Back for more, long time hiatus
Hi everyone,
I've been a longtime member and I made my first story post about 2.5 years ago. I was a complete mess mentally but I won't go too much into detail. But after a very long hiatus I felt like I wanted to make a post.
Long story short, I came down with daily panic attacks, insomnia, brain fog and severe periodic depression that I can only describe as some kind off hellish mental flu.
I lost my libido almost completely as well but honestly that was the least of my problems and I barely gave it thought.
After initially going on the protocol I started to slowly improve. I did 2 cycles of ultra hard but honestly never really felt that much of a change.
Over the last 2 years I have much improved. My libido is fully back, my panic attacks have basically stopped.
During the last year my main obstacle was all the stress I had accumulated that resulted in some form of PTSD. I was having severe nightmares every other night and bad sleep quality in general.
I went on pharms for a small period of time to stop the nightmares and the horror feelings. My doc put me on a very low dose of Haloperidol (an antipsychotic).
That seemed to help a lot since I'm now nightmare free and no longer have borderline psychotic fear attacks.
In general I'm feeling pretty happy and stable most of the time but I have 2 remaining issues I'm dealing with:
1- Periodic flutters in chest / stomach, causing hyperventilation and anxiety. (I snort a tiny bit of Kanna, a natural SSRI, when this happens, which stops it 99% of the time)
2- Racing mind during night time. I basically feel like I'm dreaming while awake. Uncontrollable images and conversations pass through my head at high speed.
Both of these issues make sleep very hard on occasion. However if I do sleep well I feel better than I have ever before, even before Fin. Unfortunately this just doesn't happen that often.
The last year though I have stopped most facets of the protocol, and got in a bit of a kratom bender because of lazyness. I don't really regret it since it helped me through some rough depression but I'm back here now to account myself to get back on the train and finally get to 110%. I believe this protocol is just good in general and it's nice to have something to hold on to and not just wing it day by day.
My plan right now:
- stop all nicotine (I vape 1.5mg juice) and recreational kratom (I do like 1 gram every few days)
- cut out sugar / gluten again and go back to full paleo
- lift 3 times a week + sauna
- HIIT sprints once a week
- red light box my nuts because CD would approve
- restart Wim Hoff and cold showers
- get back into meditation (which will be the hardest part since my racing mind makes this neigh impossible sometimes)
- limited supplementation: magnesium / saffron / boron / d3 / Pine pollen and some leftover herbs I have from back in the day (tonkat, ashwaganda, rhiodola, tribulus, cordyceps)
- once well underway I'll do the last bottle of ultra hard I have laying around for good measure
Some random things I'd like to note:
- Chances are a lot of you have clinically high SHGB / ferritin. Ferritin caused by inflammation will drop your free testosterone and raise your SHGB. Good news is there is a very easy way to fix this fast.
Donating blood will tank your ferritin levels and raise your free testosterone. Supplementing Boron (which is in the protocol I believe) will lower your SHGB and in turn also raise free test.
- some meds I tried to combat anxiety and insomnia: 25mg propranolol, 20mg trazodone, 3mg mirtazapine, 1mg prazosin and 25mg quetiapine. Trazodone did a good job putting me to sleep but didn't last through the night.
Mirtazapine really puts you to sleep for a long time, but will last throughout the next day. Quetiapine was actually the sweet spot with the effectiveness of mirtazapine but only lasting up until morning.
Not all pharms are the devil and some of these got me through some rough times. I don't take anything at the moment however and I'd like to get good sleep fully natural again.
I have a reasonable expectation to make a full recovery by the end of the year.
Best of luck to everyone!
