So I crashed for about 18 hours day after my last update, then I crashed for like 6 hours earlier today, but tonight…for now… I am back. I listened to a song playing in a TV show episode and felt the music on another level than I have so far. I sit here with tears in my eyes with how beautiful it sounds to me. I have not felt this in so long.
I won’t say it’s 100%, I’ve learned better than to say that, but it’s amazing. It probably means I will crash again soon, but for now I’ll enjoy it.
End of month ~44 months post-fin.
I did crash after my last update, but since then I’ve seen some changes/improvements.
Despite the rough start, best month post-PFS. This starts the 4 month timer again for me as I approach 4 years post-fin.
Welp, look what starting the clock again gets me.
I felt VERY slight signs this time. Over past week I slowly found myself not as motivated to watch darker shows, only wanted to watch light stuff. Also, just started feeling slight recurrence of anxiety. Very slight though, like on its own I wouldn’t even have made note of it. It is there though when I focus on it. Tonight I’ve got muscle twitches all over and I can’t sleep. Got as slight wired feeling, but nothing like before and no burning feeling like my nervous system is on fire.
Mentally I’m ok, like 8/10. I could go play a video game or something right now and enjoy it, distract myself and ride it out. Not so much the case with many previous “crashes”.
I’m fairly certain this will pass in a few hours, and if previous patterns are followed I’ll get some more improvements on the rebound.
Continued to dip down, I’d say 7/10. Anxiety is my primary issue currently. I can still enjoy things, but is now being greatly affected by my anxiety. Only things that help are games and exercise.
This is going to be a much slower rebound it seems, hopefully a more permanent one though. Sleep so far is a bit better each night though at least. Maybe all I need is a good night’s sleep.
Edit: got 6.5 hours straight, plus 0.5 additional sleep. Feel rested but anxiety is increased upon waking and I have VERY mild brain burning.
Hi Henchman
Have you tried L Theanine along your long journey?
I did at one point very briefly. If I recall, I did not notice any significant change.
Since I’m replying to you, may as well post some update. Anxiety continues to be an issue as well as very light brain burning. Sleep seems to be improving very slowly. I hit 7 hr 15 min straight last night and have continually felt better upon awakening.
Note that I have been doing my exercise routine again and have been doing mild weight lifting with about 6-7km a day running. Some HIIT mixed in.
Having a REALLY rough month. Other than slight reprieves, my anxiety has ruled the month and I have been pretty miserable. Sleep is terrible, barely holding it together. I do live in the US, and am taking all the stuff going on here pretty hard, but I do not think that is the cause, it’s certainly not helping though. I have had to put blocks on all my news intake apps just to keep from breaking down into panic attacks. I think if I was well, I would be handling this much better.
Past two days have finally been better slightly. I don’t feel quite as hopeless and the anxiety is lessened. I got about 7 hours sleep both nights with minimal interruption. I’m heavy into the exercise again, and have been focusing on reducing my work load and playing video games and other things as distraction. I still have one week left to go in the month, so things are hopefully headed up so I can close out the month strong.
How many times have I been in this position now? Where I’m absolutely terrified and I don’t know what’s next? So many times, and I’m so tired. I shouldn’t complain, as I’ve had it much better than many or even most on this forum, but it’s still enough to break a man.
I may have found the source of my issues this month, but my fear is that I’ve found it too late. I have been snacking on pumpkin seeds this month, as a “healthy” snack. I’ve been eating a good bit of them, not every day, but many days at night and pretty much whenever I’m hungry between meals. I can’t remember when I started, but I think it roughly aligns when I started having a tougher time. I don’t know what made me think to check, but sure enough, it’s a known DHT blocker. I just chugged a bunch of water and tried to make myself throw up. I got a little bit of the ones I ate tonight out, but for the most part was unsuccessful. I finally saw some blood and decided that I should probably stop.
I’m sitting here now, unable to sleep (again), with that familiar wired feeling again, with hot/cold flashes (again), filled with anxiety and depression (again), anhedonia riddled (again), muscle twitches all over (again).
Now, I will say that I had it rough many days this month when I was traveling for work as well, and during my travel days/weeks I did not have any pumpkin seeds, so there may be multiple things at play, or the symptoms from ingestion may have lasted through the week, or it’s not the pumpkin seeds at all, who freakin’ knows? Regardless, I will not be eating anymore pumpkin seeds.
I now have to pray that the damage I’ve done here is reversible (again). I’ve done this song and dance so many times now and as always I’ll fall back on what I know. Cut caffeine. Focus on exercise, sleep hygiene, and trying to focus on the positives of what I still have. Maybe everyone is tired of me doing this (I know I am), because I’m well aware I’ve done this many times. I may feel better tomorrow, or even in the next hour, but I don’t know. It’s therapeutic for me and helpful for me to post here. To be able to look back through my posts when times are tougher, to remind myself of where I’ve been. I’ve been doing that tonight, it helps keep me from really going off the deep end. I see that I was in a similar state as recently as December, which gives me some hope. When these days happen seemingly randomly, I can deal with them. I know how to manage them and see them as part of the recovery process now. However, when they seem to have a trigger (hair tonic, pumpkin seeds, etc), that’s when I freak out as I lose confidence that my situation is temporary.
Having a really bad night, but hopefully that’s all it is. I wish everyone better health.
End of month update: (~45 months post-fin)
This month sucked.
I stopped eating the pumpkin seeds and have had periods of reprieve, but I’m up and down now and mostly down. My anxiety and depression are pretty debilitating at points. To give you an idea of how much I ate last month, it was about a 2lb. Bag which is now 7/8 gone over the course of 3 weeks - 1 month. I ate them often, and I ate quite a bit. Of course I have no idea if they were affecting me, but I haven’t had a streak of bad days like this in probably 1.5 years or more so It’s hard not to make the connection. Hopefully stopping those will lead to a return to baseline.
Yeah you gotta be careful with the nuts and seeds, you can react to every one of them differently. I seem to be fine with most of them but for my own safety I stay away from them besides my peanut butter I make myself with no other ingredients. We can eat so many things without thinking about it throughout the day, for example I’ve save for my recent crash have been feeling a bit better lately and realized that I haven’t eaten any green peas in quite a while which may have been a hidden offender in my diet making me feel worse, not severely so but enough to consistently keep me step under the best I can be at any given time. I’m going to more often try to replace them with broccoli and see how that goes as I know broccoli doesn’t do anything funky to me.
Since you’re having those dietary fluctuations at all it means your body is responding to normal things outside of things that cause huge spikes in the state of this or that in the body. There’s hope, I also do that thing to where I know what my body responds well to and how it responds to various things so I can do a weird “realign the nervous system” sort of thing based on what threw something out of whack.
Yeah, I need to be more careful with anything new I introduce into my diet. I don’t know why I didn’t just check.
I’ve fallen into the very swingy pattern I’m used to where things are really bad for a while and then I swing into a good place. No idea what this means long-term, and while this is overall a bad situation, I think fluctuations are better than other options. As we’ve hit on a few times in this thread, fluctuations seem to indicate that your body has the ability to improve. I could be building up to a crash though which is a thought that constantly terrifies me.
The bad spots are really tough, I’m doing my best to manage. I’m just trying to focus on being a better person on all levels, focus on what I can control. Leaning back into exercise. Only got 1.5 hours of shitty sleep last night. Just thankful that my anxiety seems low this morning and hopeful that tonight is much better sleepwise.
Yeah see you can’t tell what is going on really, the entire system is out of whack. I’ve found a lot rebound mechanics to my situation, its as if the body csnt keep anything in check and swings around constantly as it tries to compensate for all the chaos but this only does more damage sometimes leading to a never ending cycle. This also expends a monolithic amount of energy so it also leads to crushing fatigue. I’m still micromanahing my way around, not sure how long its been for me.
I think its also important you get regular exercise as even if it doesn’t feel like its doing anything it may get some wheels going internally in allowing your body to produce more of something it needs. I tend to sleep alright but because of work I can never get enough of it.
Yeah, I equate what’s going on as similar to ‘3 body problem’ if you all have read/watched that one. Trying to figure out when you’re gonna hit your ‘stable’ or ‘chaotic’ eras is a hopeless endeavor. You just gotta push ahead best you can regardless.
The exercise really helps me manage my anxiety, depression, and akathisia. I always fall back on that one as it got me out of the deepest hole of my original crash. I got a 2 hour nap on my plane yesterday and then 9 hours of sleep last night including 6 straight. A much better day today, start of another “stable era”, however short-lived that may be.
So after last post, things got really bad again or really swingy rather where I would feel terrible for a few hours then great, then terrible again. Every night it is a question of whether I will get sleep or not. I have extreme hot and cold flashes and a feeling of swelling or lightheadedness (hard to explain) constantly on and off. Brain burning and muscle twitches are also on and off. Anxiety, depression, anhedonia and ability to sleep is extremely fluctuating.
However, it has been very clear that overall arrow is up. Peaks higher every day, valleys lower every day, good time up each day, bad time down each day, sleep improving. It’s fucking terrifying, but overall situation right now is ok. Past 2 days I have felt close to normal for large portions of the day.
No idea what’s going on, but I just have to hold out hope I don’t crash and get worse. As long as I don’t get worse I can manage.
I just read through this, and I have many of the same symptoms and fluctuations…
I don’t know if I can take a lifetime of this, this is hell on earth. How do you cope?
At the start it was hell on earth as you probably read. If I did not get better I would absolutely not have been able to handle a lifetime of it. I would have made the logical choice and checked out of the perpetual torture that was my life. However, I did get better, and while things aren’t perfect now, they’re SO much better.
How long has it been? How far in are you? What are your symptoms?
There may be chances for similar improvement. If you are early in, I can absolutely give you advice with coping through the roughest. It won’t make things better, and things will progress slower than you think you can possibly handle, but I can tell you what I did to make it through.
I’m 5 months in with minimal improvments. Too many symptoms to list here. I only took 1 dose of that poison and this happened.
Even if things improve it still looks like a completely miserable life to me. A lifetime of nightmarish fluctuations, paralyzing fear of crashing from something again etc.
Sorry for being negative but as it stands right now I don’t see the point of going on.
I’ll say this, I’m much better nearing 14 months than I was at 5 months. I’m not cured, but I definitely am in a much liveable state, and don’t think of PFS every second of the day.
Give your body time friend, a lot can change
So glad you’re doing better. Time is all we can give it for the most part. There seem to be no shortcuts yet.
Have you improved on things like penis shrinkage and libido?