Anxiety/depression/depersonalisation? What's going on?

[Blacksea2]

here's my story, I hope someone can help me a bit
I took ecstasy against my better judgement about this time last month at a party, and it seems like it's maybe caused depression or anxiety or something which has been almost debilitating. I'm hoping someone can help me shed some light on this, and before anyone says anything, yes I'm in the process of seeing a doctor about this.
The pill was untested but I've seen pill reports of what I think it was and it seems to check out. The other 3 people who took it seem to be fine.

What I'm feeling - please read

I just don't feel right after taking it and I'm having trouble narrowing down what it is. The world seems a bit 'off' and I don't feel like myself. I feel like I don't recognise my family or my home which is really upsetting. I've lost interest in things I used to love, like listening to and writing music. I feel like I have no drive to do anything, I used to always go for the best and fight to get it but now it's like I have no motivation and I don't care which is horrible. I feel hardly any emotion, just the occasional flicker of sadness or sometimes optimism. I don't get upset by things that would have got to me in the past, its like I'm numb to it, like people being rude to me. I get times I know I should be anxious, and would have in the past but it's like paradoxical because it's like 'I'm feeling anxious, I'm finally feeling SOMETHING again'' which then kills it (I'm not sure if that made sense, it's hard to explain, because the anxious feeling i 'good' it makes it go then I worry I'm fucked up). I sometimes get confused thoughts, possibly due to being mentally exhausted, but they're pretty distressing eg, today in college they described a special effect in film making and I thought 'that sounds cool, maybe I could put that in a song?'. I have like a phobia of drugs as a result now, and I am so ashamed of having done them now. I always worry 'am I doing this because I did drugs?'. I also see sort of random shapes like mild hallucinations off centre of my eyes but I think that could be stress related, I can tell they're not real so I just ignore them. My short term memory is pretty hit or miss. In a nutshell everything just feels wrong and I'm uncomfortable with just living.


I only took one pill, which I have read is very unlikely to cause any permanent damage and a lot of the stories of people having this for years have been folk who have abused it over a long period. So I'm wondering if this is depersonalisation, depression, or just anxiety and stress, or have I seriously fucked up from one night of being stupid. I've always been very anxious about my health and always jump to the absolute worst possible answer so I'm really scared right now.


Sorry for the length of the post but I think the details were important. The thing I'm hanging on to is that the brain has a great capacity for healing so I'm going to give it the best chance I can by avoiding alcohol, cigs and drugs and caffeine. It's only been a month but I'm seriously worried, I won't last if I have to live like this from now on. I see 3 months to a year being said, I hope I recover because I've learned my lesson.

 

[Cereals]

Hey! I'm sorry that happened to you! Our brains are so incredibly complicated it could be difficult to pinpoint exactly what may be wrong. I'll just share my experiences with you and hope it gives you some piece of mind!
I depersonalized hefty after some strong hash fudge. I have a super low THC tolerance so a little goes a long way with me. I didn't freak out, but I was not in my body during the most of the trip, I remember "coming back to reality" a few times to my boyfriends shaking me and asking me if I was ok, he had more than me and was fine. Anyways, for the next 2 weeks, it was awful. I didn't look like myself in the mirror, and my whole life seemed like a movie that I was watching. I couldn't concentrate, I couldn't make complete sentences, and nothing seemed exciting. I did have lots of anxiety, mostly because I thought I'd wrecked myself. I couldn't do my job properly, and I was scared that I would never feel normal again. It took me only about a month to return to normal, I found exercising would give me temporary clarity, and a little more optimism. I did take some leftover SSRI's when I had to go to a social gathering, and they helped my mood immensely. It really just took time for my body to purge itself and get back to normal.
Now time number two, this was a friend who supplied us supposed MDMA. Make a long story short, I tested it after the fact, and it turned out to be CRYSTAL METH with a little MDXX. I had a trip that sucked, and we kept dropping chutes looking for our high that never came. We had the shittiest come down, and for 2 months after I was down in the dumps. Our friends didn't care, it didn't affect them that much because they do tons of drugs and whatever fucks them up the most is the best. And when they're having a shitty a comedown, they'll just do more drugs.
You can have an afterglow after a really good roll that lasts for months, and I'm pretty sure you can have the opposite feeling.
January, I did 100mg of tested product, had a good clean roll, with not a bad comedown. Since then I've felt completely normal.

My suggestion for you is to not do any drugs again, unless you test them. Just because it didn't affect your friends negatively doesn't mean there's no shit in it. Test kits are $20, get the 3 regeant kit. It's a small price to pay for good-time insurance. There's a plethora of hardly tested research chems that are cheap and easy to aquire, and that makes it profitable to sell them as molly, x, or mdma. You never know what you're getting.
Eat healthy, eat clean, drink lots of fluids, and get some exercise. Go for walks, swims, whatever you can. Take supplements that increase energy: B vitamins, Vit D, Omega(very important for brain, take lots of OMEGA 3,6,9) and Iron. And if you wan to try boost your serotonin, you can try taking 5-htp. I take it for PMS, I think it works. 5-htp sometimes does get turned into melatonin in your body, and can make you tired, depending on what time you take it at, it can also keep you awake, so playing around with dosing times is important. I find if I take it in the afternoon I want to sleep so badly, so I just take 200mg first thing in the morning.

You very well could have had pure mdma and your serotonin system is having trouble replenishing. I'm not a doctor, so i don't know.

 

[McBird]

Hey mate. Know how you feel. I got a hardcore 'long term comedown' as they call them after only my fourth time on MDMA. It's been 6 months now since it all went hellishly wrong for me. I am a lot better now. You're right not to fear permanent damage. People fully recover from hardcore strokes and massive head trauma all the time (given lots of time), there's no way a random pill you took one night is going to fuck you up for life. You're just learning (exactly like I have) a hard lesson about the mind and psychoactive drugs. They do indeed do have the power to give you a miserable experience. Especially when you mix MDMA/stimulants with someone who might say this...

I've always been very anxious about my health and always jump to the absolute worst possible answer so I'm really scared right now.

Bingo.

Take it from a guy who also strongly identifies with that as well... What you are learning in this experience is not so much about drugs as it is about the how deep and complex the mental state of anxiety can be. I've always been a super hypochondriac and generally anxious person, and although I was able to handle doing MDMA responsibly a few times, the second I accidentally overstepped the line by doing a little too much too fast, the physiological intensity of what goes on inside your brain is a recipe for disaster for people like you and I. What you are experiencing is not physical brain damage, but drug-induced emotional trauma. You're not used to these new symptoms you're experiencing like the depersonalisation, derealisation etc, you never thought they might happen to you under normal circumstances, but then you also didn't expect that doing drugs so early in your drug-doing-career might result in one of these exceptional circumstances. Well, you've now found out you were wrong. Just as I did.

What you're experiencing right now is a lot more common than you might think. Mostly, I would guess, it would be people like you and I whom already consider themselves prone to anxiety that make up the vast majority of these such cases (when discounting the people who have abused drugs hardcore for years and years, i.e. not people like us and not relevant to our experiences.) My guess is that you'd see myriads more reports of recovery experiences if people who had them decided to write up about them instead of just forgetting about it altogether as they recover.

As someone who has been through exactly what you are going through, I have these things to tell you... Good and bad...

-You have a lot more to learn about anxiety and the million ways it will express itself mentally, emotionally and physically. It will always be in ways you don't expect it. I guarantee it. Thus to try to keep yourself as sane as you can I urge you to expect the unexpected. Nothing should surprise you and I mean nothing.
-You probably have another few weeks left to endure the worst of the debilitating symptoms. After two months, some degree of normalcy can be expected. This is the transition period between hellish misery and relatively tolerable misery.
-Every week you will be slightly better off than the last, even if it doesn't feel like that much.
-With anxiety, when one thing goes away, something else is bound to come up. Because this is a period of intense, deep anxiety that you are experiencing, your mind will conjure up new, weird, frightening things to keep you worried as shit all the time, especially when you think you're finally getting better. That is the nature of deep anxiety.
-After you make the transition into the 'tolerable misery' stage, it will take another month or two to get to the point where you feel like you can forget about it most of the time.
-After that, when you think you're completely better finally, something else will come up yet again and scare the shit out of you. This is the last of the deep trauma ironing itself out. Just ride through it again. It also will pass.
-Don't touch any sort of psychoactive substance for at least another 3 months. At all. You will go into another anxiety loop about making it worse or setting yourself back because of it.
-Giving attention to your symptoms is the number 1 thing that cause them to linger longer than they need to. The best thing you can do in the meantime is find healthy ways to distract yourself from them, ignore them, or accept them.
-You can accept your symptoms by acknowledging their transience and the fact that they are simply a manifestation of anxiety that will go away over time regardless.
-Time really does heal all.
-Take the time it takes you to heal 100% from this, and wait at least that time again before even considering taking MDMA again. AT LEAST. You will be 90-95% recovered around the 3-4 month mark. That remaining 5-10% will take at least another 3 months.
-DON'T GOOGLE YOUR FUCKING SYMPTOMS.
-Your motivation is tied to your anxiety. It will recover alongside it.
-Depersonalisation and derealisation is 100% emotional and 0% physical damage. The best thing you can do for it, again, is to do your best to forget about it.
-Yes, given time, every single shred of your misery will be a thing of the past. You will be fully normal again eventually.

More recovery tips:

-Friends and family are the best. Nothing distracts from your misery better than just talking with people, hanging out, doing things as you normally would.
-Find things you can do to distract yourself from your suffering. Gym, exercise, sports, learning something new (a language, to code) are great in my experience.
-Stay away from porn and wanking. They might feel good for a bit but you are seriously fucking yourself in more than one way if you do this. Just about nothing will set you back more. Unorthodox advice maybe, but I wouldn't be saying it if it didn't help me massively.
-Lead your daily life as normally as you possibly can. Sounds cliche but from experience I can see why it's so often repeated. It really makes all the difference.

I can understand how you fear that surely you've fucked yourself up for good. Back when I did it myself I couldn't have imagined a hell worse than the one I was in, and now here I am, sitting here 6 months later living a life as normal as ever and as if it never happened. You'll get there bro.

 

[Blacksea2]

Hey mate. Know how you feel. I got a hardcore 'long term comedown' as they call them after only my fourth time on MDMA. It's been 6 months now since it all went hellishly wrong for me. I am a lot better now. You're right not to fear permanent damage. People fully recover from hardcore strokes and massive head trauma all the time (given lots of time), there's no way a random pill you took one night is going to fuck you up for life. You're just learning (exactly like I have) a hard lesson about the mind and psychoactive drugs. They do indeed do have the power to give you a miserable experience. Especially when you mix MDMA/stimulants with someone who might say this...



Bingo.

Take it from a guy who also strongly identifies with that as well... What you are learning in this experience is not so much about drugs as it is about the how deep and complex the mental state of anxiety can be. I've always been a super hypochondriac and generally anxious person, and although I was able to handle doing MDMA responsibly a few times, the second I accidentally overstepped the line by doing a little too much too fast, the physiological intensity of what goes on inside your brain is a recipe for disaster for people like you and I. What you are experiencing is not physical brain damage, but drug-induced emotional trauma. You're not used to these new symptoms you're experiencing like the depersonalisation, derealisation etc, you never thought they might happen to you under normal circumstances, but then you also didn't expect that doing drugs so early in your drug-doing-career might result in one of these exceptional circumstances. Well, you've now found out you were wrong. Just as I did.

What you're experiencing right now is a lot more common than you might think. Mostly, I would guess, it would be people like you and I whom already consider themselves prone to anxiety that make up the vast majority of these such cases (when discounting the people who have abused drugs hardcore for years and years, i.e. not people like us and not relevant to our experiences.) My guess is that you'd see myriads more reports of recovery experiences if people who had them decided to write up about them instead of just forgetting about it altogether as they recover.

As someone who has been through exactly what you are going through, I have these things to tell you... Good and bad...

-You have a lot more to learn about anxiety and the million ways it will express itself mentally, emotionally and physically. It will always be in ways you don't expect it. I guarantee it. Thus to try to keep yourself as sane as you can I urge you to expect the unexpected. Nothing should surprise you and I mean nothing.
-You probably have another few weeks left to endure the worst of the debilitating symptoms. After two months, some degree of normalcy can be expected. This is the transition period between hellish misery and relatively tolerable misery.
-Every week you will be slightly better off than the last, even if it doesn't feel like that much.
-With anxiety, when one thing goes away, something else is bound to come up. Because this is a period of intense, deep anxiety that you are experiencing, your mind will conjure up new, weird, frightening things to keep you worried as shit all the time, especially when you think you're finally getting better. That is the nature of deep anxiety.
-After you make the transition into the 'tolerable misery' stage, it will take another month or two to get to the point where you feel like you can forget about it most of the time.
-After that, when you think you're completely better finally, something else will come up yet again and scare the shit out of you. This is the last of the deep trauma ironing itself out. Just ride through it again. It also will pass.
-Don't touch any sort of psychoactive substance for at least another 3 months. At all. You will go into another anxiety loop about making it worse or setting yourself back because of it.
-Giving attention to your symptoms is the number 1 thing that cause them to linger longer than they need to. The best thing you can do in the meantime is find healthy ways to distract yourself from them, ignore them, or accept them.
-You can accept your symptoms by acknowledging their transience and the fact that they are simply a manifestation of anxiety that will go away over time regardless.
-Time really does heal all.
-Take the time it takes you to heal 100% from this, and wait at least that time again before even considering taking MDMA again. AT LEAST. You will be 90-95% recovered around the 3-4 month mark. That remaining 5-10% will take at least another 3 months.
-DON'T GOOGLE YOUR FUCKING SYMPTOMS.
-Your motivation is tied to your anxiety. It will recover alongside it.
-Depersonalisation and derealisation is 100% emotional and 0% physical damage. The best thing you can do for it, again, is to do your best to forget about it.
-Yes, given time, every single shred of your misery will be a thing of the past. You will be fully normal again eventually.

More recovery tips:

-Friends and family are the best. Nothing distracts from your misery better than just talking with people, hanging out, doing things as you normally would.
-Find things you can do to distract yourself from your suffering. Gym, exercise, sports, learning something new (a language, to code) are great in my experience.
-Stay away from porn and wanking. They might feel good for a bit but you are seriously fucking yourself in more than one way if you do this. Just about nothing will set you back more. Unorthodox advice maybe, but I wouldn't be saying it if it didn't help me massively.
-Lead your daily life as normally as you possibly can. Sounds cliche but from experience I can see why it's so often repeated. It really makes all the difference.

I can understand how you fear that surely you've fucked yourself up for good. Back when I did it myself I couldn't have imagined a hell worse than the one I was in, and now here I am, sitting here 6 months later living a life as normal as ever and as if it never happened. You'll get there bro.

Great post, I have trouble trusting posts like these but this sounds pretty good. I'm going to stop myself researching this from now on, and yeah I'm never taking anything again in the foreseeable future

 

[PotatoMan]

maybe you shouldn't be doing drugs. Most people who get these intense emotional changes really shouldn't be doing drugs IMO.

 

[Deltronpedro]

Hey mate. Know how you feel. I got a hardcore 'long term comedown' as they call them after only my fourth time on MDMA. It's been 6 months now since it all went hellishly wrong for me. I am a lot better now. You're right not to fear permanent damage. People fully recover from hardcore strokes and massive head trauma all the time (given lots of time), there's no way a random pill you took one night is going to fuck you up for life. You're just learning (exactly like I have) a hard lesson about the mind and psychoactive drugs. They do indeed do have the power to give you a miserable experience. Especially when you mix MDMA/stimulants with someone who might say this...



Bingo.

Take it from a guy who also strongly identifies with that as well... What you are learning in this experience is not so much about drugs as it is about the how deep and complex the mental state of anxiety can be. I've always been a super hypochondriac and generally anxious person, and although I was able to handle doing MDMA responsibly a few times, the second I accidentally overstepped the line by doing a little too much too fast, the physiological intensity of what goes on inside your brain is a recipe for disaster for people like you and I. What you are experiencing is not physical brain damage, but drug-induced emotional trauma. You're not used to these new symptoms you're experiencing like the depersonalisation, derealisation etc, you never thought they might happen to you under normal circumstances, but then you also didn't expect that doing drugs so early in your drug-doing-career might result in one of these exceptional circumstances. Well, you've now found out you were wrong. Just as I did.

What you're experiencing right now is a lot more common than you might think. Mostly, I would guess, it would be people like you and I whom already consider themselves prone to anxiety that make up the vast majority of these such cases (when discounting the people who have abused drugs hardcore for years and years, i.e. not people like us and not relevant to our experiences.) My guess is that you'd see myriads more reports of recovery experiences if people who had them decided to write up about them instead of just forgetting about it altogether as they recover.

As someone who has been through exactly what you are going through, I have these things to tell you... Good and bad...

-You have a lot more to learn about anxiety and the million ways it will express itself mentally, emotionally and physically. It will always be in ways you don't expect it. I guarantee it. Thus to try to keep yourself as sane as you can I urge you to expect the unexpected. Nothing should surprise you and I mean nothing.
-You probably have another few weeks left to endure the worst of the debilitating symptoms. After two months, some degree of normalcy can be expected. This is the transition period between hellish misery and relatively tolerable misery.
-Every week you will be slightly better off than the last, even if it doesn't feel like that much.
-With anxiety, when one thing goes away, something else is bound to come up. Because this is a period of intense, deep anxiety that you are experiencing, your mind will conjure up new, weird, frightening things to keep you worried as shit all the time, especially when you think you're finally getting better. That is the nature of deep anxiety.
-After you make the transition into the 'tolerable misery' stage, it will take another month or two to get to the point where you feel like you can forget about it most of the time.
-After that, when you think you're completely better finally, something else will come up yet again and scare the shit out of you. This is the last of the deep trauma ironing itself out. Just ride through it again. It also will pass.
-Don't touch any sort of psychoactive substance for at least another 3 months. At all. You will go into another anxiety loop about making it worse or setting yourself back because of it.
-Giving attention to your symptoms is the number 1 thing that cause them to linger longer than they need to. The best thing you can do in the meantime is find healthy ways to distract yourself from them, ignore them, or accept them.
-You can accept your symptoms by acknowledging their transience and the fact that they are simply a manifestation of anxiety that will go away over time regardless.
-Time really does heal all.
-Take the time it takes you to heal 100% from this, and wait at least that time again before even considering taking MDMA again. AT LEAST. You will be 90-95% recovered around the 3-4 month mark. That remaining 5-10% will take at least another 3 months.
-DON'T GOOGLE YOUR FUCKING SYMPTOMS.
-Your motivation is tied to your anxiety. It will recover alongside it.
-Depersonalisation and derealisation is 100% emotional and 0% physical damage. The best thing you can do for it, again, is to do your best to forget about it.
-Yes, given time, every single shred of your misery will be a thing of the past. You will be fully normal again eventually.

More recovery tips:

-Friends and family are the best. Nothing distracts from your misery better than just talking with people, hanging out, doing things as you normally would.
-Find things you can do to distract yourself from your suffering. Gym, exercise, sports, learning something new (a language, to code) are great in my experience.
-Stay away from porn and wanking. They might feel good for a bit but you are seriously fucking yourself in more than one way if you do this. Just about nothing will set you back more. Unorthodox advice maybe, but I wouldn't be saying it if it didn't help me massively.
-Lead your daily life as normally as you possibly can. Sounds cliche but from experience I can see why it's so often repeated. It really makes all the difference.

I can understand how you fear that surely you've fucked yourself up for good. Back when I did it myself I couldn't have imagined a hell worse than the one I was in, and now here I am, sitting here 6 months later living a life as normal as ever and as if it never happened. You'll get there bro.

Great, thanks for that post, man.
Ive red a buch of recovery advices and storys but you are the really first who advises porn as a factor here.
Whats behind it?

 

[McBird]

Great, thanks for that post, man.
Ive red a buch of recovery advices and storys but you are the really first who advises porn as a factor here.
Whats behind it?

Quitting porn and wanking was something I was in the process of at the time my LTC started. So it was kind of coincidental that I got to discover how my LTC recovery was affected whenever I decided to go back to it temporarily. I discovered how bad porn is for you at yourbrainonporn.com and decided to give up wanking at the same time; as I noticed that it was equally habitual for me and was simply curious to see what would happen when I went an extended period of time without it. I noticed when I went a few weeks without it, my mind sharpened to a state like I'd never experienced before. Contrarily, I discovered that it massively exacerbated my anxiety whenever I indulged. It also made the auditory illusions and tinnitus come back immediately and intensely, and coupled with the anxiety, it made it very distressing. So I avoided it as much as possible. I credit quitting these habits with making me both a far happier and far more confident person than I have ever been in my life, despite my LTC.

There are places on the internet that can get a bit intense and preachy about how much quitting these things can turn lives around, but I really wouldn't be advising you quit these things as well if I wasn't absolutely certain that it helped immensely with my recovery. Even my life in general. Aside from time, this is the #1 thing that helped me, undoubtedly.

 

[Deltronpedro]

Aside from time, this is the #1 thing that helped me, undoubtedly.

Wow. What about having sex? Istn this the same effect?

 

[McBird]

Sex works on the same mechanism, and is also draining although not as bad as masturbating, however it should ideally be avoided if you want to accelerate your recovery.

 

[Deltronpedro]

Thanks for your advice my friend. Hope I will get this working :D
Have a good day

 

[Greg919]

I Feel You 100%!

I have felt very "odd" for the past two months after doing MDMA... I'll share my story.
It all started one night after a typical long distance night time run in mid-December, where after I experienced several blurry circles in my eye that lasted 20 minutes. My body then tensed up, and I felt extremely physically anxious for the rest of the night until I was able to fall asleep. For the next week (Week 1) I felt extremely sick with: inconsistent bowel movements, frequent urination, sweating and tingling in extremities, extreme brain fog, mediocre sleep, heart palpitations, and frequent episode of anxious/panic-like attacks. I saw my doctor who ran pretty much every blood test in the books, and concluded other than a slightly high blood pressure that I was completely fine. So he ruled I was experiencing anxiety or developing an anxiety disorder. The next week (Week 2) I felt much better each and every day, and I still experienced slight symptoms but they were no where near as frequent and severe as before. Week 3 then began, and the severe symptoms were back in a modified form. Symptoms included: extremely sweaty hands and feet, a few anxiety/panic episodes, restlessness, insomnia, muscle twitches, low libido, no energy, noticing pigmentation and small white spots on hands and arms. I then started eating a lot better and more cautiously, taking a multivitamin, returning to moderate exercise, and noticed that I began feeling better once again. I felt a lot better in the beginning of Week 5, but then experienced a day of extreme stomach pains which ventured into diarrhea. Week in and week out it's been a good week and a bad week (small symptoms, sleeping problems, digestive problems). I feel as if my good weeks are progressively getting better and my bad weeks are not nearly as bad as they were before. I have started taking melatonin on nights where my mind won't turn off, but I feel my symptoms have been more so physical then mental. And yes, they have been there as I have had brain fog, a lack of focus, a lack of interest in what I love, and the feeling of disconnection from the world. My MDMA use was 5 times (.2 rail) within a two month span. I also started smoking weed in that time and did it once every week up until I had my attack. I am also looking for suggestions to what I can do to feel better, but here are some I have for you!
Here's what I have done to try to help myself feel 100% again, hope this helps!
- Dim lighting before bed to allow mind to rest
- Eliminate caffeine from your diet
- Eliminate alcohol from your diet
- Eliminate any drug use from your life
- Limit the amount of sugar intake
- Start taking omega 3's (good for your brain activity)
- Try to manage and avoid stress at any means possible
- Start a multivitamin to ensure your body is getting the nutrients it needs
- Start a good diet!
- Try to limit sexual release, as I have heard limiting it for a period of time helps the brain reboot properly.

Hope things are getting better for you man!