Noiseless, sightless, scentless, weightless, and progressively more and more unaware of any bodily sensation.

So the way it worked when I went was, I reserved a time slot—I want to say it was at least over an hour long, I don’t honestly remember but it may have even been multiple hours—and then I showed up a few minutes before I was scheduled to start.

The facility’s employees explained how it worked to me, and then they took me to my own special isolated room. It basically looked like a hotel bathroom; there was a contact case and saline for my contacts on a small IKEA-type tabletop, some towels, some earplugs, and a shower cubicle with little soaps and body washes I was told didn’t have harmful chemicals in them. The only things that set it apart were the inclusion of a clock on the wall the door was on, that the shower had no walls or bathtub, so it was like a YMCA shower without a curtain wall, and that on the wall opposite the door I entered from, there was a step up to a big stainless steel door—which I understood to be the actual sensory deprivation chamber.

I was told that I had a fifteen minute buffer built into the start and end of the timeslot so I could change and rinse off before and after getting into the chamber. So, as instructed, I stripped down to nudies, put in the foam earplugs while I was still dry, and showered well, using all three of the soaps they gave me to get dead cells and chemicals and paraffins and filth off of myself before going and marinating. I then took out my contacts, readied myself, and once my fifteen minute buffer was over, I stepped into the chamber.

The way it worked was, basically, it was a little rectangular chamber, probably about five feet wide and eight feet from the entrance to furthest point. This little chamber had walls made of (I think) thick glass, and it had a floor kind of like a wide bathtub filled to about calf-height with water that was so hyper-saturated with epsom salt, you would float on it without touching the walls or bottom of the tub. And all of this was nested within a greater room filled with absolute darkness, which I’m sure houses filtration and monitoring systems to pump the water out once someone’s done.

I stepped in, and the water was lukewarm—it was about body temperature. The room itself was warm and humid, and smelled like epsom salt for some reason, but not in an aggressive or uncomfortable way; I guess it kind of smelled like “clean”, more than anything. I shut the door behind me and it was totally dark. You could close your eyes or not, it didn’t matter. I turned around to face the door, sat down, and then lied back and floated, trying to relax as much as possible with my hands by my sides. I seem to remember kind of probing the space at first, but once I realized doing so (as well as moving at all) was kind of ruining the effect, I stopped.

It was truly a very interesting and peaceful experience. I didn’t, like, see God or anything, but I think managed to slip a few times into a sort of trance state, as awareness of my senses slowly slipped from my body and my mind had to compensate. It was like I was getting short episodes of a very deep meditative experience, forgetting about my body and becoming just thoughts for awhile, until it all would come to a crashing halt due to intruding thoughts involving my subjective perception of, like, my hands, or the water, or something.

When my time was up, as I was told would happen, an employee entered my shower room and knocked a few times on the chamber door, waiting for a response to indicate I heard them. I swear I thought I had hallucinated it for a few seconds, until I heard it again a little clearer, and with myself fully awake again. I knocked back, and waited a few seconds for them to leave the chamber; then, I stood up and got out of the chamber, showered the epsom salt off of myself, dried off and got dressed, put my contacts back in, and finally re-emerged to the loud shitty noisy city traffic above, suddenly keenly aware of all the noise I was totally ignoring not a few hours earlier.

I then went down to the pier and had a burger and watched the sun go down. It was a lovely time and I’d do it again.

91% Upvoted

Fuck you, Spez

Love this quote

/Binge-watches ten 20-minute long YouTube documentaries about special interests instead

Oh my GOD, the group setting thing is sooo huge.

Imagine my SHOCK seeing an ADHD meme that looked like it was from my very own head and life experience just apropos of nothing one day.

It’s like, imagine seeing a meme like,

“tfw u are looking for ur glasses but u can’t see anything 5ft away from u”

and having no concept that people share your inability to see objects at five feet away from them, or that glasses exist as a solution to that problem.

Young adult (mid-20’s) ADHD diagnosis here.

I went to my general practitioner, who had prescribed me flu medications and stuff like that before and was covered by my insurance. I basically wanted them to refer me to a therapist or a psychiatrist, because I was grappling with huge depression and anxiety at the time from being on my own as an adult away at school for the first time.

As a side note, since it’s true, I want to mention I actually unbeknownst to myself was going through a bit of a major mental breakdown at this time which motivated my actions, because long story short, on top of the undiagnosed ADHD, I had been trying to hold myself to a standard of my peers, who all were older and more experienced and worldly than I was. And that was very difficult for me in an advanced program like I was taking, and this difficulty I had, I saw as flying in the face of the idea I was even equipped to be admitted to that program, in an “imposter syndrome” type way… despite being, again, literally younger than everyone else in the program, and being literally admitted to the program in the first place. Lol.

I was being very hard on myself with sleep and nutrition and stress about money, in a way I never had to be before, because again I had never been an adult before. I was up all hours and would sleep until late afternoon and was truant to classes—classes in my supposed field of career interest, no less—and didn’t desire to do any of the things I used to enjoy. And, when I went to classes to avoid failing outright, I was propped up on caffeine pills and coffee cans from the school vending machines—which was basically my ONLY coping mechanism aside from bad food.

It all got to the point where one time I left class while someone was presenting to vomit from stress in the school restroom, and then returned to class pretending nothing was wrong, lying to myself that I could take it and that I was normal and fine and so what big deal, class is over in two hours anyway.

I hated, HATED myself. I didn’t understand what what happening with me or why I didn’t want to do things I loved, or anything, anymore. All I knew was—and I don’t remember how exactly this became crystal clear to me, but it did, I had a wake-up call—that something was wrong, and I was not healthy and was actually suffering, in a way I never had before.

So, I went to my doctor, who I had seen before for like bacterial infections and viruses and stuff like that. In the hopes they could refer me to a psych specialist for, I don’t know, drastic hypnosis shock therapy or something, that they could tell me what to do, anything to make me feel like less of an abject failure of consciousness. And I started trying to explain myself a handful of times to my doctor, who listened and watched me talk to her, asking questions sometimes, trying to understand—but ultimately all I had to point to was my depression and anxiety and, like, hypersomnia, and difficulty at school, so it was hard for me to define the problem. I was actually embarrassed I was even sitting in the doctor’s office trying to communicate what was wrong without understanding myself.

Until she went “Okay, I see… so, I have a questionnaire I want you to fill out. And just looking at you and listening to you I have a feeling you’re going to score highly on it.”

And, wouldn’t you know it—I did score highly on it! Turns out, a doctor’s job is to identify what is wrong with a patient for them, so there’s literally no reason to be embarrassed about seeking a diagnosis at all!

Suddenly all my baggage… didn’t matter. The imposter syndrome, the pressure, the feelings of failure, all the nonsense about my mental issues at college that you had to slog through to get to this point in my comment, which clouded my ability to explain what was wrong to anybody including myself? It didn’t matter. All that mattered was my symptoms, which were validated by my doctor as real and serious, and the available treatments and coping mechanisms I could use to take back control of my life.

Edit to add: Presently, my outcome is pretty positive, as well. I hold down a full-time job and drive to work and have a dog and everything.

I’m in a place now owing to my diagnosis where I am looking into therapy to start to address and unpack what I understand to be underlying traumas from going through primary school/early life in general without a diagnosis, and the mental impacts of that on my brain in development. I have no doubt if I didn’t have my diagnosis, I would be ill-equipped for that kind of shadow work, let alone particularly interested in undertaking it.

Y’know, I’ve done it before, but feel like I could benefit from some time in a Sensory Deprivation chamber again… My serotonin and dopamine are doing God knows what in there again, it’s a madhouse.

on both attempts, I’ve lost my appetite completely. not only that, I’ve noticed a mild disgust against anything edible. I’m already an incredible picky eater per default, my reaction against food that doesn’t taste good is already really strong, which basically leaves me with only a handfull of meals I can eat without strong discomfort. but on that medication, I just could not get myself (nor felt any need) to eat anything. it was actually rather scary.

Co-signing this experience as a Vyvanse 50mg user. The mental effects are… staggering. It’s like the difference between having glasses and not having glasses, it’s that significant for me. I won’t drive my car any sort of major distance unless I’ve taken my Vyvanse for the day, frankly.

But the physical effects? The loss of hunger/thirst? The resulting anxiety and hypervigilance? The feeling like I’ve been running a marathon lately, taking it and then going to my physically-intense job?

Dude, vyvanse made me literally retch preparing my dog’s food for like weeks straight. I’d get up and have my medicine, take the dog out, and then fifteen minutes later come to prepare her food, and it would make me physically ill to smell and look at it. My theory is that I was actually waking up extremely hungry, because I was going to bed without eating properly, and my body simply wasn’t on the same page as my brain because my brain was getting medicine that tricks it into not signaling my body is hungry. So, when I opened the dog food, despite my brain knowing it was for the dog, my body smelled it and rejected it as food, despite having an empty stomach.

The only things I found that helped immediately were, 1). Eating solid food, not just a protein shake like I usually had in the morning at that point (and like I had figured would be fine, because wtf??); and, wildly 2). literally affirming out loud “It’s not for me, it’s for [dog name]”. Which I swear made a difference for me, however silly it must sound.

Usually it’s around the time I’m struggling to catch my breath inside my head that I realize I’ve neglected to intake solids.

Like I’ll be rushing around at work and thinking to myself “okay I have to do this first, and then this, and then, this. and. Whew. I have a lot ahead of me—oh, I must be hungry/thirsty/fatigued”. Does that make sense? I can feel my brain actually start chugging.

Well, yes! But actually no.

It doesn’t make it so you don’t have to eat; it makes it so you don’t feel hungry.

But that’s like the difference between being impervious to damage and not feeling pain.

You’re still physiologically dragged down by the damage, even if it isn’t registering as a “feeling”.

Your ADHD body (if it’s like mine) basically has a warning light flashing all the time, saying HUNGRY SLEEPY GONNA PASS OUT IF NOT EATING HUNGRY inside your brain, even when you’re not THAT hungry, because your brain is desperate for things to do to keep itself awake. And you may think, “well okay, turn off the broken warning light”, but that doesn’t fix that you need proper nutrition, and that you no longer feel an urgent need to eat properly, since the warning light is gone.

You actually have to be more vigilant in a lot of ways. To make sure you don’t hurt yourself or end up nutrient deficient or something—again personally I’m literally grappling with having too little Potassium in my diet presently, I have to be very aware of what I eat.

How slow does this mf read?

California is like the third largest economy in the world alone, dude. Lol their biggest export is not “making things more expensive”…

In our modern age, it really doesn’t. We have the infrastructure to make direct democracy possible, we just lack the political will to take responsibility for our communities and vote and be informed as much as that would require. As humans, not as a nation in particular.