infinityzer00000 Log

General discussions. Feel free to use this like a support group also.
Trazohell
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Re: infinityzer00000 Log

Unread post by Trazohell »

JK24 should be go in a forum for hypochondrics.
Depression never cause symptoms like numb and shrunken genitals. This would be an insult to all concerned in this Forum.
I have been mental far worse in my life and I didn't had these symptoms.
Likewise, it makes no difference how I feel today.
A bad day when I just sit at home and think about what went wrong in my life = numb sack.
A nice weekend where I was distracted from PSSD = numb sack.
June 2015 - April 2016 Fluoxetine
April 2016 - March 2017 Fluvoxamine
December 2017 9 days Trazodone
After Trazodone PSSD: loss of libido & spontaneous/night/morning erections, prostate/pelvic pain, genital numbness, lower sperm count, Anhedonia
Jaxx
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Re: infinityzer00000 Log

Unread post by Jaxx »

Post was a year old people....
Thomas
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Re: infinityzer00000 Log

Unread post by Thomas »

Trazohell wrote: Sat Oct 10, 2020 6:25 pm Depression never cause symptoms like numb and shrunken genitals. This would be an insult to all concerned in this Forum.
Depression can cause numb genitals (even when flaccid) according to doctors I saw.
As the shrunken genitals, this symptom was always puzzling for me. My flaccid penis size can easily vary of 20% depending on endogenous (mood...) and exogenous (temperature...) factors, so I guess it is difficult to distinguish 1) "structural damage" from 2) "temporarily stuck in the small size", is it? I was 2).
I have been mental far worse in my life and I didn't had these symptoms.
Likewise, it makes no difference how I feel today.
A bad day when I just sit at home and think about what went wrong in my life = numb sack.
A nice weekend where I was distracted from PSSD = numb sack.
I also was far worse in my life than these last months, and I never had any of the PSSD symptoms before. My sexuality was almost the only thing working during my depression, actually.
However, I did recover partially but significantly from these symptoms and I really think my 3 months of serenity helped... and a few days of serenity are far from enough for a body to start feeling better.
Escitalopram, 10mg/day, Jan-May 2019. Fluoxetine, May-Sept 2019. Mirtazapine 7,5mg/day, November 2019-January 2020. Escitalopram, 5mg/day, Feb-May 2020.
Symptoms: sexual & emotional numbness
JakeLawe
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Re: infinityzer00000 Log

Unread post by JakeLawe »

arahant wrote: Sat Oct 10, 2020 2:16 pm
JakeLawe wrote: Sat Oct 10, 2020 1:43 pm
JK24 wrote: Sat May 11, 2019 5:15 am I wanted to add my own experience if I may. I have suffered from depression on and off for the past few years, but over the last year it has gotten way worse. I took 5-HTP for a few days in January 2019 and have experienced PSSD symptoms after that.

Now here it goes: I agree with the OP and also with success stories like the one from Bunny. I also had lack of nocturnal erections and believed, this cannot be psychosomatic. However, there IS a link between hormones and thoughts. That‘s why you can treat depression both with psychotherapy and drugs! Cognitive behavioural therapy changes your irrational, twistes thoughts that causes your depression (which is NEVER based on realistic thoughts - read „Feeling Good“ by David Burns if you want to find out more), and drugs change hormones - BOTH have the effect of making you less depressed. So CLEARLY, thoughts can change hormones, and hormones/drugs can change thoughts. How could it be differently?

Furthermore, regular depression, without any medication envolved DOES cause physical symptoms! If you feel extremely tired or lose your appetite or slur your speech because you‘re depressed, those are PHYSICAL symptoms. So depression can cause physical symptoms just as much as medication can.

My view on this whole thing is that it can be treated ANALOGOUSLY to depression: by medication, by psychotherapy, or BOTH. My approach, just as for my depression, has been: I don‘t want to take antidepressants, I choose psychotherapy. And it has worked so far! EVER SINCE I started telling myself the following „I have low libido. Low libido is a SYMPTOM of depression. I suffer from depression. Therefore I SHOULD have low libido as long as I suffer from depression“ my symptoms have IMPROVED. Once during sex with my ex-girlfriend she gave me a blowjob and I felt NOTHING. But then I quickly told myself: „Loss of pleasure from activities I used to enjoy is a SYMPTOM of depression, and I suffer from depression. Therefore I SHOULD get no pleasure from this blowjob“ and in an INSTANT, I felt more! In an INSTANT, as SOON as I relaxed JUST A BIT MORE, the blowjob felt AMAZING.

The same approach worked for basically COMPLETELY curing myself from pleasureless orgasms within a few days. I had a few good days where my depresion was almost gone, and when I masturbated I just told myself that sexual anhedonia, i.e. pleasureless orgasms, is a symptom of depression, therefore I should suffer from it. My orgasm quality improved CONSIDERABLY and has done ever since, to the point where I‘ve gotten USED TO having good orgasms again.

My morning erections also started returning when I stopped obsessing.

I have yet ANOTHER argument why this whole thing is psychosomatic, that was quite convincing to me: I NEVER really found any symptom that CANNOT be caused by depression. EVERY symptom I experienced and subsequently searched for, had depression as one possible cause. No matter what symptom I had, it could ALWAYS be attributed to depression.

Now some of you might say: But some of my symptoms are hard to describe, I just feel weird, not like myself.
Well, excessively worrying about your health and feeling weird, is a SYMPTOM OF DEPRESSION. In my life, 100% of the cases where I told someone „I just feel weird, I can‘t explain it, I feel like not my normal self, I can‘t stand it, I just want everything to be back to normal again!!“ it was PSYCHOSOMATIC, and I snapped out of it at the latest when I visited a doctor and he told me there was no physical reason.

ANOTHER argument that gave me a hint that it was psychosomatic, was that my symptoms always IMPROVED after I visited a doctor and I stopped worrying about the condition for a minute. The first time after I visited my GP, my girlfriend and I had FANTASTIC sex and I thought I was cured. Then I started worrying again and it started getting worse again. Have you ever notied that the more you worry, the worse the symptoms get? That gave me the clue that it‘s psychosomatic, because no PHYSICAL illness I‘ve ever had had this property. The second time after I visited the doctor and he told me „FORGET about the 5-HTP. It‘s 99% psychosomatic but I‘ll get you a transfer to an andrologist and check your hormones anyway, if it will help you relax and stop worrying“, my symptoms improved again!

On thing I also experienced: I worried about my testicle size. Anytime I felt bad, I could almost FEEL my testicles shrinking, thinking I had low testosterone. I SAW that they looked smaller. They FELT smaller. It was so PHYSICAL, it was so REAL. Can‘t be the depression, right? You CANNOT shrink your testicles by having irrational, twisted thoughts, right? So it MUST be physical. Well, I put my belief TO THE TEST: I MEASURED my testicles every day, sometimes when I thought they looked normal and healthy, and also when I felt like they are small and unhealthy. They were ALWAYS EXACTLY THE SAME SIZE. I THOUGHT that they looked smaller, I was CONVINCED. But it WASN‘T ACTUALLY TRUE. Furthermore I looked up „average testicle size“ and concluded that my testicles were even slightly above average in size, but totally in the normal range. I STOPPED worrying about my testicles since then!

The SAME thing happened with my sperm volume. I thought that I was producing less sperm. It MUST be physical right? Well, I started measuring and quickly found out that the sperm volume was not only always the same, it was also always in the normal healthy range (normal is 2-5ml, 4 ml being about a teaspoon full). Since then I STOPPED worrying about sperm volume and started having more normal feeling ejaculations.

I could go on, but you get the gist. If you want to find out more about cognitive behavioural therapy and how your thoughts influence your feelings, check out „Feeling Good“ by David Burns. Great book!

If you want to find out more about excessive worrying about your health / hypochondria, check out Wikipedia. For me, it was eye-opening to see that it seems to be a SYMPTOM of hypochondria that your symptoms improve after a visit at the doctor - it was the same way for me!

Finally, one thing that has helped me a lot was any kind of activity where you stop thinking - especially exercise. If you go for a run, or lift weights, or swim, or go cycling, and do it in way where you FOCUS on your BODY AND BREATH, or do it so fast that you are FORCED to take a BREAK FROM THINKING AND WORRYING, this can go a long way to help you relax and feel better. For me this has worked often.

One final note on 5-HTP: Since both DRUGS and PSYCHOTHERAPY/THOUGHTS can influence feelings, I think it‘s in no wqy implausible that a sudden withdrawal from an SSRI or 5-HTP can TRIGGER such symptoms and also thoughts that cause excessive worrying, just as durgs can alleviate depression symtpoms. However, you CAN treat them by changing your THOUGHTS, just as you can treat your depression by changing your thoughts. You see what I mean? That‘s just a basic feature of mental illnesses like depression, where both drugs and therapy can influence your symptoms. For me, PSSD falls into that same category.
I agree with you. I'd give you the $100,000 prize but I imagine people want something "physical" as the "cure". Also if you're like me, you could careless about that and prefer your health.

Are we 100% sure this is it? nope, not me anyway, it could be something else, 5H1 whatever.. is the simplest answer usually the correct one? I'd say so, Occam's razor.

Does acknowledging this reverts things back automatically? no. In fact now the real work begins and I suspect is harder, way harder than swallowing pills (Though, may/could/can include that too!)

Does it helps with the despair of not knowing wtf is going on? I'd say so (abandoning hope, when possible, also helps with despair!)

I've been reading some of the books you suggest. I'd add: "The emperor's new drugs" by Irving Kirsch, too.

Are these symptoms real? absolutely. Can they drive a man to despair and even kill him? apparently.

The friggin mind distracting us from the true issue at hand which wasn't/ isn't our balls and dick but our mental health.

The friggin mind waiting for the right moment to make us think the cause was a pill, certainly not acting like a friend!

If I ever get my 100% back, i won't be returning. Take this as a sign I forgot about this forum (which has served it's purpose and thank you for that, Ghost) and went on with the next episodes of my life.

I'd call this: PPATAPP (psychosomatic phenomenon after taking a placebo pill).

Thank you for the perspective, Infinitizer.

Love and Compassion, brother.
JakeLawe,

Wow, thanks for bringing these profound thoughts back online. (Yours and JK24).

It also explains why there's a prevalence of people of people with a history of anxious/body obsessive thinking among PSSD suferers. I have also talked to people who had an official diagnosis of somatization disorder before taking any drugs, and now are convinced of only having complex ultra PSSD but "cured" of somatization disorder, which is by definition a severe state of worry about body symtoms and body damage. We are somehow dismissing the power of worries/obsessions have in numbing the sexual experience. Today, lots of cognitive behavioral therapy sessions I had in the past, started to make a lot of sense.

Cheers,
Arahant
Hi arahant, i thought I was quoting infinitizer on that one.. i must have gotten confused. He recommends a book "The divided mind" i finished chapter 1.

Before that, I've read "The emperor's new drugs" by Kirsch.. it says among other things that ssris are "placebos with side effects" I actually think they're fully placebos and the "side effects" are also mind made or nocebo.. (there's this drug: "tianeptine" basically does the opposite to SSRIs and people still claim it helps them with depression so the serotonin explanation of depression gets debunked, for example)

It being psychosomatic explains to me many things regarding this phenomenon, anxiety and stress and sadness can affect hormones, sugar, neurotransmitters, etc

What's also messed up is why I almost had my first panic attack on my 38 years of life after the first dose (12.5 mg sertraline) of SSRI.. do SSRI induce anxiety? how? seems to me it was possibly my own anxiety.. possibly the expectation of whether it would work and finally relieve me from depression and thd conditioning that SSRIs been here for a long time and they work... expectation anxiety is my hypothesis. One experiences "side effects" as long as one reads about them and expects the drug to really work.

Either way after reading a bit of "The Divided Mind" I'm thinking that, after thinking one is being treated by an SSRI, the depression, or at least part of it, manifests on a part or several parts of the body.. the depression itself is also a symptom to me so it's a symptom making other symptoms.. symptomception if one may ;).
Sadness, stress, anxiety, fear, worry, obsessions, trauma,.. manifested in the body as a coping mechanism of the mind that's overloaded.

There's this guy "Croboy" on hackstasis forum.. dude basically has a lot of he symptoms of this phenomenon. and he hasn't taken a ssri or finasteride or accutane in his life.. he experiences dry eyes, tight scrotum and other symptoms, including genital numbness.. he is clueless as to what it was/ is that causes it, many think his diet.. my guess? ol anxiety/ stress/ sadness.. same as our cause, I'm leaning towards..

Of course I'm not 100% sure of anything except that for all means and purposes I'm heterosexual so whether placebo or non placebo and either way simply helping me with anxiety/ depression and therefore alleviating the psychosomatic symptoms I'm taking buspar too.. alongside bethanechol. SSRIS are supposed to be anticholinergics..bethanechol is pro cholinergic.. muscarinic acetylcholine at that.

I feel bethanechol is restoring sensitivity (tho i'm taking it to restore ejaculation and proper urination) .. maybe is the buspar targeting 5HT1.. maybe is time alone and my body, maybe is my mind stopping being an asshole.. I lean towards either time or the later.

One can go crazy trying to "figure out" this phenomenon.. the significance of it starting with the ingestion of ssri i
of course can make one think that was the cause.. but.. what if it wasn't? what if the mind is an opportunist and took that moment or ingesting placebo to relieve a bit and transfer some (or all) of the trauma to the dick? (not the best survival mechanism, i reckon, way to go miiiiind!)

Either way these things should come with a warning... mind made or not of course, i may still sue them..even when i get my 100% back.. for all the trauma, money I've lost etc.. A "This pill can trigger a phenomenon where your mind transfers the depression to the body instead of your head.. and apparently it ain't easy to get it back to the head.. unless getting rid of the depression which this pill actually doesn't quite" warning of sorts..


How are you doing these days if i may ask. Is you genital sensitivity back? can you ejaculate normally? Do you have proper erotic dreams?


I feel my erotic dreams are mild.. sort of like im holding hands with my crush instead of fucking her brains out hahaha., they can be awesome too tho..

Genital sensitivity I feel is coming back again after plateauning for 4 months or so.. it may be the Bethanechol + Buspirone combo idk.

Boy, i want to take a picture of all the supplements I've taken.. seems OCDish by itself to buy so many.. maybe not and just a normal response..

Anyway, I'm taking 3 mg buspirone myself.. i felt taking 7.5 mg may be too much but i may up the dose at some point.

Is it the buspar targeting 5HT and reverting things back or is it making us less anxious as is an anxiolytic/antidepressant and thus alleviating the symptoms? or is it placebo too and our own minds alleviating things? who knows.

Funny thing: I'm reading that even when one knows a pill may be placebo, it can still revert things back.. It still has the same effect as if one didn't know! Though i tried that with no success i still think can work, specially when given by a "specialist".. possibly cause the doctor didn't really said the magic words.. Imma ask my psych for sugar pills next time and as long as he says "this will revert things back 100%" who knows.. that may work.

The mind is a mysterious thing indeed.

Are you back 100% and are in this forum to help or you still have questions/ things trusting to revert things back yourself? if you don't mind me asking, tho I know there's no "why's", we are posting here and that's that.. I suppose im here cause feels less lonely to talk to someone that also experiences or experienced genital numbness.. mind-made or otherwise..

Feel free to take your time to "digest" my reply if you must.

Cheers, brother.
JakeLawe
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Re: infinityzer00000 Log

Unread post by JakeLawe »

Thomas wrote: Sun Oct 11, 2020 12:14 pm
Trazohell wrote: Sat Oct 10, 2020 6:25 pm Depression never cause symptoms like numb and shrunken genitals. This would be an insult to all concerned in this Forum.
Depression can cause numb genitals (even when flaccid) according to doctors I saw.
As the shrunken genitals, this symptom was always puzzling for me. My flaccid penis size can easily vary of 20% depending on endogenous (mood...) and exogenous (temperature...) factors, so I guess it is difficult to distinguish 1) "structural damage" from 2) "temporarily stuck in the small size", is it? I was 2).
I have been mental far worse in my life and I didn't had these symptoms.
Likewise, it makes no difference how I feel today.
A bad day when I just sit at home and think about what went wrong in my life = numb sack.
A nice weekend where I was distracted from PSSD = numb sack.
I also was far worse in my life than these last months, and I never had any of the PSSD symptoms before. My sexuality was almost the only thing working during my depression, actually.
However, I did recover partially but significantly from these symptoms and I really think my 3 months of serenity helped... and a few days of serenity are far from enough for a body to start feeling better.
Is the forum glitching? i had written a longer reply and got lost in a "this post has already been reported" thing.

Anyway, from what I know: stress/ anxiety/ possibly sadness can alter hormones.. and hormone changes can affect one's ball's size if I'm correct.

For whatever's worth: first dose of Bethanechol i felt my balls dropped a bit more.. they feel more loose now to me.. not that they weren't "normal" in this regard before or that i was targeting this.. but it happened.. so if that's one of your issues.. maybe worth a shot?

Do so under your own research and own risk though, I'd start with rather low doses.
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