First of all, big thanks to everyone that contributes here, and takes the time to read the way too long avalanche of text that i just wrote.. I'm sorry i couldn't be more concise.
I hope i'm posting this in the correct section. And sorry for my dramatic post title.. but i feel like i arrived at the end of the road, these last few years I've been slipping away more and more into a dark abyss. And I'm extremely afraid i will never be able to get out of this nightmare. I've been contemplating suicide seriously for the first time this week, and the thought of it gives me more relieve than that it scares me.
I'm writing this post in the hope that someone could point me towards the correct medication/treatment/help for my problem, or could give me any kind of insight in what my illness could be. I will try to write down an explanation of what is wrong with me, for anyone willing to read through this ****, you have no idea how much i appreciate it. thanks.
My current situation:
• I'm currently extremely depressed, the cause of this depression has been an (unknown?) mental illness/disability(?) that has been plaguing me my whole life, at first I was just hoping it would go away, believing it might just be something temporary, something i might grow out of. When that didn't happen, i started to become extremely frustrated with myself, when nothing worked (therapy, medication), i started to become hopeless and become extremely depressed. Which is the situation in which i am now.
• I am not able to function in daily life, i can't do anything, i can't start nor finish anything. Reaching out for help online has been on my mind for months, my productivity is less than zero, my days are passing by instantaneously.
• My behavior is exceedingly self-destructive, not in a self-mutilating way, but self-destructive in that my actions, or*total lack thereof,*are actively sabotaging my life.
• I've tried to also self diagnose myself for many years now, and my conclusion is that there is some kind of grave chemical imbalance in my brain, which is aggravated by daily anxiety. Everything points towards*Autistic Inertia*, combined with diagnosed*add, depression*and anxiety disorder. However the depression is caused solely by my complete incapability to manage my mental illness(es). I'm not a depressed person in nature.
• Any kind of anxiety just shuts me down immediately, the slightest hint of anxiety and i'm done. Although i'm 100% sure that anxiety isn't my problem, it just aggravates it. When i take medication to reduce my anxiety, it works, but it just makes my overall condition worse, because my condition stays the same, and i also would no longer feel the required 'positive anxiety', anxiety that makes me want to get better. Without anxiety i just accept my deteriorating situation.
• I'm a 34 year old man from the Netherlands, and I've been diagnosed by a psychiatrist as having an IQ of 135, having attention deficit disorder*ADD, i was tested also tested for autism, but besides the diagnosis of having several autistic traits, I've not been diagnosed as being autistic, nor do I have Asperger's syndrome.
• I am currently taking dextroamphetamine and vortioxetine.
• I've tried many other SSRI's and SNRI's with very little effect. Vortioxetine is also barely helping me at all. Dextroamphetamine only helps with my concentration, I've been taking it since college, it's only been helpful for that.
• I've tried mushrooms and LSD with limited effect; I didn't try them to get high actually, i tried them out of desperation, after reading Sam Harris's book, I thought it might help me. Mushrooms seemed to have brought some consciousness of the world around me and of what is actually happening around me, i was able, or at least i got that perception, to actually experience life at the same rate as my consciousness could follow. I was in the here and now. But of course it's impossible to do this all time, and micro dosing had no effect on me, or nothing relevant. And it didn't actually solve anything, it just gave me glimpse of what seemed like a normal mental conscious awareness and experience living, of being.
Summary of my backgroundsorry that it's so long, i don't know how to pinpoint what is important, because i just don't know what is wrong with me, is it the actual chemical imbalance, but is it worsened by irrational anxiety or actual suppressed trauma?)
1. When i was young, i was always very introverted, shy, and would never do what people expected from me, people thought i was (purposefully) lazy, the slightest stress would shut me down completely.
2. I had a very strict father, he was verbally abusive (never physical tho), and would force me to sit hours on end at my desk in the hopes that i would do my homework, but my mind just couldn't do it, i would want it so bad, but there appeared to be a malfunctioning connection between my brain and my body, i would just not do it. Stress would just paralyze me, but also positive stress, if i wanted to do something, for myself, it wouldn't work, i wouldn't do it. I never gave in my homework, i was always late. I was mocked as a boy with his "head in the clouds", and i was, i was always escaping reality, dreaming away.
3. But that is the main problem, i feel like i'm never actually there, i'm not actually experiencing life consciously, i'm just floating. Like there is an invisible blurry bubble around me.
4. Fast forward to university, i couldn't stand being around other people for a long time, everything gave me anxiety, and i could never feel comfortable anywhere. One of the reasons for that is also, because i was so unhappy with myself, i would always arrive completely unprepared, always late. I was again disappointing people everywhere i went. I always gave a great first impression, people expected a lot from me when they first met me, and i hated/hate that, because i knew i was going to disappoint them eventually. So I started avoiding people, i became a recluse. I did have girlfriends, even serious ones, but they often remarked that they didn't get through to me, and it's true, i was never really there, i didn't experience the relationship, i didn't experience life as it was going on around me.
5. I succeeded at the university, but honestly i actually failed at it, hard... I was doing the hardest courses possible and i actually graduated with my degree in civil engineering from the top engineering university of the Netherlands, but i felt and feel like a total fraud. Because i didn't attend any classes, i almost missed all of them, i just crammed during the exam period and barely passed every time. And i would have never been able to pull that off without all nighters binging on dextroamphetamine. I wrecked my body 4 months a year. The other 8 months i was completely unable to go to class or even do any kind of task, only when i experienced extreme stress of the exam period, combined with high doses of dextroamphetamine, i was able to study. Whenever i did attend a class, i was amazed at how interesting it was, and i remember the few that i attended almost perfectly, but forgot most of what i studied during those 5 years.. For me the only success were when i succeeded in actually leaving my room, that me body actually executed what i truly wanted. I started having emotional breakdowns, every-time i just couldn't muster to get out of bed, i was literally frozen, i contemplated suicide so many times, because i thought i was for sure going to fail, i was sure my amphetamine binges would no longer be able to conceal that i was totally incompetent, yes i'm reasonably intelligent, but what's the point if you have zero functionality in your executive functioning..
6. Also quick extra fyi, never had any traumatic experiences in my youth, outside my verbally abusive father, grew up in a rich family. I was also never bullied in my life, but I think that is more because I'm very tall and i was doing a lot of sports when i was younger, and i'm reasonably good looking. I believe if i would have been short i would have been bullied hard, since i was awkward as **** and could be an extreme introvert. Yet I did have some great friends. But barely have any social contact anymore, since i cut them all off, i was tired of disappointing people.
Then started my working life after graduating:
1. As expected my amphetamine binges did not work during my first job. Since you actually have to show up and be there all day. Which is something i couldn't psychologically handle, i just can't and couldn't understand how someone can function all day in an environment with thousands of impulses, thousands of choices. I was constantly arriving late, i sometimes just froze up at home, couldn't muster the power to go to my job, even tho i had an amazing first job, i was also hired straight away in a management position, and no the responsibility didn't give me stress. What gave me stress , was that my mind would still not listen to what i actually wanted to do, nothing happened, only when under extreme duress, and even then my already extremely limited productivity started to wain. I crashed after a few months, one week i stayed up the whole week out of pure frustration, i had to finish one simple PowerPoint, literally 3 slides, and I couldn't, my body, my mind just wouldn't allow me to.
2. I got fired after not showing up to work for a whole week and not responding to any phone calls or emails during that time.. Gave no explanation, basically ghosted my work.
3. I started studying again to distract myself, with the hope that I could use that time to also find a solution for my crippling mental behavior. I again totally sucked, but once more passed another difficult master in statistics and applied mathematics, but nothing changed, the only thing that worked is that i'm reasonable smart, and i'm good at cramming and barely passing exams.
4. Started working again, exact same situation, got fired again.
5. I started to not even be able to handle daily life, there were to many impulses, it seems like my brain just wants to pause everything, take the time to process it, study it in every detail, organize it, and only then move on, it just doesn't allow me to do anything. I wouldn't even call it perfectionism, or fear or failure. But I had this one bizarre good moment, once when i took a high dose of strattera (SNRI), combined with a high dose of Brintellix (SSRI) and dextroamphetamine, i was able to work normally for a day. That is why i believe it's a chemical imbalance in my brain, or something defunct that chemicals can solve, at least partly. Those few moments when certain medication cocktails seemed to work, were the most happy moments of my life, i couldn't believe that i was actually breaking through the inertia. That i was doing what i wanted to do, my brain/body was listening to me. I'm not sure if what I have is autistic inertia, but it checks all the boxes. But how to treat that? And what antidepressants should i try(just to get through this horrible depression)? Because right now i can't gather the force to even go and try any treatment if i can't get some relieve of my constant crippling feeling of sadness.
So I am now 34 years old, and i have nothing to show for, yes i have good degrees, and 'theoretical' work experience, but i can't actually function, in the 3 years I've worked, yes only 3 ******* years, i'm 34!! I've maybe had the actual work output of a normal person, of about two weeks, yes two weeks, in 3 years. I got very lucky with my jobs that I was hired straight away as a manager, and i had people under me, and i only saw my direct boss once a week or even less, so i went under the radar for months till they found out i was skipping work constantly and all the output was by my team, guys that had years of experience but bad degrees that were working under me, they saved me for months on end, without them actually knowing it. They just thought i was working out of office. But in reality i was just floating/escaping in my aggravating dreamland at home, increasingly becoming desperate as to how i was going to be able to resolve my rapidly deteriorating mental state.
What is worse, I also became addicted to numbing my brain and my desperation with porn, movies, series, and the internet in general. But lately i can't even stomach movies and series anymore, they are to immersive, i'm not ******* kidding, i can't handle it psychologically, it reminds me of normal life, life that i'm missing every day, nowadays my mind keeps fleeing to trash news websites, with shocking news, and YouTube, I've rewatched some clips probably 30/40 times, it takes me away from reality. And when i switch off the internet, i first feel relieved, switched off from all that garbage, but then nothing happens, i tried a week without internet, and i just find other things to escape in. I thought i got addicted to the internet, but in reality i just got addicted to escaping the situation i'm in, to confront the fact that i'm totally clueless and feel so extremely frustrated and hopeless , already since so many years, and i have no idea how to solve this, or what it actually even is.
=> I've tried everything, diet, exercise, medications, therapies, self help books, self help videos, etc. Nothing helps, and if it seems that i'm somewhat productive because i did those things, let me enlighten you, that it takes me months to finish one book , and it would probably be the only thing i did of significance during those months.. It's a constant battle with my mind, to have anything done at all.
I would not even be able to be a mailman now, i can't gather the courage to trust myself. That's the worst part, i don't know myself, i don't know what is wrong with me. I have so many dreams and aspirations, but something in me is not working. And I'm a 100% sure it needs to be solved by medication. Therapy doesn't work on me, neither do all those other things like CBT, etc. There are great to help, but i have to be able to even start with them, to be able to cope with them, and my brain doesn't allow me to do that.
• I realize that this post is already ridiculously long, but i don't know how to convey my situation in a short concise matter, when i'm not sure what i have, i can't identify it, i assume it's autistic inertia, because it checks all the boxes, but i just don't know anymore, and i can also not find anything that actually cures or treats that effectively.
=> And one more example of the self destructive nature of my condition, I've been plagued by debt collectors, I've lost at least 50.000 euro, yes you read that right, AT LEAST, 50 ******* thousand euro to debt collectors, because i won't open my letters, my mind just freezes, any kind of anxiety aggravates it all, and when i take away the anxiety with medication, my mind cares even less!! then it doesn't want to open the letter because it doesn't care, and when i don't take the medication, my anxiety freezes me dead in my track. I'm from a rich family, so i can afford it, but i would have preferred to spend that money on a billion other things. The fact that I threw that kind of money away just makes me even more desperate that i won't be able to solve this, and that it is starting to have extremely serious consequences on my life.
And my experience with psychiatrists and therapists, is that in the end, you have to do the work, you have to self diagnose yourself, because they just try to apply random frameworks on to you, in an effort to diagnose you. They are lazy, psychologists in particular, they basically just want you to come back every week, they don't actually offer a cure, perhaps this works for people with trauma, that just want to talk, but for people with actual disabilities, it's just useless.
And psychiatrists just prescribe , hit and miss, they don't really care. I've consulted 5 psychiatrists over the years, and all of them were either lazy, or totally incompetent.
The only decent one, is the psychiatrist i have now, but he seems to also be so clueless, which is baffling to me, autistic inertia didn't really even ring a bell with him. He had to look it up. At least he is willing to prescribe me whatever i suggest/want. He is willing to work with me.
So any suggestions, especially concerning solutions; possible diagnosis for what I have, I would greatly appreciate that!! And also what medications would you recommend? I want to start something new right away, because I'm really feeling myself slip away fast.
Thanks
