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arylcyclohexylamines neurotoxicity recovery

what i mean might be different than what you're talking about, sekio. when i'm in a darkroom -- the kind for film not film paper, meaning it's 100 percent black with no red lights on -- i start to see the walls, the equipment, etc. these things are not actually where i think i see them. i might see a piece of equipment, reach for it, and my hand passes through it. my mind is making up a scene after being in pitch black for a while. i think that happens to everyone. at least every photographer i've spoken to knows what i'm talking about. it happens after about 10 minutes of being in there. most photographers don't like it and will step out for a second between rolls to make it stop, if their schedule permits. i don't like it because it makes me think i have a light leak, but at this point i've learned it's in my mind not light.

what i mean about not seeing darkness when i close my eyes now is different. instead it's like i'm dreaming. it happens the second i close my eyes. i'm in a whole other world. until i open my eyes and bam! i'm actually sitting at my desks or wherever. it's not only a visual hallucination. because my mind doesn't know my eyes are closed and i'm actually at my desk. if i test it, it might not happen. if i'm focused, close my eyes, keep telling myself my eyes are closed, then i can see darkness (well except for the light through my eyelids and those floaters). but that's not usually how we close our eyes.

i am assuming it's the result of dissos and/or remeron. if i stop using dissos, it might go away. i say remeron too, because that has some sort of waking dream side effect. when i started taking remeron, that side effect was only when i was actually sleeping. so i assume it's the dissos. of course i have no idea. whatever it is, it hasn't happened all my life like seeing colors when you rub your eyes hard or seeing walls when you've been in a pitch black room too long. i'm not saying that it's brain damage either. instead, a side effect. the reason i mentioned brain damage is because it had been my understanding that disso abuse caused it; i don't know if that's right or wrong. i know i mentioned it when asked about neurotoxicity, but i didn't know what else to say. i regret it now. but i'm glad i made this thread because in addition to the discussion between others that's going on, it helped cement the fact i need to cut back.
 
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When I was a child and forced to go to mass every Sunday I’d get super bored so I would mash my fists into my eyes when I was pretending to pray and it would give me CEVs of color just blotching all over the place. I think that’s when I first realized I 1) didn’t believe in Catholicism and 2) had an interest in mind alteration.

That's eerily similar to my own experience.
 
i start to see the walls, the equipment, etc. these things are not actually where i think i see them. i might see a piece of equipment, reach for it, and my hand passes through it. my mind is making up a scene after being in pitch black for a while. i think that happens to everyone. at least every photographer i've spoken to knows what i'm talking about. it happens after about 10 minutes of being in there. most photographers don't like it and will step out for a second between rolls to make it stop, if their schedule permits. i don't like it because it makes me think i have a light leak, but at this point i've learned it's in my mind not light.
I'm not a photographer but this happens to me too. I noticed it specifically the other day though when I was looking around my bedroom in pitch darkness and started to think I could see the room. When I turned on the lights it was clear that things weren't actually where I thought they were, my mind had just fabricated the scene in an extremely familiar environment.

When I was a lot younger, like a young child, I vividly remember also that sometimes when I would close my eyes - it was like the scene around me did not change. I knew I had my eyes closed, and yet, it seemed like I could still see the room around me - sometimes, seemingly, more vividly than when I had my eyes open. This doesn't happen any more but I assume now that it's the same kind of phenomenon, just I had a more active imagination when I was younger I guess. There was a period of time where I put more stock in metaphysical ideas that I toyed with the idea of having experienced some kind of "astral sight" but I don't really give any credence to this idea anymore, fun one though it might be.

As far as seeing whole other worlds when you close your eyes... if it didn't happen before you used any dissociatives then perhaps it could be some form of dissociative HPPD. If it's not causing you any distress though, I would not worry about it too much. Persistent perceptual alterations can be induced by lots of drugs with a strong visual component - obviously HPPD is most commonly associated with the explicitly non-neurotoxic classical psychedelics, so for sure, it's no indicator of brain damage.

I just had another quick look at your original post - just to confirm, the doses you state are the total quantity of dissociatives you've used in your entire life? If so, objectively speaking your lifetime usage is still very very low and I'd venture to say there's close to zero chance you've given yourself any real "brain damage" from it. Although even if you had been using a lot higher I'd say you'd probably be OK.

I had another look at the study I keep referring to and I might have to slightly correct myself when I said earlier that these "lesions" must be environmentally induced - actually this may not be correct - while it might be true that these specific patterns are unlikely to be purely endogenous, many conditions can cause reversible atrophy of certain brain regions, stress and depression are well known to cause hippocampal atrophy which appears to be at least partially reversible. The researchers, it appears, include very mild early stage cortical atrophy in their measured "lesions", this may be accepted practice but I presumed there to be a clear distinction between degenerative and likely irreversible lesions and more mild "atrophy" of certain brain regions, but it appears there is not. In my defence, I'm not a neuroscientist, I just pretend to be. ;)

Probably there are no real black and whites here but all is shades of grey. Even a single dose of ketamine will induce some neuronal changes although it obviously won't be visible or clinically relevant in any real way. Equally even prolonged use with obvious and scary looking changes may, in fact, not be quite as serious as it looks and may be quite reversible. So the line of where "damage" is is unclear. Again, I'm not a neuroscientist, but I had another look as you seem to not be reassured and I thought perhaps my earlier posts were unintentionally a little worrying. I seem to always recently find myself on the side of stressing the dangers of ketamine and other arylcyclohexylamines over the more common perception that they are (IMO) safer than they are. But in this case, although neurotoxicity is likely possible in very extreme cases, your own case is very unextreme, and what you are experiencing - almost certainly - is not neurotoxicity and if you are experiencing any negative symptoms you will recover.
 
yes, that's total use. the seeing other world's does cause me distress because it's shocking when i open my eyes and am not where i thought it was. especially because where i thought i was is not often all that connected to the reality we live in. not so distressing i'm gonna see a doc or anything about it. i need to cut back whether it's related or not. having a doc guess at the whether they're the cause won't help. because even though that's all in my lifetime, it's all recent except the k.

yes, the darkroom thing tends to happen in familiar environments. like your bedroom, as you mention. where your brain thinks it knows the landscape so well it doesn't need light to see. that's why i'd think i could can see my darkroom equipment. it's big, leveled (you can't move it without re-leveling), so it's was always in the same place. i live in an apartment now -- no darkroom of my own.
 
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Though arylcyclohexylamines can and do cause cognitive deficits after heavy and/or chronic use, there has never been conclusive evidence that they produce permanent organic damage to the brain in humans. John W. Olney and other researchers were able to demonstrate neuronal vacuolization - "Olney's Lesions" (see "Pathological Changes Induced in Cerebrocortical Neurons by Phencyclidine and Related Drugs", Olney et al., Science, Volume 244) but these alterations were produced in rats. Rats have a significantly higher rate of brain metabolism than we humans do. This and the fact that the dosages used were massive, much more than a typical human would ever be exposed to, leads me to believe that this type of damage simply does not occur in humans. The only drug that has consistently produced permanent damage in experimental animals is dizocilpine (MK-801), which has a 2.5 nanomolar binding affinity for the PCP site on the NMDA receptor, versus about 20nM for 3-MeO-PCP, 30nM for 3-OH-PCP, and 59nM for PCP itself. This extremely high affinity coupled with a long duration of action and slow dissociation from the receptor might at least partly explain why the damage occurs. I would speculate that MK-801 might be able to cause permanent damage in humans as well, but no one has done enough studies to find out, for obvious ethical and moral reasons. I must also add that I am certainly no expert on biochemistry, neurochemistry or pharmacology and these are only speculations on my part.

What I can say, from my own experience with these drugs (and I have done more than my fair share of them over the years), is that I've noticed some cognitive processing and memory deficits, but they have always improved following a few months of complete abstinence. I don't think that I have experienced any kind of permanent brain damage even from PCP, let alone other designer derivatives thereof. If you notice problems in thinking or memory, just give yourself a break for a while. Of course, this is all just in my own personal experience and everyone is different. Know your body and your limits, and do what is best for you.
 
I've used way too many arylcyclohexylamines and have no complaints, in fact two CT scans I had done years ago at the peak of my dissociative use were utterly unremarkeable.
my experience is the same, even the c.t. scans.

i actually think through behavioral changes, ach dissos have only served to help me improve my cognitive abilities.

a shitty job and not applying my brain in a productive manner has lately dulled me down, maybe i need dissos again. been awhile.
 
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