Overcoming long term mental issues from drug use..?
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Join Date: Feb 2012
Location: New Orleans, LA
Posts: 4
Overcoming long term mental issues from drug use..?
So I found this forum by searching in google for "spice long term effects". It gave me this thread: soberrecovery.com/forums/newcomers-recovery /222638-legal-highs-spice-help-horrible-long-term-effects.html which I read front to back and it made me register to make my own thread.
My father was an alcoholic and drug addict. I swore I'd never be like him but I failed. I'm almost 32 and when I was in my early 20's I experimented a lot with marijuana and LSD. I also took a lot of pills, I didn't care what they were. Mostly Xanax and Kolonopins.
I almost died from taking too many Ambien and drinking a couple of beers and the next day I took two hits of some real bad LSD. Yea I was a smart one /sarcasm.
So after those two bad hits and a failed attempted suicide, I quite drugs cold turkey. It was a rough few months but I made it. I was clean for many years but suffered from some mental issues. Slight feelings of reality being warped, some flashbacks of the LSD trips, nothing too major but enough to interfere with my relationship. Ended up breaking up with the girl I was living with, partly because we were such different people but mostly because I felt she deserved better than some crazy person who would get up at night and pace the hallway thinking about silly stuff.
So fast forward 6 or so years and I felt I was through with all of this BS. A coworker who I was good friends with got me to start smoking pot again. I was playing a lot of WoW and was real bored with the game and getting high made the game fun again. Stupid reason to get high I know but aren't all reasons stupid?
Anyway work started to suspect so my friend and I switched to spice/mojo. We didn't want to get drug tested and the synthetic stuff was almost as good. Well I smoked that for a week or so and they banned it. So some new strain came out and I tried it for about a week and had a really really bad reaction.
I ended up having seizures and had to call 911. It took 8 cops to hold me down and get me strapped to a stretcher. I was screaming at the top of my lungs and I was not on this planet for the whole experience.
Anyway after about 5 hours in the hospital I finally came down off the stuff. I didn't sleep for a week straight because my mind kept going to the nightmare that was my experience on the spice. I kept thinking I was dead and that nothing was real and that I'd go right back to that hell I experienced.
It took many months but I finally started to feel normal again. Life started to look up. And then I let another friend talk me into something really really stupid. About 6 months ago I had a work trip and a friend with me drove. On the way back he pulled out a pipe and smoked some pot and offered me a hit and I accepted.
That one tiny hit I took sent me right back into that hell I experienced when smoking the spice the last time. I started having seizures and I started freaking out but he was too scared to call 911 because he thought he'd lose his job for having drugs on a business trip. It lasted about 3 hours before I finally came down off of it.
So I started to feel normal again after a couple months again but here's the kicker. Right after the new year I started feeling off again. Like majorly off. I keep feeling lightheaded all the time. I keep having racing thoughts all the time. I have to keep distracting my mind because if I start to think about reality, it stops feeling real. I feel my inner mind drifting away someone else and I have to reach out and grab it and bring it back to this reality.
I'm terrified that it's going to drift too far and I won't be able to reach it. I like it here. I'm finally clean and have no desire to do any drug or even drink. I just want to live a normal happy life and have a family with my current girlfriend and die a gray old man surrounded by my kids and grandkids and hopefully great grandkids. But I feel like I'm destined to lose my mind and live out life as a vegetable.
I know this isn't a place for medical advice but I'm not sure where to turn? Do I join some sort of narcotics anonymous group? Do I go talk to a doctor and have them scan my brain and run tests? Do I go talk to a shrink and let him prescribe me some kind of anti-psychotic that will make me a zombie? Do I go to church and try to find a spiritual way to deal with it? I just don't know.
I mean things really stop feeling real. If I think about it too much I end up right back on the floor feeling my body reliving the same seizure over and over again. It starts to feel like that's all I ever do is have those seizures and that all of this life is just my brain trying to escape the pain of the seizures by creating an alternate reality. It begins to feel so real that I just focus on the seizures and I slip away. God even writing about it now puts me back in that same place and it terrifies me. I don't want to be stuck there forever I just want to be normal.
My father was an alcoholic and drug addict. I swore I'd never be like him but I failed. I'm almost 32 and when I was in my early 20's I experimented a lot with marijuana and LSD. I also took a lot of pills, I didn't care what they were. Mostly Xanax and Kolonopins.
I almost died from taking too many Ambien and drinking a couple of beers and the next day I took two hits of some real bad LSD. Yea I was a smart one /sarcasm.
So after those two bad hits and a failed attempted suicide, I quite drugs cold turkey. It was a rough few months but I made it. I was clean for many years but suffered from some mental issues. Slight feelings of reality being warped, some flashbacks of the LSD trips, nothing too major but enough to interfere with my relationship. Ended up breaking up with the girl I was living with, partly because we were such different people but mostly because I felt she deserved better than some crazy person who would get up at night and pace the hallway thinking about silly stuff.
So fast forward 6 or so years and I felt I was through with all of this BS. A coworker who I was good friends with got me to start smoking pot again. I was playing a lot of WoW and was real bored with the game and getting high made the game fun again. Stupid reason to get high I know but aren't all reasons stupid?
Anyway work started to suspect so my friend and I switched to spice/mojo. We didn't want to get drug tested and the synthetic stuff was almost as good. Well I smoked that for a week or so and they banned it. So some new strain came out and I tried it for about a week and had a really really bad reaction.
I ended up having seizures and had to call 911. It took 8 cops to hold me down and get me strapped to a stretcher. I was screaming at the top of my lungs and I was not on this planet for the whole experience.
Anyway after about 5 hours in the hospital I finally came down off the stuff. I didn't sleep for a week straight because my mind kept going to the nightmare that was my experience on the spice. I kept thinking I was dead and that nothing was real and that I'd go right back to that hell I experienced.
It took many months but I finally started to feel normal again. Life started to look up. And then I let another friend talk me into something really really stupid. About 6 months ago I had a work trip and a friend with me drove. On the way back he pulled out a pipe and smoked some pot and offered me a hit and I accepted.
That one tiny hit I took sent me right back into that hell I experienced when smoking the spice the last time. I started having seizures and I started freaking out but he was too scared to call 911 because he thought he'd lose his job for having drugs on a business trip. It lasted about 3 hours before I finally came down off of it.
So I started to feel normal again after a couple months again but here's the kicker. Right after the new year I started feeling off again. Like majorly off. I keep feeling lightheaded all the time. I keep having racing thoughts all the time. I have to keep distracting my mind because if I start to think about reality, it stops feeling real. I feel my inner mind drifting away someone else and I have to reach out and grab it and bring it back to this reality.
I'm terrified that it's going to drift too far and I won't be able to reach it. I like it here. I'm finally clean and have no desire to do any drug or even drink. I just want to live a normal happy life and have a family with my current girlfriend and die a gray old man surrounded by my kids and grandkids and hopefully great grandkids. But I feel like I'm destined to lose my mind and live out life as a vegetable.
I know this isn't a place for medical advice but I'm not sure where to turn? Do I join some sort of narcotics anonymous group? Do I go talk to a doctor and have them scan my brain and run tests? Do I go talk to a shrink and let him prescribe me some kind of anti-psychotic that will make me a zombie? Do I go to church and try to find a spiritual way to deal with it? I just don't know.
I mean things really stop feeling real. If I think about it too much I end up right back on the floor feeling my body reliving the same seizure over and over again. It starts to feel like that's all I ever do is have those seizures and that all of this life is just my brain trying to escape the pain of the seizures by creating an alternate reality. It begins to feel so real that I just focus on the seizures and I slip away. God even writing about it now puts me back in that same place and it terrifies me. I don't want to be stuck there forever I just want to be normal.
Last edited by Dee74; 02-06-2012 at 08:05 PM. Reason: removed link
Administrator
Join Date: Apr 2007
Location: Australia
Posts: 211,443
Hi Josha
Welcome
I have no experience with spice - it came out after I quit all that stuff.
I really think you need some professional medical advice - and yeah probably some form of tests etc to determine what's going on.
That way you can get the help you need...or set your mind at rest, y'know?
D
Welcome
I have no experience with spice - it came out after I quit all that stuff.
I really think you need some professional medical advice - and yeah probably some form of tests etc to determine what's going on.
That way you can get the help you need...or set your mind at rest, y'know?
D
Member
Thread Starter
Join Date: Feb 2012
Location: New Orleans, LA
Posts: 4
yea i think i really need to see a doctor but i'm worried they won't be able to do much. i was reading other links like this one - drug.addictionblog.org/spice-synthetic-marijuana-side-effects/ - and there are people who are having the same problems 
i don't ever go to a doctor what do i do pull one out of the phone book and hope for the best?
Dan
5:09 pm
January 25th, 2012
I recently smoked spice about 4 months ago. I’ve never smoked any type of weed or done any drugs before this. I took 4 1/2 hits, started to fall into it, the mind alter I had was unbelievable. if I’d close my eyes, I felt like I was 20 feet behind myself, the entire time I didn’t know who I was, who anyone was, I thought I was dead, I didn’t have any realization that I’m even alive or anything existed, couldn’t feel anything, it was like 100 things happening at once in one plain eye sight yet it was really only me spinning and screaming in a field for 1 1/2 hours. I wish I could explain what I saw, but it would take so long to explain.
A couple months later, I started randomly getting a feeling of almost like being on the edge of reality, like I don’t really exist, and everything pauses, again; extremely hard to explain. Anyway, I got an MRI, and got diagnosed with panic attacks. They help I guess, it’s starting to go away, though.
Don’t smoke Spice.
5:09 pm
January 25th, 2012
I recently smoked spice about 4 months ago. I’ve never smoked any type of weed or done any drugs before this. I took 4 1/2 hits, started to fall into it, the mind alter I had was unbelievable. if I’d close my eyes, I felt like I was 20 feet behind myself, the entire time I didn’t know who I was, who anyone was, I thought I was dead, I didn’t have any realization that I’m even alive or anything existed, couldn’t feel anything, it was like 100 things happening at once in one plain eye sight yet it was really only me spinning and screaming in a field for 1 1/2 hours. I wish I could explain what I saw, but it would take so long to explain.
A couple months later, I started randomly getting a feeling of almost like being on the edge of reality, like I don’t really exist, and everything pauses, again; extremely hard to explain. Anyway, I got an MRI, and got diagnosed with panic attacks. They help I guess, it’s starting to go away, though.
Don’t smoke Spice.
Member
Thread Starter
Join Date: Feb 2012
Location: New Orleans, LA
Posts: 4
Jeeze I'm finding more and more stories about these long term effects
What the hell did I do to myself and how do I fix this?!?!?
i believe that over time spice must change your chemical makeup in your body bcuz after a yr of not smoking i still feel diff and i allways feel like something isnt right,and i battle frequently with discerning between dreams and reality,this stuff has really bad long term effects
yo I smoke spice a lot (demon) and I've tried a few others like (happy guy) but recently I smoked and tripped THE **** OUT crawling around in the bushes thinking I was in purgatory I litteraly lost my mind the next two days reality looked completly fake like life was a vivid dream, and i kept having thought of suicide no joke and i really dont want to kill myself but that **** was rotting my mind, anyway I ended up going to gnc and got a supplement called gaba which is a natural mood enhancer so I could curb the whole suicide thing even though I felt like I was still in a dream world, I emptied 4 capsules straight in my mouth and did the same for about 4 to 5 days, after a week i finally got my sense of reality back. and I used to think it was just about mental control, but what actually happens it turns out that spice actually starts to kill your dopamine receptors thats why you freak out and hallucinate, and some people have gone into comas, I know of two people around here in virginia who went into comas after spice. It seems all fine and dandy but eventually that **** will **** your ass up and maybe permanetly
Member
Join Date: Feb 2012
Location: Hyper-emotional State
Posts: 23
Hey Josha. Welcome to the site. I'm new myself.
First and foremost I would go see a doctor. Have you ever seen a psychiatrist? Just talking to a therapist may help you sort things out.
Do you have a history of seizures? Other than from the drugs?
You can go to an urgent care center if you like. Or you can look for a family practice doctor in the phone book. They are type of general doctor that can assess you and then refer you to the appropriate specialist.
Also, your job may have some sort of employee assistance program. They usually offer some free counseling sessions. I used this through a past employer and it was really helpful. The counselor referred me to a psychiatrist.
I hate to hear you sounding so distressed and I hope this helps.
What you're experiencing could be something totally unrelated to the drug use itself. You could just be suffering from anxiety related to the experience of the seizures.
Keep in touch.
First and foremost I would go see a doctor. Have you ever seen a psychiatrist? Just talking to a therapist may help you sort things out.
Do you have a history of seizures? Other than from the drugs?
You can go to an urgent care center if you like. Or you can look for a family practice doctor in the phone book. They are type of general doctor that can assess you and then refer you to the appropriate specialist.
Also, your job may have some sort of employee assistance program. They usually offer some free counseling sessions. I used this through a past employer and it was really helpful. The counselor referred me to a psychiatrist.
I hate to hear you sounding so distressed and I hope this helps.
What you're experiencing could be something totally unrelated to the drug use itself. You could just be suffering from anxiety related to the experience of the seizures.
Keep in touch.
*Grateful*
Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: Midwest
Posts: 2,619
Josh,
I will say a prayer for you for your mind to stop "fixing" on it. I do think it is really good that you no longer want to use though. I do think you really should STOP reading the online stories. They can even create more symptoms you don't even have.
Seeing a General Practioner or an Medical Doctor might be a great place to start.
Hang in there! we too are here for you!
Lily
I will say a prayer for you for your mind to stop "fixing" on it. I do think it is really good that you no longer want to use though. I do think you really should STOP reading the online stories. They can even create more symptoms you don't even have.
Seeing a General Practioner or an Medical Doctor might be a great place to start.
Hang in there! we too are here for you!
Lily
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