Depersonalization

Hey Veeky Forums, 20 year old user here,

So for my entire life, I have lived with a severe Depersonalization disorder. I have memories as early as 5 of questioning if I am actually alive and what reality and noticing a strong visual snow effect across my visual field.

It wasn't until a couple years ago that I realized I needed to seek professional help with it. I ended up self medicating with cannabis (which paradoxically improves my condition acutely but has quite a few drawbacks), opioids, and occasionally psychadelics, about a year after i started seeing psychiatrists and psychologists.

I was continuously told that I was unlikely to ever find a solution, as my case was very resist mentioned to treatment and comorbid with depression and very bad anxiety, 3 brain surgeries over a 12 month period, as well as the previously mentioned substance abuse.

After a handful of doctors and over a couple dozen medications (ssris, ssris, tricyclics, maois, antipsychotics, anticonvulsants, benzos, anticholinergics), including the few things out there which are indicated for depersonalization (selegeline, xanax), I finally think I might be onto a solution.

About a year ago I began seeing a doctor that I told myself would be the last if things didn't work out. I was surprised that instead of being given whatever was left to try in the serotoninergic antidepressant classes (which never brought positive results besides totally numbing and flattening my emotions), he allowed me to make a case for what I thought was worth trying after extensive and almost obsessive research.

Fast forward to today. I'm currently on 225mg pregabalin, 300mg armodafinil, 20-40mg baclofen, 4mg tiagabine, and 25mg hydroxyzine daily. I picked out each of these medications besides the hydroxyzine.

Cont

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I've been on all but the armodafinil (started 1.5 months ago) and the tiagabine (started 2 weeks ago) for about 6-9 months.

The pregabalin and baclofen did provide more benefit than anything I've tried up until that point, but the tiagabine was the diamond in the rough that had to this day been more beneficial and less harmful than anything I've been prescribed to this date, and this is only after a couple weeks of treatment.

The past week alone has been the most "normal" I've felt since before I started seeing doctors. I guess the stigma of being broken and unfixable attributed to that.

First and foremost, I know that I'm still early on in the tiagabine treatment, but I'm wondering if the addition of a GAT inhibiting drug like vigabatrin or valproate could lead to an even larger reduction of my symptoms if I replaced the pregabalin and/or baclofen with something like that. Vigabatrin is out of the picture due to cost.

But could the specific combination of medications be the key here?

Furthermore, I'm almost baffled by the lack of data on tiagabine out there. There's none research or even anecdotal data about it being used for depersonalization, and the data that is out there is quite limited.

Seeing how much of a difference I've noticed makes me wonder if tiagabine (or the combination with other medications) could be an unstudied solution to treatment resistant depersonalization. I understand from personal experience and from reading anecdotal reports that the resistance to everything you throw at the problem can be almost scarier and more disturbing than the original problem.

The thought that this could lead to helping so many people who've been in the same position as me has convinced me to ask around and see if there's any evidence here or if I'm just lucky.

Let me know your thoughts, I have a feeling that I might have caught on to something almost by chance.

Pic unrelated of course.

Just as a side note, I'm self taught about psychiatry and the mechanisms of the brain and am by no means an expert so if I'm missing the point please let me know

youtube.com/watch?v=FRJohy5kN0Y

If nothing else, at least this thread was able to provide solid evidence that sonic love tails. Thank you user

What does 'the most normal you've ever felt like' mean? Why do you think you can feel 'more' normal? I'm no expert but I'm curious. I haven't seen psychiatrists on Veeky Forums though. GAT inhibitor might be overkill and make you feel like a zombie but I guess it's subjective depending on the person.

Different DID user here. I also found cannabis a good treatment, but the best by far is meditation. I never really felt as tho I "was" an embodied being until the first time I really 'got' meditation.

Basically I've just not been constantly focusing on feeling dissociated and have been able to actually carry on conversations with people without being noticeably distant or preoccupied. It definitely helps with coping but even when I try to focus on my dissociation it doesn't feel as powerful as it otherwise would.

Hey its good to hear from someone else going through the same shit in one way or another.

I've tried dozens of times to meditate, and while I do find it calming, it just seems to make me feel even more out of it for some reason. Like my anxiety can be cleared away by meditating but it's like the dissociation is just constant background noise with no shut off.

>he allowed me to make a case for what I thought was worth trying after extensive and almost obsessive research.
Wow lucky you. What an unusual selection of medications though. Did you get puzzled looks at the pharmacy when you handed that prescription in?

yeah... anti-psychotics are a real pain but they help me sleep at night...

Sometimes I feel like I am not really alive when returning to reality after being online for a while. Is that similar to what you feel like?

Also did the surgeries help?

you know what's awesome about this shit? it lets me live my life the way I want, I put it on autopilot, I can endure anything, I'm me, the world and my pain is not me, I control everything, anything except my thoughts and my actions are just stimulus inputs, i'm a fucking function nigga, taking the inputs and outputting pure success

i drank a fuckload of cough syrup once op and it was pretty cool, minus the puking

I'll bet you didn't cough though

I don't know about you, but I find that sometimes the depersonalization can be euphoric. Most of the time though it's like being in a waking nightmare. That's how I describe it: dream-like flashes or being in the shadow of a dream that you >CAN'T WAKE UP from. Anything can induce it, including just looking at my surroundings from a certain perspective.

I should add that those dream-like flashes can often be attributed to micro-seizures, and that worries me.

Hi user, i have depersonalization and panic attacks, i found that lexapro was quite efficient for me.

Oh wow, sonic love tails is a bug from zoei right? Hello there AI

Cool story bro.

I know how it feels OP.been depersonilized for 1.5 years now.started with me smoking a bit of weed.but honestly I had symptoms even prior to that.it's fucking horrible. I literally don't know how to live life anymore.my brain isn't making connections properly and my memory is fucked.I wake up sometimes and think wow is this really happening to me altho the me is long gone.I haven't tried medication yet but I think that's the road I'm gonna have to go down if I want to see some improvements.oh and btw do u go on dpselfhelp ,?

>lexapro
You do know that that's just the S-stereoisomer of citalopram? The only reason it's marketed is because the patent on Citalopram ran out, so Lundbeck isolated the two different forms of the drug from each other and declared the more potent one to be a whole new medicine and patented it.

But SSRIs work for me, but I suffer from SSRI poop-out and that's not recognised as an actual thing here.

Yes i do know! But i said lexapro because it's a known name.

Smart.

If OP is around how much does his regime cost? I remember my Lyrica (pregabalin) cost the government €90 a month and the only use I found for it was to get high, because it screwed up my focus too much.

Op here, sorry for lack of response, i had an evening class and finals week is right around the corner so the workload is picking up

Not really, since pregabalin and tiagabine are both anticonvulsants and it isn't that uncommon for someone with a seizure disorder to be prescribed more than one. Baclofen and hydroxyzine are both mild and fairly common nonaddictive anti anxiety drugs. They probably see people that need more shit on a daily basis. Oh and the armodafinil isn't on prescription, it's from India. That sounds sketchy but the guy has like 20 patients that go through the same place, and nobody has ever had problems. Plus it was tested to match our own pharmaceutical quality stuff at 2% of the price.

I feel ya man. Seroquel was easily the most dysphoric and sedating drug I've been on. But sometimes ya gotta take what ya gotta take. Hope you stay well.

Maybe. Except it never goes away.

As long as you're happy, yeah, you might as well own that shit. The symptoms may not be able to be changed, so I guess a perspective change is a good endogenous way of going about it.

As long as you respect the power of dissociative drugs, they can be interesting occasional learning experiences. But even if you don't believe in Olney's lesions, they can still cause some kind of permanent damage to memory and communication abilities.

I find it to be a very dysphoric experience for the same reasons.

I'm happy that it works for you, sadly it just didn't do a thing for me

I understand how hard it is, where the only thing that you know helps for sure is also bad for you. Hang in there man, and remember that many of your worries could be caused by the grass.

Welcome to big pharma

The pregabalin is the only one that's considerably expensive out of what I'm on. However, I have a good relationship with my pcp so his office gives me samples whenever they can.

Anyone else ever been on tiagabine aka Gabatril

the way you feel now is actually abnormal, what you were feeling before was normal, people just don't like to admit it.

also your liver will be gone in a few years

this.

nothing new here, someone likes being high more than they like not being high.

mixing all that shit, how can you even be sure you aren't fucking your brain over for the long term. i know plenty of 5+ year meth addicts who think everything is honky dory smoking meth every day, but it will catch up to them

>armodafinil

JFC

Hm, yoy sound a little disgruntled. Maybe you need to talk to your doctor. I'm sure he could prescribe a few medications to help out with that

So you are depressed and currently on a few-thousand-dollars-a-month mind altering drug binge to achieve the perfect high and overcome your social anxiety?

Good for you! Atleast you can afford the absolutely necessary medical treatment unlike your unfortunate fellow americans who steal and sell themselves to buy whatever shit they can from closest street corner and OD themselves to a better place.

>Like my anxiety can be cleared away by meditating but it's like the dissociation is just constant background noise with no shut off.
why do you care about dissociation and ending it?

>I control everything, anything except my thoughts and my actions are just stimulus inputs,
holy shit you are a moron
you do not control your consciousness, nor you emotions, nor what you care about, nor what you despise, nor your thoughts nor even your actions.
And even worse, you are stupid enough to take pride of your stupidity.

Oh fuck! You see right through me dude! You have such a clear understanding of this, and quite frankly, the good people of this thread are indebted to you

It acts as a huge barrier to the outside world. It interferes with my quality of life in such a way that I wouldn't be able to be in the college I'm at and do the work I need to do since the symptoms are so inhibiting

not OP but i hsvr not been myself for a longer period of time in my life than i have been myself

You just need God, user.

A bippity bump

i have bad depersonalization and have always had terrible visual snow + tinnitus, i wonder if they are related

you also failed to mention why you needed to have "3 brain surgeries"

I have visual snow but it isn't at all major or even inhibiting; it's only really noticeable when I think about it or get bored. I wonder how many people are in a similar situation.