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MDMA Recovery (Stories & Support - 4)

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Coffee destroyed me. Led me down the path to 5HTP and this miserable fucking mess that I'm in. I really don't think anyone should take anything for six months if they suspect damage. Maybe a benzo, I don't know. I feel like I have been beaten over the head with a hammer.
 
fnono33 said:
The above substances will kill you. I am a walking corpse.
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I really laughed out loud at this (don't take this the wrong way). I recognize it completely. I remember stupidly drinking a cup of coffee in the beginning and suffering the consequences. I remember taking melatonin and getting insane CEV's and OEV flashing colors + panic. I remember the same with 5-htp. I remember eating a protein bar containing some vitamin or artificial sweetener that made me trip out bad with DP/DR and HPPD. I remember having a beer a year into my LTC and getting hot flashes, spacey DP, heart palpilations, very uncomfortable weird sensations, etc.

I don't think I've really posted on here for over a year and a half. Many sufferers in this thread probably don't know my story. I got hit BAD by the LTC a little over 3 years ago. Today I thoroughly enjoy alcohol regularly. I've done coke multiple times without negative effects. I drink coffee about 5 days a week (at work). I could continue...

This is a very slow nonlinear process. Recovery is real.

I will post a longer story soon. I know this community really needs it. I just have to make sure that this recent level of recovery is actually real and not just a fleeting euphoric dreamstate.
 
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ScaredFirstTimer said:
I really laughed out loud at this (don't take this the wrong way). I recognize it completely. I remember stupidly drinking a cup of coffee in the beginning and suffering the consequences. I remember taking melatonin and getting insane CEV's and OEV flashing colors + panic. I remember the same with 5-htp. I remember eating a protein bar containing some vitamin or artificial sweetener that made me trip out bad with DP/DR and HPPD. I remember having a beer a year into my LTC and getting hot flashes, spacey DP, heart palpilations, very uncomfortable weird sensations, etc.

I don't think I've really posted on here for over a year and a half. Many sufferers in this thread probably don't know my story. I got hit BAD by the LTC a little over 3 years ago. Today I thoroughly enjoy alcohol regularly. I've done coke multiple times without negative effects. I drink coffee about 5 days a week (at work). I could continue...

This is a very slow nonlinear process. Recovery is real.

I will post a longer story soon. I know this community really needs it. I just have to make sure that this recent level of recovery is actually real and not just a fleeting euphoric dreamstate.
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Hey ScaredFirstTimer
I have actually read alot of your posts. Some of them put me on edge due to the length of your recovery. I really related to alot of what you said about the fluctuations. I may be mistaken but I think your posts were the first acount I read about having really good weeks followed by pure hell. Its really good to hear that you are better I was worried about you.
 
Really good to hear, ScaredFirstTimer. Like LTCsufferer, I've followed your posts with both interest and trepidation.

Long-winded success stories are like pure gold on here, so I look forward to reading your triumphant essay on here soon.
 
Amml said:
Not permanently, in stress situation I sometimes totally spaced out, couldn't speak a sense making sentence for hours, lost my orientation sense, short term memory was absent and so on. I felt like a marionette and just hoped someone would even beat me up so I have to defend myself and wake from this state.
The dominating feeling was just complete emptiness, not like in a let's say "normal" depression where you feel better when someone cares for you, it was nothing at all. I had suicide thoughts 24/7 because I just thought what difference would it make, I'm already dead inside. I wouldn't even be a bit nervous if I had done it…
So if this answers your question, yes, there was no me as a person anymore.
Because of that I said I rather feel like this my entire life or try SSRI. The first 3 days were really unpleasant, I felt like on drugs and totally spaced out, but after those 3 days the first positive effects came out. I slowly began to get feelings again over the following weeks. It wasn't as easy because all of the surpressed emotions over the months now came out, so I was permanently acting really annoying and impulsive. But I think this is more psychological, just like you need to experience how other people react to you again.
After 5 weeks I quitted the SSRI's and was stable enough to continue with curcumin. I also took a small dose of Ibogaine after that, which caused an extreme aggressive episode for a few hours. I think this was the urge inside of me that I need to do something to get better again, because it felt just like a primitive instinctive feeling, like the need to survive.
Now I feel more stable, in this impulsive time I had I also found a social surrounding which I didn't have or didn't notice before.
It's still not everything ok but there is a world between today and a few months ago.
Sorry for keeping it so long, I had to express this somewhere.
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I'm so pleased for you dude :)

@ fnonno: If it helps, I am on sertraline too. Started at 25mg (1 week) and now on 50mg (2 weeks). Like you I was shit scared of taking them as I'd had bad reactions to 5htp, ibuprofen, coffee, you name it I was sensitive to it. I have also had exactly the same depresssive symptoms as Amml. I was functioning, just, but beyond that there was nothing.

The real positive feelings of life have yet to come back fully for me, but I am playing on my decks again, going out with friends, I'm even going on a date tonight. I can finally see light at the end of the tunnel!

Starting the sertraline and moving up dose I had some mild side effects: increased anxiety, muscle tension, slight blurred vision. But nothing that was unbearable. It sounds like you are in a lot of pain and as my psychiatrist said to me, "Max,you can either spend the next months, year or however long this takes feeling like this or you can take medication which will help you. If you had diabetes, you would inject yourself with insulin everyday and wouldn't think twice about it. So what is different about your brain?"
 
That's awesome mf140. I'm really happy for you man. My concern is that it will make me permanently worse. There are stories of that happening to HPPD people. I also have visual symptoms and tinnitus which I don't think you guys do. I don't know what to do.
 
No I luckily never had HPPD symptoms…Which medications made the HPPD better/worse?
Or some life situations where you felt better or worse? Like social contact, going outside, etc.
 
I've seen a lot of meds make people worse on the boards. It seems to be a hit or miss game with hppd.

For me, I got a big fear of being in public spaces from the 5 htp. It also threw off my balance where if I wanted to shoot a basketball it would be an airball by 5 feet. Really a strange feeling. Also my legs turned to jello. So exercising for 30 minutes would be like climbing mt. Everest. And the social anxiety is through the roof. I am getting better in some ways and then worse in others. It's really fucked up.

On another note, does it seem weird to anyone that we are fighting for our lives day in and day out and the world just goes on as normal? Doctors don't give a fuck, people move on...It's makes me realize how insignificant we are to the whole. We are not special.
 
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fnono33 said:
I've seen a lot of meds make people worse on the boards. It's basically a hit or miss game with hppd ive also heard of ssri's causing hppd, or visual snow syndrome if you want to specify.

For me, I got a big fear of being in public spaces from the 5 htp. It also threw off my balance where if I wanted to shoot a basketball it would be an airball by 5 feet. Really a strange feeling. Also my legs turned to jello. So exercising for 30 minutes would be like climbing mt. Everest. And the social anxiety is through the roof. I am getting better in some ways and then worse in others. It's really fucked up.

On another note, does it seem weird to anyone that we are fighting for our lives day in and day out and the world just goes on as normal? Doctors don't give a fuck, people move on...It's makes me realize how insignificant we are to the whole. We are not special.
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I think it's simply impossible for someone who is "normal" to imagine how this feels, this is the reason why they ignore it or can't understand unless they have been through the same.

So it seems that Serotonin-rising substances worsen your condition. Have you tried calming substances like Baldrian, lavendel oil or even benzodiazepines? Green tea contains Theanine, which can lower brain serotonin levels, but it also contains caffeine, maybe you try it with a low dosage to see if it helps you. Zinc and Magnesium both work regulating on the nervous system and have no known side effects in normal doses (about 300-500mg magnesium and 15-30mg Zinc per day).
 
Benzos mess me up. With meds I dont want to add anything yet. I will try the sups, thanks!
 
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P. S.: For all mineral salts use the citrate or gluconate form (Magnesiumcitrate, Zincgluconate, etc.), oxides and carbonates are often not resorbed well
 
Just curious why you think that serotonin-raising substances mess him up Amml? Due to issues with social contact?

I don't know if a 5-HTP reaction gives a good readout on reaction to SSRIs, I would expect 5-HTP just to affect those brain areas that can mediate stress response on the outside of the BBB - just my two cents.

Also Fnono, very careful with the teas. Caffeine in some of those, and I would avoid green tea just to be safe.
 
Cotcha Yankinov said:
Just curious why you think that serotonin-raising substances mess him up Amml? Due to issues with social contact?
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No i thought because of the bad reaction to 5-HTP and the worsening of symptoms after sports, which also raises neurotransmitter levels. But you could be right with the SSRI, there is a Zoloft solution on the market (Sertraline) that could be dosed very low to see if any adverse symptoms happen.

And btw. curcumin also reverses effects of chronic stress, if there are no side effects it's actually the safest and an effective supplement (better in liposomal form or encapsuled in cyclodextrine without piperine)

Although I started with Sertraline and then switched to curcumin, but my symptoms are somehow very different that fnono's ones
 
Okay, I was just curious. Just wanted to make sure we're not scaring anybody away from SSRIs.

I personally wouldn't draw any "intolerant to serotonin" sort of conclusions off of the 5-HTP reaction and symptoms after exercise. Could just be due to serotonin binding to those other brain areas (when the benefits of SSRIs are going to be from areas much further in, past the blood brain barrier) and the exercise intolerance and symptoms afterward could just be from chronic deconditioning and sleep deprivation. In addition, exercise is going to affect a whole lot more than serotonin, and the pattern of serotonin activity induced by exercise is going to be different than the pattern induced by SSRIs. Stress can also raise dopamine and that can probably cause some issues.

Administering serotonin straight into the CNS is also going to have a different effect compared to serotonin reuptake transporter inhibition, and whatever mechanism curcumin is increasing neurotransmitters by (MAOI or effects on tryptophan metabolism via IDO inhibition) is going to be different than SSRIs as well, especially with MAO-A metabolizing more than just serotonin. So I guess there is a lot of room for variability to reaction among different substances, even if they all increase serotonin.

Supposedly Sertaline and Fluoxetine are the two most activating (insomnia, anxiety, restlessness) of the SSRIs. I might talk to a doc about Escitalopram instead.


But I totally agree as far as doctors looking straight past the issues. I think they immediately pass it off as a hysteria type thing. They used to do that with all sorts of illness that are now well recognized. Not ruminating and panicking is important, especially for the people who aren't that bad and might just be freaked out (there are situations where somebody just has a hangover and then anxiety fuels the fire, which I think doctors treat all the people like this even though there might be exceptions that end up slipping through the cracks), but you probably can't will your way out of HPPD anymore than you can will yourself to grow another inch.
 
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Yeah the biggest thing is to keep it cool and together at your doctor's office and tell them exactly what your physical symptoms are.

I was freaking out and they immediately told me it was from anxiety....Yeah ok. I've always had baseline anxiety (as you can tell from my posts :) ) but it was off the wall due to my physical symptoms.

If you describe the physical symptoms they'll look into treating those (somehow) and not just brush everything off as anxiety or depression.
 
I'm just really really concerned about the time it will take to recover more than whether recovery is possible.

How do you get over this? Any advice besides just mindful meditation and exercise? Like what do you do in the other moments you aren't doing those activities anyways? As nobody is realistically doing that 24/7 nor would it be healthy to overdo those things anyways
 
I find myself trying to do hobbies that are conducive to mindfulness, things you can do without ruminating too much. Mindfulness for 6 hours straight after you get off work isn't realistic, but playing relaxed games and watching movies while trying to being mindful is pretty realistic I think. It helps to get into a groove of mindfulness + whatever activity, so in other words you're probably going to have to learn to combine mindfulness and hobbies because you can get distracted by the hobby a lot (which can be a good thing, we just don't want too much mind-chatter).

Learning an instrument is also an option, I think music has really helped me personally in some ways and music has been shown to be very good for the brain, causing growth of the area of the brain that connects the two hemispheres (corpus callosum).
 
Meeting up with friends just to hang out or do something productive is also great for recovery.
 
socrilus said:
I'm just really really concerned about the time it will take to recover more than whether recovery is possible.

How do you get over this? Any advice besides just mindful meditation and exercise? Like what do you do in the other moments you aren't doing those activities anyways? As nobody is realistically doing that 24/7 nor would it be healthy to overdo those things anyways
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I started doing coloring book for adults! for 15 mins a day. It helped me calm my mind

http://www.medicaldaily.com/therape...oks-how-childhood-pastime-helps-adults-356280
 
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