MDMA Recovery (Stories & Support - 4)

[martainnn]

man how have you tried all these things being only 20?!! Did a doctor prescribe all these things? My stomach has also been on fire the past few days and now my feet are starting to throb. I hate providing a play by play like this but nobody else seems to understand.

Is it possible for a follow-up substance to re-trigger the Comedown? I had a bad one for two days after the drop, was ok during the week and then drank caffeine and did accupuncture. I wonder if these things triggered what I'm going through.

I think you need to look at this differently. I know the term 'LTC' is used widely in the thread and people say 'my comedown', but in reality its not useful. The spread of drug induced problems is pretty broad so LTC is reallt just a general term for saying drug induced illness. What you are dealing with is not a comedown, that passed after a few days and is impossible for you to retrigger it. You (AFAIK) have depersonilisation and anxiety and substances can make it better or worse. Its unlikely that anything apart from drugs and alcohol can make it permentaly worse and its likely youll return to baseline anxiety within a few weeks.

One thing I learnt from.CBT is that its complelty normal for anxiety to flare up for no reason and can do for weeks, but will return to baseline and that baseline should get less over time if the person is helping themselves (exercise ect...).

My point is try not to fixate too much your mistake. A few weeks will have you back to baseline hopefully. Fixating is just slowing that process down.

 

[fnono33]

I think you need to look at this differently. I know the term 'LTC' is used widely in the thread and people say 'my comedown', but in reality its not useful. The spread of drug induced problems is pretty broad so LTC is reallt just a general term for saying drug induced illness. What you are dealing with is not a comedown, that passed after a few days and is impossible for you to retrigger it. You (AFAIK) have depersonilisation and anxiety and substances can make it better or worse. Its unlikely that anything apart from drugs and alcohol can make it permentaly worse and its likely youll return to baseline anxiety within a few weeks.

One thing I learnt from.CBT is that its complelty normal for anxiety to flare up for no reason and can do for weeks, but will return to baseline and that baseline should get less over time if the person is helping themselves (exercise ect...).

My point is try not to fixate too much your mistake. A few weeks will have you back to baseline hopefully. Fixating is just slowing that process down.

I'm not sure it's that simple. I would like to think that it's drug induced and nothing other than drugs and alcohol can permanantly change it but I think that the MDMA put the brain into a very delicate state and any kind of mild stimulant or abnormal activity can re-trigger something more lasting?

 

[martainnn]

I'm not sure it's that simple. I would like to think that it's drug induced and nothing other than drugs and alcohol can permanantly change it but I think that the MDMA put the brain into a very delicate state and any kind of mild stimulant or abnormal activity can re-trigger something more lasting?

man, It really is that simple. Your anxiety is getting the best of you it seems. BELIEVE ME, I know exactly where you're at. I spent a good 3-4 months telling myself I'd done something really serious to my brain and anytime I'd try something new, If I had a bad day the next day Id blame it on that and then tell myself Ive got something more than DP/DR and I've actually broke my brain. This is something Ive had to come to terms with. I felt my brain BURN inside of my head when I had my bad trip, like...it literally felt like something snapped inside my head. But what I know now is that I had a very strong drug induced panic attack and its put me into a state of HEAVY DP/DR with some HPPD like issues. Thats all it is, and I've learnt that anxiety makes it 100x worse than it needs to be. Remember this, millions of people consume MDMA each year....MILLIONS. Its one of the most popular and widely used drugs across the globe after alcohol and cannabis. Ive seen people snort a whole gram to themselves over a night, I've had friends when I was 15 who used to take 25 pills over 24 hours then go and do speed and smoke grams of cannabis. Sure, some of them have some lasting anxiety and depression but no DP/DR/HPPD. Some people are just prone to these illnesses and there are plenty of people who get DP/DR without any drug use whatsoever. It may have happened to you eventually, or it may just be the MDMA induced it. Drug induced DP/DR has a much better recovery rate than non-drug induced DP/DR. So you have a good outlook. BUT, you need to be prepared for a long and tough journey. You are going to have setbacks, things are going to make you feel worse. You may feel good for a while and then back to square 1. Believe me, Ive been through it all. I dont want to undermine anyones problems but Id say Im up there with some of the worst off in the thread and the previous recovery threads. Ive sat and read through all 4, Ive read through countless other threads from posters of this one and the 3 before, and I relate to FirstBadComedown, PMZ, Nambo etc and I essentially have experienced 90% of the issues listed on the threads. What I have learnt though, is you can't let it consume you because it makes you much worse, sure my life is dogshit atm but I take each day as it comes and if I try something and it makes me worse I know now from experience is isnt permenant. Look at my previous posts dude, look at how ill I have been. Look at the post I made a month or two ago where I asked about setbacks. Ive been through it all. You'll be back to where you were. Just give it time

 

[ADubbs]

I'm not sure it's that simple. I would like to think that it's drug induced and nothing other than drugs and alcohol can permanantly change it but I think that the MDMA put the brain into a very delicate state and any kind of mild stimulant or abnormal activity can re-trigger something more lasting?

I'd have to agree with you on this one. It's not all in our heads: visuals, floaters, brain zaps, and continuous twitching and skin crawling are not just from anxiety or depression. Something else is screwed up. Unfortunately this is what happened to me, I didn't listen to my body, but instead listened to other people who told me "floaters are fine, everyone has those". BS. So I drank and smoked pot heavily for 2 nights, and it all happened again - puking, shaking, sweats.

 

[fnono33]

I hear you martain. What I'm getting at is that there are things you need to avoid during this process and Caffeine I think is a big problem. If it is anxiety then it will trigger a bad cycle and put you back. Possibly neurologically. I'm not necessary saying that it is or isn't neurotoxic but your brain is healing and any kind of stimulants will f with your progress big time. But I'm not sure of the science. I know that my recovery rhythm was completely different after being linear for two months.

After my two days of 'comedown' I was "fine" and then to recover I took an SSRI with 5HTP (really dumb, I know). I was fine for a week. Then I had a a lot of caffeine and accupuncture. I think that all these factors triggered a seratonin syndrome that now I am dealing with. So there are things that you can do that can delay progress in a very serioius way. That's what I'm saying I guess.

 

[ADubbs]

I hear you martain. What I'm getting at is that there are things you need to avoid during this process and Caffeine I think is a big problem. If it is anxiety then it will trigger a bad cycle and put you back. Possibly neurologically. I'm not necessary saying that it is or isn't neurotoxic but your brain is healing and any kind of stimulants will f with your progress big time. But I'm not sure of the science. I know that my recovery rhythm was completely different after being linear for two months.

After my two days of 'comedown' I was "fine" and then to recover I took an SSRI with 5HTP (really dumb, I know). I was fine for a week. Then I had a a lot of caffeine and accupuncture. I think that all these factors triggered a seratonin syndrome that now I am dealing with. So there are things that you can do that can delay progress in a very serioius way. That's what I'm saying I guess.

Well taking an SSRI and 5-HTP can cause serotonin syndrome. I think SS is what causes the neurological issues..but that's just a hunch/guess. There are other people who haven't taken MDMA but have taken an SSRI and got SS, and they have neurological issues as well (sometimes). It'll repair itself, the only time it likely doesn't is if you kept taking the 5-HTP and SSRI. Again I'm no doctor or researcher, I'm basically speaking out of my rear end on connecting the dots.

 

[martainnn]

I'd have to agree with you on this one. It's not all in our heads: visuals, floaters, brain zaps, and continuous twitching and skin crawling are not just from anxiety or depression. Something else is screwed up. Unfortunately this is what happened to me, I didn't listen to my body, but instead listened to other people who told me "floaters are fine, everyone has those". BS. So I drank and smoked pot heavily for 2 nights, and it all happened again - puking, shaking, sweats.

No, you are not screwed up. But that doesnt mean you shouldnt listen to your body either. IT IS ANXIETY. Depersonilisation/derealisation is an anxiety disorder and can lead to a number of different problems. I tell you what...go to google, type visuals dpselfhelp, then type floaters dpselfhelp, then type brain zaps dpselfhelp.... all of which will lead you to the dp forum. And Im almost certain everyone of your problems will be shared by those people. I'll say it again, I WAS IN THE EXACT SAME MIND FRAME AS YOU... im 8 months in and Ive accepted I have a serious anxiety disorder. I dont have to be anxious to experience my problems and Ive experienced everything youve listed except from brain zaps, which is common in SSRI discontinuation. http://www.healthcentral.com/anxiety/c/4182/151322/anxiety-problems/ This is the first link that comes up in google when you type 'anxiety and vision'. You have these problems because your body is stuck in a constant state of fight or flight, but then you depersonilise to account for this. But in the end anxiety is at the core of it.

 

[martainnn]

My 'LTC' didnt take effect fully till about 2-3 weeks in. It is normal for it to be delayed. I dont think the ssri or 5htp kick started anything, it was already in the post. And no, he did not experience serotonin sydrome. please be careful about guessing what happened and saying this that and the other, its not helpful. If you experienced true serotonin syndrome YOU WOULD HAVE BEEN IN HOSPITAL. Again, serotonin syndrome did not start this, the drugs induced an anxiety disorder or something similar like HPPD.

 

[Cotcha Yankinov]

I think it is important not to dwell on the prospect of "permanent damage" and also not to dwell on the events that led to the LTC, although you can learn a lot about what you were doing wrong and use that insight to change yourself for the better, a greater foundation so to speak, but at some point after realizing what you did wrong you must begin to stop lamenting the night that everything happened, and realize that lamenting that night is not the best for your well being. The past is not in your control - its important to understand what is in your control and to decide what you can do in the present to improve your future.

For me personally, I spent a lot of time lamenting everything that led to me using drugs in the first place (mainly placing blame with other people) and also placing blame with the specific people who got me into ecstasy, but at the end of the day that didn't help me any. Over the years I found I felt best and recovered fastest when I was very aware of my thoughts and grew more control over them, specifically leaning my thoughts in a non-judgmental and mindfulness fashion, really trying not to think about anything except when I was learning something or doing something that required conscious thought. Of course challenging intellectual activity can help you recover too, that certainly may have played a role in my recovery. I still remember trying to read in the first year and it was so incredibly difficult, I couldn't understand anything I read. I'm sure that challenging myself to read improved my reading capability, and then as I read I would have less anxiety when I read (anxiety about my shitty reading ability, me essentially saying to myself "Fuck you're so fucked up you can't even read why did you take all that fucking ecstasy you fucking moron") so basically if you have anxiety about being shitty at something, you can reduce that anxiety by becoming proficient. But its probably more important to learn to stem the anxiety thoughts in the first place with meditation.

Just to come back to the permanent damage/MDMA neurotoxicity thing - people get LTC symptoms from all sorts of things, from cannabis to psychedelics/dissociatives to even very traumatic events as well as regular anxiety. The more severe HPPD symptoms seem to be somewhat more exclusive to drug users but many people report some of the visual symptoms as well. I know people with anxiety that have never touched a drug besides alcohol and they are severely affected by caffeine.

Also serotonin syndrome is, lets say, quite apparent.

 

[fnono33]

I would agree that the symptoms are based in Anxiety. Is our body having anxiety because of the repair being done to our brains? As a sort of defense mechanism while it does its work?

 

[Cotcha Yankinov]

I imagine that compared to some other things like severe traumatic sexual assault induced DP/DR with PTSD, MDMA induced derealization will probably remit sooner. But I knew someone who had DP/DR from cannabis for about half a year for example. I guess my point is that it's not something specific to MDMA, people can get it just from anxiety, insomnia, and other stuff non drug related. Of course when a drug caused anxiety and insomnia and maybe some DP/DR by itself, you're going to attribute more of the DP/DR to the drug than you maybe should.

I don't think it has anything to do with the brain recovering from injury to brain cells, I think it's probably more our neural activity has been thrown off and there might be some new connections (made by the MDMA) that need to be trimmed. Of course the way you trim connections is by not using those connections, so if they are "anxiety" connections then it could take practicing mindfulness every day for a couple months just to get somewhat decent at it, and then really applying it for a couple months, and then those connections will start to really get trimmed. That's just my two cents about a really severe LTC anyways.

I guess what I'm getting at is that it's not like you start mindfulness and then a week later you're back to normal, it can be hard to change thought patterns you've been harboring most of your life, but if it wasn't hard and it was as easy as ordering a supplement online everybody would be doing it.

 

[fnono33]

This is what I think after reading everything. So then there is nothing physically being repaired?

 

[Cotcha Yankinov]

I don't think anything is being repaired because it was damaged but the brain is in a constant state of remodeling, trimming things here and adding things here. Anxiety is self reinforcing in the sense that being in a state of anxiety lends itself to making more anxiety connections in the brain cells and perpetuating the situation. It can take some time meditating focused in 15-30 minute sessions throughout the day and then more loosely trying to apply mindfulness everywhere you go and everywhere you exist, in order to start to reverse the situation.

 

[Amml]

I would agree that the symptoms are based in Anxiety. Is our body having anxiety because of the repair being done to our brains? As a sort of defense mechanism while it does its work?

I would say the anxiety comes because you realize that you aren't in the state you were before. I'm in month 11 now. In my case, the anxiety started about 2 weeks after the last trip. I realized that I had big orientation problems and couldn't follow normal tasks anymore. I never had this so bad before, so I looked on the internet and read about brain damage, … , the whole thing. That was the point when it kicked it with full power. It lasted very very long because a long time I didn't see any improvement so I thought I was permanently fucked up. It actually got better the last few days because the holidays were finished and I went to school again. Before that, I constantly compared myself with "normal" people that mostly were not my age and that drove me crazy. But in this last few days I realized that it is normal that you can't concentrate straight for hours and things like that. I wouldn't say that all my symptoms are gone, but I'm now in a state where I can function normal again.
In my opinion the "damage" (it's probably much less than you may think) will repair itself after a few months but then you are still caught in this thoughts so you won't feel any better.

 

[ADubbs]

I haven't had any DP/DR, but it was the physical sensations that caused me fleeting anxiety. Drugs DO cause changes in the brain, this is indisputable. The big thing is what Cotcha said, anxiety feeds upon itself, and definitely delays recovery. That being said, how could such a powerful serotonin releasing agent not cause any damage in some people? Everyone's brains are wired different, and it might take a lot less MDMA to send someone into a LTC then another person. I've known people who take MDMA for 3 days in a row, and they'll also say they get brain zaps...but they have some 5htp and it goes away after a few days. And these people have no anxiety.

 

[fnono33]

Has anyone had this affect their physical appearance? My beard turned a lot more blonde and my skin is pale and sallow and can't tan.

 

[Cotcha Yankinov]

Pale skin is common with stress/adrenalin (reduces bloodflow to the skin) and also not going outside which can be a byproduct of not feeling well.

 

[socrilus]

I would say the anxiety comes because you realize that you aren't in the state you were before. I'm in month 11 now. In my case, the anxiety started about 2 weeks after the last trip. I realized that I had big orientation problems and couldn't follow normal tasks anymore. I never had this so bad before, so I looked on the internet and read about brain damage, … , the whole thing. That was the point when it kicked it with full power. It lasted very very long because a long time I didn't see any improvement so I thought I was permanently fucked up. It actually got better the last few days because the holidays were finished and I went to school again. Before that, I constantly compared myself with "normal" people that mostly were not my age and that drove me crazy. But in this last few days I realized that it is normal that you can't concentrate straight for hours and things like that. I wouldn't say that all my symptoms are gone, but I'm now in a state where I can function normal again.
In my opinion the "damage" (it's probably much less than you may think) will repair itself after a few months but then you are still caught in this thoughts so you won't feel any better.

Yes exactly this. The anxiety is essentially over being in the anxious state or state of just not feeling the same as before in general. The whole question is what is causing one to feel different to begin with. Why has the perception changed in the first place.

Dwelling on permanent damage is unhelpful and since there are recovery stories its not permanent. Things are constantly changing. Its more getting an explanation for why the symptoms have arisen to begin with. Again, provided that there is no external stress in life that the symptoms can be directly attributed to. All the things Cotcha mentioned like PTSD for example have a direct external event that caused it. I don't think this can really be compared to it. Yes, people who don't take drugs get anxiety/depression but there is often some external stressor which precipitated it. Then they address whatever these things are in therapy which leads to improvement.

Mine started similar to yours in that I just noticed I wasn't feeling like myself. However, I don't really know what exactly caused me to not feel like myself as I've never not felt like myself prior to taking MDMA. Its more like how can you go ~20+ yrs feeling like yourself every single day and then suddenly not feel like yourself despite no external events. At that point the mind begins to problem solve and blames MDMA and then inevitably brain damage. Lets just assume no brain damage has been done as that is unhelpful. Either way, the whole thing is what exactly has occured in the body to make me not feel like myself in a very noticeable way. You can say "hyperawareness" but then the question becomes ok "what exactly has occured to cause the hyperawareness". As in what is at the root of all of the roots.

 

[ADubbs]

Mine started right after I took the molly and speed. Puking, shaking, muscle spasms, no sleep for days. Also my relapse started the night i boozed and smoked heavily, except worse. Tinnitus, face twitches, more floaters. I don't contribute my issues solely to anxiety, and I'll go the grave with that.

 

[Londonscouser]

To anybody who undergoes brain scans such as MRI, fMRI, CT ect, you should know that they will nearly ALWAYS result in your brain appearing normal regardless of the damage.

Here is a story about a man who has taken 40,000 pills in his life, with his peak use being 25 pills a day, everyday, for 4 years. He OBVIOUSLY suffered from neurotoxic brain damage, yet the scans came back normal lol. Note this was done 10 years ago, but the technology has remained relatively the same

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2006/apr/04/drugsandalcohol.drugs1