Sociopath Community

...I honestly don't even know anymore if it's working or if it really was a coincidental placebo. It helps with stress and sort of slows my head down a little when I take it, but it seems like it's not doing as much for me anymore beyond making it a little bit easier to handle myself (before it made me dissociate briefly before exhausting myself out of the episode). I found it slightly mind-numbing and harder to focus back when I took it daily, so I try not to take it more often than I have to. I'm still better off than I used to be, but with me taking less zinc overtime I'm surprised to see that I'm not regressing back to that point fully.

It's probably a factor of environment, as there's still episodes but they're milder and much less frequent than they were during college when I was under much higher levels of stress. When I found Zinc however, despite still being in college, it all stopped, but that in itself could have just been one giant episode finally ending followed by a superstition forming around a completely coincidentally made placebo. There are articles that support what I'd been lead to believe, but that in itself would serve to reinforce the superstition. For myself, I can't really know if it's working beyond questionable observations, so I don't really know what to believe. I might just be adaptively better at controlling it now from knowing the signs and symptoms through experience.

Back on track, I've only used supplements, typically with the word "chelated" on the bottle:



I've used a few different brands, but I've stuck with 50mg. Two of my old roommates were (willing) guinea pigs of my curiosity and both reported a drop in stress and daydreaming. Another schizophrenic I knew who tried it didn't get any better, but the reduction in stress made it easier to resist being triggered. It can be covered in your diet as well.

Fish oils really help my concentration and focus.

Even when I eat unprocessed salmon, I can feel the head change. Like when Spidey (Tobey Maguire's Spidey) discovers that he doesn't need glasses anymore. :)

So that stuff helps with ADHD and probably a few other conditions where brain lube is required.

Ah thank you, that's very helpful indeed. 

Both my grandmother and mother have been diagnosed in the past with zinc deficiency, and my understanding is that it's a pretty rare thing to be actually medically diagnosed with. I've been having these kind of episodes with hearing voices and so on, I'm open minded about the cause but figured giving this a shot wouldn't hurt. I'm treating it a bit like a project really, researching anything that might possibly help and trying it, hoping that something or a combination of things will make a difference. 

So far I've made appointments with two different therapists (one private and one on the health service just for comparison's sake, hopefully the one on the health service will be just as good as the private one so I can ditch the private one), I'm gonna try these zinc tablets and fish oil, which some ppl are saying has reduced psychosis as well, and gonna look into other things people said were helpful without going too far down the rabbit hole of alternative medicine. 

Was there anything else that helped you, perhaps in terms of diet and so on? Or do you think it's just random episodes that come and go regardless of what you do?

Wow, that's scary stuff. I don't think my situation is gonna turn out as serious as that (hopefully) but I know what you mean about it feeling like it's gradually building up to smth, that is what I'm fearing is happening anyway. 

Thing is, in a way I really like stress, I like to be busy and have lots of projects on the go, and even if stress is a part of it I'm not sure I feel it the way many people do, and I'm not sure if it's smth I should even be avoiding when to me it's a good thing. Then again, it depends what you mean by stress, and maybe I just don't understand the meaning of the word. 

I am trying to conceal it - there is no way I'd wanna discuss it with people from my real life. Again though, I'm one of those people who has a natural urge to share problems, so I'm not even sure if this is the right way to deal w it for me personally. 

Gypsy stated: source post

Was there anything else that helped you, perhaps in terms of diet and so on? Or do you think it's just random episodes that come and go regardless of what you do?

Stress tends to be the most obvious trigger, so I work a lot on reducing it. The episodes happen seemingly when I haven't had Zinc in a while, but sometimes something can be jarringly shocking enough to snap me into one without my expecting it. This is likely why I have a compulsion to understand the root of how things work, as understanding paves the way for less shock through it's predictability. Less shock = less stress. Having "crazy" be proven right also has a tendency to unbalance me slightly through the whole "If that was right, what else might be?" notion.

The general source-less ones build up slowly overtime. If I can recognize the symptoms, I can prepare for when it'll eventually happen. I tend to see the things like increased heart rate and breathing, racing thoughts, paranoid delusions, altered perceptions, issues with finding the right words, light becoming brighter, drastically increased insomnia, and general disorganization of thought as they creep into my world, but once I get to a point where Zinc is advisable I begin to find fear-driven excuses not to take it. Eventually I hit an episode, take some Zinc, and burn myself out into a state ranging from passive to grayscale textureless disassociation where my hands feel like spongy tools instead of a part of me.

As for diet, increasing potassium, b vitamins, and zinc seemed to improve myself overall, but exercising too much seemed to make it more difficult to tire myself out of an episode. Better stamina and recovery meant having an even harder time exhausting myself. I tried to eat Zinc foods, but most of them made me sick or only had negligible amounts of it, so I've carried on with supplements instead.

The best thing I learned to do before having other ways out of it was learning to conceal it. It can't always be stopped, but there's no reason to drag others into it and make it more dramatic than it already is. Finding the means of politely excusing myself briefly as it starts building up can make a world of difference some days. It still scares me that there was effectively a time where I was floating in one giant episode that grew worse and worse.

After what you've gone on about in your Panic Attack topic, I'm not sure if your enjoyment of said stress is healthy for your functioning (the Counsellors topic has me thinking that you may be worrying about this too, especially from the mention of family history). There are healthy, controlled forms of stress that aren't (always) so bad, like how roller coasters or bungee jumping can be, but excess of it's bad for pretty much anyone. This is sounding somewhat similar to people who try to justify their procrastination habits as "I do a better job when I'm on a stricter deadline".

You may want to observe yourself from outside of yourself, be that through the observation of friends, recording yourself when you're in an episode, or doing like I did and writing things down for yourself to view later on when you're more lucid. Trying to understand yourself through your own memory and experiencing alone is more likely to give you a false impression.

I can actually attest to TC's assessment here.

Thing is, I'm not sure we're really on the same page when we're talking about stress. It's not a kind of pressure that is put upon me by somebody else, I just enjoy being busy and I like to get the most out of life. There are so many things I want to do and experience, learning new languages, going skydiving, being the best I can be in my career, adopting kids, learning how to play pool really well, figuring out how to use snapchat, so many new countries I wanna visit... The list is endless and I'm aware that life is short and there's still so much I haven't done yet that I really wanna do. So, yeah, in a way I put pressure on myself, but it's a good kinda pressure and I'd be more worried about myself if I didn't have these interests. Confronting physical and mental health issues has made me wanna get the most out of life while it lasts, but I guess I just need to learn to slow it down and treat it more like fun and less like pressure. 

In my quest to find smth to cure it I tried meditation today for the first time in years. I used the Headspace app which I know many people recommend, but the effect was horrible. When my mind was empty it was like it created room for more sinister stuff.. I started hearing a whooshing sound followed by indistinct voices chatting to each other, and these random, meaningless images were popping into my head like somebody put them there, like memories of standing at a cashpoint with my mum when I was a kid etc. It kinda felt like dying. Not good. 

I'm not sure that the observations of friends would be much good because I've hidden it so well. Many of my friends think they are closer to me than they actually are, and even the ones who I would consider close have no idea about any of this yet. When I'm in an episode of it I don't think I'd be thinking clearly enough to think about recording it, but I might try writing stuff down straight after. 

Spatial Mind stated: source post

Turncoat stated: source post

You really enjoy watching the demons dance, don't you?

Do you mostly come here to be able to say to yourself "At least I'm not that guy"?

Yes, and not anymore. I'm going back to practicing benevolence.

I'm guessing he's recovered from whatever episode he was going through himself (as seen here), so I doubt he'll really respond to what you're asking.