MDMA Recovery (Stories & Support - 7) [ALL LTC posts go here]

[lionheart90]

I just looked back at the journals from when I first started taking psychedelics. I was having massive issues almost from the first use of them. Like breaks with reality, emotional issues, cognitive issues/thought disturbances, etc.

so yeah. The LTC was a real fuckshow but my issues started a year or two before, and basically from the immediate onset of using drugs.

and looking back, it's clear to me now that almost anytime I touch drugs I have this terrible reaction. Even if its just one night of heavy drinking (1 or 2 beers is OK but then I just crave more so its a bad idea) or smoking weed.

Eugh. I'm disgusted with myself. haha. I can't believe I've had such a willful ignorance of these issues before. I guess I just didn't care. I wanted the drugs and to be anything other than the state of consciousness I was used to and hated. So yeah, just did the drugs anyways despite the extreme negative consequences basically from the start.

So yeah, just realized that and just wanted to come mention it here. Basically the shit show began as soon as I started using hard drugs. and yeah, got like 10x worse with the LTC. but I'm no longer looking at it like "am i recovered from LTC" I am now looking at it like "am I recovered from drug abuse?"

IDK what my "issue" is but it seems to be some kind of mental disorder. Like bi polar or schizophrenia or something fucked up like that. I had an episode at 21 but was able to repress it so much that nobody noticed. And now looking back at the last years of heavy drug abuse, whatever that mental disorder was has been aggravated by the drug abuse. It has not completely flared up, and whatever I keep experiencing are just tremors, and I have yet again been able to repress it and nobody has noticed. BUT. the point is that i.fucking.noticed. and if I've learned one thing from the LTC it's don't tempt sleeping dragons.

so yeah. Not sure exactly how it's going to play out since I fucking love LSD and always told myself I'd never stop taking it. but with this new info, I just might have to. If I don't then I risk awakening whatever sleeping dragon/mental disorder is dormant in me.

Eugh. this just feels like another slap on the hand from God. Life was shitty before, and I felt like having drugs in my life for once made it interesting and addictive. It might have made some extreme ups and downs but at least I wanted to stick around for the up. and that was a change for the better.

I've said so many times before, the LTC taught me to live again. It made me really want to try. Now I'm going to put that to the test. Can I want to live even if I don't have drugs to look forward to? Can I enjoy living if I am totally sober? That is my new quest.

 

[AutoTripper]

I just looked back at the journals from when I first started taking psychedelics. I was having massive issues almost from the first use of them. Like breaks with reality, emotional issues, cognitive issues/thought disturbances, etc.

so yeah. The LTC was a real fuckshow but my issues started a year or two before, and basically from the immediate onset of using drugs.

and looking back, it's clear to me now that almost anytime I touch drugs I have this terrible reaction. Even if its just one night of heavy drinking (1 or 2 beers is OK but then I just crave more so its a bad idea) or smoking weed.

Eugh. I'm disgusted with myself. haha. I can't believe I've had such a willful ignorance of these issues before. I guess I just didn't care. I wanted the drugs and to be anything other than the state of consciousness I was used to and hated. So yeah, just did the drugs anyways despite the extreme negative consequences basically from the start.

So yeah, just realized that and just wanted to come mention it here. Basically the shit show began as soon as I started using hard drugs. and yeah, got like 10x worse with the LTC. but I'm no longer looking at it like "am i recovered from LTC" I am now looking at it like "am I recovered from drug abuse?"

IDK what my "issue" is but it seems to be some kind of mental disorder. Like bi polar or schizophrenia or something fucked up like that. I had an episode at 21 but was able to repress it so much that nobody noticed. And now looking back at the last years of heavy drug abuse, whatever that mental disorder was has been aggravated by the drug abuse. It has not completely flared up, and whatever I keep experiencing are just tremors, and I have yet again been able to repress it and nobody has noticed. BUT. the point is that i.fucking.noticed. and if I've learned one thing from the LTC it's don't tempt sleeping dragons.

so yeah. Not sure exactly how it's going to play out since I fucking love LSD and always told myself I'd never stop taking it. but with this new info, I just might have to. If I don't then I risk awakening whatever sleeping dragon/mental disorder is dormant in me.

Eugh. this just feels like another slap on the hand from God. Life was shitty before, and I felt like having drugs in my life for once made it interesting and addictive. It might have made some extreme ups and downs but at least I wanted to stick around for the up. and that was a change for the better.

I've said so many times before, the LTC taught me to live again. It made me really want to try. Now I'm going to put that to the test. Can I want to live even if I don't have drugs to look forward to? Can I enjoy living if I am totally sober? That is my new quest.

Just to say I can empathize with what you have expressed here. And I think you would probably find that this type of of absence of helping oneself and being totally truthful with oneself in the name of what is ultimately best and the most sensible.... is extremely Common and I would argue it's just another aspect of Human Nature which many of us are guilty of in many of life's daily activities and habits and behaviours.

So certainly try not to beat yourself up for a start and it's great that you are making a concerted effort to be more honest with yourself because we try our hardest not to admit these difficult truths much of the time.

@sassyfrass you are welcome mate. Just on the cannabis quickly and you're understandable reservation about getting high currently, you could always try my vaporizing some high quality CBD flower because this will still contain pretty much the full range of cannabinoids except THC and it is the cannabinoid vaporized which is beneficial to the heart not just the THC itself and it also may be calming and and therapeutic.

Just another thought anyway.

 

[fogmaker]

I highly highly recommend trying an SSRI or SNRI if you are having physical symptoms that aren't improving on their own. I've been dealing with all the symptoms you can imagine that people list here (you can check my post history) and basically not functioning the past 1.5 years. I'm almost a month into Effexor now and the weird head pressure/headache, DP/DR, ringing in ears, stomach issues, overall pain level and more have all gone from like a 9 or 10 to a 2 or 3, and I don't think the medicine has even fully kicked in yet. Still have some sexual dysfunction but this also seems to be improving. This syndrome is absolutely related to altered neurotransmitter levels or transmission of serotonin and/or other chemicals from MDMA abuse. Anxiety, brain damage, whatever you want to call it, if you're trying exercise, diet, benzos, magnesium, etc., and you are still feeling like shit, definitely try an SSRI/SNRI (I tried all of these and more). I feel so much better it's ridiculous. Wish I would have done it sooner. Well, I guess I did try citalopram when all of this first started, but it made me feel awful, so I was scared to try another. Try to find one you can tolerate and ride it out for at least a few weeks. I still felt terrible for the first few weeks but now I can say I legitimately feel different and better and much more like my old self. Hang in there if you're struggling, I truly didn't think I would get out of the painful fog, but it does happen.

Congratulations on your success! I'm pretty much in the same boat, its been 4 years since i fucked up and got my "LTC". After two years i was basically symptomfree but made the stupid decision to try LSD and got back to square one. I have been trying everything under the sun with minimal success. I know my nervous system probably will stabilize with time, but i probably looking at another 2-3 years and my quality of life at the moment is pretty much pure shit. My symptoms is 80% physical with a sensitized nervous system that overreacts to pretty much everything. Stress, food, sugar, all sets of a reaction. Constant pins and needles accompanied with a nasty insomnia. Every compound that calms the nervous system rebounds with 2x force. Ofcourse this is accompanied with anxiety and brain fog since its impossible to relax.

I tried to look at your post history to see if you experienced similar symptoms but, it seems that thread got deleted when bluelight got updated. Did you experience similar physical symptoms or were they more leaning towards depression and panic attacks?
At this point my last resort is to try a low dose SSRI in an effort to stabilize the nervous system and the taper with the 10% reduction/month model advocated on survivingantidepressants.com. If i commit to this it am looking at 10~12 months tapering with a risk of getting anhedonia and PSSD. So yeah, I've decided o give it atleast another month before i make a radical decision. Would be really interesting to see if your sexual dysfunction improved so please keep us informed

 

[AutoTripper]

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Congratulations on your success! I'm pretty much in the same boat, its been 4 years since i fucked up and got my "LTC". After two years i was basically symptomfree but made the stupid decision to try LSD and got back to square one. I have been trying everything under the sun with minimal success. I know my nervous system probably will stabilize with time, but i probably looking at another 2-3 years and my quality of life at the moment is pretty much pure shit. My symptoms is 80% physical with a sensitized nervous system that overreacts to pretty much everything. Stress, food, sugar, all sets of a reaction. Constant pins and needles accompanied with a nasty insomnia. Every compound that calms the nervous system rebounds with 2x force. Ofcourse this is accompanied with anxiety and brain fog since its impossible to relax.

I tried to look at your post history to see if you experienced similar symptoms but, it seems that thread got deleted when bluelight got updated. Did you experience similar physical symptoms or were they more leaning towards depression and panic attacks?
At this point my last resort is to try a low dose SSRI in an effort to stabilize the nervous system and the taper with the 10% reduction/month model advocated on survivingantidepressants.com. If i commit to this it am looking at 10~12 months tapering with a risk of getting anhedonia and PSSD. So yeah, I've decided o give it atleast another month before i make a radical decision. Would be really interesting to see if your sexual dysfunction improved so please keep us informed

Hey there, first of all really sorry to hear of your difficult plight and suffering.

Im surprised to hear that Lsd set you off so badly again after making great progress.

I was intetested in your comments about your nervous system and your overeactivity.
My own nervous system is ravaged and disordered as a direct result of Lyme Disease since 2005 from a simple 2004 tick bite which destroyed every aspect of my life as it was.

Lyme Disease is a condition which is effectively, by definition, dysregulation of both the nervous and immune system- aka, "Immune and Nervous system dysregulation".

To me that is "Lyme Disease" in a nuthsell. Not simply an infection. My actual borrelia bacterial infection was cleared a few years ago now but I still have Lyme Disease as far as I am concerned.

And it would appear that there may be some similarities between the nature of Lyme dysregulation and LTC symptoms and cases, and the general side effects and consequences of MDMA use.

We have put and heard so much emphasis on anxiety being the root cause of many people's very real pyhsical LTC symptoms.

I personally have never been satisfied that there isn't in many cases a genuine underlying physical aspect, despite my preaching about a positive mindset and strong belief.

Obviously these factors are massively important, crucial, indispensable for making real progress with virtually any type of problem or condition in life and especially the one in hand, where negative beliefs and thought patterns and conditioned emotions etc can massively exacerbate things and prevent recovery.


But @fogmaker your post and comments on your nervous system has spurred some thought in me, along the lines of LTC being more directly and simply related to Nervous system dysregulation as a side effect of MDMA.

Confession- my brain is very compromised lately due to an extremely fatigued and malnourished condition, so Im almost in a daydream and prone to both delusion and stupidity. So Im aware that I am either stating the plain obvious, or not really making any kind of point at all.

Actually, the only point I intended to make was to mention how the wise and willing @G_Chem mentioned Lyme Disease a while back in this thread, suggesting another member consider beong tested in case their own LTC was potentially a case of undiagnosed Lyme Disease which apparently has been heard of.

So I was going to mention this to you @fogmaker to consider, you never know. Maybe worth ruling out for sure. There are one hell of a lot of undiagnosed cases of Lyme Disease out there which have been wrongly identified as a huge range of other debilitating conditions and diagnosis.

But then the thought came over me to simply draw some paradims between lyme disease and LTC regarding the involvement of the central nervous system being in a dysregulated state.

 

[Southamerica123]

Hi guys.i am 24 Im in al ready 12 months. i developed some kind of twitching after getting a high dose of extacy( 2 and a half pills) in a 10 hour period( eating half, half, half,.....) + o accidental drink a big gulp of probably GHB. Got a panic attack cause i though i was gonna die and left the place got pretty high and after a couple of hours came down pretty eady, Just felt really sleepy. Next Day felt my head a mess, woke up with desrealization and a lot of anxiety. I began to fill twitching on my throat and then electro jolts in my spine the following days. Some days didnt feel nothing at All but after a month got anotger panic attack and began with bodywide muscle twtiching
Anxiety has made It worse during time. I made an EMG, Mri and bloodtest and everything came clean. Is this due to drugs or can be just because i triggered an anxiety disorder with the panic attack i had(probably ptsd) and OCD ? Every doctor spsiquiatrist, neurologist, PD, psichologist days its anxiety. Still twitching mostly in calves and have other nervous system symptoms(tingling, pre cramps) after 12 months, been sobre since the incident. Some days I have no symptoms at all. Before the incident i was a lo d of anxious and probably sensitive to mdma. I usted to get mdma 3 pills per year at thw most and smoked some weed.

Anny comments? Goos luck to everyone
Quote

 

[Wentworth211]

Hello, I have been ghosting this thread for a while now since my LTC (2 months, 1 week in as of now) began and I finally decided to make an account to join in on the discussion. The symptoms are still pretty much there but I have lessen them a lot with proper exercise, a decent diet, and a few mushrooms I started taking, Lion's mane and Cordyceps to be exact. Lion's Mane was pretty huge for me in terms of removing stuttering and helping so called "3D thinking". Sadly my memory was still pretty bad as I had a hard time with conversations. Later I started taking Cordyceps at the same time and it alleviated my cognitive problems even further.

What I want to say is that I recommend people to experiment with mushrooms such as Lion's mane. It is proven that it is neuroprotective and most importantly, promotes neurogenesis. The only problem with Cordyceps is that you get boners more often and semen retention gets harder and harder (hehe). Just a month ago I felt like I was a ghost, mentally drifting through places, now with these mushrooms I can actually watch movies and have an easier time understanding them.

Lastly, I wanted to ask if I am the only one with this kind of physical symptom where my eyes atleast once a day start shaking rapidly left and right for about 30 seconds. It only becomes disturbing when reading something upclose. I googled about it and the proper name for it appears to be "Nystagmus". It may be that my anxiety creates it as every time I start to think about it, it happens again, but at other times it comes just out of nowhere.

Can I ask what brand of cordyceps and Lions mane you are using LifeLessons?

 

[LifeLesson]

Can I ask what brand of cordyceps and Lions mane you are using LifeLessons?

I live in Estonia and some time ago I found a local website which sells 4 kinds of mushrooms: Lion's mane, Cordyceps, Reishi, and Chaga. The whole site is sadly only in Estonian, but you can still buy what you want and have it delivered to you if you live in Europe.

Site: https://www.seentevagi.ee/

 

[Southamerica123]

i am 24 Im in al ready 12 months. i developed some kind of twitching after getting a high dose of extacy( 2 and a half pills) in a 10 hour period( eating half, half, half,.....) + o accidental drink a big gulp of probably GHB. Got a panic attack cause i though i was gonna die and left the place got pretty high and after a couple of hours came down pretty eady, Just felt really sleepy. Next Day felt my head a mess, woke up with desrealization and a lot of anxiety. I began to fill twitching on my throat and then electro jolts in my spine the following days. Some days didnt feel nothing at All but after a month got anotger panic attack and began with bodywide muscle twtiching
Anxiety has made It worse during time. I made an EMG, Mri and bloodtest and everything came clean. Is this due to drugs or can be just because i triggered an anxiety disorder with the panic attack i had(probably ptsd) and OCD ? Every doctor spsiquiatrist, neurologist, PD, psichologist days its anxiety. Still twitching mostly in calves and have other nervous system symptoms(tingling, pre cramps) after 12 months, been sobre since the incident. Some days I have no symptoms at all. Before the incident i was a lo d of anxious and probably sensitive to mdma. I usted to get mdma 3 pills per year at thw most and smoked some weed.

Anny comments? Goos luck to everyone

 

[Southamerica123]

i am 24 Im in al ready 12 months. i developed some kind of twitching after getting a high dose of extacy( 2 and a half pills) in a 10 hour period( eating half, half, half,.....) + o accidental drink a big gulp of probably GHB. Got a panic attack cause i though i was gonna die and left the place got pretty high and after a couple of hours came down pretty eady, Just felt really sleepy. Next Day felt my head a mess, woke up with desrealization and a lot of anxiety. I began to fill twitching on my throat and then electro jolts in my spine the following days. Some days didnt feel nothing at All but after a month got anotger panic attack and began with bodywide muscle twtiching
Anxiety has made It worse during time. I made an EMG, Mri and bloodtest and everything came clean. Is this due to drugs or can be just because i triggered an anxiety disorder with the panic attack i had(probably ptsd) and OCD ? Every doctor spsiquiatrist, neurologist, PD, psichologist days its anxiety. Still twitching mostly in calves and have other nervous system symptoms(tingling, pre cramps) after 12 months, been sobre since the incident. Some days I have no symptoms at all. Before the incident i was a lo d of anxious and probably sensitive to mdma. I usted to get mdma 3 pills per year at thw most and smoked some weed.

Anny comments? Goos luck to everyone

 

[ZeroLuck]

@Southamerica123

Buddy, everyone is in similar situation... The general advices are...

1. Sleep well
2. Eat well
3. Exercise plenty
4. Find a way to relax and reduce your stress
5. Patience and hope


Everyone is getting better, almost everyone is completely "cured".

You can try SSRIs, if you take benzos I wouldn't recommend daily just when you really, really need them, they can make your situation worse otherwise.

Also, don't obsess yourself too much over your situation. If you do so, you risk to develop more mental issues. If you have any questions please feel free to write me.

 

[Southamerica123]

@Southamerica123

Buddy, everyone is in similar situation... The general advices are...

1. Sleep well
2. Eat well
3. Exercise plenty
4. Find a way to relax and reduce your stress
5. Patience and hope


Everyone is getting better, almost everyone is completely "cured".

You can try SSRIs, if you take benzos I wouldn't recommend daily just when you really, really need them, they can make your situation worse otherwise.

Also, don't obsess yourself too much over your situation. If you do so, you risk to develop more mental issues. If you have any questions please feel free to write me.

Thanks for the reply bro. The worst symptoms is twitching actually, cause its almost 24 /7 Sometimes feeling like Imbalance of adrenaline though my body. It sucks. Teying magnesium and pottasium. Probably Benign fasciculations triggered by drugs, cause its almost a year non stop. The weird thing is that i only had brain fog and memlry issues that lasted a couple of weeks after a heavy panic attack i had
1 month after LTC began.

I Hope i am on my way to zero symptoms. Good luck

 

[ZeroLuck]

The nervous ticks are annoying, but harmless! You're very, very lucky to regain your cognition back. I'm still struggling with floating memory issues, and that's a life-changing crap... However if your way of expressing and manifesting your anxiety is through muscle twitching, you're good to go... If it bothers you, address the anxiety. It's hard, but you got to keep the lesson for life.

 

[lionheart90]

Zero do you smoke weed?

 

[ZeroLuck]

Zero do you smoke weed?

I don't, I smoked weed one time since the beginning of my LTC(2.5y ago). Didn't have any issues and the quality seemed great! Maybe strictly medical weed in small amounts has the potential to help us somewhat in the LTC, but I wouldn't advice it, due to the many reports of people having similar symptoms caused by weed alone.

 

[Wentworth211]

Anyone here tried l theanine or taurine? I think a poster on here by the name shunga I think it was said all this is most likely a hpa axis dysfunction, caused by chronic Stress from the comedown, very similar to ptsd, anxiety panic attacks depression and physical symptoms, he said you mainly need to treat the anxiety, a lot of people benefited from things like Benzos and drugs which work on GABA and decreasing glutamate, if you look online you will see mdma causes a sustained release of glutamate (excitatory neurotransmitter) associated in high levels with ocd, anxiety schizophrenia and such disorders, so you see what I’m getting at.. too much glutamate, brain can’t calm down chronic stress and then this effects hormones.

 

[AutoTripper]

Anyone here tried l theanine or taurine? I think a poster on here by the name shunga I think it was said all this is most likely a hpa axis dysfunction, caused by chronic Stress from the comedown, very similar to ptsd, anxiety panic attacks depression and physical symptoms, he said you mainly need to treat the anxiety, a lot of people benefited from things like Benzos and drugs which work on GABA and decreasing glutamate, if you look online you will see mdma causes a sustained release of glutamate (excitatory neurotransmitter) associated in high levels with ocd, anxiety schizophrenia and such disorders, so you see what I’m getting at.. too much glutamate, brain can’t calm down chronic stress and then this effects hormones.

Great contribution and presentation of perspective. Just to add, this "pattern" can easily become cyclical, self perpetuating, and seem impossible to escape the clutches of until a little progress there's scene and then things can gradually start to swing back in one's favour as many people have reported here pleasingly.

 

[anon1644]

Congratulations on your success! I'm pretty much in the same boat, its been 4 years since i fucked up and got my "LTC". After two years i was basically symptomfree but made the stupid decision to try LSD and got back to square one. I have been trying everything under the sun with minimal success. I know my nervous system probably will stabilize with time, but i probably looking at another 2-3 years and my quality of life at the moment is pretty much pure shit. My symptoms is 80% physical with a sensitized nervous system that overreacts to pretty much everything. Stress, food, sugar, all sets of a reaction. Constant pins and needles accompanied with a nasty insomnia. Every compound that calms the nervous system rebounds with 2x force. Ofcourse this is accompanied with anxiety and brain fog since its impossible to relax.

I tried to look at your post history to see if you experienced similar symptoms but, it seems that thread got deleted when bluelight got updated. Did you experience similar physical symptoms or were they more leaning towards depression and panic attacks?
At this point my last resort is to try a low dose SSRI in an effort to stabilize the nervous system and the taper with the 10% reduction/month model advocated on survivingantidepressants.com. If i commit to this it am looking at 10~12 months tapering with a risk of getting anhedonia and PSSD. So yeah, I've decided o give it atleast another month before i make a radical decision. Would be really interesting to see if your sexual dysfunction improved so please keep us informed

I didn't have depression or panic attacks per se - mostly just severe depersonalization/derealization and other significant physical symptoms: head pressure/zaps/pain/headaches (whatever you want to call it) that descended down into neck and abdomen, ringing in ears, hard to focus vision, dizzy/lightheadedness, abdominal pain/bloating/distension, constant and severe fasciculations all over body, erectile dysfunction/orgasm dysfunction, difficulty with urination, severe insomnia, and muscle/nerve pain. All of it has improved on the minimum dose of effexor (37.5mg) after about 6 weeks, even the sexual dysfunction. I've gotten private messages from people on here saying the same thing, too. I was just so scared to put more drugs in my body, but I wish I would have done it sooner. Truly nothing else has helped in a remotely similar way, including everything from exercise to diet and benzos. I might increase the dose to 75mg to see if it fully knocks everything out. I would sort of describe my symptoms in the way that you did these past two years: an "oversensitized nervous system," or a system that is just devoid of serotonin or something and is completely out of whack. This whole thing has felt similar to when I had withdrawals for a week or so when I came off of an SSRI 10+ years ago in high school, except it started the morning after I woke up from doing MDMA and didn't go away at all for more than a year and a half. Good luck...

 

[Needhelp123]

I didn't have depression or panic attacks per se - mostly just severe depersonalization/derealization and other significant physical symptoms: head pressure/zaps/pain/headaches (whatever you want to call it) that descended down into neck and abdomen, ringing in ears, hard to focus vision, dizzy/lightheadedness, abdominal pain/bloating/distension, constant and severe fasciculations all over body, erectile dysfunction/orgasm dysfunction, difficulty with urination, severe insomnia, and muscle/nerve pain. All of it has improved on the minimum dose of effexor (37.5mg) after about 6 weeks, even the sexual dysfunction. I've gotten private messages from people on here saying the same thing, too. I was just so scared to put more drugs in my body, but I wish I would have done it sooner. Truly nothing else has helped in a remotely similar way, including everything from exercise to diet and benzos. I might increase the dose to 75mg to see if it fully knocks everything out. I would sort of describe my symptoms in the way that you did these past two years: an "oversensitized nervous system," or a system that is just devoid of serotonin or something and is completely out of whack. This whole thing has felt similar to when I had withdrawals for a week or so when I came off of an SSRI 10+ years ago in high school, except it started the morning after I woke up from doing MDMA and didn't go away at all for more than a year and a half. Good luck...

That’s amazing! You’re saying your visual focus improved on the SSRI? Was it immediate?

 

[anon1644]

That’s amazing! You’re saying your visual focus improved on the SSRI? Was it immediate?

I felt pretty bad for a week or two while starting it. It wasn't immediate. I still had some bad days 3-4-5 weeks in. But there was a point where my body sort of "woke up" and it didn't feel like my brain/vision was as out of sync with my body and surroundings, if that makes sense. Like, for a long time it was very hard to drive and try to process moving things, it felt like my brain/vision was lagging behind or something. But after a few weeks of the meds it felt like things sort of synced up better. Hard to describe, but hopefully that makes sense. I also felt like it was hard to focus vision sometimes because I was so wired/agitated, but that has gotten way better as well. Everything just feels more calm and less haywire now. I would sort of get these waves of muscle twitching/ears ringing/dizziness/shaky vision, but all of it has subsided.

 

[AutoTripper]

I felt pretty bad for a week or two while starting it. It wasn't immediate. I still had some bad days 3-4-5 weeks in. But there was a point where my body sort of "woke up" and it didn't feel like my brain/vision was as out of sync with my body and surroundings, if that makes sense. Like, for a long time it was very hard to drive and try to process moving things, it felt like my brain/vision was lagging behind or something. But after a few weeks of the meds it felt like things sort of synced up better. Hard to describe, but hopefully that makes sense. I also felt like it was hard to focus vision sometimes because I was so wired/agitated, but that has gotten way better as well. Everything just feels more calm and less haywire now. I would sort of get these waves of muscle twitching/ears ringing/dizziness/shaky vision, but all of it has subsided.

Very interesting and really glad to hear it has helped so much, long may it continue.

So Im just shooting this thought out, I'm wondering how much your general anxiety level has been since starting the SSRI?

In that, if it has gradually and substantially decreased, it may be that the improvements you are now seeing with physical symptoms and also the example you give about your ability to process information when driving, maybe this is directly linked?

We all know how anxiety can cause all manner of physical symptoms. So it's an interesting and extremely relevant idea to think that in your case the medication has subtly and gradually lowered you anxiety level and this has maybe been the biggest Factor in bringing about these positive improvements.