i wasn't using much at all. prior to dosing on the 1st of april 2016, i had maybe a small amount on 1st of jan 2016, and maybe some in september 2015. even on 1st of april it was like 'just' two lines of mixed md and coke.
i did use an immune supressant (for crohn's disease, an auto immune disease) on april 1st as well - though i'd be 'on' the same drug while doing molly before, on april i had been dosed the same day.
since then i've tried like
idk
20 differnet supplements; lithium, preganolone, selank/semax, nsi 189, uridine, piracetam, loads of shit.
nsi 189 (with zero tolerance) brought back emotions somewhat - but it soon lost that effect (it lasted maybe for 1 day of dosing and then the next day the effect
was nearly all gone. and then i'll have to wait a year etc, to dose again, or else i'll do nothing.)
prozac also, on the first day of dosing with zero tolerance, seems to bring the emos back somewhat. but then the second day, third etc, does nothing noticable (and i'm p sure
this isn't just me adjusting to the new higher level of emos.'
aside from that nothing has helped. it's hell and i wouldn't wish this on anyone.
other symptoms:
tinnitus sometimes -
awful sleep, esp for the first few years after. like wake up 12 times a night. no dreams or very low emo but intense dreams. i had extreme anger and agitation, felt like my mind was racing and couldn't
rest at all. prozac helps with this. didn't get any of the stranger symptoms like HPPD or w/e.
what have you tried/where are the others who haven't recovered? afaik on this forum everyone said that everyone got better within 24 months or so?
So I just saw your post and thought I'd drop back in to share some thoughts I have regarding LTC which will hopefully help.
I've had LTC since around Sep 2017, and for the first two years I saw no improvement at all. I only started improving slowly over 2 years in and now I feel like I'm getting close to complete recovery, although I feel like I still might take a few more months to get fully better. I've had all symptoms you've listed above including the inability to feel emotions, DP/DR, headaches, tinnitus, sleep disturbances, cognitive issues, sexual dysfunction etc so rest assured that your symptoms are normal. At my worst I thought I was permanently brain damaged and almost committed suicide. I've also been down the road of trying different supplements and drugs believing that LTC was a neurotransmitter related issue so I can completely relate to your situation.
I honestly believe there is a lot of misinformation on this forum around the nature of LTC which hindered my recovery, first and foremost being that LTC is caused by MDMA damaging serotonin receptors and axons in the brain or MDMA throwing off the production/balance of serotonin and that the damage is permanent. 3-4 years ago when I obsessively trawled this forum looking for a cure there was a
photo which I think a lot of people in this forum have seen being passed around which showed that MDMA causes permanent serotonin axon damage in rats. However if you look at the original
study the MDMA doses given to these rats were incredibly high and concentrated at 5mg/kg twice daily for 7 days straight. That's equivalent to 350mg for a 70kg person twice a day for 7 days and not reflective at all of how most people on the forum have used MDMA and gotten LTC. If you were to drink alcohol 20-30 standard drinks twice a day for 7 days straight I'm pretty sure you'd get brain damaged too. Also if you google there are also a lot of studies showing that it is inconclusive whether MDMA damages serotonin axons at normal recreational doses. So I highly doubt MDMA causes serotonin axon damage at the doses which most people on this forum have used MDMA. In any case the brain is neuroplastic and people have recovered from far worse such as concussions, brain surgeries, CTEs to live fulfilling lives and there are a lot of activities that people do which 'damage' the brain such as drinking, smoking weed, stress from work/life and they still seem to be ok. So MDMA does not damage your brain and therefore LTC is not a neurotransmitter/or neurotransmitter axon related issue.
In my opinion LTC is mental illness/mental health related. So you might say in response to that - I don't or didn't have a mental health issue. And I would say in response I completely understand where you're coming from because once upon a time I felt the same way too. Years ago I always had a certain impression of depression/anxiety and never believed it would be something I would personally experience. When I had LTC I was also diagnosed with depression by my GP and I never expected depression would feel like that. Also your LTC symptoms only started after doing MDMA right? But be honest with yourself - in the years and months prior to your LTC were you really satisfied with life? Or did your energy levels decline slowly for years prior? Did you slowly feel more disconnected from your friends, your emotions and lose interest in activities and social life? Did you ever feel something was off in your life but could never pinpoint what it was? Or did you ever feel stressed out from work/study or feel like your life was headed in the wrong direction? If so, which I think 99% of people on this forum would have experienced, your LTC is actually mental health related.
So with mental health and specifically LTC there are a couple of relevant concepts which helped me and might help you.
Thinking/Feeling/Acting
First and foremost how you think affects how you feel and act, and how you feel affects how you think and act. Similar to riding a bike, conscious thought patterns we develop, especially when we're younger slowly become unconscious over time. When they become unconscious that basically affects how we feel. This process doesn't happen overnight - it happens over years and decades. This is why you could take a room full of 5 year olds and they act similarly, then decades later they become completely different people who can't relate with one another. The different thinking patterns and values they adopt from their parents and society eventually change the trajectory of their life, and given years and decades become very difficult to change. Some thought patterns are helpful, and some thought patterns are harmful. With mental health issues people develop harmful values and thinking patterns which affect their self-image, ability to connect with others and cause unnecessary stress/anxiety in life. These thoughts become more and more difficult but not impossible to address the older we become. If you've ever felt a sense that you're stuck acting a certain way or stuck feeling a certain way this is why. A lot of symptoms of LTC overlap with those of depression, and although LTC and depression may not be exactly the same I feel that they are very much related. With depression in my personal opinion I believe that it's not really a neurotransmitter imbalance related illness, I think it's a social/relationship/behavioural/emotional illness caused by dysfunctional thinking patterns which have become so ingrained over time that they've become subconscious affecting the way we feel and interact with others. The depressive symptoms are our body's and mind's way of telling us we need to change and are an evolutionary mechanism similar to pain telling us something's wrong. For example rumination is a classic symptom of depression. Have you ever thought that rumination might be helpful to unpack why we think the way we think and our subconscious behaviour? A well documented effect of depression is depressive realism - apparently people with depression tend to see issues less subjectively and more objectively. That allows us to see our own issues more objectively and identify which areas in our lives need improvement. With DP/DR we are less present in the current moment and it feels almost like we're an objective bystander to our own life. This forces us to take a pause from life and view our own behaviour and thinking patterns more objectively. I think depression is an important evolutionary mechanism to make us reassess our lives when things go wrong.
Chronic Stress/Anxiety or Trauma
I would say basically everybody on this forum has experienced DP/DR. DP/DR is a condition not necessarily limited to LTC. There are a lot of instances where people get DP/DR after smoking weed, or a traumatic incident or after chronic stress. DP/DR occurs when the stress or anxiety you experience exceeds your brain's capacity to endure it and therefore your brain changes mode and instead you become numb and disconnected from your surroundings and emotions. Stress and anxiety are partially related to the events in our lives but also to the way our minds assign meaning to the events which happen to us. For example two people might do the same job and one person feels extremely stressed out whereas the other really enjoys their job. This is related to how these two people view their jobs - one might view their job as a learning experience and opportunity to try new things, whereas the other might view their job as a role in which they need to perform or they'll get fired and they'll be unable to feed their family. With social anxiety for example people might be socially anxious because they are afraid of people judging them by what they say or do. Therefore they are afraid to be themselves and worry about what others think of them. This fear of judgement might be because sometime in the past they acted a certain way and people responded a certain way rejecting them, therefore they became conditioned to not act that way or care more about what others thought of them. Of course for some people there is probably also a genetic predisposition to anxiety although I think the genetic predisposition might be overstated and can be overcome by changing the way you think. For example, some people are more socially anxious than others because they are more sensitive to what people think of them than others (the genetic connection). However, once they understand that in society there is a wide spectrum of people, everybody has 'haters' but also people who would accept them for being themselves and oftentimes whether they are accepted or not is not a reflection of on their own actions/behaviour but rather the values and beliefs of the other person or in other words 'haters gonna hate' and 'who gives a fuck what other think' their social anxiety can be alleviated. This is just one example of how thinking patterns can address whether or not and how we experience anxiety. So in summary chronic stress/anxiety is a major contributing factor to DP/DR which is partially influenced by genetics, our external environment, our experiences and also the values, beliefs and thinking patterns we have which affect the meaning we assign to external events. In order to recover we need to either change our external environment to reduce stressors, or change the thinking patterns we use to interpret our external environment.
Emotions
So almost everybody on this forum has probably experienced emotional numbness. I can't speak for anybody else here but with my personal experience I've realised that a lot of my emotional numbness was caused by denying and repressing my emotions, over a period of close to 8 years. When I started recovering I started realising how important and necessary emotions are to mental wellbeing and also the concept of emotional maturity. So I'm a 26 y.o. male, and when I was younger ~16 years old I started picking up toxic masculinity traits such as emotions are 'gay' and 'real men' don't show emotion and I started to consciously repress the way I felt. I thought 'real men' acted like James Bond or Jordan Belfort in the 'Wolf of Wall Street'. I'm not sure about the ladies on this forum but I think this might actually be a very common thinking pattern shared by men. Over time repressing my emotions became so ingrained in my psyche I became emotionally numb and unable to feel as it had become an unconscious habit. However what I didn't realise at the time was that emotions are crucial for cognition, feeling connected with others and just feeling alive. Why is that? Emotions are actually an internal evolutionary feedback mechanism which guide us towards doing things which help us survive and feel good. Feeling happy after playing basketball or meeting up with friends? Makes you want to do more right? Feeling sad after a friend heads overseas for work? Makes you want to spend more time with that friend and appreciate the other friends you have around you and value the fact that your time with them is limited and precious. Feeling angry after losing a basketball game? Makes you want to practise harder and more motivated to find ways to win future games. Feeling hurt after saying something and feeling that a friend's judging your character? Makes you think about whether what you said was socially acceptable or not or makes you reconsider your friendship. Emotions are a vital feedback mechanism which helps us determine what activities we should do, who we should associate with and helps us make sure we act in socially acceptable ways. In addition, being able to express emotion appropriately is completely necessary for mental wellbeing. Humans are conditioned to be social - since the dawn of humanity humans lived in tribes and societies because living together meant a greater chance of survival. Being able to express emotions signals to our friends that we enjoy their company, or that we find what they say offensive, or that we need their help during a time of sadness and allows others to either recalibrate their behaviour so they know how to act in a more socially acceptable manner or comfort us to meet our emotional needs or to hang around us more often. So there is also nothing wrong in being able to express emotion in fact it is important and necessary to be able to express how you feel. Earlier I touched upon the concept of emotional maturity. From what I understand, emotional maturity is realising the importance of emotions, being able to identify what we feel, why we feel that way and also being able to express that in an age appropriate manner. Basically all kids are taught subjects such as math, science and language growing up but not all kids are taught 'emotional maturity' which is just as important. Whether or not kids are taught emotional maturity depends on whether their family understands this concept which is influenced by the values and beliefs of the parent and also cultural attitudes. In my opinion being able to 'feel' is almost like a skill which needs to be learnt just like math or writing and can be lost if we don't practice it over time through social conditioning. For example, let's delve into childhood developmental psychology. If a child has emotionally responsive parents they would feel comfortable expressing their emotions e.g. wanting a new toy knowing that their parents would meet their needs. On the other hand if a child grew up with abusive parents they would not feel comfortable expressing their emotions as they have been socially conditioned to believe that if they expressed their emotions they would either not be met or that they would be scorned by their parents. This is an extreme example but oftentimes emotional repression can have its roots in childhood, traumatic events, social exclusion or thinking patterns developed over time becoming subconscious habits. During my LTC I had headaches, eye clenching, chest tightness and muscles pains which I now realise were psychosomatic symptoms of repressed emotions and have greatly improved after relearning 'how to feel'.
Recovery Process
So in order to recover what you need to do is:
1. Accept that LTC is mental health related, that you're not brain damaged in any way and that LTC and DP/DR is a natural response by your mind to overwhelming stress or thinking patterns which have led to a breakdown in your relationships/work/self image. The symptoms that you're experiencing is your mind telling you you need to take a break and rethink how you're thinking and acting in a way which allows you to better connect with others, prioritise activities and work which makes you happy and reduce stress in your life.
2. Reduce external stressors, change your environment or understand and reframe the root thinking patterns which are contributing to you feeling stress and anxiety.
3. Reexamine your values and beliefs and thinking patterns so that you can express your true self and do prioritise activities and work congruent to your personality and what's really important to you.
4. Relearn to feel emotions, identify emotions, express emotions so you can better connect with others.
Once you address these issues you will start to recover and your physical symptoms will start to subside as well! There is no quick fix and this process has taken years for me. This process also might sound easy but is actually incredibly hard, but once you start to recover you'll slowly start to realise again how incredible life can be and come out the other side a much better person.
A lot of my thoughts have been developed through my experience of getting better, extensive reading and also SpiderBro who added me awhile back to a LTC reddit support group. After speaking to a lot of the other people in the group it confirmed my belief that LTC is mental illness related, not neurotransmitter related, at least over the long term.
Hope this was useful.