Other Ptsd from bad trip

[Seleena]

i hate to tell my story but here i go.... I was on a tinder date and he drugged me with pcp. I felt more afraid than I ever had before and my thoughts were not controlled by myself. I escaped him and ran around in public, people were laughing at me because I probably looked ridiculous, I ended up in the hospital though, and was treated extremely poorly, and one woman said she didn’t feel bad for me. During the trip I believed that I had died and gone to hell. I am not a religious person but the thought of afterlife won’t get out of my head. Has anyone else developed ptsd from a bad drug trip? Other websites have said that it isn’t bad enough for someone to get ptsd, and my mom even doesn’t understand. I would like some support from others who have been hurt in the same way I was.

 

[Never_falter2]

That sounds like a real bid break of trust. I think bad drug trips are typically not on the list of traumas that give you ptsd BUT somebody did this to you... and I think this is really different from you deciding to do drugs.
Welcome to the board.

 

[Stephernovas]

There are criteria to meet the DSM classification of PTSD. A bad trip is a bad trip and a crappy memory, but PTSD is a whole slew of symptoms. You have to get a trained professional to determine that.

 

[mamachick]

Thats a good question. When I was about 15, a friend was going to do acid and I had never done it, I thought it was just like smoking pot. I did not know that you hallucinate. I did it too and it was a bad trip and I was not coming down after 24 hrs. They took me to hospital where a shot made me sleep. Afterwards, I had flashbacks from it. The sound of a truck brought on flashbacks and I don't remember what else. I had anxiety and lack of concentration. It interfered with school. I was a mess...which made me very afraid of any drugs. Looking back, I had symptoms of ptsd then....but may have had it even before, I don't know. It sure affected my life for a couple of years.

 

[Swift]

It's not a matter of "whether it's bad enough" to give you PTSD. It's just that one of the exclusion criteria for PTSD is that it's not caused by substances of any kind.

So... a drug trip, itself, is excluded, but the experience of being drugged is 'enough' to give you PTSD.

Diagnosis is an imperfect art, and it's basically just matching people with similar symptoms, which respond to similar treatments, under the same classification so that the doctors know a) what you're experiencing and b) what to do about it.

A proper diagnosis can be a really helpful thing, and misdiagnosis can set you back a long way. If I break my hand and the doctor puts a cast on my leg, I'm not going to get better. Same with mental health.

Do you have access to medical help atm? There are often free/low-cost ways of getting it depending on where you are.

 

[Friday]

It’s an exclusion.

Criterion H (required): Symptoms are not due to medication, substance use, or other illness.

Meaning that if you’ve delevoped a disorder from the bad trip? It will be a drug induced disorder... with different treatments & prognosis than if you developed a disorder from a trauma, or a head injury/TBI, or infection.

All disorders share symptoms, but the cause of those symptoms is important.

Just like pregnancy and ovarian cancer can have the same symptoms (no period, abdominal swelling, swollen tender lactating breasts, water retention, moodiness, etc.) But one of them is caused by being pregnant and one is caused by cancer. Giving a pregnant mom chemo & radiation won’t help her baby be born healthy, and taking prenatal vitamins whilst waiting for a baby to be born won’t help cancer.

Same symptoms, different cause, different best treatments, different prognosis <<< That happens a LOT in both medicine and psych.

Understanding post traumatic stress disorder (ptsd)

Misdiagnosis

 

[littleoc]

Not only did someone else drug you (definitely a criteria), but it seems that you were completely unsupported afterward, which makes it harder to deal with and move past, whether it's PTSD or not.

No matter what, I highly recommend asking a professional. I'm so sorry that that happened to you.

Your brain made an unintentional neural connection when it thought it saw the afterlife. With work, that can be un-taught. But I'm so sorry you had to deal with it at all.

Welcome to the forums :hug:

 

[Friday]

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