I am a 22y.o Caucasian male and I am having frustrating symptoms and my doctor hasn't the fuzziest of what it could be linked to.
Background story is that almost 2 years ago I was a regular drug user... I started off with pills (from AUS so purity was never high), then graduated onto cocaine and LSD. I would often swap between them and would only use on the weekend as I didn't want it to interfere with my Uni work.
Everything seemed fine until I took a rather strong stamp dose of LSD, I started to feel flustered and had extreme pressure on both sides of my head. Having never experienced this before I began to panic and things started to get weird... I had extreme vertigo and everything seemed really far away or really close...kinda like a fish-eye lens.
I'm sure for the most part this was just a "bad trip" but the next day I woke up still with weird vision and felt very hazy and not all there...kind of like I wasn't connected to my body...I everywhere I looked it was like the horizon on a hot day with all wavy lines. Black dots would whirl around in my visual field as though little flies were forever in my face... walls would be breathing if I unfocused my eyes and I generally felt as though I was loosing my mind.
I started obsessing about schizophrenia, researching it as much as I could... words would repeat over and over and over and I couldn't shake the thought. I never believed what I seen with my distorted vision or lost touch with reality...it was just really making me panic... I would worry so much, most nights I would wake with racing heart and racing mind...took me best part of an hour to get back to sleep.
I have seen 2 doctors and a therapist all of whom say I suffer from anxiety and depression. Treatment wise I have taken Citalopram, Wellburtin, Pristiq, Zoloft and Benzos, all at the highest possible dose. The only two that worked were Wellburtin (which helped my depression but made anxiety a little worse) and Pristiq (which helped my anxiety but did nothing for depression). Halfway through a Wellburtin 6 month treatment and for the most part I feel great, but my visual symptoms haven't subsided... often in the mornings at work the contrast in my visions changes, with everything going dark for a period of time then back to normal. I also see the occasional movement in my peripheral vision which gets me to panic a little. I have static vision but nothing to dramatic and I often feel as though I am distanced from the world like my eyes unfocused and I cannot refocus them for a period of time.
I have also had my eyes tested....so its nothing to do with my ACTUAL eye, optometrist suggested seeing a neurologist. Finally I have family history of depression, stroke and migraines...
Please reddit any suggestions as to what is wrong with me would take the world off my shoulders!
TLDR; took LSD, had a panic/ anxiety attack. woke up next day with weird visual disturbances:
-wavy vision
-black moving dots in vision
-mind kept repeating words over and over
-breathing walls
Treatment of Wellburtin has basically helped but new visual symptoms (colour contrast changes, movement in peripheral vision and depersonalisation) has occurred...