inhalents? help?

Hey,

ok, so a little background in case it helps..

I am a generally smart person as far as intelligence goes, and am musicaly inclined.  I do well in school and all but i don't know about decision making.  I've always had kind of a hard time making friends and have gone through varying amounts of depression in my life, some being very severe.  I don't let it show, and most people I know don't realize how I feel.  for a while I had what I think were panic attacks.  they came on kind of randomly, and everything would get really dim, and i would get this terrible ringing in my ears.  i would start to feel very sick and dizzy, and it just felt terrible.  but this was all going on before I ever tried any drugs.  never even tried alcohol.  but eventually being as desperate as I was, i remembered all of the references I had ever heard to getting high off inhalants.  it seemed to simple to be true, but I had an empty can of axe and tried that.  it was quite the feeling.  eventually i moved to air duster cans/butane.  I don't remember about how long i did that for, but it was way too long because I started to realize that even though I wasn't really becoming less intelligent, but it took me longer to figure out math problems, and messed up my memory, and even started to creep into my personality some.  one time I came home so depressed and just lost track of what i was doing, and the next thing i knew i was clutching an empty can of air duster and lying on my bed

I stopped after I realized how bad I had gotten, and how much it had affected me

I wouldn't say that im a different person, but I regret what this did to my memory, attention span, and personality and ability to make decisions.

is there any hope that over time these things will get better again, or am I stuck with this for life.  I am only 16 and started inhalants while I was about 15.  Because I am so young is this going to be permanent?  is there anything I can do to try and get things back on track.  Maybe I had ADHD or something before all of this?

Can anyone offer up an opinion or knowledge as to what may/may not/should/ happen?  or what to do next?

[BaronMunchausen]

Yes, there is hope. The brain is a remarkable structure. It will take time but damage can be reversed and neural pathways can reconnect around damaged tissue. There are MANY documented cases of this.

It will take time, though. Just try to keep yourself as healthy as possible. You'll also go through a period of adjusting. I've said this time and again;

Learning is perception oriented. When you learn something in an one state (altered), your memory recall of that information  when in another state (normal) is harder to access.
     You'll likely have to go through a period of "relearning" where you connect to that information again while "normal".

I would also suggest seeing a therapist/ doctor to check if there is an underlying condition to these possible panic attacks. Otherwise you'll probably suffer them again due to the stress of changing your lifestyle and taking away the emotional (chemical) release from drug use.