Anxiety disorder HPPD

Hi guys,

I'm a 22 year old student from the Netherlands and I have got Derealization/Depersonalization/HPPD for almost a year now.

Simply said, HPPD is a tempory defense mechanism from your body to deal with accumulated trauma, stress and/or anxiety. It can be triggerd by drugs and/or panic attacks. I had and have symptoms like:

- Visual Snow
- 24/7 Headaches
- Overthinking
- Obsessive thinking
- Social Anxiety
- Overanalyzing
- Everything feels fake. Like you are in a movie.
- Emotional numbness
- Depression
- Panic attacks
- You feel detached from the world.

But everything is so much better then a couple of months ago!

Before I write my whole story down about last year, what I did about it and so on, I want to ask a quick question. Maybe people aren't waiting for a whole story so my main question for now is:

How do you let go of obsessive thoughts? This is the main thing I struggle with at the moment. I have to accept and let go my thoughts, but I find it very hard sometimes. An obsessive thought is like: "Wow I didn't think about HPPD". "Oh shit I thought about it". "Ok, accept the thought and let it go". At this time a gave the thought to much power already and it keeps coming back. The main struggling thought is: "I didn't think about it".

These anxiety thoughts are the worst when I'm talking to people or when I have to think. They are constantly in my mind. "I didn't think about it". "I have to keep concentrated at the converstaion", "What is he/she thinking about me?". Or when I have to do math or have to use my insight all I can think of are my obessive thoughts. It is very annoying and it fuels my anxiety. I think it is an OCD thing.

Does anybody has got some tips and tricks to deal with these kind of obsessive thoughts? I meditate and learning mindfulness at the moment.

My main goal in this forum is to give and get tips and tricks and to help eachother out when we need eachother the most. For my whole story and stuff I have done to get to the point where I am today, scroll down!

For now,

Have a good day!

Peace,

Luuk

Guys!

I totally misjudged the amount of time the typwork of my whole story would cost. I am writing for half an hour now and I still haven't got through the first part. That is like 1/5 of the whole thing :') I haven't got the time tonight to finish it, but I will finish it first thing in the morning tomorrow!

I hope you guys understand.

Still have a very good evening!

Peace,

Luuk

This is the first time that I write my whole story down and I am very sorry for the bad English! This will be a long one so let's begin!

It all started at a vacation with a couple of friends in Berlin. I was a typical Dutch student who smoked weed/cigarettes, went out a lot, drank a lot, ate very unhealthy, was lazy and partied all the time. I was actually very happy at that moment, I thought, and everything was going good for me. At that time I had slight Visual Snow (small pixels in your vision like on tv) but it didn't bother me. I felt normal.

We were a night out in Berlin and we decided to take drugs that night. We thought it was a very good idea to buy Xtc from a creepy man in a dark allay. What could go wrong! Right? We took the drugs and as expected the drugs were rubbish. Normally from Xtc I would be very mellow, talking to everyone, kissing everyone, loving everyone and just loving life actually. But that night it felt just off. Very off. We didn't take much because we didn't trust the drugs 100%. Thank god. We partied till late in the night and went back to the Hostel.

We woke up and I felt very weird. I thought: "Well, I always feel weird the day after using drugs so it's okay. I will be fine". The visual snow was really extreme and I remember saying to a friend: "Wow I am still spacing and I see weird things when I close my eyes" but I thought these was part of the after space and I would be fine within 24 hours.
24 Hours past and I still felt completely off but still thought it was part of the after space. Later that night we traveled home to the Netherlands and I went back to my parents. I lived on my own in another town, but decided to stop by and say hi. I remember seeing and talking to my parents and it felt like a dream. They were so surrealistic. I didn't had any emotional bond and it felt like I was in some sort of movie. Normally I had the best emotional bond with my parents. They were like one of my best friends. But now, I didn't feel any emotional bond or connection with them. I knew something was completely wrong. I remember sitting on the couch and looking at the wall. Everything was moving, colors were chanching, visual snow was everywere and everything just felt fake. I didn't know what the hell was going on. It felt like I was high and spacing at the same time, all the time.

One of the first things I did was searching on the internet for answers. I was full of anxiety and the internet only fueled it more and more. I searched for my symptoms and got to the conclusion that there were two options. Option one was that I was going blind and option two was that I had some sort of big tumor in my brain what caused these visual en mental problems. It's always the same thing with Google. Oh, you have got a cold? You most certainly must have terminal cancer.

A few days past and I didn't know what to do with my life. My symptoms got more extreme by the day and I thought my life was over. On top of all the symptoms I had, I got massive headaches all the time. Just like the visual snow, emotional numbness and so on, the headaches didn't go away and stayed 24/7 day in day out.
I was searching on the internet for my symptoms and I came across somebody who had similair symptoms like me. He explained what he had. He was talking about depersonalization and derealization.

Depersonalizatoin (DP) is an anomaly of self-awareness. It can consist of a reality or detachment within the self, regarding one's mind or body, or being a detached observer of oneself. Subjects feel they have changed, and the world has become vague, dreamlike, less real, or lacking in significance.

Derealization (DR) is an alteration in the perception or experience of the external world so that it seems unreal. Other symptoms include feeling as though one's environment is lacking in spontaneity, emotional colouring and depth.

So it was obvious that I got DP/DR. But I still wasn't completely sure because he didn't have visual snow and I did. I just gave up on the searching because it made me more and more depressed. People saying like: "I got DP/DR for 25 years now and I has been a hell" "Fuck my life, got it for more then 10 years now. There is nothing you can do". You can imagine that this only fueled my anxiety more and more and I thought my life was officialy over and that this was it. This was my life. I will never be the same person again. This was the beginning of my big depression.

It got really, really bad after this. I never told anyone all the things I had done in my depression period. Sure, I told a lot, but not everything. One thing I didn't do was drugs. And I am so glad I didn't do drugs after I got DP/DR. I thought about it, but I didn't do it because I knew it would make things only more fucked up in long terms.

But yeah. My depression. Not proud of it. I isolated myself in my room. Didn't to do anything. I had headaches all the time, visual snow wasn't getting any better, everything felt so fake. Even my best friends felt like strangers to me. I was full of anxiety the whole day and the only thing that would make me feel a little bit normal again was alcohol. Yeah I know, one of the dumbest things you can do but at that time it was literally the only thing that made me feel a little bit human again. What I was actually doing is just anesthesizing my anxiety. But at that time a was so depressed, I just didn't care anymore.

My day would look a bit like this: Getting up. Eat a little bit of bad food. Just sitting behind my laptop all day and just doing nothing actually. Watched a lot of movies, gamed a lot, drank alcohol on my own, got really drunk sometimes, didn't talk to anyone. Just isolating myself and the symptoms got worse and worse. I was really bad depressed for months. Even in a stage where I thought: "I would be happy to not wake up tomorrow".

In september I was looking through Facebook and I came across a post that said: "Do you have visual snow?" "Do your surroundings feel fake?" "Don't you feel any emotions?" Watch this video! It turned out to be a Dutch company that was specialized with HPPD. In a video a person explained to me what HPPD was and how it was caused.

Hallucinogen persisting perception disorder (HPPD) is a disorder characterized by a continual presence of sensory disturbances, most commonly visual, that are reminiscent of those generated by the use ofhallucinogenic substances.

Later that week I came across a post of somebody on a forum that explained to me what to do against DP/DR/HPPD. It was like a 5 paged manual with tips and tricks to overcome this evil thing. Common tips were:

- Socialize
- Sleep 8 hours a day
- Eat healthy
- Go to the gym
- Develop Positive Attitude
- Do things that force you to be in the moment
- Don't drink alcohol/do drugs/smoke cigarettes

I just did these things like 50/50. On one week I would drink and smoke, the other week I would. One week I would be positive and the other I would be very depressed.

Everything changed on Jaunary the first. I was very drunk with some friends that night and I remember waking up that morning and thinking to myself: "You are not gonna get better when you keep going down this path". I decided that it was enough. That day I choose to stop drinking and smoking, that I would eat healthy from now on and would exersice daily. And I did. I commited 100% to my recovery. There were a lot of bad days but also good days. After the first 2 months nothing really changed but I kept on going strong. After 3 moths I noticed the first changes. My headaches started to get less, I got more energy, got more emotion, got more connected with my surroundings, lost weight, gained muscle, got out of my depression and were motivated again to keep going.

I started going back to school, got a job beside school, passed some tests, got back into my music, released an Album and like two weeks ago I finished my Minor with an great grade. I also haven't drunk any alcohol and haven't smoked in over half a year. I am still not where I want to be and I am still not 100% recovered, but it is going better every week. I still have got bad days between that I don't feel like doing anything and I am back to square one, but I notice the there are getting more and more good days. I know my recovery is around the corner and with all the knowlegde I have now I know that I can help people with DP/DR/HPPD/Anxiety.

This post is primairly focussed on my story and my depressed period. I really want to help others so when you guys are interested I will post another post with all the things that helped me to recover, do and don'ts, how a typical day looks like for me, how I manage a positive attitude and my anxiety and so on.

Have a nice day and keep going strong!

Peace,

Luuk