stuck in a cycle of death

Hi there,

I am posting here in order to find people who are experiencing similar to what I am and any strategies they use to overcome this problem..

It all started about 3 months ago. I was trying hallucinogenic mushrooms (Psilocybin) for the first time. The trip started out okay and then after a while I felt I was trapped in that world and would never get out (because time was so slow and it seemed like I was in a never ending cycle). This was a feeling worse than anything imaginable including death and this caused a great amount of stress and anxiety and I ended up having a really BAD trip (I think it's called ego death). Fortunately the mushrooms wore off and I came out (I was praying to God I would get out and I felt he answered my prayers by releasing me from that world). Anyway that was that.

Ever since that experience I felt like something was missing from my mind, like a chunk of my brain had been cut out, but not causing any noticeable change in me. About a month after the experience I would go to bed like usual, but one night I couldn't stop thinking about the mushroom experience and how I was trapped, and that reality started causing anxiety making me confused with what reality actually is. This stressed me out heaps, making me really hot, so I would take the sheets off, but then I would get really cold, and then hot, and then cold, and I was in a cycle of getting hot and cold accompanied by great amounts of anxiety. That night I ended up lying outside my house on the porch and not getting any sleep at all. That's only the beginning.

A night or two after this event I would continue remembering the mushroom experience. And eventually I would be able to relax my mind. It was at this point I heard a sound which I knew came from inside my head (kind of like a pseudo-hallucination) I recognised that it wasn't a natural sound, kind of sounded like a synthesiser playing for 1/4 of a second. That freaked me out but I managed to get to sleep. The next night I thought I heard a ripping sound in my head for a 1/4 of a second. And the night after that I thought I heard myself say my own name. During some of the days surrounding these nights I would feel weird feelings about how my soul was trapped in this world or that I was God and everyone is connected to me or everyone is just in my head. CRAZY thoughts! This freaked me out too contributing to my anxiety. So I went to see my doctor.

At first I told him about the trouble sleeping and asked for some valium which he gave me, but then he also gave me olanzapine (an atypical antipsychotic) just incase. That freaked me out, I instantly knew he thought I had schizophrenia. So I didn't take the olanzapine but I did take the valium here and there which started to help. Anyway I get a call from my doctor saying that he wants me to start on the olanzapine immediately. I guess he was discussing me with another doctor and he recommended I go on the meds. So I started on a 10mg tablet of olanzapine, and got a referral to a therapist. After about 23 days since I started the olanzapine I saw a therapist and I explained the whole situation and he wanted me to lower the dosage to 5mg. The 10mg had been helping me sleep, at first I got really fatigued, but eventually I got used to it. After a while however, you really start to notice the side effects of olanzapine. It basically made me brain dead, and depriving me the ability to feel any emotion. So I really hated this effect and stopped taking the olanzapine after about a month of taking it.

I went back to my therapist and told him I had stopped taking it and he didn't like the idea and was telling me it was likely I might have schizophrenia (because my cousin has it). Anyway it was my choice but he tried to help me start some cognitive behavioural therapy sessions. I started taking the valium more to help me sleep, but you can only take valium so much before you become dependent on it so I decided to stop. This was about 2 days ago. So I've been on no olanzapine for about a week and no valium for about 2 days. Yesterday I was really tired and I guess I have some anxiety related to sleep from all the previous experiences, and when I try to relax my mind, I start to hear sounds, from inside my head, which freaks me out and gives me more anxiety. It is kind of like they are thoughts, except I notice them more, and sometimes they are loud and hard to ignore. So the only way to get rid of these sounds and the anxiety is to just stay awake. Because it is impossible to relax and sleep with them going on in the background.

So now I am stuck in this cycle of death, not being able to relax, because this allows the sounds to overtake my head creating anxiety. I used to listen to music to help me sleep but now this doesn't even work. I'm really tired and haven't slept in two days and am afraid I wont be able to go to sleep tonight. I feel I will just drop at any moment from exhaustion. I don't know how many days I will be able to go without sleep. I really do not want to start back on meds, especially the valium because of the dependence. I'm starting yoga tomorrow, don't know how much good that will do anyway. I don't know how many people will read this, but if you have any advice for my situation I'd love to read about it.

Thanks for reading,

Regards,

HonkeyTonk

Hi HT. Welcome to the sandbox.

Well, I have no first-hand experience with hallucinogenics, precisely for the reasons you mentioned. Like it or not, it sounds like the trip triggered a schizophrenic episode.

The first thing I would do is let go of any negative associations you might have with the "schizophrenic" label. I dated this one guy in college. He was a brilliant chemist, funny, and a carbon copy of Erroll Flynn. 27 and just got his doctorate. He also had schizophrenia. We broke up over religious preferences, not because he had to walk across the room and turn off an imaginary stereo. In other words, even if the schizophrenic episodes continue, you're not screwed, and you're not necessarily going to be shunned.

Since you're doing yoga for relaxation, you might want to look into guided meditation. See where the stuff in your head takes you, and see if they can guide you through it--kind of a twist on the cognitive-behavioral thing. I'm not intimately familiar with meditation or anything like that, but I'm wondering if processing this trip while you're not actually tripping would help you work through it.

You might also want to post and/or browse the schizophrenia forum for additional answers.

Hopefully, someone more knowledgeable that I am will throw in their 2 copper as well.

I've done mushrooms (among other things) quite frequently, and am on them right now.

Psilocybin and all hallucinogens that act on the 5-HT2A receptor (most of the common ones) can do weird things to people with latent schizophrenia. They can also do weird things to people with mere depression due to the disregulation of all serotonin (5-HT) receptors that occurs in people with many of the common forms of depression (as well as other mental disorders). Anxiety, which you seem to have, is one of them. I wouldn't be quick to ascribe the label of schizophrenia to what you have. I've never experienced anything of the sort myself, but I've seen people feel lasting effects of various sorts (both positive and negative) from many different hallucinogenic substances, and I think this may just be one of them (given how bad your trip was, any lasting effects from it would be wholly negative, I'd think). They usually go away after a few months at most. The valium and olanzapine probably actually did nothing but prolong the whole experience (adding drugs randomly usually does little to help something drug-related, and olanzapine being an atypical antipsychotic is probably a seratonin agonist, which could just make it worse).

It'll probably just go away relatively soon, or at least diminish a lot.

When you take mushrooms, what essentially happens is your souls filters get turned off, that is why you start seeing things that "aren't there". When you turn off your filters, all kinds of things can start influencing you. Nothing that passes through you leaves you unaffected. There are all kinds of things out there that are way beyond our comprehension.
The mushroom, although an incredibly useful tool, is also an incredibly powerful tool. You shouldn't use an chain-saw if you never even used a knife.

The shamans who have been using this for thousands of years know this, and they treat the mushroom with utmost respect. The very fact that you "tried" mushrooms means that you where FAR from ready to use it, like 99.9% of users. No wonder it has such a bad reputation.

What you describe to me is soul loss, or medically known as PTSD.

Here is a few recommendations to regain your sanity:
Start meditating. Meditation helps with retrieving lost parts of the soul within the spirit realm. (That is exactly what happened, you lost part of your soul in that realm.)
Record all dreams you are having. Recording your dreams helps with increasing dream time. You want to increase your non-drug induced time in the spirit realm to a maximum.
The idea is that your body regulate your filters gradually, so that you can enter the realm without being influenced by unwanted influences. This is most likely to happen while in deep meditation or in a dream.
Look into astral travel. Because the filters are turned off by the body itself, you will not be able to achieve it until your spirit can navigate itself without it being influenced by unwanted influences.

To fully recover you will have to go back to that state of endless cycles, but not one of death, but one of rebirth, that is, without drugs.

PS: Anyone who has ever been on an hallucinogen or in deep meditation will know, there is a spirit realm, and it isn't always a friendly place. And anyone who has taken an hallucinogen without having been in truly deep meditation, is an fool, and is lucky if he still has his sanity.
You don't toy with Hallucinogens, or they will toy with you. They will pull you, twist you, expand you to the size of the universe, shrink you into an singularity, chuck you in hell, or chuck you in heaven.

Remember, if you can't drive a go-kart, don't climb into the monster-truck with rocket boosters.

Oh, and your weird thoughts, don't be scared of them, investigate. You might just find that you are right into thinking that everything is a figment of your imagination. I haven't been able to prove that anything exists outside my mind so far, and the very fact that it is possible to astral travel, and the ease of which the conciousness is changed by an chemical, to me is testimony that we truly know absolutely nothing for sure.

These past years i have been in a very similar situation. I am deeply sorry for what you are going through. i want you to know, ive made it through it. it gets better. i promise you. i will pray for. pray whenever you get the chance, and when this is happening to you. i can promise you god helped me through it and he can help you too. good luck, your in my prayers. and dont give up hope. i know the whole big picture of life just feels screwed up, but dont give up.

oh, and you are not schizophrenic , dont even let it get to you