In February of 2022, my friend was sleeping over my house and we decided to smoke his new weed pen. I don’t remember how many pulls I took, but it must’ve been over 10 as I completely passed out. I woke up the next day feeling very strange, feeling as if I was still high. I ignored it and didn’t think much of it, assuming it would go away eventually. 10 months later and I still feel the same way.

I feel very alone in my symptoms of DP, as most of the cases I’ve read online from people suffering with it have “episodes” of derealization. Like, it comes and goes for them. In my circumstance, I feel derealized 24/7. There hasn’t been a day since that night in February where I haven’t felt like everything is hazy or dreamlike.

I was on 3 different antipsychotics that were prescribed to me back-to-back to cure my DP. None of them were helping. The first one I took, Abilify, slightly lowered the intensity of my feelings, but wasn’t enough to fully get rid of them. Plus, the side effects were very severe and left me twitching uncontrollably all over my body. I discontinued all treatment shortly after my 3rd prescription as my therapist told me it was very strange that I was prescribed such intense medications back-to-back, and I honestly feel like they’ve made my symptoms of DP worse overall.

I continued smoking weed until September. In the 3 times since that I’ve gone back to it afterwards, I have a completely different reaction to it. I used to smoke all the time and never had a bad trip, but now I start freaking out. My heart races, I think about things I never wanted to think about, and I shake so badly that it made me never want to smoke again. I’ve quit vaping but started smoking cigarettes in December. I’ve heard nicotine helps DP, but it really hasn’t done anything for me to aid in recovery. I’m stopping smoking altogether tonight.

I really don’t know what to do anymore. Every day I wake up struggling to remember what’s been going on in my life lately. I feel almost as if I have Alzheimer’s, like my brain is slowly rotting away. Nothing genuinely excites me anymore, I struggle with basic day-to-day activities, and feel like I’m watching my life get wasted right before my eyes. It’s honestly caused me to feel suicidal as it’s so intense that I feel like it will never get better. At this point I’ve tried medicine, CBT, realization techniques, trying to “accept it”, but nothing seems to work.

I’m considering purchasing this depersonalization manual I saw online, but I don’t know much about it or if it’s actually effective in curing DP. I’m willing to do anything to get rid of it at this point. I’ve made a post here before about it but I can’t stress how intense these feelings are. If anyone out there has any tips on what I should do next it would be greatly appreciated. I can’t keep going on like this anymore. I just can’t.