Hey man, so I actually joined this forum specifically because of you and this thread.
I have literally the EXACT SAME symptomatology as you even down to the looping music in your head.
I'm 24 and like you said it feels a lot like most of the negative symptoms of Schizo but I've never had any positive symptoms either only the looping music.
It almost feels like my 'referential point' of consciousness always bounces back to the music as opposed to internal thinking/ideas like a normal person. That or like you said it's basically just blank and I have no thoughts/ideas whatsoever.
I think you said earlier in the thread you had tried NAC, have you ever tried NAC + Sarcosine together for an extended period of time?
It's crazy cause I literally feel like you're going through the exact same thing I'm going through.
In 2014 I was on NAC + Sarcosine for about a month and it did help a little. I'm currently waiting for another sarcosine batch to arrive.
My doc had simple schizo patients and he said that contact with me is way more better and I'm functioning better than them - can you believe it?
I have another theory. If endos are right and I've got thyroid hormone resistance then maybe my brain is hypothyroid all the time (read more on wikipedia about this syndrome but you probably don't have it).
Another thing - I think I've finally found the cause of my panic attacks, anxiety and tachycardia. My cortisol level is elevated. If they treat it, I can finally take methylphenidate without panic attacks.
Ok very good bro, thanks for that insight and I'll probably try NAC + Sarcosine as well and will update with results.
I also feel like when I'm in situations where I need to be 'on' like when talking to the doctor, or immediate family, or a few people in the gym etc. that I can forcefully cut through the fog just enough to maintain a conversation with them and can even enter into a conversational flow if enough convos happen to stack together to where I'm actually in flow and 'out of my head' so to speak.
Hypothyroidism does seem like it matches most of the symptoms for me outside of weight gain, only issue being these symptoms are somewhat vague enough to almost match a ton of things making it hard for us to pinpoint things.
Interesting for you to mention cortisol. I've literally kept thinking 'Man, it just seems like my cortisol levels are constantly peaking for no reason.' I haven't got the level officially tested but you can internally feel when your cortisol is jacked up - it's pretty obvious. And it's supposed to be higher in the morning but it's almost like for me the cortisol knob in the morning especially and throughout the day has been turned up too high. In fact I'm taking a supplement stack called 'Calm Now' to attempt to troubleshoot this issue as a lot of the compounds in it like Ashwagandha, Lemon Balm Extract, Passion Flower, Bacopa, and the like have been shown to naturally lower anxiety over weeks of supplementation. (Only a few days in so can't comment too much on that right now)
In fact, just last week I took L-Theanine but it also had 100mg of caffeine in it and I hadn't had caffeine in a while. Needless to say it seemed to spike my cortisol even higher and I actually had a very intense panic attack and almost blacked out if it hadn't been for my brain automatically kicking in and doing self hypnosis/guided meditation on myself and solving arithmetic in my head to force the logical part of my brain to light up more.
I can't remember if you mentioned this but have you been pretty socially isolated for years? Sometimes I feel like my life path I chose just happened to lead me down to being socially isolated and with years of that compounding that itself could have very adverse effects on a person's mental functioning/anxiety levels as a person could feel separated from society at an unconscious level. Also getting drastically less natural dopamine stimulation from the lack of conversations.
Lastly, don't know if you wanna open up on this or not but has there ever been any consistent weed use in your past/teen years? I started smoking weed off and on from around 16 years old and I'm 24 now. Was never really a daily smoker for more than about a week or two at a time and then would take some weeks/months off etc. But here's something interesting... I just smoked a very little amount for the first time in a while and it's literally like a light bulb has been turned on in my brain. I have massive motivation, incredible focus, creativity, no looping music, ability to control my thoughts and actually logically think 3-4 layers deep in my mind, just had the best conversation I've had with my immediate family in months and was able to be incredibly in 'flow' with amazing word retrieval, memory, and humor, it's literally like someone flipped the 'on switch' in my brain...
So that tells me that perhaps for me personally, through years of artificial dopamine stimulation when I'm 'normal' I may just have drastically less dopamine receptor sites than the normal person thus creating this myriad of issues regarding mood and cognition. Because right now I probably feel mostly like how a 'normal person' should.
EDIT: Also wanted to add, I recently watched some interviews on Youtube with a man named Dr. Mark Gordon who has helped thousands of people having cognitive issues by lowering inflammation in their body/brain and by also testing specific biomarkers like testosterone, cortisol, HGH, etc. and by getting those in the optimal range it seems like it drastically helps people's mood and cognitive issues. Kinda in line with what we were talking about with cortisol.
Edited by Mastermynd, 16 January 2018 - 05:54 PM.