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MDMA Recovery (Stories & Support - 4)

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Yes I sleep tons now due to depression I think, it's hard to get up honestly. I'm just worried the 3 days of taking ecstasy caused me a significant amount of brain damage, messed with the dopamine,seratonin levels, and damaged nerves/ synapses in my brain. I wish I researched but was not in the right mind state to do so. Ever since the festival my thinking has been weird and I've been diagnosed as bipolar from my psychosis.
 
Well at least sleeping too much is better than sleeping too little, especially when it comes to psychosis. I imagine your brain is trying to rest and recuperate.

How long ago was this festival?

I really don't think that the various adverse effects people get from various drugs are from actual injury to the brain cells thankfully, but it can certainly feel like that at the time. When you say your thinking has been weird, do you mean that you have magical thoughts that are insane-ish, or that your experience of consciousness feels weird, like you're just watching life through a screen (depersonalization/derealization), and that nothing is real and you're just kinda watching a movie?

Do you have any visuals like blobs of color or static-y vision (HPPD)?

Lots of these symptoms are pretty common with these long term comedowns, and generally take around a year to get better for many, although some take shorter and some take longer.

I really recommend practicing mindfulness, and if you can will yourself to do it, cardio. Cardio 3-4 times a week and daily practice of mindfulness can really make a big difference.
 
Cotcha Yankinov said:
Well at least sleeping too much is better than sleeping too little, especially when it comes to psychosis. I imagine your brain is trying to rest and recuperate.

How long ago was this festival?

I really don't think that the various adverse effects people get from various drugs are from actual injury to the brain cells thankfully, but it can certainly feel like that at the time. When you say your thinking has been weird, do you mean that you have magical thoughts that are insane-ish, or that your experience of consciousness feels weird, like you're just watching life through a screen (depersonalization/derealization), and that nothing is real and you're just kinda watching a movie?

Do you have any visuals like blobs of color or static-y vision (HPPD)?

Lots of these symptoms are pretty common with these long term comedowns, and generally take around a year to get better for many, although some take shorter and some take longer.

I really recommend practicing mindfulness, and if you can will yourself to do it, cardio. Cardio 3-4 times a week and daily practice of mindfulness can really make a big difference.
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Pretty much all of the above. And yes I did develop static and see colorful dots from time to time. This was 6 years ago. I feel like I still am suffering from the 3 day use or it did some permanent rewiring in my brain. I used weed to mask how I felt but because of a self destructive meltdown I recently had I quit smoking weed. It's been 5 weeks and I feel terrible and I think the e played a role. I will try and run but it's hard when I can't even get out of bed. I just complain about myself and feel ashamed for what I did but life must go on.
 
Amml said:
@Cotcha: How long did it take you to feel normal without any medication again?
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I wish I could say I feel normal but I'm still off a bit, mainly just HPPD and still some insomnia (fairly improved though). But to be fair I've had a lot of physical health issues, otherwise I'd put myself at 90% better. And I can't really say about the without medication part because I took so many and some did help. I was on antipsychotics for about 6 months and then I've been really focused on mindfulness for almost 2 years and therein have been most of my improvements. Have been completely sober for more than half a year now and am sleeping about 5 hours a night.
 
ADubbs said:
Sooo does shunja think keto diet is good? Or bad?
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He probably thinks its good for both mind and body. I think it can probably be okay for the mind (there is evidence it helps epilepsy) but it may be hard on the body, especially long term.
 
Young_ile said:
Pretty much all of the above. And yes I did develop static and see colorful dots from time to time. This was 6 years ago. I feel like I still am suffering from the 3 day use or it did some permanent rewiring in my brain. I used weed to mask how I felt but because of a self destructive meltdown I recently had I quit smoking weed. It's been 5 weeks and I feel terrible and I think the e played a role. I will try and run but it's hard when I can't even get out of bed. I just complain about myself and feel ashamed for what I did but life must go on.
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I would definitely cut out weed, people are all like "Its natural" blah blah blah, but I really think you'll do better if you can go it sober for a while, but medications are perfectly okay to talk about with a doctor if you're depressed. Some of us have had success with antidepressants (SSRIs).

Were you somewhat dependent on weed? If you smoke every day for a while, you can honestly have withdrawals. If you were smoking everyday for quite a while and just stopped I would definitely give it more time.

Its really easy to spend a lot of time mentally regretting and self-blaming but its important to realize that that doesn't actually help your situation or make you any better (probably the exact opposite). I would start practicing mindfulness so that you can learn to catch yourself when you're ruminating like that throughout the day. Essentially the whole goal of mindfulness is to just stay in the present moment, not to worry about the future and regret the past. I would try guided mindfulness meditations from youtube, and an app called Headspace for starters. Regretting the past just takes away from our future.

Try not to get mad at yourself as you work on being mindful (its easy to get frustrated if quieting your thoughts is very difficult), but do realize that every time you catch yourself lost in thought, its progress. Slow and steady. I personally am going on about 6 years from E abuse when I was 14-15 and have made the vast, vast majority of my progress when I started practicing mindfulness and trying to apply it throughout the day about 1 1/2 years ago. The 4-5 years prior to that I really didn't see that much improvement.
 
I smoked heavily everyday, that's what gave me energy, although it fueled my "hypomania." I recently lost a lot of money and relationships because I went psychotic. I was so high on mania that I thought I was the king of the world for a good month. The things I did were so self destructive and Ludacris that it's hard not to forget. Now that im back in the real world things are so difficult. I feel so stupid and slow. Thanks for your advice, I will try and focus on the future even though I self destructed enough to commit suicide maybe. I will practice mindfulness. I just don't want to be a loser :(.
 
I had similar experiences with weed. It gave me energy and allowed me to face the day/face myself, but there was that mania element that meant weed wasn't helping me long term, and then of course dependence/withdrawal.

You're not a loser - an incredible amount of people have mental health issues. There is just a dumb stigma about talking about them, so you really don't hear about it very much. You sound like you've really learned from mistakes and are going to start on the right path. Its not your fault that you may have made mistakes in the first place- its just the way your brain was, and if we had the same brain we would have done the same things.

Its okay if we're walking the right path slowly - remember that many other people are walking the wrong path very quickly. Consider this a greater foundation upon which to build the rest of your life, and as we experience these shitty parts of life it can really help us appreciate when life is finally good.

Try this mindfulness exercise for starters. Close your eyes and stare into your eyelids, but try to relax your eyes and face. Count from 1 to 10 aloud in your head, trying to focus only on the sound of the numbers. Try to count slowly, but notice if your thoughts or the voice in your head start chattering in between numbers. If a thought comes and interrupts your counting, try to let the thought pass and begin counting again. The goal is to just hear the numbers, and to start over at 1 again once you reach ten.

Doing this is a good way to start shutting off the voice in the head, and its a good way to start the day if your mind is very chattery. See if you can go from 1 - 100 or even higher, counting very slowly, without losing track. If you notice yourself lost in thought or going off on a tangent in your head, bring yourself back to 1, take a slow deep breath and begin once again.

As you go throughout your day, you may notice that your mind is chattering away. You might be regretting the past or worrying about the future - but the ultimate goal of mindfulness is just to stay in the present moment, without the voice in your head going a hundred miles a minute. It can definitely some time to get used to, and if you have any questions please ask away. Remember that you did drugs because you were coping with something. It wasn't your fault that you felt bad enough that you needed to cope with drugs. You felt whatever you needed to feel at that time with those drugs, but every time you think about all that, you re-live it and bring everything back. I hope you can begin to put the past behind you and stay in the present moment.

All the best.
 
Cotcha Yankinov said:
I wish I could say I feel normal but I'm still off a bit, mainly just HPPD and still some insomnia (fairly improved though). But to be fair I've had a lot of physical health issues, otherwise I'd put myself at 90% better. And I can't really say about the without medication part because I took so many and some did help. I was on antipsychotics for about 6 months and then I've been really focused on mindfulness for almost 2 years and therein have been most of my improvements. Have been completely sober for more than half a year now and am sleeping about 5 hours a night.
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And how do you feel or when did you improve from the psychological side? I still suffer from anhedonia, when it's at the worst I can't even feel if I'm hungry, tired, cold or something else, it just feels like I have no consciousness about myself.
 
The derealization/depersonalization is actually much, much better for me. It no longer feels like I'm looking down a long tunnel with a TV portraying my life at the end of the tunnel.

It started getting better around a couple months in to mindfulness, and then my conscious perception really started to shift back towards normal. Before that, things felt unreal. I do occasionally get a dream-like unreal feeling but its rare and it doesn't last long.
 
Aw man, my case is so severe. My visuals aren't terrible but my head is like a brick and I'm throwing up food. Can't sleep well. It's the same 24/7. There's no flow to it. Theres just never a break.
 
I used to have a great memory but since my LTC started I feel like my situational memory has been shot. I have trouble recalling details from a TV I just watched the day before and its sometimes so bad that I don't watching the show at all until I'm half way through the same episode.

If it weren't for this problem I feel like I'd be fully recovered but it gives me anxiety thinking i won't be able to recall most of my life's experiences moving forward.

Does anyone have a similar problem? Did it ever get better? I'm in the 8th month of my LTC for frame of reference.
 
I've gone up to 50mg of Sertraline and feeling a bit out of it. Is this meant to happen at 50mg?
 
Brain_fog88 said:
I used to have a great memory but since my LTC started I feel like my situational memory has been shot. I have trouble recalling details from a TV I just watched the day before and its sometimes so bad that I don't watching the show at all until I'm half way through the same episode.

If it weren't for this problem I feel like I'd be fully recovered but it gives me anxiety thinking i won't be able to recall most of my life's experiences moving forward.

Does anyone have a similar problem? Did it ever get better? I'm in the 8th month of my LTC for frame of reference.
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Yes I have the same problems, but they are slowly getting better after 1 year now. I often had a complete blackout when I went to the cinema, after half the movie was over I couldn't even remember the main characters and went totally paranoid.

Now after about 1 year and 2 months, a one month sertraline therapy (25mg/day), daily Turmeric (5g) and omega-3 fish oil (about 4-8 capsules/day) my short term memory improved a lot, in percent I would say 70% of normal. I still have some problems with motorics, verbal skills and higher cognitive functions, but they are also improving. I must say that a lot got better after the sertraline, and I haven't got any negative long term side effects such as sexual dysfunction, etc.

The turmeric has a noticeable effect on my short term memory and other cognitive functions, but only slight effect on my mood.
The omega 3 oil boosts the effects of the turmeric and has an antidepressant effect on it's own.

When I'm feeling really down and foggy, I drink a cup of St. John's Wort tea (about 1 tablespoon per cup), that brings up the mood in a few hours, but it's not a long term solution.
I'll probably try liposomal curcumin and liposomal B12 soon, it may help too…
There are some supplements that help, try them on your own, not everybody can agree with some supplements.
Keep it up :)
 
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