Young-age Experimentation, Yoga, Benzos, and Pervading Frustration

[Chimeric]

Hello everybody! I am one of the lurking members of this wonderful community; perhaps 95% of the time I lurk, and only 5% of the time do I post or comment in threads. Right now I need some advice, and like most of you I find it difficult to ask help from family members because they will be unable to relate to my drug stories and the repercussions of drug abuse, so here I go...

As with most chronicles of one's "drug experimentation"--or "drug abuse" depending on how you look at it--it is hard to condense everything without boring the readers. Nonetheless I'll try my best to keep this succinct.

For ease of reading, I will divide my story into the following parts:

1. I started using drugs too early
2. The drug use shattered my ego and its defense mechanisms
3. I tried to repair my mind through years of yoga and meditation
4. But the repercussions of the aforementioned drug abuse are still present today

I started using drugs in my 3rd year of high school. I know some of you started experimenting at a much earlier age, but I consider mine early because I had not yet created a healthy, functioning understanding of society and the real world. In retrospect, you should not start altering reality and your consciousness unless you already have a good understanding and appreciation of what it means to be a member of society; "before you start reaching for the skies, make sure your feet are planted firmly on the ground," as they say. NOTE: I am not saying we should be mindless, conforming drones of The Man; I am only saying that we have to fully understand how the game works before we start 'bending' the rules.

The drugs I tried were never as "hardcore" as most other members here--I only tried grass, DXM, benzos, and some painkillers. But I used them way too much, and I was way too young. The DXM probably did the worst damage, and I believe that getting dissociatedly high pulled my Ego away from my mind and left it floating in outer space. What does this mean? It means that all the defenses I had created since childhood, my confidence, my ability to cope with problems and challenges, and my ability to properly believe in myself and socialize were seriously compromised. Nowadays I tend to get anxious way more easily than I used to, I've also become more prone to self-conscious thoughts ("Am I behaving in the right way?" "Am I saying the right things?" "Are other people secretly judging me?") And what is incredibly frustrating is that I know these fears are irrational; prior to using drugs, I was totally confident in my own shoes, and I was always hopeful and positive in facing life's challenges.

I have done my best to re-solidify my mind and my sense of self. I have been doing yoga and meditation almost daily for 3 years now. I have also been staying sober, having only a few tokes very infrequently, and I have been looking for work and doing part-time jobs as well--I am trying to re-adapt into the real world. Nonetheless, I still feel that sense that I lost the adaptive functions of my mind because of the DXM abuse. I still tend to get worried a lot, over little things about having to interact with people, or having to accomplish something I would rather not do even if I know it would be good for me.

And here is what urged me to write this entire post: I recently got my hands on some Valium again. And I just wanted to see how it would affect my mindset after so many years of not using them. I popped a few milligrams, and wow, I felt like I was completely normal again. I wasn't high, I wasn't exhilarated, but I was genuinely interested in socializing with others, and I was also confident in getting some work done... Normal as if all the damage of the drugs had completely gone away.

And even though I felt good about it, I also felt hopeless. Does this mean 3 years of yoga and trying to re-adapt to reality will still pale in comparison to 20mg of benzodiazepines? OF course the benzodiazepine buzz cannot last forever; I will probably get hooked and suffer even more if I keep on popping them... I do not want this to happen. It's just that the pills took away the worry and the shyness.

Ultimately, I would really just like to hear of similar stories. Of those people who lost a part of themselves cause of too much experimentation, but nonetheless were able to recover again. I am definitely not an addict anymore, I no longer seek to escape sobriety, and I would rather just live a simple life of pursuing music while holding a day job. It's just hard to do those things when one worries about what he has to do instead of being positive and enthused about it. I would also like to know if any of you have experienced a similar phenomenon, that sense of being stripped of the powers of the ego which are so essential to healthy functioning in the world.

Thanks for taking time to read this. Cheers! :D

p.s. by "ego" I don't mean arrogance or bloated self-confidence; what I mean is the part of the mind which is most responsible for battling neuroses and dealing with the real world--see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Id,_ego_and_super-ego. %)

 

[Mysterie]

i'm rather similar to you in that I started experimenting with dxm, weed and benzos during my last 2 years of High School

and I remember being able to socialise with much more ease during primary/early high school

however I dont think your anxiety is totally stemming from your abuse of drugs while your brain was still developing

I reckon a lot of peoples anxiety becomes more apparent during the later years of high school and onwards

Benzo's are definately not the way to fix this, I think setting goals/changing your environment (get out of your home town/move out of your parents house) would be more beneficial

your post is alot more eloquent than anything i can come up with so your brain is smarter than most others imho, good luck, i really empathise with having things to say and feeling inhibited

 

[RobotRipping]

i think i've had a similar experience in life. Psychedelics really stripped me down to nothing. I also have quite a bit of anxiety that i deal with and the self-consciosness you describe i am quite familiar with. I really do not think that was caused in any way by DXM or other drugs (unless you were a huge benzo/opiate addict).

It's possible you just have anxiety, like myself and many others. These things really start to develop after you mature. The big thing to remember is, sure people may judge you for being weird in a social interaction but it doesn't matter what they think. There are plenty of other people thinking the exact same thing or nothing at all. If someone says something weird to me i notice it but i don't really care or even remember it afterwards.

Perhaps all that yoga and mediation just made things worse. If you want to learn real world skills you have to put yourself out there. I think being stuck in your head is what causes these issues in the first place. If you're properly socialized you aren't going to analyse every single interaction you have, you will just act the way you do and be fine with it. To solve this i think you need to get out of your head for a while and just go with it.

I've recovered from my ego shattering experiences but I still have problems, mostly ego related, that i have to work on. I think living life and interacting with people will be the quickest way to get back on track, it's the main thing i've been forcing myself to do for the last year.

 

[RedLeader]

One thing to keep in mind is that during the high-school/early-adulthood years, your brain is still maturing, you're still getting smarter, learning more and being exposed to new things. And for a lot of people who are thinkers by nature (I classify a lot of TDSers [and drug users proper] in this group, as we really do seem to be a group of people to ponder the big questions, want to know more about everything, and so on), when the mind really takes off around that 18-20 age bracket, we can feel ostracized from society because most people in modern society are boring, predictable and don't really think much on their own. We're made to feel insecure about thinking so much, and this naturally will affect our social lives. Drugs helped at first because they calmed the mind down, or distracted us from getting caught up in petty social insecurities and whatnot, but eventually the drug use also ostracized us because we had to keep it candid and live in fear that if society found out, we'd be branded as criminals. Nobody likes living that double life for too long, and it surely doesn't make socializing any easier. So sure, it could be a little bit that the drugs affected your brain chemistry, but really I think a large part of it is that the lifestyle that you were forced to live to use the drugs only further made you have to be dishonest socially, which kind of creates a perpetual uncomfortability.

With regard to shattering your ego, this doesn't have to be a bad thing. It just means that you're seeing the world a bit more directly/honestly than most people, and this is going to feel more overwhelming. I have shattered my ego with psychedelics, and also have attempted the yoga/meditation thing, and do some new-age reading and studying of Eastern thought. The key here is to not feel like you're going about it alone (because you can convince yourself that you're a bit of a cook...). Are you in college? Do you ever hang around intellectuals? I think you could benefit a lot just by being able to have conversations with people in real life that don't seem petty and boring. Conversations that actually engage the depths of your brain.

What I think you're doing is trying to use the benzos to act as defense mechanism from your exposed ego after all of the other defense mechanisms no longer work. This isn't going to work in the long-term, though, because the amount of benzos you'd need to effectively pull this off on a regular basis is going to get you physically addicted. And you don't want to be physically addicted to benzos.

 

[Pagey]

I agree with a previous post and think it's possible all this might not be entirely drug-related. If the benzos made you feel so much better, perhaps you suffer from anxiety? You were young and your chemical disposition has changed a bit since then, so the anxiety could have developed later and might have been exacerbated by the drug use. I think RedLeader is right and you should maybe try to engage in stimulating conversations whenever possible, so that they'd maybe 'revive' your brain.

 

[Chimeric]

The idea that a lot of psychonauts/druggies are 'thinkers' is truly interesting. In the age-old Enneagram http://www.enneagraminstitute.com/TypeFive.asp there are different archetypes of personalities. And the "thinkers" archetype ( type 5 ) are said to become more healthy if they move towards the "challenger" archetype ( type 8 )--instead of just thinking about things, they are encouraged to apply their thoughts or insights by becoming more decisive and by actually doing things instead of just analyzing or ruminating.

Thank you for the replies. Yes, hearing from people with similar experiences has shown me that my situation may not be as complicated or drug-related as I had imagined. It could well be also a product of getting older and having to 'hide' my unorthodox explorations and views from the great majority of people I run into (for concern that they would not be able to relate). I think it's crucial to find outlets for all this mind-stuff, the simplest of which would be reaching out to people and especially developing connections to those who also have similar experiences and perspectives on life.. though they might be harder to find.

And if there's one thing I've learned from drug use it's that it's all fun and games until we choose to live inside your head instead of the world around us. I appreciate the advice, and I'm certainly going to put it to good use.

 

[xxsicknessxx]

I think the worst thing drugs do is fill your boring time. You get so used to doing something to kill your free time that when you find your self sober and in the situation of (not having a job, anything to do) Your brain triggers the drug part of the brain. Its says.. Were board ok so what do we do? DRUGS DO DRUGS DRINK BLA BLA its what your brain knows..

Thats how the brain works... triggers sucks.. you have to fill that free time with something else, anything, reading, talking to a friend, walking, hobbys... anything.. But your brain can never forget

as they say you cant unring the bell... you can't undo something... you did drugs your brain will always remember drugs are fun and you have to except its a battle for life.. end of story... *shrug*

best you can do is replace the drugs with something positive.