A guy at work here asked me “How’s that coming?” every day for three days. And every time I was surfing the net. I need a door on my office space. “Oh, its coming great, I just bought a digital camera, and my automobile research is almost done…” – that’s what I should have said.

That guy hasn’t said a word to me in four months. He just emailed me saying I did a good job on a computer model I made for him last week. I didn’t expect him to come speak to me face to face. You see, the last time he asked me that stupid question, he then proceeded to blow up – I mean he was all like “Every time I come by here you are surfing the internet. I don’t want to see you looking at that screen any more. Just look at this one (pointing to the CATIA tube).”
What an awkward moment!
So here is what I say to that guy, and to every go-getter who wants to ask the stupid question:
Dude, we all surf the net. I see you do it too. I always get my stuff done on time. If I were running late, I’d stop surfing and work. But that hasn’t happened yet!
We are all hamsters on the wheels of the Man. Relax! It’ll all work out.

I guess this philosophy works better if you believe and trust in God. If not – how can you possibly believe everything will be OK? Don’t those people just think that they will die – the world will implode into a new Big Bang or something? What a dismal way to live – what a bleak outlook to have.

I need a bumper sticker for the back of my chair at work: “I’d rather be working”

I had a depersonalization disorder attack when I was 18. It was triggered by experiencing an event I never thought would ever occur. The event lasted about 12 hours and ended as soon as I stepped off the bus back home. Whatever causes it is still floating around in my body because when I read and/or type on the computer (especially now where there is a bunch of white space), then my head starts to float away and my hands start to seem so far away. I also shake my leg up and down like the characters in the movie while I’m typing this. Haven’t had an attack since 18 though, but I am on the edge.

But I think eventually once people start to gather data on the experience people have and how they snap out of it, then more treatments will be put together for this cure. I think you could put together one with some kind of electronic/syntactic stimulus of a certain pattern of lights and touches that would help some people snap out of it. Others probably need to be put in a situation they feel is Perfectly possible. Perfectly normal. I think the disorder is sometimes brought on by people going down a road of increasing situations they feel they should not be in (like living a certain place, having a certain job, seeing a certain person) and then all of a sudden it hits their unconscious mind that the situation they are in should be impossible. This triggers a long episode of DD, where the persons mind detaches itself from it’s surroundings, because part of that mind knows what it is seeing is impossible.

Depersonalization is related to Acute Stress Disorder, which states that “The onset of a stress response is associated with specific physiological actions in the sympathetic nervous system, both directly and indirectly through the release of epinephrine and to a lesser extent norepinephrine from the medulla of the adrenal glands. The release is triggered by acetylcholine released from pre-ganglionic sympathetic nerves.”

Since I have Atypical pseudocholinesterase, which is “A genetic variant of cholinesterase that fails to catalyze the hydrolysis of succinylcholine.” AND acetylcholine. (http://cancerweb.ncl.ac.uk/cgi-bin/omd?atypical+pseudocholinesterase)

It then follows that if I cannot metabolize acetylcholine, then there are elevated levels of it in my body. Acetylcholine triggers the release of epinephrine and norepinephrine from the medulla of my adrenal glands. These chemicals are known to trigger Acute Stress Reaction, symptoms of which I exhibit, and are best illustrated by the following story:
When I was approximately 13 years old, I attended a youth retreat with my church at a camp in Indiana. One day we were playing a version capture the flag, where everyone had to wear a flag on their persons, and yanking the flag off of another person made that person a prisoner. I completely evaded any perilous situation, because I did NOT want to be captured – except once when a friend and I were surrounded by two or three members of the other team. Most people would give up at that point, since its just a game. But I would not. I went as far as throwing rocks and dirt, injuring another player, which is not typical behavior for me, especially considering one of the players surrounding us was the youth pastor. The youth pastor pulled me aside, out of the game, and suggested I apologize. It was nice to not be in survival mode anymore, and I did apologize, and I was ashamed at my behavior. It was also very spooky to me, so much so that I still remember this small incident over fifteen years later. And I still wonder what was in me that made me behave that way.
Indeed, its not often I play lazer tag, but the one time I did, I made sure I won. In that game, its very possible to never get shot, you just have to be very careful. I always just thought I had a “survival instinct”.

When I was 16, I had to fight to survive, when I was given a dose of succinolcholine, which knocked my brain out and I had to be intubated. I was then given a drug that would metabolize the succinolcholine, and I slowly awakened, minus my tonsils and adenoids.
Then when I was 18 I had my first Depersonalization disorder episode. I attended post-prom activities at Kings Island theme park in Ohio with a friend of mine and the girl I attended prom with. I didn’t know her very well, but I’ll never forget the first time I saw her. She transferred into my school in the eighth grade and came into my English class. She was gorgeous and I swore to myself I would date her someday. I largely let that go for the next four years, because I decided I wasn’t old enough to date anybody until I graduated high school. But as it turned out, she was a good friend of a mutual friend of ours and her boyfriend went to a different school. So in order to hang out with her friends at our school, she agreed to go to prom with me. I quickly became infatuated with her in the 3 week period before she agreed to go to prom with me and the prom happened. I learned all about Christian Science and Vegetarianism. I hadn’t ruled out the possibility of a relationship between us – until I was standing in the line for a ride at the park. I had been considering the casual way she behaved at prom and at during the bus ride to the park (we only danced together once or twice at prom and she felt obligated to sit next to me on the bus, but I let her sit with her girlfriend instead.) I concluded she wasn’t interested in me, and as I was chatting with our mutual friend, Martin, he confirmed as much. That didn’t knock me out of the DD episode though. I had an interesting time trying to explain how I felt to a few friends while I was there at the park. They had no idea what I was talking about. Still, I was functional all day. Didn’t snap out of it until I got back to the parking lot and stepped off the bus.

When I was younger, quite often I was sick, due to infections stemming from allergies. During my illness, while I was dozing in bed, I also experienced symptoms related to DD. Spatial distortion, hypersensitivity. I would stare up at the sharp ceiling and feel every prick. The rectangles and cubes and lines would take on a life of their own. As I aged and the illnesses became less frequent (and I began taking allergy medication), the episodes dwindled and finally disappeared altogether. I kind of missed having them when I was sick, because it was to me like “that is what being sick is supposed to be like” and if I wasn’t having those episodes anymore, was I really sick? And they were also kind of a fun reality warp.
Incidentally though, I began a great disdain for any kind of mind-altering drugs, and through a times I had drugs that did alter my mind, I became sure I’d never take any illegal narcotics, and only use legal ones as a last resort. Because I cherished my sanity and the feeling of reality, and didn’t see anything good about changing that.
Another symptom of the disorder is feeling as though this has happened before, what I commonly refer to as Déjà vu. I had this quite a bit between 8th and 12th grade, but its been occurring less frequently.

Lets put two and Two together:
two:
I have atypical psuedo cholinesterase. I am therefore allergic to choline drugs, because I lack the protein to digest it. Pseudocholinesterase deficiency is an inherited enzyme abnormality that results in abnormally slow metabolic degradation of exogenous choline ester drugs such as succinylcholine. Pseudocholinesterase is a glycoprotein enzyme, produced by the liver, circulating in the plasma. It specifically hydrolyzes exogenous choline esters; however, it has no known physiologic function.
· Most clinically significant causes of pseudocholinesterase deficiency are due to one or more inherited abnormal alleles that code for the synthesis of the enzyme.
· These abnormal alleles may result in a failure to produce normal amounts of the enzyme or in production of abnormal forms of pseudocholinesterase with altered structure and lacking full enzymatic function, as described below.

Are you starting to see the link between Alzheimers, DD, and Atypical Pseudocholinesterase yet?

Its my hypothesis there are two classes of DD and approximately 4 or 5 different types of DD.

Class 1: Acute Onset
Type A: Altered Body Chemistry: Drug use
Type B: Environmental: Stress, traumatic event, or other mental illness (Defense Mechanism)

Class 2: Insidious Onset
stems from or is related to atypical pseudocholinesterase.

Or, it could be that everyone with DD has Class 2, which is a predisposition, and they experience episodes because of Specific events.

Categorized by treatments:
- lamotrigine as an addition to an antidepressant medication. Our latest findings show that approximately 65 per cent of patients who take the above combination benefit to some extent.
- clonazepam, also seems beneficial in a number of patients, particularly when used in combination with an antidepressant.
- ‘antiopioids’ (eg naloxone, naltrexone) seem to help a number of people
]]> http://indyscretions.wordpress.com/2009/06/03/new-to-the-net-1/feed/ 0 indyscretions http://indyscretions.wordpress.com/2009/06/03/hello-world/ http://indyscretions.wordpress.com/2009/06/03/hello-world/#comments Wed, 03 Jun 2009 01:35:58 +0000 indyscretions ]]> The purpose of this blog is to complete the internet with all information heretofore not found therein. 

Comprende?

Good, lets get to it then.