r/dpdr

If one more fucking person says "ignore it/accept it and keep living" i am going to lose my mind. We seriously need a flair that is for people who have had DPDR for decades with little to no improvements despite multiple efforts. The dismissive attitude on how genuinely debilitating it can be is so ridiculous here. I dont even like catastrophizing or wallowing in it but it makes life unbearable. I don't want to live disconnected and floating. I do it every single time and there is nothing. It genuinely gets to a point when you are actively trying to survive while doing the absolute bare minimum and basics. I can try to ignore it all i want, but when it overtakes my basic senses like sight and hearing... it gets real fucking hard. Whats even worse is how pointless this sub can feel when literally no one has answers for anyone. Why would they? All we do with each other is quietly relate to the 50% of posts here that get absolutely no attention. Im sick of this and im sick of living like this and im sick of people barely understanding and having any solutions, myself included.

Is this disassociation? Derealization? Ocd? Driving me nuts. I am taking klonopin daily now.. it keeps going started 5 days ago. This started before the klonopin and i took it because anxiety is so bad. I had a weed panic attack 3 months ago and ever since then I haven't been the same. I was improving 2 months ago then ever since summer more and more what feels like derealization or disassociating. Dizziness i had got better and don't feel as off balance. Also have had weird vision changes, sensitive to light and screens. I have a long history of anxiety, health anxiety and ocd. The panic attack from weed clearly did something to me. Feel could be some type of vitamin deficiency, thyroid. Have no idea. Only abnormal blood result was a slightly elevated inflammation esr rate of 28

Insomnia perpetuates my dpdr and creates a negative feedback loop. I'm curious if there's anybody that sleeps relatively well and is still crippled by DPDR.

I was on Reddit reading posts, rabbit hole-ing, and someone mentioned that often, people who recover from derealization don’t return to forums and announce their recovery, so here I am!

I have dealt with anxiety and derealization since I was too young to know what it was. I remember being 6 years old and asking my dad at Cici’s Pizza “Why do I feel like I’m not really here?”. Back then, it came and went, and though it was anxiety inducing, I didn’t pay much attention to it, and it never stuck around. As I got older, I had it after going on benders, after panic attacks, after a head injury, after weed… you name it, but it never lasted more than a few weeks.

Last July, I had a health scare that rocked my world. I was dealing with constant, front row anxiety inducing symptoms that were impossible to ignore. I was so afraid, and that intense fear triggered the longest episode of derealization I have ever experienced. From July 2025 until January 2026, I was a complete mess. I couldn’t tell whether symptoms were a result of derealization and anxiety or something catastrophic happening to my brain. My vision was wonky. My neck and shoulders were so stiff that I couldn’t turn my head. Breathing felt like a chore I had to think really hard about. I felt dizzy and disconnected all the time. I found myself searching for words. I couldn’t spell. I felt like my intelligence was gone. Nothing looked “right”, especially outside. I couldn’t focus. I spent all my time crying and reassurance seeking. I was constantly Googling or talking to AI, reading horror stories, and was absolutely convinced that I was stuck permanently in that dulled state. I remember thinking about how much joy I used to find in just being at home and watching my TV shows, and the thought that I would never enjoy such a mundane thing again brought me immense sadness.

I had read all the things about making it go away, but when you’re in that state, it’s a lot easier said than done. One day, I decided NO MORE. I decided I was going to participate in life in whatever state I was in. I couldn’t keep putting everything on hold. It had been months, and nothing was changing, so I accepted my situation, stopped Googling and chatting with AI 24 hours a day, and started trying to BE present for myself and the people I love again, even if I didn’t FEEL present. I faced life head on and cried in the bathtub at night. I’m honestly not even sure when it actually disappeared, but sometime around January the fog began to lift. By May, the physical symptoms that were a result of the anxiety and depersonalization were gone. It’s August now, and I’m 100% me again. My head is clear, the pain is gone, my vision is normal, I can think…. and I am so thankful I am able to enjoy the mundane things, like a quiet evening at home again! I can even panic without it coming back, as I haven proven many times to myself over the past few months. 😅

If my anxiety wasn’t as prominent as it is, it probably would have gone away a lot sooner! I definitely ’kept it alive’ with constant reassurance seeking.

MY ADVICE: Acknowledge it, then force yourself to live exactly as you would if it wasn’t there.

Better days are right around the corner, even if it doesn’t seem like it right now! Wishing you so much joy! 🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍

Hi everyone,
I'm a medical student and (mostly) former sufferer of DP/DR. I'm looking for two or three other people with DP/DR to participate in a quantitative EEG study that will try to identify common patterns in the brainwaves of people with this illness.
Participation will entail completing a psychiatric/medical/personal history questionnaire and about an hour of EEG recording in a New York City office.
I hope that it will lead to insights into DP/DR mechanisms and increased awareness within the medical community.

If you're interested or have questions, please message me.

Wishing all of you recovery and happiness.

TLDR: Anyone with DPDR and fully/mostly recovered go back to smoking weed or taking edibles?

I (26M) have now gone about 8 months without any weed or THC since deciding to stop when I was experiencing chronic DPDR symptoms.

I started smoking and overall just consuming THC around late 2023. I started off with 5mg edibles, then to carts, and then flower within the next year or so.

By 2025 I was smoking flower every evening after work, not a ton, always less than a quarter gram, but I would always get extremely high since I was taking huge bong hits.

I had smoked weed in my early teens, and by early teens I mean at 13, when I had a massive panic attack several times which led me to initially develop DPDR which lasted a couple years afterwards.

Interestingly enough, I didn’t develop DPDR immediately after the weed induced panic attacks (the ones I had when high), but instead…it started after I had a panic attack several months after initially smoking, with the panic attack being triggered by the fear of going “crazy” (this stemmed from seeing an article about weed induced psychosis). That fear and panic then triggered the DPDR which even more made me believe that I truly was losing my mind.

I felt like I didn’t know where I was, who I was, what was going on, and overall just felt completely out of my body.

I had been an extremely anxious person my whole life, and struggled with anxiety attacks when I was even younger, but this was my first experience with true panic.

This feeling would persist as long as I would think about it, it often would get better when I talked about it to someone, and whenever I was distracted (playing video games or watching a movie or show).

I eventually went to therapy, got on Zoloft at around 14-15 years old, and discovered drinking and nicotine around that age as well. I started vaping daily and drinking heavily on the weekends, which got heavier as I went into college (never drank during the day, but would get shitfaced at night like 3-4 times a week, sometimes more sometimes less).

After graduating college and getting a big boy office job, and things started to settle down, I started to seriously get worried about my relationship with alcohol. I always knew drinking heavily was bad…but I didn’t realize how bad until this time, but I still loved drinking and nicotine…and couldn’t imagine being fully sober.

This is when I really started thinking of weed as my “way out” of drinking and nicotine combined…without having to face full sobriety. So as I picked up weed again after all those years, it was actually amazing this time, and got me to stop using nicotine as well.

I would definitely “green out” (and get really anxious and “panicky” after smoking sometimes too), but I felt like I was “working through it”…like I was getting over my irrational fears, and over time I got used to how weed made me feel, and I would rarely get anxious anymore.

The problem was…I now couldn’t go an evening without smoking. If I didn’t smoke one night, I was physically fine, but mentally I was angry, annoyed and irritable. I also would just get too high so often that I would become “non verbal” and this would cause a lot of friction between me and my fiancée since I was essentially “clocking out” from our social time together every evening.

I also got to the point that I didn’t want to hangout with people unless smoking was involved, and even then if we did smoke I would often get so high I couldn’t interact normally.

Over time I started getting more and more derealized and depersonalized, and my anxiety got worse and worse specifically about existential stuff and my overall fear of death being looped into everything.

That’s when I stopped smoking entirely around 8 months ago, but now I am back to drinking after taking 8 months off of it as well. I know that escaping reality and being avoidant of the present isn’t a good thing, but I have a good paying steady job, I workout 3-5 times a week, I see friends every now and then on the weekends (usually with drinking and going out being the activity we do when we hangout), I have a happy long term relationship with my fiancé…someone I consider my best friend who I do everything with, but we both struggle with excessive drinking on the weekends, and we are back to considering some form of THC again as a potential “replacement”/damage control.

My DPDR is fading but still present at times, the derealization is entirely gone but now it’s just the depersonalization that’s there sometimes…usually just whenever I get over stimulated or anxious.

I think I may have undiagnosed ADHD that was simply brushed off as purely anxiety since I was a kid. I was always bad at school (basically from 2nd grade on), and it genuinely wasn’t until I started vaping in high school that I had the motivation to actually start trying and get good grades (always had trouble paying attention and never had the patience to read or do my homework, it always felt like pure torture sitting there in class, but once I had nicotine it was like knowing there was a little reward after every class made it easier for me to get through the day and actually have “excitement”)

I know now…the main issue for me is moderation, and all of this boring context I’m giving is a long winded way of me to ask people who have experienced weed induced DPDR (after smoking) to see if anyone has been able to return to weed? If so is there a controlled and more stable way of consuming that has worked for you? Maybe small dose edibles, only on weekends?

Hello guys here is the complete understanding of dpdr. So our body is holds a gel like substance in our whole body. If you press you arm you will see that there is fat on top layer and if you press that fat with finger it will not give a push back to your finger. Benith that is the gel that I'm talking about. This gel when it is evenly spread on body only then the brain works constantly without delay. If you have gas in stomach also that time brain stops working. So we lost this gel due to marijuana trauma and masterbation. When this gel get reduced the mind does not work. You will feel dpdr. Let's suppose you don't have sufficient gel in your body. So in order to make your brain work again you have to press your legs. See if you press your legs your mind will get active that time you will also notice that your breath when it inhale after inhale it will stop for some sec and then move again to exhale. So if you are in dpdr your breath will not hold automatically when this happens when no holding happens brain stops working and you will stay in dpdr. So for cure we have to get back that lost gel in body. First we have to eliminate marijuana and masterbation cause it burns away that gel. Stay away from food that produce a burning sensation in your body. Now first thing is we increase aur stamina and run everyday. This gel is basically water. If you stay at home you will not have urge to drink water. So first thing we have to do is go for running. Keep 1 to 2 litlre of bottle with you. After running you will feel deep urge to drink water. That water will replenish that gel you have to keep this over and over again until whole body gel get evenly distributed. You will feel your breath is automatically holding by itself. This is whole of dpdr. Thanks

I feel very alone with my symptoms, I sit most of the day just staring into nothing cos they are so bad I can’t actually function. Do others experience severe issues with their sensory nervous system ? These worsen by the day for me , eg today I have nerves burning all over body, they feel like texture of fine sand over the skin..then this horrible furry texture in my mouth..but each day i lose more sensation or they become more minuscule and they don’t return.My head is the main issue but I also don’t feel my body. I feel like there is something very wrong. And I don’t know how to get better. I feel in shock that every day it’s worse. My face looks totally different, I’ve lost most of hair and it’s drastically thinned out. I can’t take much more of this I need a sign of getting better. Starting to worry it’s much more serious or it’s getting worse and chronic like when does it end :(((

Hi! I had dpdr from december till late june, I was feeling extremely anxious and depressed also. I was eating pretty bad and drank a lot of caffeine. I recovered by stopping drinking caffeine, slept a lot, didn't stress myself, stopped eating ultra proccesed foods and I started eating plenty of meat and fruits instead. I didn't only eat meat and fruits of course but I mostly prioritized meat mostly and sometimes fruits after meals, a lot of foods from the stores contain weird conservatives (not all of them are bad but mostly) and I also stopped consuming oils and instead used butter and lard. I suggest to cook foods at home instead of buying them as it's way more nutritive. Hope this helps people who still suffer from it :)

Sorry if I made some mistakes, english is not my first language.

Edit: I forgot to mention it, I also ate eggs, honey and dairy products

guys make sure to also eat carbs unless you want to lose weight also. I'm not a doctor or nutritionist this is how I managed to recover from dpdr, but make sure it doesn't have a bad impact on your health

hi everyone!! about a year ago i experienced severe dpdr (i’ll try to find my posts on here) and thought my world would never be the same. this knowledge was debilitating and haunting, and ruled my life for months. this page didn’t help much, so i wanted to come here and say that YOU CAN RECOVER!!!!

i thought i was one of those people who would never recover, but i was so wrong.

if you want me to make a post on how i did it, let me know. dm for questions, support, etc. i’ve been there and i know how horrific it is. i want to help as much as i can <3

EDIT: i will make a master post and have it up tonight!

Hi there!

I'm interested to know if you had any kind of trigger that made your DPDR permanent.

In my case, I would occasionally have moments or even days of derealization as a child, but then - from one day to the next - it suddenly never went away again. I'm sure the underlying cause was the abuse and neglect I experienced as a child, but I find it so strange that the *chronic* DR started on such a random day without any trigger as far as I remember.

If you'd like to share your stories, I'd be happy to hear them :)

I’ve been reading through some posts on this subreddit, and I don’t seem to really recognize what I have.

Many people seem to describe their DR state as okay, for some even pleasant and safe.

Mine is as if I’m in a different world, looking exactly like the normal one but feeling entirely different. Everything feels dark and dangerous and whereas some people here say they’re coping reasonably well with DR, mine is torment and when it hits I can’t do anything, I’m just suffering.

I think I know the other thing, too - when your mind seems to go blank, and you don’t know how to talk to others because you hardly know where you are. Also very disconcerting, of course. But the thing that bothers me most is the dark feeling, like I’m living in a post apocalyptic landscape or something. I just can’t feel normal, can’t get back home even though I am there.

I hate it so much.

Anyone recognise this?

hello guys. recently at mt university we have beeung having daily assemblies where im forced to go ro the highest floor, sweat a lot in a hot bright room, stand for 30+ minutes.its really terrifying cuz i have OCD and intrusive thoughts make me really scared about whats about to happen. i keep thinking im gonna get a stroke or that im going to fajnt even though i never did
my brain just shuts down and i feel heavy
my knees lock and i just feel like im. floating and my vision goes cartoonish and flat

This is so weird like 1 year ago, I was still posting on Reddit abt this. My life was going better everyday, and I really thought I was going to recover. And, for a short period of time, thought I didn't fully recovered it was going better. But some event which I can't say for anonymity like destroyed all of it. Though I can't say the event I can say that my family really does bad things continuously (and like it never stopped, it was a ton of time in day) and so at first I wasn't focused on dpdr, rather on protecting myself. Now, I am away from that and I noticed that it just fucked me up. My dpdr is like really bad and so worse than before bc now I didn't have hope I don't even know why I am here writing this like everything is fake.

I had a panic attack six months ago, first major one, since then i’m having weird bodily sensations, that I can’t really explain.

Vision seems like I am looking through a much stronger prescription glasses than I need to be.

Sounds and voices sometimes sound like a background noise.

Weird touch sensations in hands sometimes.

I don't know when my derealization started, but it was extreme for around 10 months when i was 16 (i'm 20 now). I could barely think at all (for this I quit chess and couldn't do homework even when I tried), constantly confused the size and distance of objects, and of course nothing felt real. Used to compare it to playing a VR game. The thing is, even when I got over the most incapacitating aspects of it, I barely ever felt like anything was real. It never fully goes away, and I think it's a big reason of why I struggle to make friends. My question is, has yours actually gone away? Or making it a bit better is all we can aspire to?