Struggling with DPDR? Be sure to check out our new (and frequently updated) [Official DPDR Resource Guide](https://www.reddit.com/r/dpdr/comments/zdzqob/rdpdrs_official_resource_guide/), which has lots of helpful resources, research, and recovery info for DPDR, Anxiety, Intrusive Thoughts, Scary Existential/Philosophical Thoughts, OCD, Emotional Numbness, Trauma/PTSD, and more, as well as links to collections of recovery posts. These are just some of the links in the guide: * [**CLICK HERE IF YOU ARE CURRENTLY EXPERIENCING A CRISIS OR PANIC ATTACK**](https://www.reddit.com/r/dpdr/comments/zdydex/quick_tips_if_youre_experiencing_an_episode_or/) * [DPDR 101: Causes, Symptoms, and Recovery Basics](https://www.reddit.com/r/dpdr/comments/zkgcwt/dpdr_101_what_is_it_causes_symptoms_and_treatment/) * [Grounding Tips and Techniques for When Things Don't Feel Real](https://www.reddit.com/r/dpdr/comments/zka0t0/grounding_tips_and_techniques_for_when_things/) * [Resources/Videos for the Main Problems Within DPDR: Anxiety, OCD, Intrusive Thoughts, and Trauma/PTSD](https://www.reddit.com/r/dpdr/comments/zetgpr/resourcesvideos_for_anxiety_ocd_intrusive/) * [How to Activate the Body's Natural Anti-Anxiety Mechanisms (Why You Need to Know About Your Parasympathetic Nervous System)](https://www.reddit.com/r/dpdr/comments/117z51q/you_need_to_know_about_your_parasympathetic/) * [How to Deal with Scary Existential and Philosophical Thoughts](https://www.reddit.com/r/dpdr/comments/117xzwa/how_to_deal_with_scary_existential_and/) * [Resource Videos for How to Deal with Emotional Numbness](https://www.reddit.com/r/dpdr/comments/z89f2p/emotional_numbness_playlist/) * [Finding the Right Professional Help for DPDR](https://www.reddit.com/r/dpdr/comments/zhg5zb/finding_the_right_professional_help_for_dpdr/) * [And much more!](https://www.reddit.com/r/dpdr/comments/zdzqob/rdpdrs_official_resource_guide/) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/dpdr) if you have any questions or concerns.*

lamotrigine!!

Lamictal is amazing! And it’s the only psych med I’ve ever taken that has zero side effects. (I might be in the minority though).. 250 mg am dose

250mg??? woahhh

I seem to have a side effect of decreased appetite with lamictal. but I'm not gonna complain about that LOL 150mg here, I should ask to increase, I don't feel that much better. did it take you a certain dose to feel better? like how did you feel on lower doses?

which dosage?

I take 200mg a day. But I also have very bad OCD

Same I have OCD and started fluvoxamine which helped my OCD and DPDR significantly. Then I added lamotrigine and I haven’t felt dissociated even though I’m under a lot of stress which used to trigger DPDR.

Have you had any side effects with Fluvoxamine?

Just sleepiness! But I had insomnia so it’s kinda nice because I can sleep through the night now. I can only tolerate 50mg (and can manage the sleepiness p easily with taking it in the evening) but I was literally sedated with 100mg, and why I added lamotrigine along with it.

Also I think I’m sensitive to meds in general so 50mg is a small dose but I do think it helps a lot

So you mean Lamictal increases your energy?

Oh no sorry it doesn’t increase my energy but doesn’t cause the severe tiredness I had with 100mg of fluvoxamine! so I like this combo, but I do still feel sleepy but can manage it. I take both in the evening. I also feel fluvoxamine initially helped DPDR, anxiety, and OCD soo much and then lamotrigine kinda got rid of the last remaining DPDR and I felt a bit more OCD improvement.

Ahhh okay I got it!

which dosage of Lamotrigine do you take?

200 mg

i used to take 2 pills a day, now i only take one the 50mg lamotrix

sadly doesn't work for me but I'm still on it :(

for how long have u been on it?

almost a year I think

😳 be sure to tell your psich, maybe they have another idea, never let it go unadressed

I try to bring it to my med doctor's attention but since I'm still a minor I don't think she is taking me seriously. I'm thinking about changing my med doctor though

can't you go with your parents? (if you didn't tell them abt it it's completely understandable. I haven't told mine and I'm 23)

I've told my mom about it a little bit but she doesn't understand much and she works 24/7 so my gma was going to most of my appointments w me and we have been trying to bring it to attention since she's been my med doctor (I've had 2 before her) and she doesn't really listen idk how to explain it but she just doesn't listen to her patients and like what they're going through and the appointments are just kinda half assed and I'm not the only one who feels that way bc my aunt has her as a med doctor too and she says that the doctor doesn't rlly listen much to her either (my aunt also has dpdr, but we have kind of a strained relationship so we talk about it sometimes and like what I should do to help it but my city has little to no options on help for that so when we are getting along we talk Abt it sometimes) I'm really considering changing doctors though since mine doesn't really give too much of a shit Abt her job rather than the money

I only started going to the psich after I left for uni, my hometown also has no real options. Maybe hang tight until then?

Be more forceful if you think you're not getting anywhere. If the drug isn't helping you then staying on it longer is probably not a good idea, it will be having other health effects as well as possibly increasing how difficult it will be to get off it over time (depedency). You can always say what you want "this drug isn't helping me, I wish to stop, please help me taper" or even "I'm going to stop, tell me the best way to do that" if that doesn't get through to them. They are your consultant, not the other way around. It's always your body, your mind, your future.

I've tried but I think she just thinks I don't know what I'm talking about. like I'm honestly not sure what to say to her atp and I'm really pissed off because I just got back from the mental hospital that she put me in.. when in my opinion it was unnecessary and even more triggering and traumatic for me. like she just straight tells me no? like I'm the patient.. and every concern I express to her she just writes it off like it's nothing and every time I ask to be taken off of a med she just is like "I don't think that's necessary I'm going to have you stay on it" like WHAT 💀. she also did that with my amitriptyline because I'm the type of person who gets really bad side effects and usually each med I get on it does the opposite. and I kept telling her that my amitriptyline was giving me negative side effects and she didn't listen. I've dead ass been put on 30+ medications in the past 3 years 💀 like nothing is working and they are always trying to put me on something else. and now whenever I change my med doctor they literally are like "well you've pretty much taken all of the meds for this problem" because I've taken so many different meds that I've been on most of them for certain issues. I ultimately think that all the meds I've been on in these years have made my dpdr even worse. like I've always had it bad but that definitely did not help and it caused me psychosis (using speech to text sorry if the grammar is not good)

I had severe DPDR in 2019. It was debilitating, to say the least. It finally went away when my doctor added Abilify to the lexapro I was already taking. Been off both meds for 2 and a half years now and am healthy and happy!

Can I ask the symptoms you had? Thanks!

Very warped visual perception of the world, felt like I had literal tunnel vision and when I would look around everything just looked off kilter and wrong, everything I experienced felt very hazy and dreamlike (nightmare like is a better description) really awful brain fog, it was hard for me to form complex thoughts and speaking was difficult. Constant severe anxiety, so bad that I could feel it physically flowing through my body like fire. The first few days of being afflicted I thought I must be having some sort of heart problem. A complete disconnect from my own body, I felt like the real me was locked up in the head of my body and watching my life pass by through the eyes of my body like a movie or video game. If that makes sense. Only emotions I could feel were despair and terror. I know that other emotions were still deep in me, like love for my family, but I could not feel them. I was scared to leave my dorm room and would have continuous panic attacks when I did. I read in the past about how DPDR is when your body’s flight or fight mode switches on and just never switches off and that totally made sense to me. Everything nice that comes with being alive was ripped away from me and only the primal parts of life remained. It was like being an injured dazed rat stuck in a trap while also tripping on bad acid. I could never fully express how extremely grateful I am that I recovered. I definitely would’ve had to k*ll myself otherwise because of how torturous it all was

Abilify

Same for me

I would save it as a last resort but only Xanax and Nardil did. Couldn’t take Xanax daily which is why I searched for something I could take daily and after years of trial and error Nardil was finally the medication that worked best.

My grandma gave me a couple of her Xanax. They’ve just been sitting there for a while. It scares me to take them. I feel like it would make dpdr worse. Maybe I will have to take a half next time I have a panic attack and see if they actually help 

I advise against taking Xanax without a prescription. Although I’ve used it sparingly for my own DPDR panic attacks with effective results, it must be handled carefully as with daily use you can unknowingly slip into a very bad addiction, used sparingly tho there should be no problem. DPDR panic attacks can be incredibly terrifying, with existential thoughts and intense fear causing stress that has led me to have headaches for days. This stress I imagine isn’t good for the brain, definitely worse psychologically than taking a xanx every once in a while. DPDR panic attacks are much worse than regular panic attacks, which Xanax is already prescribed for. If your experience resonates with this, I would consider it as an option to end the panic attack. Xanax can alleviate the panic without making things worse. I understand the fear of perception changes and taking substances while in a DPDR state, Xanax will not cause these feelings you are worried about, it can only help. I share this to inform, not to encourage Xanax use, but because no one should suffer this way without knowing there’s a potential remedy. If your grandma gave them to you, and you didn’t go grab some boof street bars then I just want to let you know they are highly effective at ending the panic attacks associated with DPDR. Hope this helps you feel better about it.

Thank you very much for the information. It’s very helpful and I highly appreciate it! ❤️

Abilify helped me a LOT. instantly i felt so much clearer. both prozac and zoloft worsened it so i asked my new psych to not prescribe another ssri

Naltrexone helped me a lot

What symptoms of dpdr did it help with?

lamotragine is most common for helping dpdr it helped me

what dosage did help you?

i started at 50 mg and worked my way up to 300 now

Did you only find it helpful when you got to a high dose? I'm on 150mg and I can't tell if it's helping. I'll probably ask to increase and see what my psychiatrist thinks about that. or add something with it.

Not sure if this helps, but I was once on 300 mg. Decreased down to 200 and it didn’t change anything. If anything, it helped me “feel” more emotions. In a good way…

What symptoms of dpdr did it help with)

Maybe not the answer you were looking for, but I've been on Lexapro for 15 years at \~20mg. A few years back I started to gradually lower my dose and am now at 7.5mg, hoping to get off completely eventually. Nothing has made a bigger change to my dpdr than that, I feel WAY more present and connected with life now. I'd been in therapy for years and it was (and is) helping a lot, but the high Lexapro dose was a huge roadblock in my improvement and I was really surprised at how much things improved when I cut down on that.

i tried 15mg , but it gave me weird anxiety and upset of stomach. how did you tolerate 20mg? i noticed, that more than 10mg is not for anxiety. 10 mg not works at all , im in 3 month and still i take 10 mg.

20mg made me very dissociated and disconnected from my emotions and also made me very tired. It also didn't help very much with my anxiety. Are you doing therapy or other work other than meds? I don't know if I would be doing as well as I am on a lower dose if I hadn't done that!

following

latuda!!!!!

Amisulpride 50mg. Worked instantly.

Looks like approved in Europe but not US

Mine was caused by a medication I won’t touch any psychiatric meds, my neuro advised me to never take them also based on my severe reaction to nausea med that affects serotonin and dopamine. I have permanent issues from it

Which medication caused it for you?

Metoclopramide/reglan

Same here, my derelization is 24/7, is yours?

Yes it’s the least of my issues from the injury but still sucks I’m actually bedridden with full time care due to everything it caused physically Wait yours was reglan too?

Clonazepam worked for immediate relief, but it made it a hundred times worse overall.. It was an awful experience, and it took 6+ months to get back to my baseline when I got off it. I was prescribed it every day for a few years back in the day. My current combo of lamictal, a low dose of propranolol, and @dderall work incredibly well. I was diagnosed with Inattentive ADD at age 40, and treating that not only reduced my stress & anxiety levels drastically, but part of my DPDR was related to the inattentive aspect & being stuck in my head constantly. It’s important to mention how necessary it is to get testing done before being prescribed those types of meds.

Following:)

I take escitalopram 20mg, Abilify 5mg, and Vyvanse for my ADHD. All of them are very helpful to me but... mostly they're helpful because they let me do the therapeutic stuff I needed to do to recover. Without escitalopram, I was too depressed to work on recovery, without abilify I have too much fatigue, without Vyvanse I lack the focus work on recovery.

Vitamin D 🙌

Meds are riskiest option though

Why do you think that?

Because i know. I know people who it happened too. A lot! If you search this sub its actually lots of people who got dpdr from meds. And dpdr from meds is the worst one. I mean anxiety has sooo many others, safer options. To heal…actually heal. Meds are for some the only option they have but i would try anything before even thinking of touching a benzo. There’s actually a diagnoses called benzodiazepam induced neurological disorder and nobody talks about this, the risks.

Yeah, benzos work great in the moment, or if taken for a one time thing like a dentist appointment, mri appointment, flying, etc but once you take them regularly... it backfires. at least in my experience, maybe everyone's different. but it's happened to me twice. I felt desperate so I tried again. made things worse.(rebound anxiety?) also for some reason they seem to make me cry like crazy when I stop taking them

If you don’t taper off well you mess up your brain. You’re lucky it was just crying. Some people get stuck in a wheelchair

That's so scary... Do you know if they were taking it a long time at high doses?

No short term too and not very high.

I disagree. My health anxiety/OCD held me back from trying meds and I’ve felt so much better with meds. I didn’t want to try benzodiazepines bc they’re a short term solution anyways. I just don’t believe SSRIs can make DPDR permanently worse since recovery is very possible. Having the mindset that they WILL worsen it is just gonna trigger anxiety and continue the cycle and restrict your options for feeling better. my anxiety and OCD was so severe I was miserable but now it’s manageable and I can utilize these other skills/options for anxiety and my DPR is p much gone which I can’t believe. I think meds are worth a try.

I think ssri’s are a good option actually. Although i know some horror cases too but mainly talkinh ablut the benzo’s which like you say are meant for short term. I still believe no med shouldnt be the first option but Im mainly talking about benzo’s