Backandforth
Member
I decided that I should probably introduce myself. I feel weird admitting this, but I have not been a member of an online message board (if that's even what it's called) since I was in middle school around 2001. Back then it was just me and some online friends role-playing and whatnot, but when I got to high school I just stopped. I would say I have pretty moderate to severe Social Anxiety. When I was younger I became overweight and was taunted incessantly for it, and as a result I withdrew from many social situations in favor of playing video games. I had friends, but I tended to keep to myself unless someone else spoke to me first. It was a pretty weird time for me because at the same time I gained all of the weight I realized that I was attracted to members of the same sex as well. This wasn't something I understood or wanted to talk about so it forced me to withdraw even more.
When I got to high school I became determined to lose all of the weight and did so in my sophomore year. By my junior year I found the courage to come out of the closet and had my first boyfriend. During this time period and the years following I grew in confidence because I was finally considered to be physically attractive by my peers. I worked a number of part-time jobs and was able to make new friends pretty easily for the most part. After I graduated high school some of the issues started coming back to haunt me. I had a tendency to push everyone away from myself because of my insecurities. If I had acne, in my mind I was unworthy of any friendship or kindness and I would say things to hurt others just so they wouldn't be able to get close enough to see my imperfections. I realize now that those were irrational fears that caused my behavior, but they still occur to this day although I'm a lot better at rationalizing them.
So a few months into college I sunk into a deep depression. I have had on and off depression for most of my life, but this time it caused me to end up in a fight with my stepfather and I decided to quit school and move in with my friend in a nearby city. I was working three jobs and my schedule was the opposite of a normal one. I don't know why I'm sharing this, but I figure I might as well be honest. I was a male dancer/performer at a nightclub for a while and I also cleaned a company from 4-10 a.m. My third job was mostly odd jobs given to me by the same employer. Eventually I developed horrible insomnia to the point where I was not sleeping for days. I couldn't sleep at all until I reached the point of utter exhaustion and I would pass out for an hour or two. It was so bad that I started developing ulcers and nothing I tried was working to help me.
I never wanted to try medication, but here I was, a 21 year old guy and I was bawling uncontrollably on my way to each job and thinking about suicide obsessively. Eventually I quit the dancing and the odd jobs to try and get myself sorted out. I was referred to a psychiatrist because my doctor didn't know what else to do. They started trying different antidepressants on me...Zoloft made me overly-stimulated to where I felt like I had just injected caffeine into my eyeballs, so obviously a no-go for insomnia. Effexor made my appetite disappear altogether and when I was attempting to eat dinner with my family I barfed on the table. I was close to just dealing with never sleeping for the rest of my life until the psychiatrist prescribed me Remeron and Klonopin.
They were my miracle combination! The first night I took them, I slept 18 hours. At the time I figured that it was just my body making up for all of the sleep I had lost. Unfortunately, it seemed that whenever I slept it was for at least 10 hours and more than likely 12+. Compared to the hell I went through before the meds I decided I would rather deal with sleeping too much and stayed on them. Well throughout the years the psychiatrists increased my dosages quite a bit. I was taking 45 mg of Remeron and 3 mg of klonopin a day at one point and I became a real-life zombie. I smoked weed from time to time, I wasn't an everyday user, but I had begun to think that it had made me permanently stupid. I always felt like I was in a haze and it became difficult for me to be around anyone who didn't smoke weed because I was so slow I couldn't even put a sentence together. My memory was good for about five seconds and my memories of the distant past hardly existed. I decided to stop taking them...HUGE. MISTAKE.
I quickly realized that the medications were now a part of my brain because without them I couldn't speak without my jaw quivering, my entire body began having spasms, I felt electrical zaps in my brain, I couldn't stop sweating and soaked through all of my clothes, I felt TERRIFIED, the most terrified I had ever felt in my entire life until that moment. I always thought panic attacks were just people being overly dramatic and craving attention, but I was dead wrong. I experienced my first panic attack ever and I legitimately thought that I was dying. When I reinstated the meds and told my psychiatrist about what I experienced, he just seemed apathetic and made me feel like I was severely mentally unstable. Hey, it was his job I suppose, but I never dreamed about cutting off peoples' skin and fashioning myself a cute pair of ugg boots (JOKE). I only went to a psychiatrist because I was out of options and totally desperate. He tried to tell me it was just my underlying anxiety coming back, but I had never in my life experienced anxiety that caused me to fear I was actually dying at that very moment. If anything I had been more depressed. He told me they went hand-in-hand. I believed him because he was a doctor, but looking back on it I know he just needed to keep making money.
So basically these meds ruled my life. I forgot to bring them with me when I traveled a few times and it resulted in the horrible tremors and sweats and terrors every time. I ended up making a fool of myself on a few occasions which I'll leave out since this is already pretty lengthy, but it cost me a job, opportunities for higher education, and countless other things as well. I totaled two cars in two years with no record of car accidents prior to taking the meds, and the second accident left me with severe nerve damage to my left arm. After the second accident I decided to quit klonopin altogether after tapering and I did it with success, but it has been hell. I now have terrible social anxiety and it's difficult for me to go anywhere. I go to a commuter college twice a week, but I don't have friends anymore. I don't work. I don't do anything because I'm so afraid to go out into public and I live in my parent's basement. I should also mention that remeron caused me to gain 40 lbs. and because of that the self-confidence I used to have is long-gone. I tried to go off of remeron shortly after klonopin, but it proved to be too difficult to manage. By the seventh day I had three major panic attacks in public and it caused me to reinstate once more. Now I'm just biding my time until the winter semester is over and my classes are finished so that I can get off of it for good...I just have to figure out how to cope with the anxiety that's sure to follow. And that is why I have joined SocialPhobiaWorld, in a nutshell! (Clearly a Coco de Mer nut since that was a veryyyyy long post)
Note: I initially posted this as a reply to the first thread. I quickly figured out it belongs here!
When I got to high school I became determined to lose all of the weight and did so in my sophomore year. By my junior year I found the courage to come out of the closet and had my first boyfriend. During this time period and the years following I grew in confidence because I was finally considered to be physically attractive by my peers. I worked a number of part-time jobs and was able to make new friends pretty easily for the most part. After I graduated high school some of the issues started coming back to haunt me. I had a tendency to push everyone away from myself because of my insecurities. If I had acne, in my mind I was unworthy of any friendship or kindness and I would say things to hurt others just so they wouldn't be able to get close enough to see my imperfections. I realize now that those were irrational fears that caused my behavior, but they still occur to this day although I'm a lot better at rationalizing them.
So a few months into college I sunk into a deep depression. I have had on and off depression for most of my life, but this time it caused me to end up in a fight with my stepfather and I decided to quit school and move in with my friend in a nearby city. I was working three jobs and my schedule was the opposite of a normal one. I don't know why I'm sharing this, but I figure I might as well be honest. I was a male dancer/performer at a nightclub for a while and I also cleaned a company from 4-10 a.m. My third job was mostly odd jobs given to me by the same employer. Eventually I developed horrible insomnia to the point where I was not sleeping for days. I couldn't sleep at all until I reached the point of utter exhaustion and I would pass out for an hour or two. It was so bad that I started developing ulcers and nothing I tried was working to help me.
I never wanted to try medication, but here I was, a 21 year old guy and I was bawling uncontrollably on my way to each job and thinking about suicide obsessively. Eventually I quit the dancing and the odd jobs to try and get myself sorted out. I was referred to a psychiatrist because my doctor didn't know what else to do. They started trying different antidepressants on me...Zoloft made me overly-stimulated to where I felt like I had just injected caffeine into my eyeballs, so obviously a no-go for insomnia. Effexor made my appetite disappear altogether and when I was attempting to eat dinner with my family I barfed on the table. I was close to just dealing with never sleeping for the rest of my life until the psychiatrist prescribed me Remeron and Klonopin.
They were my miracle combination! The first night I took them, I slept 18 hours. At the time I figured that it was just my body making up for all of the sleep I had lost. Unfortunately, it seemed that whenever I slept it was for at least 10 hours and more than likely 12+. Compared to the hell I went through before the meds I decided I would rather deal with sleeping too much and stayed on them. Well throughout the years the psychiatrists increased my dosages quite a bit. I was taking 45 mg of Remeron and 3 mg of klonopin a day at one point and I became a real-life zombie. I smoked weed from time to time, I wasn't an everyday user, but I had begun to think that it had made me permanently stupid. I always felt like I was in a haze and it became difficult for me to be around anyone who didn't smoke weed because I was so slow I couldn't even put a sentence together. My memory was good for about five seconds and my memories of the distant past hardly existed. I decided to stop taking them...HUGE. MISTAKE.
I quickly realized that the medications were now a part of my brain because without them I couldn't speak without my jaw quivering, my entire body began having spasms, I felt electrical zaps in my brain, I couldn't stop sweating and soaked through all of my clothes, I felt TERRIFIED, the most terrified I had ever felt in my entire life until that moment. I always thought panic attacks were just people being overly dramatic and craving attention, but I was dead wrong. I experienced my first panic attack ever and I legitimately thought that I was dying. When I reinstated the meds and told my psychiatrist about what I experienced, he just seemed apathetic and made me feel like I was severely mentally unstable. Hey, it was his job I suppose, but I never dreamed about cutting off peoples' skin and fashioning myself a cute pair of ugg boots (JOKE). I only went to a psychiatrist because I was out of options and totally desperate. He tried to tell me it was just my underlying anxiety coming back, but I had never in my life experienced anxiety that caused me to fear I was actually dying at that very moment. If anything I had been more depressed. He told me they went hand-in-hand. I believed him because he was a doctor, but looking back on it I know he just needed to keep making money.
So basically these meds ruled my life. I forgot to bring them with me when I traveled a few times and it resulted in the horrible tremors and sweats and terrors every time. I ended up making a fool of myself on a few occasions which I'll leave out since this is already pretty lengthy, but it cost me a job, opportunities for higher education, and countless other things as well. I totaled two cars in two years with no record of car accidents prior to taking the meds, and the second accident left me with severe nerve damage to my left arm. After the second accident I decided to quit klonopin altogether after tapering and I did it with success, but it has been hell. I now have terrible social anxiety and it's difficult for me to go anywhere. I go to a commuter college twice a week, but I don't have friends anymore. I don't work. I don't do anything because I'm so afraid to go out into public and I live in my parent's basement. I should also mention that remeron caused me to gain 40 lbs. and because of that the self-confidence I used to have is long-gone. I tried to go off of remeron shortly after klonopin, but it proved to be too difficult to manage. By the seventh day I had three major panic attacks in public and it caused me to reinstate once more. Now I'm just biding my time until the winter semester is over and my classes are finished so that I can get off of it for good...I just have to figure out how to cope with the anxiety that's sure to follow. And that is why I have joined SocialPhobiaWorld, in a nutshell! (Clearly a Coco de Mer nut since that was a veryyyyy long post)
Note: I initially posted this as a reply to the first thread. I quickly figured out it belongs here!
