| My entire life I have experienced DP, I am 33. I was given up for adoption while born with Temporal Lobe Epilepsy, spending the first six months of my life in the hospital being treated with Phenobarbital and Depakote, diagnosed ADHD in 1974 but left untreated and diagnosed with the personality disorder Schizotypal in 1994. Since as long as I can remember I have always felt like a stranger unto myself. Even as a toddler I remember looking in the mirror and wondering who I was looking at, sometimes I would get in trouble for telling stories about what things I thought I had done but actually hadn’t, my subconscious was that strong even back then. Late in high school and for a short time after, I smoked pot to excess, at least a half ounce a day (it was cheap in the 80’s) for about two years straight, until I ended up completely paranoid. During this time I had also dropped acid twice, smoked and snorted cocaine and indulged in some mesqueline once and I can’t forget about the hash and hash oil. In 1989 I fell from a roof while at work and landed head first on a set of concrete stairs. I suffered a crushed left wrist and forearm, demolished left hip and a left orbital implosion which severed my left optic nerve and left me with left temporal lobe bruising due to the incredible amount of swelling. This tragic event killed me for 3 minutes and the odds were 60/40 against me but I made it out. The following lawsuit left me with a net worth of over $500,000 which just helped to let the illness gain more power over me, because with the money, I could be anyone I wanted to be even though I had no idea who “I” was. Needless to say, the money was gone within 5 years. At one time I was taking a combination of 6mgs of Xanax, 30mgs of Valium, 500mgs of Depakote, 360 mgs of Inderal LA and 50mgs of Prozac all in one day. My resting heart rate before the Inderal was 140bpm, now it is around 80bpm, BP was always fine. This is due to the over production of adrenaline, cause unknown. Cushing’s Syndrome, to me, is suspected though I need to see an Endocrinologist. When I was young the only way I could deal with it was to push myself to the limit causing my body to use all it’s adrenaline. The way that worked the best was to drive at insane speeds down roads that would have killed normal people but with my focus and desire to expend that adrenaline I could drive through downtown Boston MA at over 120mph, blowing red lights and dodging pedestrians. Though the best was 140+mph police chases either on the highway or through the suburbs of Boston (they could never catch me). My mind was thinking so fast and so caught up in its self that I literally couldn’t drive slow, if I did you would swear I was driving drunk. During recent neuropsych testing they calculated that my brain was operating at more than 6 times the speed of a normal brain, as determined through the Raurshock(sp?) test. IQ is 145. The Inderal was my idea, not my shrinks. It has been a god send for anxiety and panic but I am still taking the Xanax so I can stay somewhat in touch with reality. My combination of illnesses is overly frightening to me due to the nature of the thoughts that invade my mind from my subconscious, very morbid, delusional and fanciful thoughts of homicide or suicide, fantasy thoughts or mainly “what if” thoughts. Sometimes I’ll hold my arm out, look at it and not believe that it is part of me, more like I am an alien inside someone else’s body. Looking at the world through some one else’s eyes. Speaking of eyes, I am blind in my left eye, so I have no depth perception, hence 2 dimensional vision which just makes everything even more surreal. Sometimes I’ll look around and it’s as if I am walking through the little city they show at the beginning of the PBS show “Mr. Rogers Neighborhood”. A lot of times I’ll be walking out of a store back to my car and I’ll see my car yet I can’t believe it’s mine, even though I know it is. I’ll just think, “wow, I actually have a car”. Sometimes with the “what if” thoughts that float through my mind I just feel as if there is no hope and want to die. Add in the depression and guilt from the divorce and even I am surprised I am still alive. Also I have many memory lapses, such as driving to work and not remembering certain parts of the drive. As in “Wow, I am at this light already, what happened to the last three miles?”. The same can occur during any activity, working, surfing the net, watching a movie, making love etc. It is like I wake from a haze not knowing where I am or what I was doing. It takes but a few seconds to recover but is very odd to say the least. Now, to make matters worse, my wife has left me because she can’t live with my illness any longer. We were together for 10 years then right out of the blue, just a week after our sixth wedding anniversary, she said she wanted a divorce and that it was too late to fix anything. All I want is for people to understand, is that too much to ask and why is society so afraid of psychological pain? I am afraid to wake up tomorrow. |
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