Wish my parents had a boy....

[mactalibis]

It will be obvious in a moment, but I don't mean to brag by the following:
I am a pretty girl with a very high IQ and respectable ambitions. I am in the prime of my life. I shouldn't feel like trying is pointless.
I guess this post is my first real attempt to get help or explain my situation clearly but I want to preface it by saying that I've seen numerous counselors/therapists, psychologists and psychiatrists for everything from adoption to addiction and I've taken every kind of pill - prescribed or otherwise - and I'm not crazy. Everyone seems confused that I put so much weight on this problem. And maybe they're right. It's all in my head. But even that needs some kind of solution. The point is, I'm not looking for medical advice, per se. I just want a normal person who knows (not academcally or relatively) how I feel to tell me how they feel, then maybe we can get somewhere.
I think I'm getting ahead of myself...
I've always struggled with anxiety and depression to some extent. I was a fragile kid so I developed a bunch of bad habits to toughen myself up and learn something in an effort to survive this worlds constant ****-storm. One night, when I was 18, blacked out at my own house party, I took off with a friend and dropped what I think was two hits of DOB (a kind of acid). All I remember after that is lying in bed, barely aware of the room or my friend beside me while I stared up at a black face until mid-afternoon the next day. I don't remember what I was thinking, if I thinking at all, but I remember repeating - begging - "Please make it stop" and the unimagineable terror that went with that.
At some point I guess I passed out and woke up, or maybe my mind just snapped back a little but nothing was the same...I was severely shaken and everything looked somehow different....sadder maybe. The first thing I became aware of past the crippling anxiety was that my inner-monologue was just gone. My head was quiet except for the panic, for which there were no useful words. When I could grasp a thought, it looped over and over, as if my mind were trying to unravel it's mystery no matter how simple. Like having a Backstreet Boys song stuck in your head, except scarier, because it's all I had.
Anyway, I thought I was stuck or something so after a week or two I decided to try to reverse the process with a do-over. My friends were raving about the stuff and I figured I was toast either way so I took ten. It was like smoking pot when you're already paranoid. The feeling I had when I got up that afternoon never went away. I stopped taking drugs; that was 7 years ago.
For the first few years I was desparately hopeful, alternating between twiddling my thumbs while my synapses healed and taking a more active role in finding what I'd lost and losing what I'd found. But sometime in the last few years amidst the normal tragedies I guess I decided that whoever I was or might have been was the same selfish ***** who put me here and she doesn't need to come back. But who does that make me? A 7 year old adult with a rocky-at-best foundation for life.
Obviously I've managed to fake through it all since then, but not in any meaningful way. I still don't feel right, even in dreams. It feels like there isn't enough room for joy with all the murky emotions roiling inside.
Finally I got around to school, became a technician, which turned out to be a waste of time so I went back for mechanical engineering and got engaged. That's when things fell seriously apart. My fiance was in Chicago having recently joined the Navy and I was living with my parents in a town I hated. I had thousands of dollars, no friends and unbearable pressure. So I leaned on alcohol, as has been my M/O since puberty, and like it has since puberty it served as a conductor for disaster. I lost my fiance of years, almost all of my many friends, and literally everything I owned because I failed to learn the appropriate lesson from my millionth mistake. That was over a year ago and I'm off alcohol again. I'm even trying to quit smoking and I'm finally at a place where I can pick up the innummerable pieces and build something solid but I'm feeling more terrified now than ever.
The thing is I used to be too confident for my own good, get things too easily. It's like my ugly duckling story came full circle and I don't feel like I have it in me to blossom like that again.
The pain has no floor, but the ceiling of happiness is decidedly there and I have no idea how to break through... I just want to smile a little, feel better and wake up hopeful. True thoughts and real emotion are such valuable commodities, and much too rare to me.
I've heard people mention LSD-related PTSD, and that seems fairly probable. I can't reach a certain level of happiness with or without pills and whenever I get close I get this huge surge of anxiety that shuts my mind down flat and keeps me locked up in this little panic box, confused and mortified by my odd cowardice.
Aside from my emotional turmoil, which I know hugely affects the nature of ones thoughts, my thinking patterns aren't right. I can't seem to hold onto a heirarchy of importance on any subject, and when I manage to get on a proverbial role, I'm unquestionably sure that I will fumble at some point, so I grasp at straws until none are left. The only way I can manage a coherent arguement is with time and editing, which was not always the case. Before all this, I planned to do programming and english so that I could spend the rest of my days typing every [doubtlessly brilliant] stray thought in my head at which the world might marvel and reconstruct itself. Unfortunately, my mind works best now with lots of structure and tangible results. In other words, my artistic creativity can't exactly be counted on these days.
So what's the deal here?
Is it a chemical imbalance giving me too much adrenaline, not enough seratonin? Is it PTSD, or a latent psychosis? Did I fry my brain with two hits of acid? What does it mean that I lost my inner monologue? Did I scare my brain into silence?
For some reason nobody I've told has a single word to say about it, including mental health professionals, which is really perplexing. I'm inclined to believe that they think it's not as bad as I'm describing, that one of their errant cliches might shake some sense into me, and I wish it were that simple. I'm sure I sound like a child because that's how I feel. At 25, I've pretty well lost the years where everyone cuts me a break because I'm a kid. So far I seem to be denied help because I'm good enough at pretending and not good enough at explaining. I'm expected to cope and I want to thrive but I feel like I'm on another level of loneliness and I could really use some evidence to prove otherwise, or at least an objective perspective to help me understand.
I've tried waiting, I've tried trying (with little certain direction), I've tried purging my life of memories (literally, all pictures, writing, friends...etc) but no matter what I do, this weird feeling follows me. Guess that's all for now. Thanks for reading.
P.S. I did EBT and CBT in rehab a few years ago. I don't remember much specifically, but I have to admit the program was helpful whether I liked it or not. ; ) I could probably use some reinforcement in certain areas.

[nursegirl6572]

You couldn't have gotten a better answer than the one above from Paxiled.  While your situations aren't identical, they're very similar, so he totally gets what you're saying (which, btw, you say it all so well, you express yourself very well).

The important thing is that you don't stop trying.  Like Pax said, youth and your intelligence is on your side.  Keep working at it...there are so many approaches out there.....start somewhere and give it your all.  Try to not over analyze things too much either, as that will make you feel worse.  I know, easier said than done, but with practice, it's possible.

I wish you the very best...keep us updated, okay?

[Paxiled]

Anyone who tells you they know how to get past this is probably just being optimistic for you, but you have one very important asset -- you're very young.  I know it doesn't feel that way to you, but it's true, so you're brain and you have a long time to fix this.  I will tell you something very similar happened to me, only I wasn't trying to have fun -- it was quitting the drug Paxil that wiped out my brain.  I know exactly what you're saying, and you say it the way I say it -- it turned me nine years ago into what is now a 61 year old 2 year old without a mommy.  I was a writer, and can't even think like one anymore.  So I get it.  Drugs that affect the brain can be a bummer, legal or illegal.  That's why the people you've seen can't really explain it to you -- nobody no matter what we hear has much of an idea how the brain works.  But we do know it can repair itself, though it can take time and be just as impossible to understand as how it got damaged.  And that's why your youth is an asset.  Long before this happened to me I had an employee who had suffered depression, and then Prozac wiped out what was left of her motivation.  She quit college, and ended up working in a health food store I managed.  Slowly she toughened up, and ended up with a good career in big chain health food stores.  So it does happen, and it happens easier when you're young and don't have a thousand other things going wrong as well.  I say that with your self-knowledge you've already built yourself a life, you just don't appreciate it.  Keep trying, and maybe look for something spiritual -- I'd suggest something in the Buddhist or such realm, where judgment isn't important and meditation and a focus on practical practices can be found, and you don't have to belong to the religion or tradition to participate.  People have been trying to deal with this stuff for centuries, maybe you'll find something that can help.  I just run into walls and it sounds like you are too when it comes to docs, but they just don't want to end their income by admitting they just don't know and are experimenting.  Which doesn't mean they can't help, it just means they won't be able to explain everything to you.  Rely on your youth and strength and just be glad it didn't happen when you were old and worn out.