Has this ever happened to you?

[Undertoad]

I've had some of that sort of thing with anxiety illness. Sufferers call it "depersonalization". Anxiety can cause every single symptom you can think of...

[Kitsune]

I've had some of that sort of thing with anxiety illness. Sufferers call it "depersonalization". Anxiety can cause every single symptom you can think of...

Same here, UT. For about a year and a half, I suffered some fun anxiety problems thanks to stress at work. The depersonalization can actually take on the form of temporary "mini-Cotard's" and you can feel completely detached from your world. What I experienced was mild, but I had no idea that stress could do such things! Its almost like you're floating through your world and aren't fully in control or like you're watching what you see through a television and your feeling that "you are inside yourself" feels shifted, like someone has miscalibrated your internal compass.

Fun stuff.

If you've had it for awhile, UT, and still do make sure you go see someone about it. I had a heck of a time shaking it but was determined to do it without medication and was able to get through it after many nights of thought, introspection, and forced relaxation. I still have a fairly stressful job, but learning to cope was a massive help.

[Undertoad]

I've had it all my life, it's truly chronic. I address it with medication.

[Catwoman]

alphageek I have just noticed you are very funny.
we shouldn't be worried about what we write here in case someone uses the information... this is the internet - it was designed for the sole purpose of teaching kids how to blow things up and get high and be the world leaders of the future.
anyway, back to the point, I find smoking pot brings me back in touch with reality - and you are able to see things a lot more clearly and rationally. Which reality is a different question - but I certainly prefer it.

[perth]

Everybody I know has some deep reason why they smoke pot. Doesn't anyone do it just because it's fun?

[Catwoman]

fun? FUN? there are people out there levitating and you speak of FUN?! my son, you know nothing. this world was made for misery. MISERY I tell you! Fun indeed.


actually yes there is no deeper meaning. it's just that smoking pot makes you take everything so seriously, you must have a deep reason for smoking it...

[perth]

I guess a side-effect is that it makes me *very* creative. I do my best writing / painting / whatever, but the impetus is always "for fun". And not everyone takes things seriously after smoking pot. There's a good reason my brother's nickname is "monkeyboy".

[Tomas Rueda]

Well, (as the old poem says)

Worry not, ye who ask, For I have set my own self beyond the boundaries of perplexity(drugs), And so, whithersoever I walketh, mine lips shalt not touch yours...(oops, I meant) Mine lips shalt not touch any weed or grass of the field. (including tobbacco)

(translation: I ain't smoke)

...and besides, I want to die late, not early

[perth]

well, (as Denis Leary says)

Smoking takes ten years off your life. Well it's the ten worst years, isn't it folks? It's the ones at the end! It's the wheelchair, kidney dialysis, adult diaper fucking years. You can have those years! We don't want 'em, alright?

(Translation: What's the fucking point of living a long life if you never have any fucking fun?)

[Tomas Rueda]

Originally Posted by perth

well, (as Denis Leary says)

Smoking takes ten years off your life. Well it's the ten worst years, isn't it folks? It's the ones at the end! It's the wheelchair, kidney dialysis, diaper ing years. You can have those years! We don't want 'em, alright?

(Translation: What's the ing point of living a long life if you never have any ing fun?)

Well, (as I say)

Life is not all that there is to living. There is more to life than just ________(fill in the blank) If you are the person that has a positive outlook to life (sees the glass as half full) then those 10 last years would not be as bad.

[flippant]

Tom if you are young,and I believe you are.......Live it up! There are PLENTY of chemicals there already. No need to enhance a prime.Or destroy the gifts of a young brain and body.Way to go Tom!(OBE's need no enhancement as you seem to have figured out)


No single rain drop believes itself to be responsible for the flood.........

[Clodfobble]

I occasionally have mild temporal lobe seizures which cause a very interesting sensation in my brain: I "recognize" whatever's happening around me and I am ABSOLUTELY CONVINCED that I know what is going to happen next. (This is not like your typical deja vu experience, there are a bunch of other symptoms that go along with it, but anyway...) The interesting thing is the theory as to the origins of the sensation--they think that perception is delayed ever-so-slightly, kind of echoing if you will, so that you actually ARE seeing something you've seen before.

[megatron]

Originally Posted by Clodfobble

I occasionally have mild temporal lobe seizures which cause a very interesting sensation in my brain: I "recognize" whatever's happening around me and I am ABSOLUTELY CONVINCED that I know what is going to happen next. (This is not like your typical deja vu experience, there are a bunch of other symptoms that go along with it, but anyway...) The interesting thing is the theory as to the origins of the sensation--they think that perception is delayed ever-so-slightly, kind of echoing if you will, so that you actually ARE seeing something you've seen before.

.


IN ALL SERIOUSNESS I THOUGHT I WAS THE ONLY ONE.

[wolf]

Steering clear of psychoactives is a really good idea.

Mystical experiences while high are really just being high.

You're welcome to consider me an old fogey killjoy, but that's how I feel about it.

Oh, and most of the stuff on that list of things to try ... very dangerous, some to the point of lethality.

[Elspode]

I always swore that I'd avoid the old-fogey judgementalism myself, and sometimes it is difficult to discern whether I'm just old and crotchety, or that I truly have some hard-won wisdom to impart, so take what I'm about to say with a grain of salt, or ignore it altogether if you choose.

I started drinking regularly when I was 15. I came from a family of drunks, and so it wasn't really looked at askance. At 17, seeking to be one with my hipper friends, and to also bring my other unhip pals into the "mainstream", I started smoking pot. For me, the herb was definitely a threshold drug, and pretty much anything that you didn't have to insert via a needle followed over the coming years. I was particularly addicted to amphetamines, and would always have a couple of hundred miniwhites around.

I quit the speed after about a year because it was having some pretty profound negative physical effects...my teeth were getting loose, I was malnourished, and I exhibited some really interesting paranoid dementias. I kept up with everything else for another 15 years.

I had to quit the dope due to having to work, but drinking...well, drinking was *the* drug for me, even when I was doing the other stuff. After all, if 40 mg of valium is good, 40 mg of valium with a twelve pack is *better*!

All of this, as I now see in retrospect, was self-medication to try and make myself somehow better, or at least different. Sometimes, it was a search for cosmic inner truth, but most of the time it was simply wanting to not be *me*.

Now, a couple of years shy of 50, after a heart bypass and lacking a colon...I want those years - and body parts damaged by my consumptions - back. I wish I'd had, during those years, the clarity of being clean and sober. I now want to be able to decide that I want a couple of beers rather than having a case of beers decide *me*.

I have found more spirituality in a bottle of water and a walk through the park than I ever found in a hit of acid. I have found more insight in the struggle to not drink and do drugs than I did when I was fucked up.

My .02. I'm sure your mileage will vary. Oh, yeah...and what's with these kids and that music today? And those haircuts? And those clothes!!??


(edited to add a bit more rambling)