24 months PAWS - still in the midst of hell

Hey guys,

I, 27, never posted in this forum before but I recently read through some posts that gave me a lot of hope strength and optimism to keep going and I kinda had the urge to reach out.

I am currently close to 24 months of not smoking weed, cigarettes, having orgasms from sex and masturbation. I also used substances like amphetamines, MDMA, cocaine regularly before but its been more then 3 years since I consumed any of those. I also was playing a lot of video games, watched porn and drank coffee which I stopped with the hard drugs as well.

Those last two years were probably the toughest sh** I ever went through. Beside PAWS my father had a brain aneurysm that popped and he barely survived, leaving him in coma for many months and he is still recovering from it, unable to speak or to move out of bed on his own. He is making progress but as you might imagine, he's still far from his old self BUT it's getting better and chances are there that he might be able to return to a somehow independent life. Yet it's really hard for me as most of the administrative and financial responsibilities fell onto me as my family heavily relied on my father. I am studying and working at the same time, managing my own life and the life of my family while dealing with PAWS.

For me PAWS is like one trip of hell. I will shortly go into my symptoms: I mostly suffer from heavy derealisation and visual disturbances like visual snow. Beside that I often feel depressed and my thoughts are always expecting the worst while being colored dark. I also barely can direct my thoughts. I am just experiencing the whole spectrum of my subconscious thoughts poured into awareness. I have heavy mood swings, feel uncomfortable when I'm in public spaces and I'm really tired most of the time. This might result of me not being able to find fulfilling sleep as I'm dreaming so freaking much. I have a lot of addiction dreams where I dream of past addiction behavior and when I wake up I feel all the negative emotions of relapsing in my body. I would say having bad sleep and being derealised 24/7 while having visual snow is probably the worst of all those symptoms. If my perception of reality would be clear then 90% of my suffering would be gone. I can deal with negative thoughts and being tired but not feeling connected to reality is probably the worst of them all. Dreaming a lot of addiction is also very painful and annoying. I mean there are a ton of other symptoms like brain fog, concentration problems but just so you know I have every single symptom you possible can have, tinnitus, blocked sinuses, muscle twitches and so on. I got checked out from various doctors and they all attest that I am perfectly healthy.

For the past few months it feels like I am making progress backwards in some areas while some other areas are slowly improving but I experience reality through such a thick wall of "glass" and brain fog that its hard to compare my progress as its the complete opposite of linear. My social anxiety greatly reduced and I am feeling more and more at peace when I am around people I like. I was at a wedding and I could actually enjoy it somehow. I also went to a rollercoaster park recently and a lot of fun despite my symptoms. I am also getting better at playing chess and feel like I am developing on other parts of my life yet I am still heavily handicapped by my symptoms and more complex stuff just takes a lot of energy to figure it out. I know that my brain is totally off and that its only functioning at 20-30% which still is enough to get me through life better then most people I know. It just is a pain in the donkey for doing so and as my memory is really bad, I am learning much slower.

I kinda had the feeling that I wont recover after 24 months and I am fine with it as I read other posts in here of people recovering after 24 months until 36 months but lately I just feel so burned out and I barely have any good days. I will keep going through this sh** no matter what, it doesn't matter how long it will take. I also know deep down that I will recover but my current constitution is just switching so often that its hard to keep up that mindset. My meditation practice that used to work really good until month 20 isn't working at all. It feels like I never meditated before. Also my diet isn't 100% optimal. I eat 3-4 fast food meals a week but its not like the worst food you can find. For most of the time my diet is fairly balanced and healthy.

I don't really know what I am expecting from this post, I have no specific question. I think I just want to documentate how I feel at the 24 month mark and to come back to this post at some point and let people know that I in fact made it out and if I can recover then everyone can recover. Many people never come back after leaving PAWS and I am so thankful for the ones actually sharing their stories once they are out. If there is someone out there who went through something similar then you might give me some reassurance and advices. Beside that I want to thank anyone participating in this forum and giving others hope and strength. I am really grateful for all the recovery stories.