First Bad Comedown
Bluelighter
- Joined
- Nov 26, 2010
- Messages
- 562
I am here today because I have had a difficult few days and I wanted to share this with the community.
For those who are not familiar with me, I was a heavy poster in this forum for a little over a year during my recovery from Serotonin Syndrome.
I had a rather severe reaction 3 days after taking too much MDMA on October 31st, 2010.
I thought it was a modest dose, but I didn't understand that re-dosing and rolling two days in a row significantly increased the neurotoxicity of MDMA.
Two days after my first mini-binge I took 100mg of benedryl and went to sleep feeling very dizzy and euphoric from the DPH.
The next day I nearly died.
Sudden severe chest pain, tachycardia, and the most severe abdominal pain I have ever experienced.
Below my stomach it felt like I had swallowed a bag of rocks!
I wondered, "is this what hepatoxicity from MDMA feels like?"
The anxiety was unreal.
I couldn't speak much - all I did was pace around in my living room like a caged animal.
My head started to feel like a balloon that was inflating beyond control!
A terrible migraine followed, as well as the dreaded fever.
My knowledge on MDMA was just good enough to recognize that anxiety + fever is seen in the acute cases and can lead to death.
I immediately began cooling myself off and trying to calm down.
My intestines were still in severe pain, and until I managed to go to the bathroom I didn't think I would survive it.
But somehow I pulled through!
I survived the most frightening night of my entire life, all without going to an ER.
I wish I had gone immediately, but my lack of understanding and inability to speak or communicate made others confused about what was going on.
After all, it had been three days since my last dose of MDMA...
Later I would learn that severe reactions have occurred in other users 3-4 days AFTER their last exposure.
Then I started to learn about serotonin...
Living mostly in the intestines, it drives the smooth muscle of the vast nervous system within your gut.
It is also wired into the brain where it forms a highly dense network of nerves that has profound effects upon other neurotransmitters, especially dopamine.
Another effect of serotonin is that it increases blood flow in nearby capillaries.
This will be the subject of my current thread.
Suffice it to say I came unhinged during the first six months of recovery.
My anxiety was intense and ongoing, from the moment I would wake up every morning I knew that I was forever changed.
The world looked like it was behind a sheet of glass, or being projected on a screen!
This is known as HPPD, and it is a clear sign that toxicity has occurred IMO.
Exercise would help control the suffering, and I still recommend it to everyone that is healing from a neurotoxic event.
It releases BDNF which grows new serotonin neurons.
Yet it was no cure for my suffering.
Brain damage doesn't go away with pushups.
But a new network can be slowly formed.
My research efforts were extreme.
Somehow I believed I could read enough studies to understand what was happening, and maybe even find the magic medication that would fix me.
I literally read hundreds of studies, including many full papers...pushing my mind to the limit.
Then the writing began.
I decided that I needed to provide what nobody else could - a detailed account of the known neurotoxic effects of MDMA.
I never railed against its single use, but my mantra became "DO NOT REDOSE".
Because animal studies prove beyond everything else, that re-exposure is what will guarantee long-term detectable changes in this critical system of nerves.
And the higher brain is the most vulnerable, so there is great concern for human users.
My appetite for writing seemed insatiable.
Unlike most BL members, pages upon pages appeared in most of my posts.
I would later learn that loss of higher brain serotonin can cause a DE-inhibition of dopamine acitivity.
I was clinically psychotic, but since my 'research' was real it all made sense to me.
Looking back I recognize it was the amount of effort I put into it that made it unhealthy.
And that is why I stepped away from BL after about a year and three months had passed.
In the past year I have made very few posts and generally do not browse the website.
Instead I focused on forgetting who I used to be and figuring out who I was going to become.
My old analytical nature is only partly intact.
I feel much older than a 31 year old man should.
And I have to go to the gym regularly to keep the remnants of depression at bay.
And it still works...
Yet over the long recovery journey I have endured, I have learned that the brain is not going to stop re-wiring itself....over and over again.
And that anger seems to be a powerful tool in making sweeping changes.
More than exercise or anything else I have done, my angry outbursts have caused permanent changes in my brain wiring.
In the early stages I literally felt stupid for DAYS after an outburst. My brain just wouldn't function well - especially in terms of language.
But slowly my brilliance would return...my energy too.
Then this would lead to the next outburst!
It was a cycle.
And as it continued the amount of functional loss became less, yet the recovery took longer and longer.
Another way to put this is that over time, my outbursts caused less cognitive changes and depression yet it took longer and longer to return to 'baseline' each time.
This is seen in severe depression - each new episode takes longer to recover from.
I believe it is caused by sweeping changes to the serotonin network.
And my research taught me an interesting finding in primate research - post MDMA toxicity there is a temporary resprouting of cortical serotonin axons in the first few months. But at 6 months they are reduced and at 18 months there is a clear pattern of hyperinnervation of the hypothalamus and de-nervation of the cortex.
Your hypothalamus is the small control center of the endocrine system.
It is responsible for the effects of mdma, and is the relay station for serotonin that extends from the brainstem into the frontal cortex.
The research suggests that following a neurotoxic dose of MDMA a long term rewiring of the brain occurs, in which the serotonin in the higher brain collapses back into the hypothalamus.
Considering the critical role of the hypothalamus on sleep, sex, appetite, body temperature regulation....it is no wonder that members of this board report severe bodily and emotional disruptions - sometimes lasting months after their drug use.
And some of us report years.
In some way I have felt that as my hypothalamus has been hyperinnervated over time, that the remaining serotonin nerves in my cortex have responded by growing. It is as if the system is collapsing and regrowing each time, and the tool used to drive this process is the emotion of anger.
Dopamine goes up, shaking the serotonin network until the next collapse occurs.
Although I have accepted this self-diagnosis as true and I have seen value in this process, I have also experienced some frightening events lately.
Strokes.
I imagine my first stroke occurred the night of the serotonin syndrome.
And I know that two more happened around month 6 and 8 - my right arm went completely numb!
Very scary shit.
But then it seemed to stop, until a few months ago.
At work I have had 4-6 events where I will experience sudden tinitus (loud ringing in one ear) combined with confusion, fear, anxiety, vertigo...
There was also heat flashes all over my body and a struggle to find words.
These all resolved within minutes.
They are called TIAs or transient ischemic attacks.
And they may be caused by clots forming inside blood vessels.
Perhaps this journey of re-wiring is not altogether predictable - perhaps the redistribution of serotonin between the brainstem and the cortex can cause major disruptions in vascular health over time.
Well last week I had my first major outburst of anger in a long time.
I was sleep deprived and stressed out and I yelled for about 10 minutes.
Minor in comparison to the rage fests from before...
But ever since the next day I can feel something is wrong.
I am not OK.
Tinnitus seems trivial now.
I have had sudden loss of hearing, and a feeling of heaviness in one ear.
Dizziness, confusion, major anxiety.
Recurrent TIAs are known to lead to major strokes in some patients.
And I fear this is the fate that awaits me, very soon.
I went to an ER saturday and was given a CT, but they didn't find anything.
Of course CTs are not able to catch TIAs very often.
Only real strokes show up.
I nearly went back yesterday and I'm planning to find a stroke specialist today.
But I know the treatment options are limited.
I'm actually scared.
After all this time I have become a master of anxiety.
I thought I could nonchalantly look my death in the face.
But it turns out that isn't true.
I have written tearful goodbye letters to my beautiful wife and 4 year old daughter.
That's how afraid I am.
I am certain that these new TIAs are involving the brainstem.
When they happen I can feel much more significant changes in brain function happening.
They are different than from before.
I feel amazed that after all this time, my struggle could end in death or disability.
All the exercise, all the help I gave to others, all the patience I had with my own depression....
And I could just DIE.
So, I am here on Bluelight to say goodbye.
If I do pass away, my wife has been instructed to post my story and my picture.
I have actually read a case story of a former MDMA user that died of stroke 6 months post recovery.
Here I am 2 years and 5 months later, afraid for my life.
I want this to be a lesson to my younger readers.
Not long ago I was a college student, smoking weed all the time for years in a row.
Then I went on a brief ecstasy use.
Maybe 20 pills over a two year period.
But the last time I did it two weekends in a row.
And I always liked to redose.
My pills were 240 mg each.
Despite my best efforts at recovery I am now facing a possible brainstem ischemia.
This is one potential fate among many for those who chose not to respect a powerful drug.
Brain damage is very real.
And dismissing research due to its inherent weaknesses only exposes your own.
MDMA is meant to be done in moderation, meaning 150 mg each time.
Separated by MONTHS of abstinence.
And perhaps even this pattern of use leaves some lasting deficit in the highest parts of the brain.
But repeated dosing should be a thing of the past.
If Bluelight and First Bad Comedown do nothing else, they should spread this message.
Nobody should be ignorant of the increased neuorotoxic effects with each subsequent dose.
It doesn't take that much.
I hope to return in a few days to proclaim it was just a scare!
But if I do not, I ask that the community please offer their support to my grieving family.
The thought of leaving them has made me unbelievably sad.
I love you all.
Take care of your selves and each other.
First Bad Comedown
For those who are not familiar with me, I was a heavy poster in this forum for a little over a year during my recovery from Serotonin Syndrome.
I had a rather severe reaction 3 days after taking too much MDMA on October 31st, 2010.
I thought it was a modest dose, but I didn't understand that re-dosing and rolling two days in a row significantly increased the neurotoxicity of MDMA.
Two days after my first mini-binge I took 100mg of benedryl and went to sleep feeling very dizzy and euphoric from the DPH.
The next day I nearly died.
Sudden severe chest pain, tachycardia, and the most severe abdominal pain I have ever experienced.
Below my stomach it felt like I had swallowed a bag of rocks!
I wondered, "is this what hepatoxicity from MDMA feels like?"
The anxiety was unreal.
I couldn't speak much - all I did was pace around in my living room like a caged animal.
My head started to feel like a balloon that was inflating beyond control!
A terrible migraine followed, as well as the dreaded fever.
My knowledge on MDMA was just good enough to recognize that anxiety + fever is seen in the acute cases and can lead to death.
I immediately began cooling myself off and trying to calm down.
My intestines were still in severe pain, and until I managed to go to the bathroom I didn't think I would survive it.
But somehow I pulled through!
I survived the most frightening night of my entire life, all without going to an ER.
I wish I had gone immediately, but my lack of understanding and inability to speak or communicate made others confused about what was going on.
After all, it had been three days since my last dose of MDMA...
Later I would learn that severe reactions have occurred in other users 3-4 days AFTER their last exposure.
Then I started to learn about serotonin...
Living mostly in the intestines, it drives the smooth muscle of the vast nervous system within your gut.
It is also wired into the brain where it forms a highly dense network of nerves that has profound effects upon other neurotransmitters, especially dopamine.
Another effect of serotonin is that it increases blood flow in nearby capillaries.
This will be the subject of my current thread.
Suffice it to say I came unhinged during the first six months of recovery.
My anxiety was intense and ongoing, from the moment I would wake up every morning I knew that I was forever changed.
The world looked like it was behind a sheet of glass, or being projected on a screen!
This is known as HPPD, and it is a clear sign that toxicity has occurred IMO.
Exercise would help control the suffering, and I still recommend it to everyone that is healing from a neurotoxic event.
It releases BDNF which grows new serotonin neurons.
Yet it was no cure for my suffering.
Brain damage doesn't go away with pushups.
But a new network can be slowly formed.
My research efforts were extreme.
Somehow I believed I could read enough studies to understand what was happening, and maybe even find the magic medication that would fix me.
I literally read hundreds of studies, including many full papers...pushing my mind to the limit.
Then the writing began.
I decided that I needed to provide what nobody else could - a detailed account of the known neurotoxic effects of MDMA.
I never railed against its single use, but my mantra became "DO NOT REDOSE".
Because animal studies prove beyond everything else, that re-exposure is what will guarantee long-term detectable changes in this critical system of nerves.
And the higher brain is the most vulnerable, so there is great concern for human users.
My appetite for writing seemed insatiable.
Unlike most BL members, pages upon pages appeared in most of my posts.
I would later learn that loss of higher brain serotonin can cause a DE-inhibition of dopamine acitivity.
I was clinically psychotic, but since my 'research' was real it all made sense to me.
Looking back I recognize it was the amount of effort I put into it that made it unhealthy.
And that is why I stepped away from BL after about a year and three months had passed.
In the past year I have made very few posts and generally do not browse the website.
Instead I focused on forgetting who I used to be and figuring out who I was going to become.
My old analytical nature is only partly intact.
I feel much older than a 31 year old man should.
And I have to go to the gym regularly to keep the remnants of depression at bay.
And it still works...
Yet over the long recovery journey I have endured, I have learned that the brain is not going to stop re-wiring itself....over and over again.
And that anger seems to be a powerful tool in making sweeping changes.
More than exercise or anything else I have done, my angry outbursts have caused permanent changes in my brain wiring.
In the early stages I literally felt stupid for DAYS after an outburst. My brain just wouldn't function well - especially in terms of language.
But slowly my brilliance would return...my energy too.
Then this would lead to the next outburst!
It was a cycle.
And as it continued the amount of functional loss became less, yet the recovery took longer and longer.
Another way to put this is that over time, my outbursts caused less cognitive changes and depression yet it took longer and longer to return to 'baseline' each time.
This is seen in severe depression - each new episode takes longer to recover from.
I believe it is caused by sweeping changes to the serotonin network.
And my research taught me an interesting finding in primate research - post MDMA toxicity there is a temporary resprouting of cortical serotonin axons in the first few months. But at 6 months they are reduced and at 18 months there is a clear pattern of hyperinnervation of the hypothalamus and de-nervation of the cortex.
Your hypothalamus is the small control center of the endocrine system.
It is responsible for the effects of mdma, and is the relay station for serotonin that extends from the brainstem into the frontal cortex.
The research suggests that following a neurotoxic dose of MDMA a long term rewiring of the brain occurs, in which the serotonin in the higher brain collapses back into the hypothalamus.
Considering the critical role of the hypothalamus on sleep, sex, appetite, body temperature regulation....it is no wonder that members of this board report severe bodily and emotional disruptions - sometimes lasting months after their drug use.
And some of us report years.
In some way I have felt that as my hypothalamus has been hyperinnervated over time, that the remaining serotonin nerves in my cortex have responded by growing. It is as if the system is collapsing and regrowing each time, and the tool used to drive this process is the emotion of anger.
Dopamine goes up, shaking the serotonin network until the next collapse occurs.
Although I have accepted this self-diagnosis as true and I have seen value in this process, I have also experienced some frightening events lately.
Strokes.
I imagine my first stroke occurred the night of the serotonin syndrome.
And I know that two more happened around month 6 and 8 - my right arm went completely numb!
Very scary shit.
But then it seemed to stop, until a few months ago.
At work I have had 4-6 events where I will experience sudden tinitus (loud ringing in one ear) combined with confusion, fear, anxiety, vertigo...
There was also heat flashes all over my body and a struggle to find words.
These all resolved within minutes.
They are called TIAs or transient ischemic attacks.
And they may be caused by clots forming inside blood vessels.
Perhaps this journey of re-wiring is not altogether predictable - perhaps the redistribution of serotonin between the brainstem and the cortex can cause major disruptions in vascular health over time.
Well last week I had my first major outburst of anger in a long time.
I was sleep deprived and stressed out and I yelled for about 10 minutes.
Minor in comparison to the rage fests from before...
But ever since the next day I can feel something is wrong.
I am not OK.
Tinnitus seems trivial now.
I have had sudden loss of hearing, and a feeling of heaviness in one ear.
Dizziness, confusion, major anxiety.
Recurrent TIAs are known to lead to major strokes in some patients.
And I fear this is the fate that awaits me, very soon.
I went to an ER saturday and was given a CT, but they didn't find anything.
Of course CTs are not able to catch TIAs very often.
Only real strokes show up.
I nearly went back yesterday and I'm planning to find a stroke specialist today.
But I know the treatment options are limited.
I'm actually scared.
After all this time I have become a master of anxiety.
I thought I could nonchalantly look my death in the face.
But it turns out that isn't true.
I have written tearful goodbye letters to my beautiful wife and 4 year old daughter.
That's how afraid I am.
I am certain that these new TIAs are involving the brainstem.
When they happen I can feel much more significant changes in brain function happening.
They are different than from before.
I feel amazed that after all this time, my struggle could end in death or disability.
All the exercise, all the help I gave to others, all the patience I had with my own depression....
And I could just DIE.
So, I am here on Bluelight to say goodbye.
If I do pass away, my wife has been instructed to post my story and my picture.
I have actually read a case story of a former MDMA user that died of stroke 6 months post recovery.
Here I am 2 years and 5 months later, afraid for my life.
I want this to be a lesson to my younger readers.
Not long ago I was a college student, smoking weed all the time for years in a row.
Then I went on a brief ecstasy use.
Maybe 20 pills over a two year period.
But the last time I did it two weekends in a row.
And I always liked to redose.
My pills were 240 mg each.
Despite my best efforts at recovery I am now facing a possible brainstem ischemia.
This is one potential fate among many for those who chose not to respect a powerful drug.
Brain damage is very real.
And dismissing research due to its inherent weaknesses only exposes your own.
MDMA is meant to be done in moderation, meaning 150 mg each time.
Separated by MONTHS of abstinence.
And perhaps even this pattern of use leaves some lasting deficit in the highest parts of the brain.
But repeated dosing should be a thing of the past.
If Bluelight and First Bad Comedown do nothing else, they should spread this message.
Nobody should be ignorant of the increased neuorotoxic effects with each subsequent dose.
It doesn't take that much.
I hope to return in a few days to proclaim it was just a scare!
But if I do not, I ask that the community please offer their support to my grieving family.
The thought of leaving them has made me unbelievably sad.
I love you all.
Take care of your selves and each other.
First Bad Comedown
