u/martin_luther_drill

It's been almost a year, and I'm still bedbound because of my most ridiculous and only symptom: the inability to feel sleepy. It's literally my only withdrawal symptom, but it has been causing extreme insomnia for the last year. My entire body is in physical pain worse than kidney stones, I cut myself, scream, hallucinate from time to time, dissociate all the time, get out of breath after walking to the kitchen, and lay on the kitchen floor first before gathering up strength to eat. I lost so much muscle and bodyweight in general that I look like I'm straight from Auschwitz. No clothes fit. I have a totally blank mind. My new MRI showed there's more empty space in my brain now than before. This is the list of meds I can't do:

* Mirtazapine spiked my trigs to such a level that my blood is more fat than blood now. It didn't even work.

* Lithium stopped working.

* Clonidine didn't work.

* Trazodone stopped working.

* Amitriptyline, I can't take due to sensitive lipid levels.

* Antipsychotics I can't take for the same reason. Besides Seroquel was 50% responsible for my PAWS.

* Hydroxyzine stops working almost immediately, as do other antihistamines.

* Melatonin, supplements don't work.

* Gabapentin stops working quickly.

* Pregabalin might trap me post-benzos.

* DORAs are unavailable here. I will be going to the US soon, so I'm going to try them.

* Z-drugs gave me HPPD.

* Keto helps with sleep deprivation but not insomnia.

Has anyone been in this position, and tried CBT-i? Has it worked? If not, please suggest me something because I've been literally bedridden by stupid insomnia for a year!!! I can't live for years like this on the off chance it will go away. I tried CBT-i months ago but decided I couldn't do it because I was going psychotic without any sleep. Maybe I should revisit.

My new MRI showed my subarachnoid space is widened compared to the MRI I got 4 years ago when my insomnia had been tormenting me for just 2 years, which suggests there’s more empty space in my skull now.

Has anyone else with severe insomnia had this finding? Were you able to reverse it?

From the beginning of the pandemic to around 2024, I was chronically dissociated for no apparent reason. I was also suffering from insomnia for long stretches of time. My mind was so blank that I would become anxious when I had to engage in a one-on-one conversation with someone because I would run out of things to say very quickly and I needed someone else who could take over the conversation. I couldn’t laugh, cry, or feel any emotion to add insult to injury. I was a brain-dead “amoeba” as my Mom referred to me once. Then it sort of just went away on its own when I turned 18. Not much happened that could account for such a radical change. It was a rebirth. I’m trying to make sense of what it was.

Could it have been long COVID that spontaneously resolved after a while? Have you experienced something similar?

Over a year ago, I accidentally blacked out on zopiclone and woke up to an empty blister pack. After that I hallucinated for a week. To this day, I still have slight visual distortions like breathing, morphing, and warping in the dark. When I take off my glasses, it seems to amplify that. I have a myopia of -6 diopters.

Can anyone relate to that? Have you continued taking zopiclone after acquiring HPPD from it? I’m having terrible insomnia, and I could really use some.

If you are DAO-deficient, does amitriptyline make it worse for you?

If anyone here has used pregabalin nightly for months or years, what side effects did you notice? Do its sleep-promoting effects wane over time in your experience?

I’m thinking of using it long-term because of how refreshing and deep sleep on it feels, but I’m not sure how risky it is.

View Poll

At 2 PM, I have my first meal of the day and it’s quite high in saturated fats unlike my second which doesn’t make me tired. It’s 130g bacon, 100g gouda, and 5 eggs. I feel so groggy and drowsy for a couple of hours after eating it, but it tastes way too good.

Can you relate to that? Do you have tips on how to manage it, or is it only avoidable with limiting saturated fat? I can’t do more than 2 meals per day.

View Poll

Have you experienced any weight gain at these dosages? If so, at which dose? How sedating is 3.75 mg compared to other meds in your experience?

I tried the lion diet to identify my “brain allergies” because I was having severe neurological problems. After three weeks on nothing but ground beef, I reintroduced just two eggs and they gave me a massive histamine reaction (flushing, itching, agitation, the whole deal) that I had never experienced before despite having eaten eggs daily. At first I thought that I might have been allergic to them all along, but then I tried eating other foods that were either histamine liberators or histamine containing, and all of them would trigger severe reactions that, as I mentioned above, I had never had to deal with. It went far beyond neurological symptoms. Two times I have approached the anaphylaxis territory. I wasn’t able to stand up, I felt so terrible. These reactions wouldn’t subside despite my continuing to eat those foods.

It’s already been three months since I went off the diet, and I still have extreme flareup and even those foods that wouldn’t give me a reaction at the peak of my intolerance are now fucking me up too. I ran out of things to eat at this point. I can’t even sleep anymore.

At first it went away after two weeks of eating beef liver, sauerkraut, and supplementing vitamin C and zinc, but now the same protocol is not working, and I live in a war-mongering third-world country that doesn’t even treat thyroid disorders, let alone this. Please could someone chime in on this?

P.S.: In order for this post not to get taken down, I must say that I am not opposed to these sort of “extreme” diets where appropriate, but apparently they’re not without their risks and the supervision of a savvy doctor is essential, only I live in a shithole where it was not an option.

I was eating an all-beef diet for 4 months to alleviate my neurological condition. 3 weeks into that diet, I tried reintroducing eggs and got a huge histamine reaction, although previously I had never had a problem with eggs, meaning carnivore messed me up pretty early on. After 4 months, I tried to come off and had reactions to absolutely anything histamine. I decided to whiteknuckle through it and eat everything like normal while supplementing beef liver for copper, 20 mg zinc, 900 mg vitamin C, 100-200g sauerkraut, and 300 mg iron. I was also gradually increasing my histamine intake, and within 2 weeks it went away almost entirely except for maybe one spot that was healing.

For two months I felt normal, but now I'm flaring up again like crazy, can't sleep, can't do anything. For the past couple weeks I've been trying the same protocol yet to no avail. It's only getting worse and worse. What gives? I had never had any histamine reaction before carnivore and I didn't even know there is such a thing as histamine intolerance. Needless to say, doctors are clueless and dismissive. Who would've guessed...

This diet is so ridiculous. Not the diet per se, but people who are its most ardent advocates that don't warn you about these risks. We shouldn't act as if it isn't a serious medical intervention that has its risks and benefits like any other. Granted, I should've done more research. Still, in my defense, I was in the depths of benzo withdrawal, so not too good at decision-making at the time. The alternatives, on the other hand, were electroconvulsive therapy or antipsychotics and SSRIs, which I was done with, so I thought to myself, "fuck it, whatever happens, happens." Was it worth it? Probably not. It would've been, though, if not for the histamine BS.

I have such extreme insomnia that my mind is completely devoid of thoughts and emotions. I’m profoundly dissociated all the time. The only thing I do feel is a kind of pain that is hard to describe. I can’t really locate it or tell what it feels like, but it’s so severe that I rock back and forth and scream and bite on my shirt to tolerate it. It comes directly from sleep deprivation because when I have slept there’s no pain. I sometimes punch walls, break stuff, and cut myself to shift focus from that pain. It makes me very aggressive and on edge. I’ve been punching walls so hard that my knuckles are now permanently deformed, worse than those of a boxer, and the skin on my palms bleeds. The only description I have is it’s as if my skull was opened and someone was raping my brain.

What is that pain? Can you relate? How do I describe it to people around me who give me a hard time all the time because they have no clue how disabling it is. People think I act this way because I’m an asshole. I had some dumb bitch tell me the other day something along the lines of “consider yourself lucky that you have insomnia - you have so much free time, I envy you! you’re just a slacker.”

Not that I care much about what people think - it’s more about caring what people who have direct influence on my life think, including doctors even. A sleep specialist refuses to give me sleep meds and makes me do sleep restriction and I genuinely tried it two times and I almost lost my mind doing it on top of this pain. How f*cking annoying.

i’m considering Lyrica for as-needed use to treat insomnia due to not being able to tolerate most meds. One time I used it for sleep and woke up incredibly refreshed and in a great mood after just 4 hours of sleep. That said, it might’ve been a coincidence, who knows. It is said to improve sleep architecture.

Do you find that Lyrica causes a next-day hangover or fogginess when used for sleep? How does it compare to other sleeping pills in this regard in your personal experience?

For whatever reason, the post got taken down, but I don’t see what’s wrong with it, so I’m posting it again.

Hey everyone, my first language is Russian, and I'm looking to do a language exchange with a native speaker of American English. I'd say I'm at an advanced level in English and can express myself without issue, but there are a couple things that need polishing. I also have a C1 certificate in German, but I'm quite rusty on it.

Feel free to hit me up on DMs.

Hey everyone, my first language is Russian, and I'm looking to do a language exchange with a native speaker of American English. I'd say I'm at an advanced level in English and can express myself without issue, but there are a couple things that need polishing. I also have a C1 certificate in German, but I'm quite rusty on it.

Feel free to hit me up on DMs.

Are you cognitively and emotionally blunted on lithium?

View Poll

When I'm in a very dark environment, my vision gradually goes completely black unless I blink like every two or three seconds. Is it related to my visual snow or something else? Completely stationary objects also appear to be slightly dynamic in the dark. I can't quite put my finger on what makes them dynamic, maybe some slight wobbliness or something. I've had visual snow since birth.

Can anyone relate?

If you have LSD-induced HPPD, do you like it, dislike it, or are you indifferent about it?

View Poll

I've had it all my life. Only recently have I realized it's not normal. Since my teenage years, I've struggled with severe mental health issues, accumulated a few diagnoses, but nobody could point to a specific root cause. My most debilitating symptoms are mainly 24/7 dissociation and extreme insomnia. Everything else is secondary. I read up on this visual snow thing, and apparently it's the exact type of non-visual symptoms it leads to: brain fog, dissociation, insomnia, anxiety. Because your visual field is always overstimulated, your brain gets fried. So I connected the dots and thought maybe that's what it is.

If you've had VSS since birth, were you able to reduce your symptoms? Is it even possible? Not once do I remember not having those flickering dots and tinnitus. In all probability, my brain doesn't even have a different "configuration."