Toilet, the initial context was a deeply distressing situation where I believed I was at imminent risk of harm and was under that existential anxiety for quite a prolonged time. I'm not going to cover this at any more length but this was not some reddit fad but rather acute distress.
The problem is called neuropathic pruritus. I've made some cursory study in that area as to treatments, but as with most psychiatric conditions the literature seemed to emphasize to simply more aggressively drug the patient. After release and gradually weening myself off of medication (Which I want to tell others, you must taper slowly in a supportive environment after your mind has adequately healed enough to make coherence of the world) I stopped dealing with the system altogether as it was clear they had no real answers for treating or helping me. So there are no further scans to compare. I will also note that when I first recovered I was operating at a low level of intelligence, many parts of the brain feeling not to be in coordination, and psychiatric drugs themselves notably make a person dumber. Despite various inquiries it became obvious no single person was knowledgeable or interested in helping me so the stack has simply progressed through experimentation. Fetching the initial scan will take a bit.
As I claimed initially, I was indeed able to locally feel when various areas of my brain were activating and through study eventually gathered the most likely candidate for the areas being stimulated was the dopamine pathway. Through trial and error I've been able to gather that substances that stimulate dopamine release appear to be involved in that aggravating sensation. My laymen understanding is that this must be because the areas being stimulated were in some way damaged.
At one point, any level of bloodflow in the region was sufficient to cause this irritation. Merely walking at night, which seemed to potentiate the effects of various supplements, was enough to do this. Watching flashing checkerboards, which also causes the brain to circulate fluid, would also cause this effect. I am happy to remark with months of treatment this problem has almost completely subsided. At times while I think or exercise a hitherto rarely used function I might get an itch as some new area is again exercised, but otherwise in daily life I rarely if ever notice it. The problems you are remarking on- heat, cold, cocoa, grape seed etc do not presently irritate me so I have made significant recovery.
I have unfortunately only a sketchy ROA. It would be possible to compile a list of the cycling therapies I have tried, I suspect it would not produce much insight as this has not been done in a clinical format of clean testing in isolation. It has been 8 months since psychosis sent me back to square one sending me here.
for the first two months, I did almost nothing and was practically a vegetable watching youtube videos. By November I had resumed a cursory supplement program - the bulk of which I list in the initial post, various supplements reputed to be used for schizophrenia off a pubmed paper (bacopa, NAC, omegas, a b-complex, ashwaghanda etc...). The most notable result I found was one of the initial therapies of omega-3 which I felt immediately, I assume because of it's involvement in brain repair. In December I began various peptide therapies - Semax which was quite effective by caused a bought of paranoia causing me to drop, BPC 157 in several cycles, which was overstimulating and I suspect did little, p21 which I would never recommend despite it's web reputation as a restorative therapy. A single cycle of GHK-CU capsules which had no obvious effect at all and I suspect was a dud.
One of the odd things happening here I did not mention is that at various times throughout the day I would recall memories out of the blue of various life instances at random, many of which happened during the psychosis. Most notably under semax, although I do recall this also happening while taking bpc-157. I assume this is involved in repair of the brain. This no longer happens to me.
I did mention Uridine, choline, and DHA as a potential restorative therapy early, and it may have had an effect but the dopa-raising produced a great itching in the midbrain and it wasn't clear that any dramatically restorative effect was pronounced
In January I began taking dihexa which saw the real gains. The first was 5mg twice a day combined with 9-me-bc at 20mg twice a day. As Dihexa came in first I was able to feel the result. It is a subtle thing to explain but I began to feel greater brain connectivity. I woke up one day from sleep about a week in and felt a brain region of mine in communication that had never been felt before. While it is impossible to explain, I could feel the various parts gain greater connectivity whereas before it was as if only a small part of the brain was actually doing the thinking.
I don't think much of 9-me-bc, while using it I can remember feeling the dopamine "pooling" in the brain (this is exactly one of the sensations that happens during psychosis, it is almost as if your consciousness is a tiny raft being drowned and the parts begin the communicate in a distributed fashion lacking central control) and would occasionally get a sort of sensory release I mentally associate with states of zeal and think some people mistake is chakra release.
My earlier theory was that by restoring the dopamine system I would restore functioning. After 9-me-bc I began to get more issues with itching until finally one night while walking I was able to realize the problem really was just dopamine release and I could feel a great weight of pressure on my midbrain, which as I have explained I was able to rectify using melatonin which counteracts dopamine excess. So I stopped using 9-me-bc since it was obvious this was too much to bear.
There was a period of about a month while my Dihexa supplier was slow to produce the product and ship, during which a laundry list of other supplements I had interest in came in. ACLAR, Jujube extract, Lion's mane, uridine and choline again, bacopa, Tumeric, Panax ginseng based on a theory from here involving nogo inhibition, Royal Jelly, gotu kola. Pregnenolone, sleep optimizer and noopept in combination with 7,8 dhf was later thrown in This concoction was hard to take initially but I adapted although I doubt the components really did much. Each has been implicated in some fashion in brain recovery and I still take most of them
And now begins my second cycle of dihexa. I had doubled the dose after seeing how useful it was, now taking 10mg twice a day. I've only just run out. I credit it as the most effective item out of the laundry list of supplements I've taken and a real turning point.
The only major addition at this point is Tryptophan at 220mg twice a day after I realized that probably the residual itching I was getting was a product of a deficiency in serotonin as I know dopamine and serotonin compete for expression in the brain and I feared I was reaching towards an undesirable dopamine excess. It did seem to require a period of adaptation but now I am fairly well adjusted and even contemplating rejoining public life and the workforce.
You wanted the laundry list rather than the highlights. Almost everything has been sourced from various bits of commentary taken from this forum. I currently take:
pregnenolone
low dosages of Lion's mane mixed with cocoa mixed with agmatine
an amino acid and creatine mix
Dihexa
L-Tryptophan (to raise serotonin)
Quercetin (anticancer agent in warding against dihexa)
Gotu Kola (anxiolytic)
Jiaogulan as a trial for reputed dopamine restoration properties
a simple multivitamin
omega-3's
ashwaghanda
ALCAR
CDP choline
7,8 dhf paired with noopept, which I cycle
Tumeric
Panax Ginseng (nogo A inhibition)
NAC + glycine
Magnesium
Vit C
BPC-157 again in trial, which now does not produce any itching sensation at all
Oh, and nicotine patches occasionally in very low dosages. One of the few reputed ways to reverse hypofrontality. I've one of Amen's books on neuroimagining and noted his schizophrenia patients all demonstrated hypofrontality and believed it was a credible possibility. Early on, I noted it was as though my prefrontal region had less control over my brain. This had changed with time thankfully
I have been thinking of testing my recovery by dropping the vast majority of supplements for a week or two and seeing what happens. I doubt I shall take many further cycles of dihexa and generally have spent a great deal of time researching each of the supplements I take
Edited by Ghola, 15 April 2024 - 04:57 AM.
