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MDMA Recovery (Stories & Support - 2)

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I was not able to sleep last night until I took Clonazepan because of EXPLODING HEAD SYNDROME

https://www.sleepassociation.org/patients-general-public/exploding-head-syndrome/

Exploding head syndrome is a rare and relatively undocumented parasomnia event in which the subject experiences a loud bang similar to a bomb exploding, a gun going off, a clash of cymbals or any other form of loud, indecipherable noise that seems to originate from inside the head. Contrary to the name, exploding head syndrome has no elements of pain, swelling or any other physical trait associated with it. They may be perceived as having bright flashes of light accompanying them, or result in shortness of breath, though this is likely caused by the increased heart rate of the subject after experiencing it. It most often occurs just before deep sleep, and sometimes upon coming out of deep sleep.
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Anyone else experience this? It drives me CRAZY :( I'm having a very bad week...

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I've started getting migraines that I strongly believe are related to what I considered conservative, but chronic MDMA and MDA use. I used both off and on for about 3 years, almost always two months apart. Over the last 3 months, I began delving into MDA a bit more frequently. About every 2-3 weeks, sometimes mixing MDMA in as well. Dose escalation became pretty high as 150 mg MDA would barely phase me. This was due to tolerance and not issues of purity. The purity was quantitatively known to me always. I still have a binder of spectra and chromatographs (can't bring myself to toss the spectra :) )

Anyway, about a month ago I began having retinal migraines. These moved on to full blown migraines with very severe neurological symptoms such as unilateral facial numbness and crippling aphasia. I lost a massive amount of work time due to the aphasia. I'm now on fiorecet and sumatriptan as needed which help a lot. Still, they aren't cure alls and I find myself using them far too often for my liking. I've had CTs and MRIs which have not found anything abnormal. Multiple doctors have said it's very unusual for someone my age to suddenly develop migraines and some were initially skeptical to treat my symptoms as migraines. I did some research and found a number of articles correlating low cortical 5HT to cortical spreading depression.

I was dumb and cocky. I thought I was in good shape because I had pure stuff and I wasn't abusing it like crazy. Needless to say, I am full of regret. I can't conclusively prove that MDxx use caused my neurological issues, but the evidence seems to strongly support it. I'm confident things will significantly improve with time, but I seriously doubt I will ever be able to touch these again. I am probably getting too damn old for it anyway, so maybe it's not the worst thing in the world.

What kind of disturbs me is that I hear people younger than myself doing MDMA of questionable purity and using it more carelessly. It's possible I'm an anomaly and just more vulnerable to neurological issue. It's also remotely possible that MDA is THAT much more neurotoxic than MDMA. Still, I worry for people who use this stuff chronically.
 
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Need recovery help

just curious as to what i can do to get my serotonin levels back up anything i can eat any supplements i can take or techniques???
 
CloudIX said:
Hey man, I know what you are going through and I can definitely assure you there is a light at the end of the tunnel. In the past few months I have made HUGE progress in my recovery. Like night and day difference. Like everyone else said, there is unfortunately no set time frame for this, but I think it really depends on the experience and how much it has effected you. Eventually, you will stop dwelling on how you feel and forget to even have the negative thoughts you have been having. Feel free to message me man!
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Thank you for the resassurance. I hope you right and i cnt help but want the anxiety to go away now. but patience is key. Im glad you have made good progress keep up the good work.
 
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Tpchan85 said:
I absolutely agree. We tend to focus on the negative when we post but 14 months down the road I would say I really feel like myself. Before I was like "where the fuck am i and who the fuck am i" the anxiety was so crippling. I literally felt like I was tripping my nut off questioning reality all the time. Now I'm just me again but with anxiety / physical symptoms caused by the trauma. The most important step in this was not allowing my symptoms to impede my life! I can not stress enough that withdrawing from life, sitting at home waiting for my symptoms to pass probably tripled the duration of them and made me utterly depressed. I remember telling myself "i cant go out, i might have a panic attack, what if i have heart palpitations?" etc etc but I was

What you need to bare in mind is that if you stop giving a fuck anxiety wont just disappear like that. It takes a long time to train your brain. I believe that our brains were set into panic mode by a traumatic event (for me horrible panic attack caused by daily stimulant abuse) and the way to undo that is to basically chill the fuck out for a couple of months be it through distraction, cbt, medication or whatever. I also have to say I think meditation and other mental strategies are bullshit, to me there was nothing worse than sitting in the dark with nothing but my own thoughts. It's like if you try not to think about something you WILL think about it.

Anyway, that's my take on it.
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Wow thats my life right there. i dont do shit becuz i say what if i have a panic attack jus like the first day. the first panic attack kicked off my ltc and it was horribly unimaginable. Fucking terror. Anyways ur right it does take time to train your brain that shit will be okay. Im trying to be social atm but getting myself go to an upcoming concert/rave is hard af. I cnt buy my ticket due to fear. Thats a goal of mine to attend and stay at a freaking concert. I did this to myself and maybe it would have happened regardless of xtc who knows. But i have to deal with it and fix it.
 
johnnyquid said:
just curious as to what i can do to get my serotonin levels back up anything i can eat any supplements i can take or techniques???
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Have a read of this thread I merged your question into, you will find a lot of recovery tips in here and people that have been through this before and will be able to offer advice
 
jusjenn21 said:
Wow thats my life right there. i dont do shit becuz i say what if i have a panic attack jus like the first day. the first panic attack kicked off my ltc and it was horribly unimaginable. Fucking terror. Anyways ur right it does take time to train your brain that shit will be okay. Im trying to be social atm but getting myself go to an upcoming concert/rave is hard af. I cnt buy my ticket due to fear. Thats a goal of mine to attend and stay at a freaking concert. I did this to myself and maybe it would have happened regardless of xtc who knows. But i have to deal with it and fix it.
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November last year was the first time I went out after my LTC started. I was a wreck and was really scared of what would happen and if the surrounding would trigger anxiety. I remember before I went my heart rate was over 100 I was so anxious about it, so I had a couple of beers and forced myself to go. And you know what, I had a bloody fantastic night, drank a fair bit too much and danced for hours like I used to (only this time without hard drugs!). No panic attack, no skipped heart beats, no dizzyness, no anxiety. It was a huge release and now I am back into that scene going to all night raves and having a great time. They are actually the one place where I completely forget about this stuff and just go nuts. Actually every time I'm drunk at one of these things I feel so confident I'm back to normal that I start debating whether to take a pill or not (the answers is always NO thankfully). Point is, do whatever it takes to stop anxiety from controlling you. If you need to have a few beers to be able to do it - dont hesitate!
 
Tpchan85 seriously its getting scary, I feel like im listening to myself, everything you say I think the same and we've been in the exact same situation from the start. To be honest, I did mdma only once, but I keep having flashbacks of the magic it was. Seriously, it was to die for when the anxiety had stopped that night. I couldn't believe the body could feel this way. I almost started crying it was so surreal. But then I remember the moments I spent on my bed all curled up why this is happening to me. If you want my opinion without all the bullshit? I'd say the day the ltc started, the mdma just caused an anomaly that sent our brain elsewhere, or even damaged it. I strongly feel like other mdma trips would not do anything worse to it. With that said, i'm 19, am I going to live in fear for the rest of my life? Fuck no, but i'm not ready to try it just yet. I wana know how it feels again, soon, maybe not that soon but someday.

Sorry for broken english, french Canadian trying his best!
 
Strangestuff said:
See the thing about benzos though is that unless you use them sparingly/leave gaps all they will do is suppress your symptoms and taken everyday have a withdrawal. You arent fixing anything with them like CBT (or hormone treatments if applicable) does. That doesn't mean don't use them of course but they are just a coping tool.
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They're a cover-up. So what? You can use benzos responsibly if you're monitored by a doctor/psychiatrist. At my worst I took 1mg a day. I felt like an entirely new person. Clonazepam gave me my life back. It allowed me to start leaving the house again, to go back to work and get back on my feet. Now I'm on .25mg a day and still cutting down. My withdrawal honestly has been fine. I have some sleep issues (waking up in the middle of the night once or twice), I sweat, and sometimes I get moody (irritable or inexplicably sad). But I'll take it over my pre-benzo life - lying in bed shaking all day. No, I'm not exaggerating.

All of that said - antidepressants, CBT, diet, lifestyle are all still crucial parts of the puzzle.
 
me2point0 said:
Ill have to disagree with you on the neuro damage side of things here. Most of us here got the ltc on a delayed fuse. some guy told us he got this months after his last use. Even me for instance, I got anxiety the day after my last use wich was also my first use, and then all other symptoms 3 days after. wich is alot. It has to be a snowball effect or anxiety or something else. Neurological damage has to be ruled out. 75-100mg on my first time and I get damage? Fuck that, no way.
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Anxiety, depression, and depersonalization/derealization (the first and foremost LTC symptoms) are caused by chemical imbalance in the brain. Yes, it can take one use. There are all sorts of reports of people feeling this way from first use of marijuana.
 
ryan23 said:
Okay I'm goina go to the doc and get that done, I just feel so confused And vision memory is so bad.... How long you think this will take ? And would you recommend ssri if the bloods come back normal
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I do recommend an SSRI. I have had the best luck with Zoloft.

There's no universal recovery timeline. I started to feel much better around the 3-4 month mark when I switched to Zoloft and Clonazepam. And again at the 8 month mark when the dissociative episodes (largely) stopped.
 
Strangestuff said:
Nobody can say a real time its guna take. But regarding the blood tests, I've said it before and will say it again--if your results are in the "normal" range your doctor will most likely be like its all normal nothing is wrong. However, a bunch of people here probably have stuff that is not "optimal" which is what you need. eg) Having a Testosterone in the 300s or 400s when you are like 20-30 years old will be regarded by the doctor as "normal" yet its totally not and can cause/contribute to all the LTC symptoms like head pressure, anxiety, palpitations (not directly due to Testosterone but due to anxiety created by low T), etc. Normally, 20-30 year olds will have levels near 700.

Some people probably even have partial subclinical hypothyroid which cannot cause the entire LTC but everything counts and adds up.
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So who here has run these hormone tests?

I was tested for thyroid and results came back normal.
 
hoketus said:
So who here has run these hormone tests?

I was tested for thyroid and results came back normal.
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Morning cortisol and comprehensive thyroid panel tested here. All normal. Obtained a copy of results and thyroid was spot on mid range, cortisol was like 400, upper limit being 600.
 
Tpchan85 said:
Morning cortisol and comprehensive thyroid panel tested here. All normal. Obtained a copy of results and thyroid was spot on mid range, cortisol was like 400, upper limit being 600.
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See this is exactly where doctors go wrong. Its in the "normal range" therefore its normal. No thats not how to interpret it at all especially for cortisol.

Im not a doctor but ive read up on the site definitivemind run by a psychiatrist who understands hpa dysfunction and thats where this is from. And forums like allthingsmale, etc. For cortisol, the dr should be asking you what were your symptoms on the day of the test. Did you have high anxiety and were you stressed out, etc. Cause if so, then even though you have a cortisol that is "normal" it is ABNORMAL GIVEN THE SITUATION. Cortisol should rise with stress and thus it should be out of range high if you had full blown ltc symptoms. Anxiety is created by high norepinephrine and cortisol is meant to downgrade the NE response. So again, no your results are not necessarily normal although it says so. It says that because the range is meant for your average unstressed person. You are not the average unstressed person you have an LTC

Now, on a side note, the ACTH stim test is often what is ordered by your typical run of the mill bad endocrinologist to determine adrenal insufficiency but it does not detect this and merely tells you whether the adrenals are functioning and they are fine for the LTC so then the endo says its all in your head but nope hes completely wrong.

Also thyroid in "mid range" might still be suboptimal. And did you test LH/FSH/Testosterone at all yet? That axis is the one that gets hit the most after cortisol. Thyroid is usually the least off.

There are tons of forums out there that will help you interpret your results-- eg)allthingsmale. Post your stuff there and members will tell you how to proceed.

TLDR--you probably do have some degree of HPA dysfunction and thats perfectly fine and its treatable. So go get diagnosed by a legit hormone specialist (not run of the mill endo--im talking about famous drs like Dr. Crisler or an integrative clinic which deals with subclinical stuff) Dr. Crisler does consultations I believe where he will interpret everything.
 
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Just gonna check in guys. Not been on here for a few weeks, been trying to get on other things.

I'm feeling ALOT better I must admit. And praise the fucking almighty that the constant awareness of my heartbeat isn't quite constant anymore!

I'm finding with my symptoms, nothing is like a straight line. It's like a really messed up sine wave, ups and downs but the trend is a constant down, which is good!

I'm still left with a pretty flat libido, but even that surges at times. I'm fairly confident it will resolve itself.

I've been clean from MD since December 31. I originally got really sick in October last year.

You guys wanna start meditating. Do some research on it, it's amazing. I actually managed to stop the awareness of my heartbeat whilst meditating. Literally, try as I might, I couldn't feel it anywhere in my body at all, even when i was really trying to pay attention. It hasn't cured it, but its such a relief. I've been meditating for 40 minutes a day, two 20 minute sessions. I've been doing vipassana meditation, I'll just try and focus on my breath, although I make my breaths quite deep, and not fully natural. It has such an amazing calming effect.

I can say with 100% certainty that meditation has given me leaps and bounds in recovery.

Really sad to see new faces crop up on here. If anything, I hope this thread dies. But it won't, so the best thing we can do is educate people.
 
hoketus said:
So who here has run these hormone tests?

I was tested for thyroid and results came back normal.
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Thyroid (TSH, T4, T3) , normal
Cortisol, normal (17.98 ref values 5-25)
Dopamine, normal
Adrenaline, normal
Noradrenaline, normal
Serotonin serum, normal (91 ref. values 20-230)
 
I started running and I can say with confidence that it's speeding my recovery. I'm addicted to it now. I think this might be just what I needed.
 
me2point0 said:
I started running and I can say with confidence that it's speeding my recovery. I'm addicted to it now. I think this might be just what I needed.
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Throw some power yoga in there. I have a routine atm where I do 30 minutes of it, followed by a run. I do as much as I can fit in, making sure to not completely exhaust myself. I guess it's just about listening to your body, I read an article on adrenal fatigue in that if you don't feel like exercising, do the warm up. If you still don't feel up for it that day, take a break. If the warmup is ok, carry on. Exercise has kept me sane the past few months.

There are positives to this LTC. All this exercise and improved diet is slowly giving me the body of a god lol.

I can't wait until my mood is fully fixed and my libido is back. I'm gonna have girls on me like hugh hefner.

Soon...
 
Tpchan85 said:
If we're going down the hormones route, has anyone tried supplementing DHEA? Seems like it could help.
http://www.drmyhill.co.uk/wiki/Adre..._of_the_car_(DHEA_and_cortisol)_–_underactive
We are definitely experiencing chronic stress so our adrenals are taxed at the very least. There are some anecdotal reports of DHEA helping cure anxiety issues. Definitely warrants some more research.
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I think pmz on here has tried pregnenolone (precursor to DHEA/progesterone/etc) and he got results. DHEA is more downstream and probably only worth taking if you run the DHEA-S test and see an issue there. On the latest tests, my DHEA-S is actually high so I am avoiding that of course and this is why its important to test before taking a hormone supplement.

I've made a thread here where we can talk about the "adrenal fatigue" (bad name for it) and what we are doing for treatment/testing/etc http://www.bluelight.org/vb/threads/757875-HPA-Dysfunction-(Adrenal-fatigue)-Discussion

Other things to test are Ferritin, B12, Vit D, RBC magnesium, Zinc, etc.
 
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