pinpoint
Bluelighter
This is a story of a journey I took over the past 4 months on a mission to find sustainable zen. With the advent of WebMD, Wikipedia, forums and the never-ending flow of information found on the internet these days I, like many, have become something of an internet doctor. I diagnose myself free of charge and waive all rights to sue for malpractice. So in an attempt to replace my previous hard drug addictions with a natural, legal alternative I stumbled across a product called Phenibut. I had heard of it before, but with heroin and benzodiazepines flowing in the front door who has time for obscure chemicals with funny sounding names? At this point though I had been off the hard stuff for several months, but I still wasn't feeling 'right' - whatever that is. So for $20, shipping included, I took a chance. I waited for that brown UPS truck and in the meantime I read everything I could about this miracle cure. By the time it arrived I signed for it like I was putting my signature on the Declaration of Independence. I had predetermined that 2 grams was the best starting dose and thus with a plop-plop fizz-fizz I was back on tour.
The first effect I noticed that I couldn't write off as placebo was a curious giddy feeling when interacting with people that afternoon. It was an MDMA-like empathy that caused me to draw out conversations much longer than they needed as if I was drinking in the nectar of sociability. Now, I am a salesman by trade, but I'm actually a closet introvert with a self-conscious form of anxiety. In fact I got into sales a decade prior at the behest of a therapist. It was his thought that throwing myself to the wolves, so to speak, would allow me to deal with my anxiety issues. It worked like a charm - at least I thought it had until I realized I was self-medicating with opiates and benzodiazepines to succeed. But I digress, back to the Phenibut. In addition to the empathy I was in an excellent mood. I don't mean a 'it's Friday night and I feel all right' mood, I mean an 'all is right with the world, my career, my life' mood. It was truly magical after months of feeling 'off' due to the PAWS phase of recovery.
That night after re-dosing another gram something told me to get on my elliptical at home. Something also told me to bring music - lots of music. Let me tell you, never have a felt such manic happiness from exerci- scratch that, from anything - and yes I've done MDMA. That night was bliss. I'm no exercise buff so this was a strange deviation from the norm. I assumed I had achieved some sort of runner's high and I continued on that elliptical until I could bare no more. I felt amazing. No anxiety yet fully cognitively functional. In fact I was beyond functional - I was 'takin' care of business' at a whole new level - nothing could stop me, nothing could bring me down. Thus began my love affair.
Now, I had been warned via internet forums and postings about the withdrawal, but when you feel this good your brain cares not what some nerds on the internet are blabbing about. I was one bad motherfucker. I was the guy from the movie Limitless and I could do no wrong. If you were of the opposite sex and above a 4/10 you were gonna get the shit fucked out of you with my eyes. If I got the chance to speak to someone who would listen they were going to hear all about everything on my mind at approximately 120 words per minute. I felt as though I had finally found 'it' - that perfect mix of stimulation, mood enhancement and anxiolysis with no side effects - at least not yet. Music and exercise as well as eating healthy and socializing became a religion for me. This further lulled me into a sense of 'this is forever sustainable and healthy to boot' mindset.
A couple weeks went by in what can only be described in retrospect as a hypomanic state. Everything I said was the word of God himself and I owned every place I went. I was the god damn CEO of bosses and the world was my oyster & my playground as long as my servant, Phenibut, was by my side. My friends loved the new me and my family felt that I was the perfect son. I started running each night, music pumping, singing to the stars and not giving a damn about anyone who saw. I quickly worked up from 2 miles to 5 miles to 8 miles. My body was looking great - I had never felt better in my life.
One sunny Sunday summer morning I woke up and dosed like every other day. Something inside me, much like the voice that first told me to get on that elliptical, told me I should spend the day running to the beach. Now, the beach is 15 miles from my house. This seemed like an exciting challenge and now looking back on it I was in a full blown hypomanic state. It was like a 12 hour MDMA peak, I shit you not - 80 degrees, not a cloud in the sky, heading to the beach, not a care in the world. The only care I had was the thought of why other people weren't as happy as I was. Each person I passed who said 'hi' back to me gave me a rush of bliss as if they had just awarded me the Nobel prize with a simple acknowledgement of my existence. That day came and went and boy was I sore the following day. What I didn't realize is that Phenibut rapidly depletes Potassium and could've landed me in the ER had it not been for my copious intake of health food.
Eventually side effects reared their ugly heads - I had cramps in my limbs often and woke early, albeit refreshed, but knowing full well that 4 hours of sleep per night may become an issue. Another side effect began to make it's presence known, which was a bloated mid-section. I always had a flat tummy, except for the time I had used Gabapentin, which caused water retention, so I assumed it would go aware upon cessation of Phenibut. But wait, how could I stop? The new and improved me is dependent on this chemical to sustain my newfound lifestyle. I had a day or two when I ran out and the Express shipment didn't arrive until a day after it was supposed to - holy shit. It was bad. I knew I was in for a real treat. However, thanks to my previous addiction my brain had already had close to a decade of experience coming up with ways to get what it wanted just one last time in a never-ending fashion.
Alas I was dosing on a 24/7 schedule and it wasn't keeping me out of withdrawal and when it did I would still have nasty GI side effects and pains in what I assume to be my organs - not a good sign. I became nervous that perhaps taking my anxiety & fear department completely offline was preventing me from making the logical connection between Phenibut and serious bodily harm. I couldn't believe that what had happened to everyone else was actually happening to me. I just wanted to be back out on that sunny Sunday summer morning again. The days that I would search the internet for answers to why I was so happy all the time and if it was unhealthy to be so fucking happy that you shit rainbows. That was the magic that was lost now and no matter what I tried it wouldn't return.
I was consuming at least 10 grams per day, so I attempted to taper in a futile fashion. The pull to take more with the hope of one last hoorah was too much. I waited until a holiday weekend when I knew that I would simultaneously run out and be unable to get an overnight shipment delivered until halfway through the following week. I work Monday-Friday so I scheduled the withdrawal to begin early Saturday and hopefully peak sometime on Sunday or Monday. I brought nothing but what one would find in Mr. & Mrs. Average's medicine cabinet. That was a mistake. What came that Sunday was a preview of what I'd imagine hell would be like. It was a constant non-stop panic attack with the most bizarre delusional paranoia that combined itself with torturous bodily sensations that played into the paranoia to make you truly believe you were dying. Sleep was non-existent and the few half hour blocks when you did pass out from exhaustion were horrifying. The most realistic nightmares I've ever experienced and they were totally mindfucking in an 'Inception' style where you'd wake up, jump out of bed and immediately fall off a cliff and into the pits of hell - nightmares within nightmares within nightmares ad naseum.
By the time the night was over I literally could not differentiate between reality and nightmare - I was psychotic with no prior history of psychosis. Now, normally nobody is as logical as me - I have a mind like steel trap - or so I thought. While all this was going on I had absolutely no desire to interact with anything or anyone. Nothing I used to do was the least bit satisfying, people were like poison, the thought of exercise made me nauseous, and my appetite was lower than a meth addict's. I felt as though my personality had died and gone to hell. My attempts to tell people to stay away due to 'the flu' were successful, but at the time I truly believed they hated me and knew I was nothing but a big, fat phony. The stress that my body was undergoing caused me to develop a terrible cold just to, you know, put the cherry on the shitcake. However the first sign that God still existed was when the world's longest panic attack ended roughly 48 hours in - gone without a trace - granted with no cessation of other symptoms. Once the anxiety lifted I was left with a strange dopaminergic stimulation that actually felt pretty damn good, at least during the day. My nights were still filled with full on psychosis with OEV/CEV - not the good type, schizo-style voices, and hellish hallucinations of every sort. Of course you were forced to be awake for every moment of it lest you spend what feels like eternity living in a movie called 'Nightmare' starring yours truly.
Thankful beyond thanks at day 7 I was back to normal - what ever that is. I still had trouble sleeping through the night and still had strange thoughts from time to time, but my anxiety is noticeably less than when I started the Phenibut. I've chalked this up to the idea that MY PERCEPTION of anxiety has forever changed. No more do I see transient daily anxiety as a threat. So in a way Phenibut has helped cure some of my psychological issues by showing me that the anxiety that I do live with is something to be scoffed at for it is weak unlike the hell that I knew. This was an unpleasant-beyond-words way to learn this, but a week in hell should yield years of serenity. Any time I get anxious I think back to that 48 hour panic attack and the nightmares which my memory has somehow encoded to the section of my mind called 'shit that happened irl' - in other words they were nightmares which were vivid and real enough to cause PTSD in those prone to it. The bloating has slightly subsided but I cannot help but think I may have caused some damage to my liver or kidneys. I will be getting blood tests shortly.
Nobody knows about this experience other than my current therapist who didn't even know what Phenibut was and wrote it off as some bad reaction to a homeopathic drug - I didn't attempt to take that conversation any further. The family and friends who knew I was taking some sort of powder stuff assumed it was a supplement for exercise, which I guess you could kind of say it was.
So would I recommend Phenibut to anyone? Yes, in fact, I would. For the lessons learned alone I would say yes. I would never deny anyone the happiness and bliss that this chemical provided me, not for anything in the world. It was magic - at first. You quickly learn who you are, who you could be, what you need to do to become who you could be - and if you're like me - you actually become who you could be before the cons outweigh the pros. I have made lasting improvements in my personal, financial, business, and family life. Unlike a drug like heroin that isolates the user into a lonely death, Phenibut brought out the best in me.
This all happened a couple months ago and I've been clean ever since. So why am I writing this experience now? Well you see, I'm an addict. What I mean to say is that I have 1000 grams of Phenibut on my doorstep right now and I don't know how this story will end but I know where it begins and I want to get this on paper while I'm in my right state of mind so that it may perhaps help, entertain, upset or enlighten.
Time to see how deep this rabbit hole goes...
The first effect I noticed that I couldn't write off as placebo was a curious giddy feeling when interacting with people that afternoon. It was an MDMA-like empathy that caused me to draw out conversations much longer than they needed as if I was drinking in the nectar of sociability. Now, I am a salesman by trade, but I'm actually a closet introvert with a self-conscious form of anxiety. In fact I got into sales a decade prior at the behest of a therapist. It was his thought that throwing myself to the wolves, so to speak, would allow me to deal with my anxiety issues. It worked like a charm - at least I thought it had until I realized I was self-medicating with opiates and benzodiazepines to succeed. But I digress, back to the Phenibut. In addition to the empathy I was in an excellent mood. I don't mean a 'it's Friday night and I feel all right' mood, I mean an 'all is right with the world, my career, my life' mood. It was truly magical after months of feeling 'off' due to the PAWS phase of recovery.
That night after re-dosing another gram something told me to get on my elliptical at home. Something also told me to bring music - lots of music. Let me tell you, never have a felt such manic happiness from exerci- scratch that, from anything - and yes I've done MDMA. That night was bliss. I'm no exercise buff so this was a strange deviation from the norm. I assumed I had achieved some sort of runner's high and I continued on that elliptical until I could bare no more. I felt amazing. No anxiety yet fully cognitively functional. In fact I was beyond functional - I was 'takin' care of business' at a whole new level - nothing could stop me, nothing could bring me down. Thus began my love affair.
Now, I had been warned via internet forums and postings about the withdrawal, but when you feel this good your brain cares not what some nerds on the internet are blabbing about. I was one bad motherfucker. I was the guy from the movie Limitless and I could do no wrong. If you were of the opposite sex and above a 4/10 you were gonna get the shit fucked out of you with my eyes. If I got the chance to speak to someone who would listen they were going to hear all about everything on my mind at approximately 120 words per minute. I felt as though I had finally found 'it' - that perfect mix of stimulation, mood enhancement and anxiolysis with no side effects - at least not yet. Music and exercise as well as eating healthy and socializing became a religion for me. This further lulled me into a sense of 'this is forever sustainable and healthy to boot' mindset.
A couple weeks went by in what can only be described in retrospect as a hypomanic state. Everything I said was the word of God himself and I owned every place I went. I was the god damn CEO of bosses and the world was my oyster & my playground as long as my servant, Phenibut, was by my side. My friends loved the new me and my family felt that I was the perfect son. I started running each night, music pumping, singing to the stars and not giving a damn about anyone who saw. I quickly worked up from 2 miles to 5 miles to 8 miles. My body was looking great - I had never felt better in my life.
One sunny Sunday summer morning I woke up and dosed like every other day. Something inside me, much like the voice that first told me to get on that elliptical, told me I should spend the day running to the beach. Now, the beach is 15 miles from my house. This seemed like an exciting challenge and now looking back on it I was in a full blown hypomanic state. It was like a 12 hour MDMA peak, I shit you not - 80 degrees, not a cloud in the sky, heading to the beach, not a care in the world. The only care I had was the thought of why other people weren't as happy as I was. Each person I passed who said 'hi' back to me gave me a rush of bliss as if they had just awarded me the Nobel prize with a simple acknowledgement of my existence. That day came and went and boy was I sore the following day. What I didn't realize is that Phenibut rapidly depletes Potassium and could've landed me in the ER had it not been for my copious intake of health food.
Eventually side effects reared their ugly heads - I had cramps in my limbs often and woke early, albeit refreshed, but knowing full well that 4 hours of sleep per night may become an issue. Another side effect began to make it's presence known, which was a bloated mid-section. I always had a flat tummy, except for the time I had used Gabapentin, which caused water retention, so I assumed it would go aware upon cessation of Phenibut. But wait, how could I stop? The new and improved me is dependent on this chemical to sustain my newfound lifestyle. I had a day or two when I ran out and the Express shipment didn't arrive until a day after it was supposed to - holy shit. It was bad. I knew I was in for a real treat. However, thanks to my previous addiction my brain had already had close to a decade of experience coming up with ways to get what it wanted just one last time in a never-ending fashion.
Alas I was dosing on a 24/7 schedule and it wasn't keeping me out of withdrawal and when it did I would still have nasty GI side effects and pains in what I assume to be my organs - not a good sign. I became nervous that perhaps taking my anxiety & fear department completely offline was preventing me from making the logical connection between Phenibut and serious bodily harm. I couldn't believe that what had happened to everyone else was actually happening to me. I just wanted to be back out on that sunny Sunday summer morning again. The days that I would search the internet for answers to why I was so happy all the time and if it was unhealthy to be so fucking happy that you shit rainbows. That was the magic that was lost now and no matter what I tried it wouldn't return.
I was consuming at least 10 grams per day, so I attempted to taper in a futile fashion. The pull to take more with the hope of one last hoorah was too much. I waited until a holiday weekend when I knew that I would simultaneously run out and be unable to get an overnight shipment delivered until halfway through the following week. I work Monday-Friday so I scheduled the withdrawal to begin early Saturday and hopefully peak sometime on Sunday or Monday. I brought nothing but what one would find in Mr. & Mrs. Average's medicine cabinet. That was a mistake. What came that Sunday was a preview of what I'd imagine hell would be like. It was a constant non-stop panic attack with the most bizarre delusional paranoia that combined itself with torturous bodily sensations that played into the paranoia to make you truly believe you were dying. Sleep was non-existent and the few half hour blocks when you did pass out from exhaustion were horrifying. The most realistic nightmares I've ever experienced and they were totally mindfucking in an 'Inception' style where you'd wake up, jump out of bed and immediately fall off a cliff and into the pits of hell - nightmares within nightmares within nightmares ad naseum.
By the time the night was over I literally could not differentiate between reality and nightmare - I was psychotic with no prior history of psychosis. Now, normally nobody is as logical as me - I have a mind like steel trap - or so I thought. While all this was going on I had absolutely no desire to interact with anything or anyone. Nothing I used to do was the least bit satisfying, people were like poison, the thought of exercise made me nauseous, and my appetite was lower than a meth addict's. I felt as though my personality had died and gone to hell. My attempts to tell people to stay away due to 'the flu' were successful, but at the time I truly believed they hated me and knew I was nothing but a big, fat phony. The stress that my body was undergoing caused me to develop a terrible cold just to, you know, put the cherry on the shitcake. However the first sign that God still existed was when the world's longest panic attack ended roughly 48 hours in - gone without a trace - granted with no cessation of other symptoms. Once the anxiety lifted I was left with a strange dopaminergic stimulation that actually felt pretty damn good, at least during the day. My nights were still filled with full on psychosis with OEV/CEV - not the good type, schizo-style voices, and hellish hallucinations of every sort. Of course you were forced to be awake for every moment of it lest you spend what feels like eternity living in a movie called 'Nightmare' starring yours truly.
Thankful beyond thanks at day 7 I was back to normal - what ever that is. I still had trouble sleeping through the night and still had strange thoughts from time to time, but my anxiety is noticeably less than when I started the Phenibut. I've chalked this up to the idea that MY PERCEPTION of anxiety has forever changed. No more do I see transient daily anxiety as a threat. So in a way Phenibut has helped cure some of my psychological issues by showing me that the anxiety that I do live with is something to be scoffed at for it is weak unlike the hell that I knew. This was an unpleasant-beyond-words way to learn this, but a week in hell should yield years of serenity. Any time I get anxious I think back to that 48 hour panic attack and the nightmares which my memory has somehow encoded to the section of my mind called 'shit that happened irl' - in other words they were nightmares which were vivid and real enough to cause PTSD in those prone to it. The bloating has slightly subsided but I cannot help but think I may have caused some damage to my liver or kidneys. I will be getting blood tests shortly.
Nobody knows about this experience other than my current therapist who didn't even know what Phenibut was and wrote it off as some bad reaction to a homeopathic drug - I didn't attempt to take that conversation any further. The family and friends who knew I was taking some sort of powder stuff assumed it was a supplement for exercise, which I guess you could kind of say it was.
So would I recommend Phenibut to anyone? Yes, in fact, I would. For the lessons learned alone I would say yes. I would never deny anyone the happiness and bliss that this chemical provided me, not for anything in the world. It was magic - at first. You quickly learn who you are, who you could be, what you need to do to become who you could be - and if you're like me - you actually become who you could be before the cons outweigh the pros. I have made lasting improvements in my personal, financial, business, and family life. Unlike a drug like heroin that isolates the user into a lonely death, Phenibut brought out the best in me.
This all happened a couple months ago and I've been clean ever since. So why am I writing this experience now? Well you see, I'm an addict. What I mean to say is that I have 1000 grams of Phenibut on my doorstep right now and I don't know how this story will end but I know where it begins and I want to get this on paper while I'm in my right state of mind so that it may perhaps help, entertain, upset or enlighten.
Time to see how deep this rabbit hole goes...
