Hello,
I'm writing this in order to obtain opinions on how I should go about repairing the damage I've done to my brain over the past year and a half. About a year and a half ago I took the first psychoactive drug I've ever taken in my life, 356mg's of the dissociative drug Dextromethorphan. I researched it before first taking it until I was confident that I knew what the experience was going to be like and all that could go wrong. It was great, recreationally speaking. A few weeks later I decided to take it with caffeine (200mg anhydrous). It made me really energetic, made my heart pound, made me feel like dancing, music was amazing, I was really empathetic and loving, my vision was blurred, my social inhibitions were inhibited, minutes were hours, my ability to feel physical pain was inhibited, my sense of touch increased and some other effects which I can’t recall at the moment. After these two times I didn’t use it for a few months and I began feeling slightly depressed, had an increase in social anxiety, my emotional perception had been slightly (and at that time unnoticeably) dulled, and I developed a slight memory impairment.
I took it few more times (at the same 356mg dose) sometimes with the caffeine, sometimes without, and I started to feel like life was becoming gradually duller as time went by, my memory and my ability of conception/mental imagery began to become progressively impaired but for some reason I didn’t attribute these effects to my drug use. During these times, I sought to DXM for redemption rather than recreation; personal sorrows had led me to continually use DXM as an escape. Then I started taking the DXM with Deprenyl (Selegiline, MAOI-B Selective Inhibitor) at a 5mg dose. I don’t know from experience how coke or meth feels, but I could say this combination probably feels something like one of the two. After I took the combo, I was overflowing with motivation, I had to get up and do some kind of physical activity; run, exercise or dance or I felt like I would explode. Talking was a lot more fun as well. I had almost no tolerance, the effects were the same with each use of the combo, except for the psychological dissociation which started to become more and more apparent after every time I used DXM. It was as if after every time I used DXM and the effects had worn off, a little bit of dissociation stayed with me. Life gradually became less immersive and less engaging after each time I used DXM. I had to read sentences over 2-3 times to understand what was being expressed, complex ideas started to become harder to grasp and to communicate and my imagination lost a lot of its vividness. My learning and memory had been without a doubt impaired. My intelligence gradually degraded. My brain had to put in extra effort to process the information being given to it by the world around me, and my social anxiety had become even worse. I also noticed my sensory perception becoming less sensitive.
I continued using the combination for a few months. In total I probably did the DXM + Deprenyl combo about 20 times. However, I ran out of Deprenyl and just used the DXM by itself. I continued using DXM. First, doing it a few times every week (still with the same 356mg dose), then everyday. Then after using DXM for maybe around 40-50 times, I took for the first time a mega-dose of 712mg (which was more than likely a lot more considering the DXM that was already in my body prior to taking this dose) and then for the next 3 days, although during that 3 day period I hadn't taken any more DXM, I couldn't focus on or block out any sound I heard, similar with anything I read, my sensory perception was not very helpful in translating the world into something I could understand. Anything exogenous was almost un-interpretable. I wasn't hallucinating, or becoming psychotic. It was dissociation, stepping outside of my own head and making sense of the world was the hardest thing to accomplish. After that 3 day period, I took a break from using it for a few weeks. During those few weeks of not using DXM, I began to become very anti-social, I developed a bipolar-like manic depressive behavior, my behavior ranging from feeling hopeless, depressed and suicidal to being short-tempered, hyper-focused and sleeping for 3-6 hours a day. Then I decided to visit a psychiatrist, I exaggerated my symptoms and behavior, thinking that the doctor would give me something helpful if I did (I was thinking along the lines of a SSRI), and after a few weeks of visits, my doctor unenthusiastically prescribed me Seroquel (Quetiapine, an atypical antipsychotic) at 50mg/once daily. It sucked away any of the pleasure I that I could still feel from my life. Any motivation, creativity and focus I had went away, and I was sleeping as an occupation. To this day I feel like taking an antipsychotic was one of the worst decisions I’ve made in my life. Although, at that time I didn’t completely hate it, being as terribly depressed as I was, sleep was an escape from what my life had become.
After awhile I ran out of Seroquel and decided not to use it anymore. Almost immediately after I stopped using Seroquel I developed dyskinesia tremors, which worsened over time. I used the DXM + Caffeine combo a few last times, just because I was so numb from the Seroquel, and was desperate to feel anything and after those few times I finally decided to completely quit using DXM. After quitting, I became really socially avoidant. It was almost like a general fear of people. I would have panic attacks in certain social situations, where my heart would start racing and I wouldn’t be able to breathe. When it happened, I would usually run into a bathroom or an isolated room and try to calm down. My depressive symptoms kept me feeling quite hopeless, and all my other cognitive disabilities I described (dissociation, anhedonia, memory and learning impairments) had reached levels of severity. For awhile I used Cannibis to try and drown out how terrible I felt, but that was like Seroquel all over again and I quit after about two weeks. Then, I started smoking tobacco but I also quit that after a week.
After awhile some of my conditions got a bit better. Enough for me to get a little research in every now and then, so I began researching in neuroscience in order to get a better understanding of what was going on in my brain, and more importantly what I could do to attenuate the damage I was certain I had. Apart from self-made therapy of trying to desensitize my social fears, I took a hopeful look into nootropics, where I was glad to find such relieving literature of neurogenesis and cognitive enhancement. First I tried green tea. I’d used it before, but I hadn’t really recognized its nootropic properties until recently when I made a cup of it and began to feel motivated and a little less dissociated. It was great; it opened my mind up to other nootropics and their possible use in the remedy of my cognitive problems. I started taking gingko biloba (180mg) with the green tea and it seemed to have added to the focus the green tea gave me, but this focus was hard to control so I stopped taking the gingko. For about a week I used Forskolin, (4-15mg, sporadically) which gave me a little more motivation and helped my memory a bit. After I stopped taking Forskolin, I began taking SAM-e for about 2 weeks (400mg-morning, 400-afternoon/everyday) which hasn’t seemed to have much of a noticeable effect on me but I will take it again in the future in order to get a better assessment of its efficacy in the treatment/repair of my cognitive impairments.
All of the nootropics I previously spoke about seem to have had mostly positive effects on my cognitive ability. However, I have not selected them specifically based on my goal to treat/repair my cognitive ability, and taking nootropics in such a manner has been inefficient. Thus, I have been focusing my efforts on trying to accurately determine what kind of damage has been done to my brain, its severity and how to best go about repairing the damage.
It has been approximately 6 months since the last time I used DXM. Many of the conditions I have previously stated have stayed the same in terms of severity but some have become slightly better, although sometimes I question whether or not things are becoming worse.
Below I have outlined my most severe symptoms and beside them my hypothesis of what may be their cause:
-- Memory Loss, Difficulty in the Formation of New Memories, Difficulty in Conception/ Thought/Difficulty in the Formation, Processing and Organization of Complete/Clear Ideas, Difficulty in the Interpretation/Understanding of Ideas [Decreased Neuronal Synchronization, Glutamate Receptor Dysfunction/ Damage, Neuronal Degeneration, Acetylcholine Receptor Damage]
-- Reduced Perception of Pleasure, Loss of Motivation [Decreased Neuronal Synchronization, Significantly Reduced Serotonin Receptor Density, Serotonin Transporter Damage, Significantly Reduced Dopamine Receptor Density, Dopamine Transporter Damage, Glutamate Receptor Dysfunction/Damage ]
-- Severe Social Anxiety/ Avoidance Disorder [Significantly Reduced Serotonin Receptor Density, Serotonin Transporter Damage, Significantly Reduced Dopamine Receptor Density, Dopamine Transporter Damage]
One of the most obvious forms of damage I have is NMDAR antagonist neurotoxicity. I doubt this has led to lesions, however, impairments in my short term memory, long term memory, visual processing ability, my ability to reason, form clear concepts and in my decision making ability makes it clear that some serious damage has been done. I find that I often over-explain simple concepts and that being concise is very challenging for me. I take a lot longer than an average person to come up with decisive conclusions to problems and this affects many aspects of my behavior and productivity.
Among neurotoxicity, because NMDAR plays such an important role in LTP I feel that there also must be some kind of dysfunction in my brain’s glutamatergic system, which I believe has ruined my brain’s synaptic plasticity. I also believe that the frequent use of the DXM + Deprenyl combo has led to glutamate excitotoxicity and dopaminergic neurotoxicity in my brain. This has possibly led to the loss of neurons in my brain and has also contributed to my motivational problems.
DXM is a SSRI, consequently, the possibility of serotonergic damage is very likely, as a matter of fact, the effect profile for DXM in high doses is very similar to the effect profile of Serotonin Syndrome. Also, I can remember experiencing mild Serotonin Syndrome-like effects many times while on DXM. This had led me to believe that my avoidance and anxiety problems stem from serotonergic damage.
My knowledge of neuroscience is limited, and the rate at which I am comprehending the concepts that it comprises of is very far from optimal. However, I believe that there are many people here on this forum that are very neuro-scientifically knowledgeable and I would love to get the opinion of such people on my hypothesis of what my damage is and how best to go about repairing the damage. I honestly do believe that reversing the damage I’ve done to my brain is possible and I would appreciate the least bit of help in the process. Since this is happens to be my first post, I would also like to say that I am truly appreciative to be apart of such a community and will try to contribute as much useful information as I can to the forum.
Edited by cryonicsculture, 18 June 2014 - 02:35 AM.
