Working with anxiety; 6 month check in

[jon6123]

Okay so 6 months ago I was hit hard in the face by anxiety I quickly linked to a large (for me) dose of MDMA, after having an absolutely beautiful first 6 month ‘every 2-3 weeks’ period of use. (I used to have 20 second panic attacks as I came up, often worrying about how much I liked MDMA)

After the high dose I first found myself depersonalized for roughly a week, then I returned to normal, then I kept getting tiny rushes of adrenaline popping in my stomach, really small, and that felt like coming up slightly. These weren’t scary at all and I quite enjoyed them until the fact I couldn’t control them started to annoy me, and at some point I began to fear I had done something wrong to my body and brain. I spent nearly 2 months surfing the internet and bluelight and really working myself into a huge fucked up fear that I had messed my brain up.

I dosed again roughly 1 month after the depersonalization; thinking maybe there was nothing to fear, and had a terrible time; I couldn’t escape my thoughts and get into the music, I was stuck thinking about stupid things bigger than life, my drug use (which is just mdma, very minimal) and where my life was going and what I thought I was doing to myself. (I say terrible, I wasn’t panicking and it wasn’t scary or hurtful or any worse than being sober actually, just irritating, and a waste of a dose during my hard time knowing it was damaging my anxiety recovery for nothing)


I realised at this point I had been most anxious the week BEFORE dosing, this opened my eyes partially to the reality of MDMA induced anxiety.


I left it another two months whereby I realised that I was.. in some way scared of MDMA, I had set myself an automatic fear of it, which when I thought about properly is unfounded. I decided to take again after these two months, this night felt a whole much better, I really enjoyed it but I soon came down after around 2 hours which was irritating as I watched the rest of my group stay up. I also found myself with a nasty depressed comedown.
I decided to abstain for yet another two months, and try my luck again, this time really concentrating on resisting the surreal fear of the drug and try and show myself I have nothing to fear in the mindset that I could cure my anxiety by ridding the fear. I also enjoyed this night a lot too, but came down quick like the last time, I also had the heavy comedown days afterwards.

One month on from that and im still quite anxious in day to day life, I have come to realise that the anxiousness is a fear I have created myself back when I thought I had messed my head up, in reality the thoughts and research I was putting into this was making me --in the process-- of messing my head up, only building on the anxiety itself.

Whilst I know my brain is chemically sound at this moment and I am truely confident that MDMA will never chemically damage me again, as I will keep my doses low and sparse for the rest of my life thats for sure!! I still cant escape the anxiety, I cant help but concentrate on it and I know that when I next dose again, the week before and the week after will be full of MDMA thoughts and this causes my anxiety to rocket.

I still have this strange fear which is completely unfounded in my logical thoughts as when I think things through I truly am content with MDMA use, but for example when I flick through my facebook photo’s and see a cool picture of me rolling with my mates and I get a surge of adrenaline I just cant control.



My question is should I roll again next month? (leaving nearly 3 from my last dose) I am in two minds. I will be around a lot of people on MDMA that night and I know it will be an awesome night either way but ofcourse I want to roll and I feel that I somehow could do with proving to myself that I have no fear of MDMA to get over this hump in my mind and continue. I feel that if I don’t roll ill still have the anxiety from thinking about it through the night, and the anticipation of the next time I do roll will grow bigger meaning as I manage to stray my mind away from the anxiety over the months, that when I finally feel comfortable I will be very anticipated for my next roll and it could reinitiate everything!

Its important for you to know that I still hold the third option of never rolling again, it really is an option and I hold it as my baseline backup to solving this anxiety when I feel it is the time, but I still feel I have a few options left before I sign myself off to that.



My overall point is that I think that a lot of this MDMA anxiety could be based on how you feel about the drug, from your own experiences, and does not necessarily involve the original chemical damage, but just stems from it as an experience linked to MDMA, atleast thats how I feel mine operates in my mind..

Thanks for reading, I would appreciate it if people who have never been through anxiety would not make suggestions, its very easy to scare anxious people into bad frames of mind by telling them they have fucked their brains up chemically, which might have been what happened to me

 

[vancbc]

It sounds like you have both anticipatory anxiety and post use MDMA induced anxiety. My initial experiences were very much like yours, except the turning point for me was the unexpected come up from a high dose. MDMA was never the same after that, and for me the anticipatory anxiety only increased over the years. Over the years it became almost crippling, so taking MDMA ended up being an experience of being so anxious that I never really experienced the desired effects of the drug. What would happen is that at some point the anxiety would melt away and I felt altered but without euphoria and empathy. I tried many things over the years to lessen the anxiety, but you can't rationalize through anxiety or think it away. It would happen even if I had clean MDMA and was trying it somewhere completely safe and secure. Unfortunately the only solution I found was to quit taking MDMA for good. Keep in mind that I used for almost 10 years, but it's been three years since I used MDMA and the anticipatory anxiety still kicks into high gear if I get in the situation where it's possible to use MDMA. That's an improvement from a time when I couldn't be around others who were high, think back on my own experiences or even contemplate using it again - all brought on the terrible anxiety. I've more or less accepted that as much as my memories of how wonderful it can be pull at me - I'll likely never use again.

Post use MDMA induced anxiety may be part of the same conditioned response, but it's also likely that temporary changes in your neurochemistry are also contributing. I used to have moderately severe social anxiety, and when I quit using E that almost completely disappeared over the course of perhaps two years. It was also common for me to have the experience in the first few days after using that at night time when it became time to go to bed that I felt an odd, lonely type of anxiety wishing it wasn't night time and the lights didn't have to go out. It would linger a bit as I lay in bed and then slowly go away. I work in a corporate office and also found that work stress and the daily grind of life caused me a lot more anxiety during those years that I was a regular MDMA user.

It's taken nearly three years for me, but I very seldom deal with anxiety now over things that wouldn't cause most "normal" human beings some level of anxiety. The anxiety is about all I can associate MDMA with now, so I think for me that's why it's done for good.

I wish you the best. The one thing I can think of is if you could find a therapist who would be willing to work with you on this. Otherwise I really don't think you can deal with this on your own. Anxiety is generally highly treatable with a very rapid response using cognitive behavioural therapy techniques. I never would have believed this, but I saw a cognitive behavioural therapist for my social anxiety, and it only took two or three sessions and there was already a dramatic improvement in the level of anxiety I felt in social situations. I just didn't stick with what I learned, and the social anxiety slowly returned until I stopped using MDMA