxiety and depression (ed, genital numbing, lack of pleasure = low serotonin/depression) seem to be persistent and chronic which is why they don't seem to be there at all.

so yeah it seems to be anxiety and depression because of low brain chemicals or receptor dysregulation, and it doesn't seem like normal anxiety or depression because its not conditioned upon an outside trigger. we are used to the conditioned anxiety and conditioned depression, but this new pervasive anxiety and depression is something that not many of us are aware of so it is confusing in the beginning.

 

[anon1644]

Personally I don’t think it’s anxiety. I have no anexious feeling st all and both my heart rate and BP have dropped significantly since all this. Not to mention the physical symtoms (head pressure, visual, etc.) some even report sexual symtoms like genitial numbing, ED, and lower quality orgasim. How can this all be anxiety?

This is exactly my concern. My heart isn't even racing or pounding, I just feel intoxicated, and in pain. I really question if it's some weird anxiety state, especially when benzos don't help.

 

[lionheart90]

The question is if the anxiety is manifested from biological disorder that could actually be considered damage from the MDMA, is it chronic or is it just imbalances... it SUCKS.

dude you've read like countless posts and researched this topic more than most of us combined. how tf can you still be fearing that it's damage from the MDMA?

it's not chronic damage like in the form of brain scarring and shit. it's just dysregulation/imbalances.

unless you were burning like 1g per weekend for a few months you didn't get brain damage.

 

[ZeroLuck]

dude you've read like countless posts and researched this topic more than most of us combined. how tf can you still be fearing that it's damage from the MDMA?

it's not chronic damage like in the form of brain scarring and shit. it's just dysregulation/imbalances.

unless you were burning like 1g per weekend for a few months you didn't get brain damage.

We have nothing solid. Yes, there's people who get LTC like symptoms from psychedelics, specifically LSD. A dose of LSD as you know is micrograms and therefore very unlikely to do any "damage" whatsoever. However we don't know if for an example those people really did only LSD, or any other drugs too.

As in the science field, the brain complex function isn't well understood and still most of its mystery are unsolved.

On the other hand we don't know if we took pure MDMA, was it synthesized correctly, purified correctly, cut with something and so on.

Another thing is we don't know how we breakdown the drug biologically individually. Yes there's stories stating... "My friends took much more than me and they're fine, but I've took less and experiencing all this hell".


I don't know what I've read or not, but... all this being just an imbalance in our brain chemistry sounds illogical too. How can you take 2 years to calibrate to normality? Can you give me an analogy of anything else that takes THAT long to go in its base state? We're talking LONG after the absence from the drug in the system. Why we're unaware of ANY other substance that can cause this kind of "imbalance"? There's countless psychoactive drugs, but only the ones from MDMA goes through this horrible experience. As I've said... illogical.

 

[adumbral]

The head tension is a physical biomarker of anxiety. It's a pretty common symptom though and most people have it to some degree.

I feel you on the dread of having built your life up to be so amazing, only to have it crash down. My life was going pretty well too and yeah basically this last year I've been in a hell that is very persistent. I used to be really happy for the most part, very optimistic and felt good emotionally. not all the time but at least a lot of the time. This last year though I've had very persistent emotional numbness and anhedonia or lack of happiness/pleasure. There have been times when I felt like I was a gutted fish, gutted of all the things in life that made life meaningful. It sucks but it goes away with time.

If it's been 4 weeks since the MDMA then you can quit the 5htp because you're not low in that chemical. supplementing with it when you're not low is doing more harm than helping. If you want to supplement do it with a multi vitamin and some adaptogenic herbs like ashwaghanda, ginseng, lions mane, etc.

also trying to be positive when you're in a shitty situation can often backfire. Acceptance of how things are is a good strategy, maybe save optimism for the future like this. "yeah I'm in the shit now, but I won't be forever".

and yeah it seems like time is the main healer for this situation. The supplements don't do much at all. The only things I've noticed that really help are exercise, preferably some kind of walking in nature. socializing with close friends. and a daily routine that includes lots of relaxation and very little responsibility.

thanks for your advice and acknowledgement. appreciated.

you say it goes away with time.. is your anhedonia still present? how long did it take to see definite improvement? it's weighing me down so bad. i keep obsessively comparing how i felt now to before. its like day and night, i feel like a different human being.. everything that gave me so much joy before now feels empty. its like everything that made me who i am has been wiped out. I'm just going through the motions now playing the part of who i was before.

i find it hard to accept that the headaches i'm having are entirely down to anxiety.. it's a constant physical feeling, so intense. its there no matter whether my anxiety is present or not. it's like someones pulling my hair back, like i've got this tension all over my scalp all the time.. like my heads trapped in a vice. i've never felt anything like it. i'm really scared that it won't go away.

the thought of feeling this way for six, twelve, eighteen months is really unbearable. i can't enjoy work, life, romance, or anything any more. i know it's counterproductive to obsess over brain damage etc, and possibilities of permanent damage, but it's really hard not to.

 

[ASX]

thanks for your advice and acknowledgement. appreciated.

you say it goes away with time.. is your anhedonia still present? how long did it take to see definite improvement? it's weighing me down so bad. i keep obsessively comparing how i felt now to before. its like day and night, i feel like a different human being.. everything that gave me so much joy before now feels empty. its like everything that made me who i am has been wiped out. I'm just going through the motions now playing the part of who i was before.

i find it hard to accept that the headaches i'm having are entirely down to anxiety.. it's a constant physical feeling, so intense. its there no matter whether my anxiety is present or not. it's like someones pulling my hair back, like i've got this tension all over my scalp all the time.. like my heads trapped in a vice. i've never felt anything like it. i'm really scared that it won't go away.

the thought of feeling this way for six, twelve, eighteen months is really unbearable. i can't enjoy work, life, romance, or anything any more. i know it's counterproductive to obsess over brain damage etc, and possibilities of permanent damage, but it's really hard not to.

Definitely sounds to me like a tension headache from anxiety. You say you feel no anxiety yet you are worried you will have the headache permenantly or long term. That?s anxiety my friend.

Once you realise all these physical symptoms are caused by stress hormones you will feel better. Took me 8 months to realise there is nothing wrong with me other than a chemical imbalance. It will go away with time, keep your chin up. You are doing great

 

[Needhelp123]

Give it more time then, sooner or later that effect will go down and it will feel peaceful and relaxing to be in nature. but yeah don't try that practice if it's not working for you, look for other ones that work best for you.

i cling to your words and hope you are right. I am 7 months out and while the emotional piece has gotten better, my physical symtoms are still there. I still see wavy lines when I ooonat things, my head still has pressure, and I feel like I’m in a bubble when I walk outside. Not to mention I’m always a little lightheadedheaded/loopy. It’s amazing how I took everyday life granted. I was career driven and stressed about the smallest things. Now I just want to be at peace and feel the breeze. A simple breeze used to make me feel good. I felt so connected and grounded. Now there is gaping void between myself and my body. No harmony, no synchronization. My body is now this thing that doesn’t work right and that’s it.
Right

 

[Dany657]

The head tension is a physical biomarker of anxiety. It's a pretty common symptom though and most people have it to some degree.

If this were true then the head pressure would be worse in anxiety inducing circumstances. In my case, it's not. I've also had anxiety the majority of my life and never once did I experience this head pressure until my LTC. While some studies have shown head pressure to be triggered by anxiety, it's clearly not the case in the situation where this particular physical symptom didn't appear until very recently after someone's drug use and lasts a hell of a lot longer than your average comedown. Acrylamide/mercury neurotoxicity is a FAR more likely scenario.

If it's been 4 weeks since the MDMA then you can quit the 5htp because you're not low in that chemical. supplementing with it when you're not low is doing more harm than helping

Saying you're not low on serotonin in the majority of LTC's is extremely wrong! Whats most likely the case is that some of your serotonin receptors are downregulated or perhaps even destroyed. This would explain why exercise & OMAD are both quite helpful in recovery due to their boost in BDNF and why something like 5-htp(which works better when receptors have more density) is most often ineffective for alleviating our symptoms in the long term.) Every LTC symptom I've got is listed under serotonin deficiency on Dr. Braverman's Neurotransmitter Deficiencies test. I see this as a clear indication that toxicity to the serotonin system has occurred.

@ZeroLuck have you stuck to strict keto with OMAD? I've found it provides a decent amount of cognitive improvement. More than even exercise

@Needhelp123 It's one hell of a longshot to say that all of our sufferings are due to anxiety. It sounds like you're also having the realization that this can't be the case.

unless you were burning like 1g per weekend for a few months you didn't get brain damage.

I was doing exactly that. 1g+ twice a week for a few months. My LTC causing dose was 1.75g over the course of five hours. I'm very curious as to where you came across this information. Most websites will say the neurotoxic dose is WAY below that, we're talking even less than 1/2 of a g. Then there are those who say that true neurotoxicity from mdma cannot happen. I'm very confident in the 2nd one, true neurotoxicity from mdma would require another neurotoxic substance (acrylamide for example) to lower the body's line of defense to the point where the actual poison taken with the pills can cause the neurotoxicity seen in LTC sufferers, and even then.. is mdma really the culprit? No!

 

[ASX]

We have nothing solid. Yes, there's people who get LTC like symptoms from psychedelics, specifically LSD. A dose of LSD as you know is micrograms and therefore very unlikely to do any "damage" whatsoever. However we don't know if for an example those people really did only LSD, or any other drugs too.

As in the science field, the brain complex function isn't well understood and still most of its mystery are unsolved.

On the other hand we don't know if we took pure MDMA, was it synthesized correctly, purified correctly, cut with something and so on.

Another thing is we don't know how we breakdown the drug biologically individually. Yes there's stories stating... "My friends took much more than me and they're fine, but I've took less and experiencing all this hell".


I don't know what I've read or not, but... all this being just an imbalance in our brain chemistry sounds illogical too. How can you take 2 years to calibrate to normality? Can you give me an analogy of anything else that takes THAT long to go in its base state? We're talking LONG after the absence from the drug in the system. Why we're unaware of ANY other substance that can cause this kind of "imbalance"? There's countless psychoactive drugs, but only the ones from MDMA goes through this horrible experience. As I've said... illogical.

I would treat it as an injury. Some injuries can take years to heal. A friend of mine had lung trouble which took 2 years to heal before he was able to work again.

I know that?s a physical illness but logically speaking what?s to say the brain would heal faster? I would put MDMA LTC in the same category as a serious illness.

 

[Needhelp123]

It's not the usual anxiety, it's something new that's caused by the drugs.

In life before the drugs, anxiety was conditional upon other things. we get anxiety because we have to go to work we dont like, or anxiety about your crush walking over to you, anxiety about the neighbors big scary dog, etc. The anxiety was always tied to a stimulus or trigger, and it was very over-bearing but once the stimulus and trigger was gone it passed very quickly.

in life after the drugs, the anxiety is caused by chemical imbalances (most likely, not 100% sure but this is the general consensus). Because these chemical imbalances are persistent you don't really feel it come and go like before. Anxiety and depression become the normal state so they almost become invisible. You have to really train your brain to see them or they will remain invisible.

they also say that it could be brain receptor down-regulation and dysregulation, which basically mean your chemicals might not be low or high but the receptors are in the wrong areas so you have these long lasting and persistent effects while the receptors try to recover (which takes years).

Either way, the anxiety and depression (ed, genital numbing, lack of pleasure = low serotonin/depression) seem to be persistent and chronic which is why they don't seem to be there at all.

so yeah it seems to be anxiety and depression because of low brain chemicals or receptor dysregulation, and it doesn't seem like normal anxiety or depression because its not conditioned upon an outside trigger. we are used to the conditioned anxiety and conditioned depression, but this new pervasive anxiety and depression is something that not many of us are aware of so it is confusing in the beginning.

is there any way to upregulate receptors?

 

[Dany657]

@Needhelp123 The supplement Magnesium L-Threonate has been shown to increase the density of receptors(upregulation) during the duration of it's use. While it does provide temporary cognitive improvement, I wouldn't look at it as a cure. I'm starting to think the destruction of receptors is more likely and that's okay in LTC since we can make new ones with exercise, OMAD, & healthy keto.

 

[Needhelp123]

We have nothing solid. Yes, there's people who get LTC like symptoms from psychedelics, specifically LSD. A dose of LSD as you know is micrograms and therefore very unlikely to do any "damage" whatsoever. However we don't know if for an example those people really did only LSD, or any other drugs too.

As in the science field, the brain complex function isn't well understood and still most of its mystery are unsolved.

On the other hand we don't know if we took pure MDMA, was it synthesized correctly, purified correctly, cut with something and so on.

Another thing is we don't know how we breakdown the drug biologically individually. Yes there's stories stating... "My friends took much more than me and they're fine, but I've took less and experiencing all this hell".


I don't know what I've read or not, but... all this being just an imbalance in our brain chemistry sounds illogical too. How can you take 2 years to calibrate to normality? Can you give me an analogy of anything else that takes THAT long to go in its base state? We're talking LONG after the absence from the drug in the system. Why we're unaware of ANY other substance that can cause this kind of "imbalance"? There's countless psychoactive drugs, but only the ones from MDMA goes through this horrible experience. As I've said... illogical.

There is a whole forum of HPPD people who have similar sides plus more for years and years from other drugs (and also mdma)

 

[Needhelp123]

@Needhelp123 The supplement Magnesium L-Threonate has been shown to increase the density of receptors(upregulation) during the duration of it's use. While it does provide temporary cognitive improvement, I wouldn't look at it as a cure. I'm starting to think the destruction of receptors is more likely and that's okay in LTC since we can make new ones with exercise, OMAD, & healthy keto.

thanks! I’ve been following this for a few weeks now. How long in are you Danny? I’m worried I waited too long at the 7 month mark.

 

[lionheart90]

is there any way to upregulate receptors?

It's best to just let nature heal your brain man. Messing with chemicals is what got our brains into this in the first place, the last thing we should be doing is trying to use chemicals to mess with it again. Just exercise and work on getting through each day one step at a time. It's gonna take a lot of time, that is the bottom line. IMO things you do like exercise and meditation just make you feel better, they dont shorten the amount of time it takes to recover.

 

[lionheart90]

We have nothing solid. Yes, there's people who get LTC like symptoms from psychedelics, specifically LSD. A dose of LSD as you know is micrograms and therefore very unlikely to do any "damage" whatsoever. However we don't know if for an example those people really did only LSD, or any other drugs too.

As in the science field, the brain complex function isn't well understood and still most of its mystery are unsolved.

On the other hand we don't know if we took pure MDMA, was it synthesized correctly, purified correctly, cut with something and so on.

Another thing is we don't know how we breakdown the drug biologically individually. Yes there's stories stating... "My friends took much more than me and they're fine, but I've took less and experiencing all this hell".


I don't know what I've read or not, but... all this being just an imbalance in our brain chemistry sounds illogical too. How can you take 2 years to calibrate to normality? Can you give me an analogy of anything else that takes THAT long to go in its base state? We're talking LONG after the absence from the drug in the system. Why we're unaware of ANY other substance that can cause this kind of "imbalance"? There's countless psychoactive drugs, but only the ones from MDMA goes through this horrible experience. As I've said... illogical.

Doubt and anxiety goes hand in hand. Anxiety is a tough adversary, and once you start to get it on the ropes you'll notice that doubt starts to spread into almost every thought you have. It's anxiety trying to remain dominant. When you start to doubt everything anxiety is giving it one last shot. You have to push through it though or you'll just keep being bullied by the anxiety.

It's not illogical man, just to you because your knowledge is limited. There are people with nueroscience degrees who can talk about whats going inside our brain for hours and can almost fully understand this issue. There is science out there man, and people who can understand the brain to a huge degree. so don't think that the brain is some mystery that nobody has really solved yet because there has been light years of research done in the last few decades.

look up nueroplasticity and rewiring the brain. It happens slowly, like over the course of years.

drugs caused the brain to re-wire itself in a negative way, and it takes years for it to unwire itself. Especially if someone was doing drugs for years.

and its not as simple as "do mdma and your brain wires itself badly" there is clearly something else that has to do with it. like a bad trip or a crash experience that causes the bad rewiring. Everybody who has a LTC starts off with a "it all started one night" story, so clearly there is some kind of build up effect and then the hair that broke the camels back.

so yeah man, seems most likely that the drugs influence our brain chemicals in a negative way, then the brain rewires itself so it adapts to the chemical imbalances. then we feel miserable so we quit the drugs, only to find that our brains are still wired badly even after the drugs have left our system.

and yeah most people dont understand how the brain wires itself so I'm guessing a lot of people make copious amounts of mistakes like continuing with drugs or not exercising or not doing some form of mental therapy/relaxation to break the cycle of depression and anxiety. which consequently makes it harder for their brain to rewire itself and prolongs recovery.