Tell
05-05-10, 00:51
I'm in my early 20's - male, and on paper should be quite content with life. I have some great friends, my own well-performing business, plenty of talents/hobbies..well, you get the picture. With people in the world suffering from problems such as cancer, severe heart disease.. I feel guilty even stating that I have a condition.
Wind back to around 12 months ago - a person I had been living with was unbearable. A backstabbing piece of shit, whose only motivations are decided by what could possibly improve his ego. You know that guy who will argue for an hour straight about the colour of the paint on the wall? Yeah, think that guy. Except imagine he's colourblind and still arguing with you. And then he's threatening to kill himself whenever he isn't getting his way.
I won't go into a great amount of detail on it - my writing style is already too recognisable as it is, without giving away a lot of personal info on my life. But let's just skip forward to 6-7 months ago. I'm still living with the same level of intolerance, only due to the fear of having to live with someone's suicide over my head. When it finally arrives to breaking point, and I'm having trouble getting myself out of bed in the morning, I find a very stupid escape. I start taking cocaine, and ecstasy. In hindsight, I wish the guy just did kill himself. Would've made my life a hell of a lot easier in the long run.
2 months of usage in, and I'm mixing any drug I can get my hands on - **** me did it make things easier! Weekdays dragged on the same as usual, but at the weekend I could finally go for stress relief. It was dumbing me down too - and I didn't mind this at all. My mind was finally resting. I could just stare into space for hours on end without a care in the world. All the ideas I had for improving my business were leaving - everything from musical ability to skills in playing sudoku were fading. And it was near bliss.
Now, I've always had an invincibility complex - it was probably my strongest trait. Nothing could take me down. I was about to prove myself quite wrong. Things in the real world were starting to get on top of me - firstly, I was not living with the person in question anymore. There's not a lot of detail I can give on that, but it did involve a grand finale in pissing me off. Think enough to drive most people to their own suicide - but regardless, I carried on. This unfortunately made my chemical abuse worse. And I leveled that out with more chemical abuse. And eventually my own confidence got the better of me - I went too far, and spent 3 days shoving shit up my nose, and drinking vodka. Eventually rationality set in, and I decided to go home and bring myself down.
4 hours later I was in the ER with my first ever full blown panic attack, spurred on by the fact that my heart was in a dangerous place itself. I had to be given valium to calm down. This was the last time I ever took a recreational drug.
This is also when my real problems began - I was told, nay, PROMISED that I was just having withdrawals from my usage. Constant fear, paranoia, depression. Spells of absolute horror - going from smiling and chatting to thinking I was going to drop dead. Hot flushes, blurred vision, numbness, severe agitation. Refused to do so much as drive. When I go to the bathroom, I'm afraid of collapsing with a fatal issue and not being discovered. When I'm in work, I'm afraid of putting my head down on my desk incase nobody notices me passing out (which has never happened before). Afterglow of fear for hours on end. It was torture. I persevered, promising myself I'd be better after the withdrawals. A few weeks to go, and I'm going to be great again.
And things did get a little better. 3 Months and several hospital/doctor visits later, every cardiovascular related test under the sun completed, and I'm coming to terms with the fact that my heart is safe. But in that time, I have also been diagnosed with Panic disorder. I usually only have around 3-4 hours every day where I am not thinking about my symptoms - just a constant "I'm not right/I'm sick with some unknown disease/I'm going to drop dead/I'm having a panic attack right NOW" feeling. I'm completely self aware - I eat something, and I feel every tiny effect from everything contained in it. I think about my death all day long, how it would affect other people. How it won't matter in the long run - think total existential crisis, for most of my day. My symptoms while being mostly thought trains, are also very physical. Stabbing pains in my heart, light-headedness/confusion, and blurred vision.
Unfortunately, there is no chance of this being withdrawal related any longer - I'm far past the withdrawal stages. Everything else has come back to normal - from writing music to business proposals.
I have refused SSRI's and Benzodiazepams. I'm of the belief that if I need chemical stimulants to recover, I'm better off to stay being punished for my own stupid actions that got me into this position. If I drink alcohol, I can stop thinking about it so much, and almost act normal again - which is all well and fine until the morning after, where I'm normally hit with both a massive hangover, and a day-long panic attack, coupled with depression. The only silver lining here is it puts me off drinking so much that I could never possibly become an alcoholic.
On the outside, I'm starting to break. I'm still outwardly very confident - a lot of people I have spoke to think I'm just joking when it comes to telling them I have panic disorder. But lately it's been breaking through. I've been getting upset at the fact that I'm broken compared to how invincible I used to be - I can't drink for 3 days straight and still show up for work at 8am on Monday morning, put in a cracking performance and not feel the need to drink for another month. I can't eat junk food for a day straight (enough to disgust most people), and feel no consequence - and trust me, with my metabolism, there really is no consequence. I can't spend a day with friends without starting to think I'm about to have a breakdown, for no reason at all. I'm borderline about to lose my job because of the amount of times I've had to leave work early because of the panic getting too extreme to deal with. And nothing makes me worse than "are you alright?".
While on an intellectual level I've returned to myself, on a personal and social level I'll never be the same. I'm starting to accept the fact that I'm stuck in this position forever, and it's making me crack. I've adjusted my diet, I've meditated, I exercise and I constantly do things that I enjoy - there are good days and there are bad days, but ultimately, nothing is helping.
I'm near at my wits end - while I'd love to say "I'd rather die than deal with a life of this", my paralysing fear of death would only leave that an empty threat.
And with that, hello NMP. Nice to meet you all.
Wind back to around 12 months ago - a person I had been living with was unbearable. A backstabbing piece of shit, whose only motivations are decided by what could possibly improve his ego. You know that guy who will argue for an hour straight about the colour of the paint on the wall? Yeah, think that guy. Except imagine he's colourblind and still arguing with you. And then he's threatening to kill himself whenever he isn't getting his way.
I won't go into a great amount of detail on it - my writing style is already too recognisable as it is, without giving away a lot of personal info on my life. But let's just skip forward to 6-7 months ago. I'm still living with the same level of intolerance, only due to the fear of having to live with someone's suicide over my head. When it finally arrives to breaking point, and I'm having trouble getting myself out of bed in the morning, I find a very stupid escape. I start taking cocaine, and ecstasy. In hindsight, I wish the guy just did kill himself. Would've made my life a hell of a lot easier in the long run.
2 months of usage in, and I'm mixing any drug I can get my hands on - **** me did it make things easier! Weekdays dragged on the same as usual, but at the weekend I could finally go for stress relief. It was dumbing me down too - and I didn't mind this at all. My mind was finally resting. I could just stare into space for hours on end without a care in the world. All the ideas I had for improving my business were leaving - everything from musical ability to skills in playing sudoku were fading. And it was near bliss.
Now, I've always had an invincibility complex - it was probably my strongest trait. Nothing could take me down. I was about to prove myself quite wrong. Things in the real world were starting to get on top of me - firstly, I was not living with the person in question anymore. There's not a lot of detail I can give on that, but it did involve a grand finale in pissing me off. Think enough to drive most people to their own suicide - but regardless, I carried on. This unfortunately made my chemical abuse worse. And I leveled that out with more chemical abuse. And eventually my own confidence got the better of me - I went too far, and spent 3 days shoving shit up my nose, and drinking vodka. Eventually rationality set in, and I decided to go home and bring myself down.
4 hours later I was in the ER with my first ever full blown panic attack, spurred on by the fact that my heart was in a dangerous place itself. I had to be given valium to calm down. This was the last time I ever took a recreational drug.
This is also when my real problems began - I was told, nay, PROMISED that I was just having withdrawals from my usage. Constant fear, paranoia, depression. Spells of absolute horror - going from smiling and chatting to thinking I was going to drop dead. Hot flushes, blurred vision, numbness, severe agitation. Refused to do so much as drive. When I go to the bathroom, I'm afraid of collapsing with a fatal issue and not being discovered. When I'm in work, I'm afraid of putting my head down on my desk incase nobody notices me passing out (which has never happened before). Afterglow of fear for hours on end. It was torture. I persevered, promising myself I'd be better after the withdrawals. A few weeks to go, and I'm going to be great again.
And things did get a little better. 3 Months and several hospital/doctor visits later, every cardiovascular related test under the sun completed, and I'm coming to terms with the fact that my heart is safe. But in that time, I have also been diagnosed with Panic disorder. I usually only have around 3-4 hours every day where I am not thinking about my symptoms - just a constant "I'm not right/I'm sick with some unknown disease/I'm going to drop dead/I'm having a panic attack right NOW" feeling. I'm completely self aware - I eat something, and I feel every tiny effect from everything contained in it. I think about my death all day long, how it would affect other people. How it won't matter in the long run - think total existential crisis, for most of my day. My symptoms while being mostly thought trains, are also very physical. Stabbing pains in my heart, light-headedness/confusion, and blurred vision.
Unfortunately, there is no chance of this being withdrawal related any longer - I'm far past the withdrawal stages. Everything else has come back to normal - from writing music to business proposals.
I have refused SSRI's and Benzodiazepams. I'm of the belief that if I need chemical stimulants to recover, I'm better off to stay being punished for my own stupid actions that got me into this position. If I drink alcohol, I can stop thinking about it so much, and almost act normal again - which is all well and fine until the morning after, where I'm normally hit with both a massive hangover, and a day-long panic attack, coupled with depression. The only silver lining here is it puts me off drinking so much that I could never possibly become an alcoholic.
On the outside, I'm starting to break. I'm still outwardly very confident - a lot of people I have spoke to think I'm just joking when it comes to telling them I have panic disorder. But lately it's been breaking through. I've been getting upset at the fact that I'm broken compared to how invincible I used to be - I can't drink for 3 days straight and still show up for work at 8am on Monday morning, put in a cracking performance and not feel the need to drink for another month. I can't eat junk food for a day straight (enough to disgust most people), and feel no consequence - and trust me, with my metabolism, there really is no consequence. I can't spend a day with friends without starting to think I'm about to have a breakdown, for no reason at all. I'm borderline about to lose my job because of the amount of times I've had to leave work early because of the panic getting too extreme to deal with. And nothing makes me worse than "are you alright?".
While on an intellectual level I've returned to myself, on a personal and social level I'll never be the same. I'm starting to accept the fact that I'm stuck in this position forever, and it's making me crack. I've adjusted my diet, I've meditated, I exercise and I constantly do things that I enjoy - there are good days and there are bad days, but ultimately, nothing is helping.
I'm near at my wits end - while I'd love to say "I'd rather die than deal with a life of this", my paralysing fear of death would only leave that an empty threat.
And with that, hello NMP. Nice to meet you all.