Any idea on how to get rid of depersonalization?

Doesn’t THC go away on it’s own? Or kills your cells?
And I’ve learned that the more you tell someone not to do something, they do it even more. It happens to me.

@Tink1113
-usually it goes away rather quickly. But, in some cases it messes with your brain. Usually even when a person feels depersonalization it lasts a couple of weeks. Mine’s been there since July. There is a disorder like that too & i just cant believe that one party can jack you up that bad!

@seventeen123 I just read that it usually goes away during 120 days. You must have done alot to make it last that long!

in my defense the above ^^ was not a quip

For once.

@Blondesjon You can repeat it now if you like. Adding an explanation of how that could actually work would be good, too.

@augustlan . . .<shrugs> Uh…it works for me?

@Tink1113
– Yeah I used to be quite a bit into pot. & then i quit for a yr & a half & went to this party couple months ago & had like 30 hits from a bong in like 5 hrs.. its crazy i know!

@seventeen123 Yikes!

I did that once about 35 years ago and I STILL don’t feel like my brain is completely back to normal and I did a lot less than you.

@seventeen123 damn!

THC only stays in your system about thirty days. It is sometimes stored in your body fat (or is that acid?) and losing weight can cause you to feel funny. Just try exercise, drinking water, and eating healthy foods to flush out your system. I smoked pot for years (like almost two decades) and while people say smoking that shit is harmless, well, I am living proof that putting too much of anything in your body can harm you.

When all the potheads in this generation reach my age, I’d like to see their physiological reaction to the amount of narcotics they have voluntarily ingested in the name of “fun.” Unfortunately, when they reach my age, I’ll already be dead.

All it takes is one time for anything to create permanent damage. Your body is not indestructible. You may need to seek medical evaluation.

Is there any chance that other substances were mixed with it? Back in my partying days, I knew people that would put coke in with the weed… I never understood why, though.

@hearkat, we used to put mushrooms on top of the pot we smoked. Smoking dried mushrooms tastes bad, but boy, did it fuck you up. Once I smoked a joint that some jerk had laced with PCP. That was not something I would suggest to anyone. We also smoked pot with MDA sprinkled over the top. If I knew now what I knew then, I would have just stuck to beer and Black Velvet.

There exist treatments for depersonalization. The first step is for you to get diagnosed. See a mental health professional, who may refer you to a psychopharmacologist. Everything else is just speculation. We don’t even know for sure if your symptom is necessarily related to your drug use.

@pdworkin
– Until that night I’ve always felt normal so I doubt its anything other than that.

@evelyns_pet_zebra i have to laugh every time i see/hear black velvet

@seventeen123 It was probably the proximate cause, but we don’t know if it continues to be the cause.

in response to the first post, engage in physical activity like tai chi or yoga or martial arts which strengthens the mind-body connection.

also, @pdworkin: come on, go to a shrink and take more drugs to deal with the effects of too many drugs in the first place?

@Ria777 No, just suffer with unexplained symptoms that distress you. By the way, I didn’t suggest taking drugs. I suggested that a psychopharmacologist might be included in the diagnoses because he or she will have been familiar with the street drugs which may have been the proximate cause of the complaint.

@pdworkin: I misunderstood. though I think the collective wisdom of a messageboard full of pot smokers (intelligent ones, preferably) would know as much as a professional. I would advise seeking them out anyway.

You know, there is a reason why old fogies like me tell you fools not to smoke pot. I think you may have discovered it.

Why do we alter our minds? We’re looking for something. Often we look for something because of some pain we want to get away from. Often the thing we want to get away from is deep loneliness.

Mental illness has a genetic and an environmental component. If you have the genes, than any unusual event in your life could tip you over into mental illness. It is worth getting a psychological evaluation. There may be treatment that can help. Has your behavior changed in other ways besides this feeling?

There are people who are born with a sense of dissociation with others. The pot could have changed something in your brain that made you like these people. They can learn to be more socially appropriate, but they do have to learn. There are classes that can help you learn to empathize more with others.

I would take this seriously, and seek treatment. I wouldn’t just keep on hoping it’ll go away. It might, or it might not. In any case, time spent working on yourself is not misspent time. Even if the poisoning goes away on its own, you would still benefit from work to address your more existential problems.

@daloon
-Honestly, I’m not the biggest believer of mental illness. I can’t go get a psychological evaluation. What would I do? Go to my mom & say “hey, mom, i smoked weed & now i need help”? I got into this mess & I have to figure my own way to get out of it.
My behavior has changed. I don’t want to be around family. I can’t focus in school. Everything feels like a dream so I don’t care about the consequences of my actions. I take risky actions and pretty much live the way I thought I never would.
As far as addressing existing problems, I don’t plan on doing that through a medical professional. I suppose I should but I just cant.

@seventeen123 What a tricky situation, since you can’t go to your parents for something like this and I’m sure your insurance is through them as well. I smoke a moderate amount, and I have never heard of this before, and it kind of scares me a little bit…

@deni
Yeah I used to smoke quite often for about half a year. Quit for almost 2. Then did it ONCE & the summer & pretty much living through the worst experience of my life. It might not be from the weed. There’s a bunch of theories. I wouldn’t get too worried, because im sure this is really rare. I’ve never known of anyone personally whose had this besides me..

Can you see a counselor at school? You can talk about the issues you mentioned (I can’t focus in school. Everything feels like a dream so I don’t care about the consequences of my actions. I take risky actions and pretty much live the way I thought I never would.), perhaps in confidence (I would check first, to make sure they don’t have to report to your parents).

Guess what? I didn’t believe in mental illness, too. Until I was 52 and I was diagnosed with one.

The problem is that most people think of mental illness as something you can control, because it’s your thoughts, isn’t it?

Well, chemistry controls thoughts as much, if not more than our own will does. Any brain scientist will tell you that, and I’ve experienced it. Now you have, too.

You may not be able to tell your parents about what you did, but you should be able to tell them what is happening. Ask them to get you help. Then you can talk to the counselor (again, if it is in confidence). But please take this seriously and get help. You don’t have to take drugs (although I don’t think they are bad), but you don’t want this to go on longer and you don’t want it to taint the rest of your life, either.

@daloon A good point, you can at least tell your parents what you’re feeling. It’s doubtful they’ll have any idea what its from but they might be able to help in a way you hadn’t thought of..

@deni & @daloon
– If I told my parents they would fast & pray. I’m serious they’re even stronger unbelievers of mental illnesses than I am.
& @daloon
– I really don’t believe that chemistry controls more than our will does. We can achieve almost anything if we use our will fully.

@seventeen123: When you use your “will” you are triggering the release of brain chemicals. By repeatedly exercising your “will” and creating a pattern, eventually your brain’s connections and chemistry can be altered.

However, there are people whose chemistry is imbalanced and/or whose brains have “faulty” connections (such as those that developed in dysfunctional childhoods, as was my case). For them, will alone might not be sufficient to spur an effective change.

Using pharmacology to help balance the brain’s chemistry helps to give the “will” or behavioral changes a stable foundation from which to create those new patterns.

This is very oversimplified, and we do have neuroscientists in the collective that could provide more details.

Just saying “I don’t believe” doesn’t mean mental illness isn’t real. It might just be more evidence of the illness.

@seventeen123 – The only schizophrenic who has supposedly been able to “use his will” to overcome the hallucinations that are part of his disease is John Nash, a brilliant Nobel Prize winner who went to University with my dad. And even then, he had to use hospitalization and medications to get there just like other folks. The movie A Beautiful Mind Hollywoodized his recovery to ignore the chemical treatment he underwent, without which he would not have recovered.

When my son hallucinates he sees and hears things that do not exist but his brain tells him they do. He can see them and he can hear them, just as he can see and hear me or the television. How can he “use his will” when his brain is telling him something exists, but it doesn’t? How can he tell what is real and what isn’t if his brain and his senses are misleading him?

Mental illness is real. Will-power is an important part of the path back to normalcy, but chemicals are also important. Much as we hate to think it, who were “are” is a result of the chemicals and physical construction of our brains. And our brains can get out of whack the same way any body part can, through injury, infection and imbalance of normally helpful chemicals.

@Darwin, and when we pollute it with to many recreational chemicals too!

@seventeen123 It’s almost impossible to understand how our brains and thoughts can be controlled by chemicals if you haven’t had the experience. Believe me, it is totally weird. On day I was thinking about suicide, or about how useless I am, and a week or two later, I can’t even think those thoughts! The only difference is the change in brain chemistry induced by the meds.

You’ll just have to take my word for it that brain chemistry changes thoughts. I’m not sure how much science you’ve had, so it may be more difficult for you to understand.

Now, having said that, there is plenty of scientific evidence showing that you can change brain chemistry by changing thoughts. It is possible to use your will to fix your brain. However you will do a much better job if you get training in how to think in a way that can change your brain chemistry.

However, if you had to build a house, would you rather use a hammer, or one of those nail guns? If you want to have an essay for school, would you rather type it out, and correct mistakes by hand, or use a computer? If you want to calculate the standard deviation on perceptions of gender, do you want to do all the math by hand, or use a computer?

Your will is a tool. So are medicines. So it therapy. But even simple tools can be impossible to use properly without training.

Your parents believe that fasting and prayer will help. Well, they could help—if you are the one doing it. Parental fasting and prayer won’t help you.

Your will can be powerful. Self-hypnotism focuses the brain and helps us accomplish things more easily. Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy teaches people how to use their analytical thoughts to banish emotional thoughts. Mindfulness teaches us how to accept our thoughts without being so attached to them. All these techniques help us use our will to change brain chemistry. You can learn them, to some degree, from books, and I urge you to do that if you must do this by yourself. Just look up CBT or Mindfulness on Amazon, and find some books that look good to you, and then see if you can buy them at your local bookstore.

If meds are out of the question for you, then you have to try other methods. But if you can train yourself in those other methods, you’ll do better than inventing it yourself. You could also ask more specific questions here. Let people know that meds and therapy are not options, so can they give you methods for training yourself to counter the thoughts brought on by the marijuana. Describe the feelings of “depersonalization” in more depth. I, for one, am having difficulty imagining what you mean. Tell me what it feels like and how it makes you behave and how that is different from your behavior prior to this.

You don’t have to believe in anything, you know. Just remain agnostic about it. You can let the evidence persuade you. Until you try the meds, you won’t know. And the meds don’t always work, either. Some people go through a dozen different meds before finding something tolerable that works. Some people never find a med that works.

All you need is the best tool available for the job. All you need is training to use the tool. That’s the best you can do, right now. So educate yourself. You can do it online, too. You don’t need to buy books. Again, ask people here for recommendations about web sites. Ask them to describe the differences between CBT and mindfulness. Ask for whatever will help you.

You’re doing the right thing in asking, and in trying to help yourself. We can help you do a better job. You can make a plan—steps to bring your empathy back. You can follow the plan. You can make it work. You really don’t have any other choice, do you?

THIS IS WHAT IT FEELS LIKE TO BE EXACT:
1. Sometimes it seems like I’m seeing everything through a tunnel & I’m not really at an end of it
2. Sometimes my voice & other people’s voices are far away even though I’m the one talking
3. I can hear the same sound over & over until I choose to push it away
4. Feels exactly like I’m living in a dream.
5. Time drags, but in the end I don’t remember feeling any emotions.
6. I have to constantly be doing something, or else I start wondering if I’m really there & I go deeper & deeper into it.
7. Other words- feels like shit.
You’re not alive.

Thats depressing.

Now go to a psychiatrist and tell him/her the same thing, so you can get help getting back to normal.

You messed your self up chemically and you need medical help getting back to normal.

There is a chorus of voices suggesting that you need assistance with this. The point of this website is to harness collective wisdom. I hope you will take it upon yourself to seek out professional help. Your school is a good place to start, and they are used to dealing with confidentiality issues involving parents.

She knows she needs help, but she has real problems accessing any kind of medical care since her parents don’t believe in psychological help (they seem to be fundamentalist Christians of some kind). She needs ideas about how to get help on her own without her parents getting in the way, or about how to convince her parents to get her help.

That’s why I suggested beginning at school. She goes to college, and colleges are not unfamiliar with this kind of public health problem.

Under age 18, you usually need your parental consent, or a letter saying it’s okay for you to seek treatment without parental consent.

No, no. Not true. Your parents cannot interfere with health issues.

After you turn 18, they cannot.

when i was 15 i smoked for the first time in a year. and before that i used to smoke all the time when i was younger. when i smoked that 1 time i have felt high ever since. im 17 now and still feel it. i did not know anyone else felt this way. i was really scared at first but after about a month or 2 i got use to it and now i feel high all the time. its not a good feeling and nobody beleives me about it. before i had this problem i was sponsored in skateboarding and all sorts of things were going great for me. but ever since then i cant skateboard for a long time or run long or my head will start having a ticking sound in it. i was starting football for varsity my freshman year until i smoked. i wouldnt recommend smoking just because of that. i was sober for about 9 months after that and then i started thinkin of weird ways i could get rid of it. so i smoked again thinking maybe if i come down from a high it would go away. it didnt work. so i kept smoking. and then i got on probation and cant smoke. when i drink i feel drunk the next day to. and i feel like i cant hear people sometimes. i do think im going crazy sometimes but then i know there can be no way its happening so i ignore it. if i was back to normal i feel like i could do better things. i just need someone to tell me what they do to get rid of it.

@talking45 Have you ever had a psychological evaluation? You might have a mental illness that just happened to coincide with or was initiated by your experience.

@mentalhealth I’m not convinced that it is possible, desirable or even ethical to diagnose a stranger at long distance.

I will say, however, that this sounds nothing at all like Depersonalization Disorder which is a controversial and rare diagnosis.