Hey!
I´m in deseperate need of help in recovering my brain that has been damaged for over 3 almost 4 years off drug abuse.
I´mma a 22 year old university student who has been mostly abusing GABA receptor antagonist such as benzodiazepines, z-drugs, alcohol, phenibut and occasionally baclofen along with heavy Cannabis usage and some terrible experinces with synthetic marijuana (that I will address later in this text) along with psychadelic usage moslty LSD (Though I´m not even sure if was actual legit acid or just some research chemical).
Anyways it started out with me mainly drinking alcohol heavily at the age of 18 and would get drunk on multiple occasions per week and then moved onto benzos and sleeping pills such as zoplicone and ambien a long with frequent cannabis usage at the age of 20. Mainly to self medicate my severe generalized anxiety, social anxiety and insomnia disorder.
At first I didn´t notice any negative consequences from my drug use until the right before the time I turned 21 and I was taking those prescription pills everyday for months a long with smoking marijuana about 3 times a week. Then at 21 was the first time I tried to get off the sleeping pills but I couldn´t sleep at all litterally for like 2 weeks straight so I went crazy and eventually found help from remeron (mirtazapine) and slowly weaned myself off the medication and was after a few months eventually able to sleep only by using mirtazapine at night. However I made a dumb decision and decided to get off mirtazapine and not soon after I started to experience horrible insomnia again and ended up relapsing on benzos and z-drugs again after abstaining for about 3-4 months. This time around my addiction to these pills grew worse and worse and I would have to take higher and higher dosages to be able to sleep and eventually at my worst I was taking crazy high doses like 7 x 7.5 mg zoplicone pills and still only would sleep like 4 hours a night.
During this period I also smoked a lot of marijuana and was an idiot and started to experience with LSD that I just bought online and had no idea whether with it was real acid or not. And at first it felt great but eventually I would experience really bad panic attacks and even some minor HPPD that eventually faded away on its own.
Anyways I quit doing LSD about last summer and havent touched it ever since. However I still kept taking my pills and smoked weed and my insomnia went worse and worse to the point that I eventually ended up going a FULL MONTH without any real sleep and yes Im serious I was pretty much brain dead from severe sleep deprivation after that and Im still not 100% if I have or will ever truely recover from that. As I started to experience rapid decrease in short term memory and mild cognitive impairment along with severe concentration problems. And this is not even the worst part, yet!
I was finally able to lower my dosages from benzos and substained my usage of marijuana for a while and was able to get some mediocre sleep and thinks were looking better for me... Until the worst possible scenario possible could ever happen.
I hadnt smoked weed for quite some time and had a problem with my regular dealer and met up with some really sketchy guy in one of those ghetto projects that Ive never seen before that gave me something that looked like complete bushweed maybe kinda something like this: http://i27.tinypic.com/5zjmus.jpg
That Im almost 95% sure was sprayed on with chemical substances such as spice to enhance the affects. Dumb as I were I packed a HUGE blunt of this and took really big inhales and ended up with the worst panic attack Ive ever experienced EVER in my life. It went from not really feeling anything for the first 5 minutes until all off sudden I was in a complete different world and the only thought I had in my head was that "I dont like this I wanna get out of this Im forever gonna be trapped in this Im dying" to all off sudden experience the WORST headache Ive ever experienced in my life and I swear I could hear liquid floating around my brain and I got super paranoid that I had a stroke or something which also can happen from synthetic marijuana.
However besides the extreme severe headache and complete confusion and derealization. I didnt really experience any other stroke like symptomps as my balance was fine and I could talk and walk normally. Eventually I passed out and woke up the next morning with still a really severe headache that persisted for a whole week but didnt really notice many other symptomps at the time execpt derealization that would come and go and I could also feel like my inner monologue was slowly shutting down and there was times where my mind would go completely blank. This would persist for months and its not until just right now Ive been able to think again (the incident happened in November 2018). So Im sure I suffered some really strong neurotoxicity along with derealization due to the spice.
Oh and before someone tells me that it was probably just really strong marijuana and not spice. Well I actually can pretty much confirm that it was spice. Cause I had a urine test for marijuana a few days after smoking and they didnt find anything and then I tried marijuana just once more from a reliable source and all off sudden I had such a huge tolerance it felt as if I were snoop dogg though I had took a long break prior and its impossible just regular marijuana would have raised myself up to such an insane permanent tolerance to cannabis unless it was spice.
Also a week after the incident happened I started to experience really weird body sensations in my right arm that would come and go and felt like burning sensations and needles going off inside my arm. Besides that I would also get really bad blurry vision frequently that came and went. And I freaked out as I thought that this meant that I probably suffered an aneurysm or ischemic stroke. So I decided to go the doctor and did an MRI that came out fine plus an ecg to rule out heart any cardiovascular disease that also came back fine.
However its been almost 6 months now and I still experience pain that appears to be neuropathic in my right arm on almost a daily basis now. The only thing that lowers the pain is when I take benzodiazepines. So maybe it could be anxiety but I dont believe it cause I get the sensations all the time even when Im not anxious so I think my gaba, dopamine and cannabinoid receptors simply just have been completely wiped out along with excess glutamate.
And I need help in restoring my life I want to get off my pills but the pain is just so unberable that I can barely eat with my right hand. Not to mention I still experience complete anhedonia, lack of emotions, lack of appetite, lack of libido, chronic fatigue syndrome and brain fog sometimes. I just feel like a complete robot and Im starting to lose hope.
Is there even any hope for me to make a full recovery or not and if so how? Cause right now Im on the edge off almost killing myself.
