Possibly connected head (disorientation, fogginess etc.) and body symptoms (neurological stress)

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As embarrassing as some of this is I am going to attempt to be as honest as I can be in the desperate chance that someone somewhere out there might have a line on precisely what ails me and anything that may alleviate or, much better, garner me a line on reversing/healing my condition(s).

I have been borderline suicidal for as long as I can remember. I never, ever feel ‘good,’ I only experience degrees of bad. I am extremely well versed on innumerable explanatory theories on my conditions, as well as drugs, supplements and other devices and substances that have varying degrees of alleviating impact upon my two conditions, which may be directly interconnected (everything is connected, especially in the body, but how directly my conditions are connected I’m not certain). I say that only to give you a sense of the fact that I have been trying to figure this out, the most effective symptom mitigation strategies or, far superior, a means to heal, for a VERY LONG TIME. I will attempt to iterate as many of my explanatory theories as I can after I describe what it is I am suffering from.

First: ‘Body Symptoms’ from a form of peripheral neuropathy adversely affecting my sexual neurology.

Second: ‘Head Symptoms’ from an unknown culprit, or co-occurring culprits, possibly related to a constant state of stress and anxiety triggered by the body symptoms.

The body symptoms have an extended history. I am 35 now, and have suffered from them for as long as I can remember, going back about 20 years, I’d say, to when I was around 15 and things started going badly for me in a personal and general mindset/health way. Please note that even while suffering from all of this I have possessed the intellectual capacity to compensate enough for these ongoing pressures to be able to maintain employment on and off and to write and work on other personal projects.

Anyway, those body symptoms are in my penis and groin area and, of course, with the nerves there connecting to the brain and the full nervous system, everything is negatively affected; even my thought processes. Essentially I began masturbating compulsively at a very young age and to such an extent that I interrupted the natural vascular development on the right side of my penis which has, ever since, sent heightened signals of stimulation to my brain AT ALL TIMES. Those having no experience of this may believe it sounds appealing, but trust me, it is not. It is extremely stressful. My penis is oversensitive to touch on that side and I always feel the effects of its overagitated state; it is like being neurologically undermined at every moment of every day. And I know it is causing a chain reaction – it stresses my whole body and even corrupts my thoughts – you’ll have to trust me on this – I know that all men think about sex; that’s not what I’m talking about. It’s as if I’m always being stimulated to the point where I constantly have to fight the urge to masturbate and finish the stimulation towards orgasm, which makes the senses subside a bit for a time, but they come back in full force. It’s so bad that I’ve contemplated finding a way to get a Botox injection to kill the sensations on the right side of my penis or finding some other nerve-killing-cure, though I know, obviously, insurance wouldn’t cover this and I likely would not be able to get a doctor to even do it, even if I signed a release... I’m not going to go completely into my history with this affliction – I have hundreds of journal pages on my struggles against it over the years and all the drugs and techniques and such I have employed trying to encourage healing and growth of new blood vessels and removal of possible scar tissue possibly impeding blood vessel growth etc. etc.

The head symptoms have a less extensive history, and extend back 4 to 8 years. The reason I am fuzzy on the timeline is two-fold: my memory is atrocious (one of the symptoms), and I was a hardcore cannabis smoker until about 3.5 years ago – I now rarely smoke. I cite the cannabis smoking not only because it is known to adversely impact one’s memory, which is one of my symptoms (one of the least problematic), but also because it is very possible that the marijuana was effectively concealing symptoms and a condition that was there during that time, before I quit the smoking and allowed the symptoms to rise to the surface of my awareness. The NOTICEABLE onset of my head symptoms does suspiciously correlate with my cessation of my hardcore marijuana habit (smoking 10+ times a day for approximately 12 years), as I noted in my journal that it was about 3 weeks after I quit smoking, right about the time the cannabinoids would have been flushed from my system, that I started feeling the symptoms.

Those symptoms include: constant disorientation (confirmed not to be an eye problem), as if nothing I am looking at is ever perfectly stable and similar to the dizziness one feels when there isn’t enough blood getting to their brain (but again, ALL THE TIME); brain fog; lethargy; a constant sense of the surreal, as if I’m never fully conscious and exist in a half-awake, half-asleep semi-alive state at all times; horrible memory; pressure sensations that move around the left side of my head – these are not painful, but feel as if someone is lightly pressing against the outside of my skull, and always on the left side of my head, from the back left to the side to the top.

I have had an MRI – nothing revealed out of the norm. Blood tests haven’t revealed anything. My current doctor wants me to more seriously engage with a specialist on ‘vestibular training’ to correct what she thinks might be an inner ear disorder (I’m highly skeptical – my history does not lead me to having a high opinion of doctors in general, honestly) or to see a neurologist. The problem is the cost – I simply don’t have enough to go on constant fishing expeditions. I should also admit that I don’t want to take pharmaceuticals to conceal the issue for a number of reasons based upon experience, research etc. My theory for a long time was that it had something to do with inflammation in my brain preventing adequate circulation of blood related to my brain attempting to recover from the marijuana and/or some of the other drugs I have abused over the years.

I have a history of drug abuse, though it is well in the past, and if this abuse is the cause, or at least a contributor, it seems that, like my body’s inability to grow new vessels and/or eradicate the scar tissue in my penis and therefore heal my sexual neuropathy, my system simply can’t recover from whatever abuses I incurred. I smoked marijuana hardcore for 12 years. During 10 of those years I took Propecia because I was worried about thinning hair. I was addicted to OxyContin for about a year and then, likely of far greater damage, an addiction specialist had me on Suboxone for about four years. I have taken Zoloft and Prozac in the past, but neither for all that long. I used to be in poor health in general, having high blood pressure and being overweight and having borderline pre-diabetes etc., but most of that has been corrected with an interest in nutrition, a solid diet and some semi-regular exercise, including jogging.

As I mentioned earlier I have taken endless supplements and attempted countless techniques in a constant ongoing desperate attempt to address these issues. I take SAMe now, for example, which helps with my mood (and because depression could be part of the cause and could contribute to the dizziness, apparently), and take many things on and off, orally and topically, to attempt to numb the neuropathy and address the connected stress and anxiety…

Anyway, ANYTHING you may know that might be able to help me would be greatly appreciated!

 

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