How are you all doing now? It does sound like anxiety is, if not the source of your troubles, then at least a potentiatior. It's remarkable how powerful anxiety can be on both your mind and body. Have you tried meditating or cognitive behavioral therapy? What about travel? It sounds too simple to be true, but travel is a powerful medicine. A trip to London when I was 23 helped me finally overcome, once and for all, a horrible, life-altering, half-a-decade experience with tinnitus, hyperacusis (intolerance of everyday sounds to the point of suicidal ideation), OCD, hypochondria, depression, and bipolar disorder.
You probably know about this already, but long-lasting, unchecked anxiety can manifest itself as a somatoform disorder, which means you exhibit very real and very distressing physical symptoms that mimic a range of diseases. I had terrible OCD and hypochondria and germaphobia for years and literally thought I had, or would soon manifest, conditions as unlikely as trichinosis, rabies, stroke, aneurysm, heart attack, multiple sclerosis, hypothyroidism, multiple-endocrine neoplasia (which runs in my family but which I do not have), diabetes, etc. On top of that, when I was 18, I developed tinnitus and hyperacusis from playing in loud bands. It changed the course of my life and kept me from playing music for years because I was constantly afraid I'd go deaf by age 21. I couldn't sleep because all I could hear was roaring and buzzing and crickets and ringing. My eardrum would spasm at the sound of my mom doing dishes even if I was in my bedroom with my door closed. I wore earplugs all the time--the worse thing you can do for a noise sensitivity but at least it kept the pain at bay! Moreover, I couldn't read a book or think straight (which is not a good thing for a writer) and feared that my life would just get worse and worse. I fucked up my first year of college because I couldn't read, focus, or do homework. I literally wanted to die and start over in another life (that was before I became an atheist and realized this life is an unlikely gift).
Eventually, I started slowly exposing myself to pink-noise through headphones as a way of rebuilding my tolerance to sound. I forced myself to start another band and write songs and play shows (with ample hearing protection of course). Every day after practice, my ears would ring so bad that I'd freak out, though objectively I knew the earplugs and firing-range headphones were actually preventing any damage. I also started seeing a therapist and learning a variety of coping mechanisms. This was the most difficult journey of my life, even worse than overcoming severe hypochondria,. It took about five years, but eventually I regained my tolerance to sound and can live a totally normal life without fearing I'm going to go permanently deaf. I also got to the point where I literally don't notice the ringing in my ears unless I consciously force myself to pay attention to it. It's still as loud as it was then, and I can even make it louder just by thinking about it, but I learned how to detach the anxiety from the sensation and it no longer bothers me. Haha, I'm in a quiet living room right now and it literally sounds like a plane is idling in here with me, and I feel totally fine about it. When I was 18, I would have been in tears over this and praying for death.
Maybe you could look at it another way. Maybe you got used to functioning at a higher cognitive level, and when you stopped taking nootropics after experiencing some worrisome symptoms, you noticed a totally normal return to your old self. You got distressed by the symptoms and fell into a negative-feedback loop of anxiety --> worsened symptoms --> more anxiety --> despair --> continued symptoms.
I can totally see how this might happen. I've tried several racetams (pira-, ani-, oxi-, phenylpira-, colu-, faso-, and now prami-) and have noticed a dramatic return to baseline cognition whenever I cycle off. It worries me, but then I remember how anxiety could just make it worse, so I try to be mindful and just accept my normal dumb self. I think the racetams are subtle but powerful enough to artificially increase your capacity for abstract thought in a state-dependent manner, so that when you come off them, the disjunction between your nootropic self and your actual self is kind of alarming. Throw anxiety and a hard-to-overcome fatalism into the mix, and you can convince yourself that you're untreatable.
There's a Sartre quote that I may be misremembering, but which has always helped me in desperate times. The gist of it is: He who accepts himself as he is now, as what he will always be, accepts himself on bad faith.
I am in no way trying to invalidate your experience or suggesting that you "just get over it." I'm just sharing my experience and encouraging you not to give into despair. Hopefully it helps!
Edited by Tram, 01 March 2015 - 08:43 PM.
