I have been living with DP for around 6 months now, and it has been nothing short of a crippling and frightening experience. It has made my everyday life such a challenge and has lasted consistently for so long now that I seriously feel like I’ll never recover from it. I’ve tried realization techniques, changing life habits like drinking more water and sleeping better, accepting it, taking medication, but nothing has seemed to work.

At the time in my life where my DP had started, I recently went through a car crash and had been in a very soul sucking relationship. I was also very stressed out with school as I was taking 7 college classes. The DP triggered one night when I smoked too much of my friend’s weed pen. It lasted for weeks on afterwards and up to this very moment as I speak.

I’m currently in therapy and have been prescribed two medications, one for depression (Effexor) and one for DP (Abilify). I’m only taking 2mg of Abilify at the moment, though my psychologist wants to see if a higher dosage would work. So far it hasn’t helped me all too much, the most it’s done is stabilize my symptoms and make them overall less intense. I do occasionally feel a sense of coming back to reality, but in the grand scheme of things it almost doesn’t matter. I suffer with DP 24/7, every waking moment is a feeling of being out of touch with reality so a minute or two of feeling normal again isn’t much for me. Not to mention the side effects are absolutely abysmal.

I continue to smoke weed as well as nicotine while being on the medication, which I know is really bad for me. At this point, I am in no doubt addicted to both. I have been thinking about quitting cold turkey just to help everything get on track better. Though I know smoking both is terrible, I really don’t know the fullest extent of my actions or how much worse it’s making my symptoms of DP. Please let me know if any of you have info on this.

I just really don’t know what to do anymore. I can’t keep living like this, it makes me feel like I don’t even want to be alive at times. I’m really trying to get my DP sorted out and over with as quickly as possible, but with how unpredictable the nature of DP is, it’s something I simply can’t guarantee. I need as much advice as I can get right now if any of you are willing to hear me out and help. I’m all out of options as to where to go next. If you’ve read this far then thank you, it’s seriously appreciated a ton.

TL;DR - Living with DP has been one of the worst experiences of my life and I’m at a total loss as to how to recover from it.