disguyhere

not even admitting things to others.. more admitting them to myself.. speaking things makes them more real. not like holding them back does any good :\ .. but some things when dug up have a way of coming out to more people then you want it to no matter how hard you try. plus of the 4 people who I've ever talked to about my past.. 2 are now dead, and 2 I no longer speak to. my ex fiance and former best friend. .. i know none of that had anything to do with knowing about my past but the track record is admittedly beyond fucked

fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck .. going through a serious deep pit of depression today and I can't seem to reign it in. I'm used to dealing with daily drops into depression and suicidal thoughts and just letting them pass, but for some reason today seems different. I just can't turn off the fucking pain. I wish I could pin this all on hppd but things in my life are just bubbling to a head.. all the good the bad and the ugly ugly past rolling into one ball of god damn this fucking sucks. 3 more weeks and i can take a vacation, get away from a computer, and try to reset myself. 3 weeks left I have to make it day by day and not let this feeling overwhelm me. and it feels liek its going to be the hardest 3 weeks of my life. I normally keep a running total of the reasons why to stick around vs the reasons to let go and take a knife to my wrists. the sad thing is even though my life seems to be going better, the list of reasons to stick around is depleting more and more.. i think the only thing keeping me leaning towards the stick around side anymore is my puppy. no matter how bad it gets for me I cant think of leaving him alone without me. he wont even eat his food or drink water if I'm not around, let alone move from a spot in front of the door where he waits for me all day.. even that though is losing its weight in the war against the depression. I know i need to see a shrink. i know i need to get certain things out before they eat me alive from within.. but just admitting to someone these things will break me completely and totally and I havent been able to speak of them to more then 4 people total since i was 10.. i dont know how to do it now, 23 years later.. fuccccccck... i wish i had someone i could call to come watch me and stop me doing something stupid, but now i have to rely on myself to do that :\

my experience is we're a very quiet group of people when it comes to talking about our hppd issues with 1 doctor let alone participate in studies like this.. so right there the study is flawed

that first sentence felt like i was writing it :| ... most of the last two as well... its scary how similar some of the people on here's experiences can be. and yet how completely different the circumstances that brought them there are. ah the human condition :\

sleep deprivation is never a good thing... if you are to the point where you feel more mentally alert with 0 sleep then you are in a very bad place physically and need to get yourself in a sleep treatment program asap. dont fuck with your sleep, you will pay dearly for it in the end. you may feel more alert but you will start hallucinating more and will have a harder time discerning those hallucinations from reality. if you think thats going to help your dp/dr in anyway... dont know what to tell you then but after nearly 15 years of hppd related sleep issues and other sleep issues that are unrelated to hppd but similar in scope... trust me when i say your sleep is more important to your health than anything. You sacrifice that for any reason and you're going to get bitchslapped by your body

oh i know 1998... i started off not wanting to take more than 1/2 every 4 days to stave off dependence ... that only worked for so long and then 1/2 pills failed to put me out.. then full pills wouldnt put me out.. etc etc .. i've since gone back to once every 3-4 days, and just deal with not sleeping well the in between nights. not so much the ambien causing that though, more the things that caused me to need the ambien in the first place getting worse. eventually whether i take ambien or stop for months im still not going to get much sleep at all so right now im all about getting what i can while i can.

i work work work.. work some more.. work a lil more.. play with my dog.. smoke smoke work smoke.. pretend to sleep for 6 hrs while sleeping for a few minutes... rinse repeat.. substitute with 4 hours of sleep at best on nights i take ambien .. tv generally on but ignored in background... take a break every so often for backgammon

thats why im heading to neurologist soon.. i know my current twitch problem isnt the rls.. and i've been through the "fear" stage where i thought i was getting early onset parkinsons for a while... being unable to control your body can scare the bejesus out of you. i'm trying to avoid being paranoid about it though and if there is anything i can do to prevent it from getting worse i know i need to do it now. otherwise my sleep is never going to return to normal

real restless leg syndrome is neurological and not necessarily stress or anxiety induced. some people bounce with stress alot.. but then you have people who MUST move or else they get the buzz built up and their body twitches on them and yes synth... i drive people insane with it. if im not paying attention to it my legs will bounce like crazy, shaking conference tables and shit... i make other people nervous by them watching me doing it because they think its me being nervous or something, but its not something i have any control over. both me and my sister have been that way since i was younger, and we feed off each other when it happens. i'll start bouncing and even without seeing me doing it she'll start a few minutes later... until it gets to the point someone throws something at me :\ but yeah, the involuntary twitching and body buzz shit has just just been getting worse and worse the past 2 years, and moreso the past few months. i'm usually fine at work because im constantly doing things throughout the day. But as soon as i get home and start trying to relax i feel the buzz build up. At first it will take a while before i get a twitch, maybe 20-30 minutes. But then as the night goes on it will get quicker and quicker, and I'll start twitching bad once every 2-3 minutes. Its the main reason I dont get sleep anymore. Everything else I'm mostly dealing with ok at night, but it's impossible for me to relax, get comfortable, and stay in a single position for more then 5 minutes at a time. I've been putting it off for some time now but in the next few weeks I'm making an appointment with a neurologist, because I really am worried by it. I've been through a whole gamut of tests before but have always been spoonfed the bullshit line that its just stress. Ever notice how when a doctor is being lazy and doesnt want to entertain your concerns, they immediately blame stress? Whatever I'm experiencing is a physical neurological issue, maybe hppd related maybe not, but its not stress. I can be sitting perfectly relaxed, perfectly at peace with the world, and a muscle in my arm or neck will just start twitching. Over and over and over, visible to anyone watching me, you can see the muscle contracting quicker then I would be able to consciously control it, and I'll get the sensation of bubbles popping within the muscle. Like someone hooked up a basketball pump into my muscle and slooooowly blew air into me . Last night it got so bad that the spasm caused me to crack my neck super hard, and that sent an electric current down my arm. REAAAAALLY fucking painful. Its honestly hard as fuck sometimes for me to pin down any of my issues on hppd, or my immune system being beyond salvaging. I already know the next few years of my life are going to be miserable as my body slowly starts attacking itself on a more regular basis, so i'm kind of ready for this shit to get worse and worse. But as ready as I can get myself to be it still sucks beyond belief when you're holding a glass of soda, and your arm twitches and spills soda all over a friend sitting next to you :\ .. screw you body :\

i had no choice but to learn to drive during the initial trip that melted my brain. i had prior to that never had a problem driving while on any substance. my lack of depth perception always made me adjust to driving differently then most people would have to and that helped me overcome the worst of the things i went through after the initial trip. worst of it was my windshield would turn into an oil painting on canvas. any window fog would become overblown and any color in the general area of the fog would start spreading out like someone splashing the screen with paint. but i made it home that day. and forced myself to drive daily the next few months as i continued tripping and having 0 sleep. since i never let on to anyone that my brain was gone , i had nobody to rely on to pick up my slack and drive me places. hell i was the only one of my friends with a car or real job at that point so i really had no choice. since then the only thing thats kept me from getting in a major accident has been my ability to compartmentalize my visuals. i treat them like a HUD, overlaid on my vision but not interfering with it. some days it actually works to my benefit. Like it i subconsciously pick up on a disturbance a few cars ahead of me, i start getting a colored "aura" building up around that general area. my brain picks up on it before i notice it consciously, and helps me react quicker. its not always the case and sometimes it can be super distracting, but i never relied on certain aspects of my vision to drive to begin with so its not bad enough ever to make me unable to deal. I'm still one of the few people i know who can smoke herb for hours straight, get in my car, and have 0 difference in my ability to coordinate or pay attention to the road. night driving.. thats a different story. you take away my ability to see shadows and you take away any ability for me to discern distance. plus i get really bad flaring that screws up my depth perception even more. but i generally dont drive at night so i avoid that issue.

the aura isnt specifically hppd related. alot of migraine sufferers get an aura, and since medicine still hasnt solved the riddle of the migraine theres no clear reason why. i imagine hppd would make things potentially worse, but I had halo-fied migraines long before i touched any drug. try excedrin. may seem like too obvious a thing to actual work, but where most other meds fail me for my migraines excedrin seems to help. other suggestions... cold water on a washcloth over your eyes... sit in a room with indirect black light (dont really look at the blacklight but let it bounce in the room around you). lay down in a fetal position in a cold room and hum... last one is more trying to find humor in a shitty situation, but hell, sometimes the humming does help me (in between the crying in pain :\ ). sometimes the migraines will stay until they choose to go away... if you find regular excedrin or home remedies dont work, and the migraines come frequently, bring it up with your MD.

visualization man... its one of the reasons i've been able to cope enough to do the job i do... at this point i have so many different thought processes that fire up that i manage them like this.. i visualize each independent thought process as thousands of strings hung straight down from a ceiling above me. if i force myself to clearly separate them they'll stay there active, but not intrude on the thoughts im focusing on. I'll visualize myself tugging on a string holding that thought in my hands as it were. one thing is for sure. the more you purposefully try to avoid it sometimes the worse it makes it. trick for me is acknowledging it and pushing it to the side. those thoughts likely gonna be there a while. best to just understand it, understand what brings it about, and let yourself find a way to push it to the side

should be a given that any psychedelic use can worsen hppd.. even if your brain is screaming at you that you can handle the psychedelic even better now because you're so used to the side effects... theres still the chance. i stupidly kept running back to them after my major major break.. and hell if you walked up to me today and offered syd i can almost guarentee id take it then and there because thats just how i'm wired... but i would harbor no delusions that i wouldnt be paying dearly for taking it afterwards.

i was engaged 6 years ago... during the height of the worst of my hppd issues... she never knew, but im sure it impacted our relationship still. in the end it wasnt my issues that broke us up, it was her being a cheating bitch. while i was preparing to ditch everything in my life to move 8 states away to live with her (she was an air force staff instructor and subject to frequent moving)...she was screwing around with some guy who had no idea she was getting married in a few months. i found out thanks to her forgetting one day to log off of aim while i was by her place and she was at work. can tell yourself you wouldnt read someones ims all you want but when one comes over saying "hey baby how's your vacation going. I cant wait until you get home and i can be inside you again" ... even from a room away your eyes would see that shit :\ since then i havent been able to bring myself to put myself through a relationship again. between her, and my ever increasing lack of ability to trust anyone anywhere with anything.... loneliness for me.. at least my earlier years had their more than fair enough share of relationships .. not missing it too too terribly, or maybe im just still lying to myself after all this time

the band Palms is currently on my repeat until can no longer tolerate playlist : http://palmsband.com/music made up from 3 of 4 members of the band Isis and Chino from Deftones on vocals. Best of both worlds and sonically just rocks my ass off into zonesville whenever i listen

if ir not ok with herbal dont try to replace with coke.. as pretty much everyone else has already pointed out too many negatives, too few positives. here's an idea a friend of mine is trying... drink kava kava teas. helps him deal with his own lesser extent hppd now that he's stuck unable to herbalize anymore.. http://www.sagewisdom.org/danielsiebert.html ... sells the strongest kava extract that you can find

i wouldnt worry about labeling things as sounding strange in these forums. I think with reasonable certainty you will always find at least one person here who who no matter how bad your visuals may be they've been through worse... and then someone whose been through worse than them, i can go through a whole thing about our visuals being a true visual processing that we are normally subconsciously aware of but cannot process consciously... but it gets too deep to go into right now as the ambien begins to make me need sleep asap.. will follow up tomorrow

i get slow-time, tunnel vision, etc.. a lot... i've had to learn to deal with driving with that going frequently. i've been told a range of things from blood pressure drops to mini strokes.. to vertigo.. to "insert we dont really know what the hell we're talking about medical diagnosis here" .... here's a tip. when it happens take quick inhale, deeeeep exhale.. get all the air out of your lungs on the exhale, and a regular inhale in after... then try to keep your breaths times like that.. regular inhale.. deep forceful exhale. i can usually snap myself out of that within a few seconds now, though some harder ones still last a few minutes. here's a question.. when it happens do you get a sensation of tingling anywhere in the side of your neck? almost wired up to your teeth, but not quite... like you feel like an electrical chord got plugged into a muscle on low voltage? i dont always get that but when i do it's usually after moving my head too fast in one direction. it's almost like an emp blew in my nervous system and knocked everything offline briefly.... that's in opposition to the muscle twitches that are happening more frequently... wish my damn body would decide one extreme... lose all control but just collapse, or lose all control and have my muscles randomly seize up. at least if it stuck with the emp one i could probably get more sleep. here's another question.. if not the tingling in the neck, do you get the "building buzz"... like theres a deep vibration inside you that keeps building until bam, mental cloud thingamajoohokie. (dont mind me.. day 3 no sleep.. need to invent new words is high). well if you do then you sir may just be an indigo child! and jenny mccarthy would like to talk to you! ... back on serious note the breathing does seem key to helping regulate that "mode" and getting out of it quicker. whether its electrical or the plumbing, clearing the lines usually helps

Give it a few more years and it will be the standard for medical use

You mean tripping isn't always a good idea??? but yeah that's why I only wished it could have been the miracle thing.. But honestly after the Gupta special last night it wouldn't surprise me if the answer was under our noses all along in the form of low thc herb.. Super CBD saturated. It helps with epilepsy and many other neurological diseases.. Maybe sans the ridiculously high thc levels modern herb has it could be helpful for some of us

i gotta wonder if somewhere in the world there is a wonder plant like iboga (ibocaine) functions as for heroine addicts, where it resets their systems giving them a chance to heal properly without months/years of medication. you could almost almost imagine salvia could be something akin to that. It's so unlike traditional hallucinogens that get us into this mess, that the few times I've gone all out with it, i imagine if i didnt follow that up with more psychedelics, i could have lived the rest of my life without any of the side effects i have now. it was that hard of a reset switch for me. but at the same time, salvia typically pushes its users to take it deeper rather then to stop reflect and reset. until you have that monster of a disconnected reality experience and it scares you from ever touching anything again in your life. until the next time you do ... i'm rambling arent i... friend mentioned salvia earlier in the week and it's been on my mind since :\

to what etardnow is saying... from my ibs experiences from long before i even tried any psychedelics i can vouch that the issues caused by them made the ibs much worse.. the more accepted thoughts on ibs now relate it to the brain and sympathetic systems fight or flight response, and that stresses that at one point in nature would have triggered a flight response are now rerouted directly to the digestive and immune systems, causing an overload and triggering the symptoms all ibs sufferers have come to know and love.

my mistake.. from some of the posters on here my assumption was that they regarded the collection of dp/dr symptoms as being hppd, with or without the visuals. they've all been part and parcel for me, but i can see how where some people who experience minimal visuals on psychedelics to begin with could mix dp/dr and hppd up. they all come back to brain chemistry either way.. and i hope whatever you choose to do, alfie, you're able to identify and treat your problems.

know exactly what you mean... my normal stereoscopic vision is toast.. but i look at a picture with clearly delineated colors and contrast and it looks like what i "remember" 3d to be... I have a series of nature pics as my wallpaper on my computer and some of them i can swear feel like their reaching feet backwards through my monitor.

Sorry officer. Whatever you say