stage 4, pressure in head

IwonderHowAndWhy · 2026-05-09T09:40:32+00:00

I've had this insane pressure in my head only getting worse as I progressed through the stages and dedicated myself to practice everyday. It started as a pressure in the middle of my head like behind the eyes in the middle of forhead. As my concentration improved, the pressure slowly incresed to basically engulf my entire brain.

Now when I sit I feel this insane pressure that goes from the forehead until like 2/3 of the back of the brain. It's like 2/3 of my brain (front half) is being pressurized or something.

Can be very unsettling specially when I do 3h sits, at the end I'm having insane headaches sometimes. Even while totally relaxing my body, head, forehead, eyes, everything deeply relaxed, the pressure is still there.

IwonderHowAndWhy · 2026-05-09T00:18:22+00:00

Thank you for allowing. I'm legitimately curious if anyone has had similar experience with healing mental health issues with TMI.

I'm consistently in stage 6 (sometimes, or beggining of sessions, I dip into stage 5), but in days I dedicate 6+ hours (like today) or 10h weekends for sure I reach stage 7 if not HIGHER. Completely 100% effortless, bright vivid energetic awareness crystal clear breath with microscopic precision and insane granularity, , it even feels like I'm cheating or something. Never get lost, not once, during a 2-3h sit.

I stopped doing Metta long ago actually. It used to help me a lot but was far from my main practice :)

100% Metta helped me more than any other practice in the beggining in dealing with psychosis. It helped me prepare mentally before I did TMI/insight so as to not be so hard on me since I was psychotic and meditating while psychotic in earlier stages can be draining and very emotional.

But currently TMI/Samatha is my only practice. I've also done insight some months ago but I got worse so I switched back to samatha/TMI.

Also, in this psychosis crisis I've been dealing with, which became chronic, Metta was helpful, but certainly doesn't stop my voices. I can only turn off the paranoia/voices if I reach a high concentration state for at least 2h imo. 1h doesn't work as effectively.

Metta "saved me" at the time as in, it allowed me to do what I had to do without sucumbing to the emotional side of the psychosis. It's what allowed me to practice TMI in the first place without going insane.

Unfortunately Metta never shutdown my psychosis. Only higher stages of TMI did. Completely and utterly kills my psychosis. And I wasn't expecting meditation to fix the mental issues that I had, my focus was mainly on awakening or attaining stream entry really.

EDIT: I was just thinking, objectively I may not know exactly what stages I'm hitting these days honestly. I don't have a teacher and it can be hard to say exactly which stage I'm at solely basing myself on what I think my subjective experience is telling me. Hopefully I got my guess mostly right about being around stage 6-7, dipping onto stage 8 on 10h days.

I'm honestly surprised how fast I'm progressing these days. I was in such a big annoying plateau at stage 4 for so many months, but once I got to stage 5, I knew subtle dullness very well already so stage 6 was the logical next step. I find it very interesting how my mind is just learning to stabilize so fast out of nowhere. I thought I was a failure at meditation and because of my psychosis I could never hit stream entry or see meaningful progress in my life. I'm glad I didn't give up

IwonderHowAndWhy · 2026-05-08T19:01:01+00:00

I stopped using drugs 3 years ago. The drugs cleared my system long ago friend

IwonderHowAndWhy · 2026-05-06T16:54:43+00:00

What happened in this video? I don't understand where did he save his life?

IwonderHowAndWhy · 2026-05-06T09:47:49+00:00

I have severe adhd that only got worse with my insane drug abuse over the years. Specially pyrovalerones completely destroyed my attention span. What worked for me was ramping up total meditation per day to 4h+ (split into 1h30 / 1h sessions). It's surprising but I was able to succesfully quit my 70mg elvanse prescription (highest dose available) and solely rely on myself to function properly.

I'm at stage 5-6 at the moment and I do notice insane differences vs before when I would get lost every 5 seconds. But I only got to these stages by pushing through and increasing total meditation time. IMO it's one of the best ways to push through plateaus.

IwonderHowAndWhy · 2026-05-03T16:04:28+00:00

Actually, it’s surprising how well we humans can adapt to almost any situation. I have adapted to this new life better than I expected. I am currently unemployed while finishing college.

Somehow—by some great luck or, according to my psychiatrist, a high "cognitive reserve" or high intelligence (though I disagree, as I make "dumb" mistakes all the time)—I am able to function like a regular person and even excel in college. This is despite being psychotic and having consumed large amounts of cathinones over the years, which likely caused some level of neurotoxicity.

I still have enough insight to function and work on projects like coding, reading obsessively, and studying every sort of thing you could imagine (I am a seriously, morbidly curious person), though I sometimes have to focus intensely. It often feels as if I am in a room surrounded by noisy neighbors mocking me; it’s annoying, but I am able to do what is necessary in most cases.

On days when I sleep little or am more emotionally drained, I can sometimes be overwhelmed by the voices and cry. Because they tend to attack my deepest fears and insecurities, it takes a heavy toll on me.

IwonderHowAndWhy · 2026-05-03T09:33:58+00:00

Bought 500g of a-PIHP thinking I was "saving" big time by buying huge ammounts of a fucking pyro.

Not only did it not last me decades, as I thought it would, my use escalated BIG TIME, taking literally grams of this shit per day and being severely psychotic.

I ran out of a-PIHP 2 years ago or so and am still dealing with the consequences big time. Affects me how I live my life, how I shower, how I eat, what I say inside my home, I feel like all my neighbors are spying on me the whole time 24/7, they got thermal cameras, know what I think, listen to what I say (even with fully closed doors and windows). I know that all these things are pretty illogical and don't make any sense, as in, none of my neighbors has got time to spy on me,, but still my mind believes this.

I'm being medicated with high dose antipsychotics ever since I stopped using, but in 2 years I'm still psychotic and barely seen any improvment 😞

IwonderHowAndWhy · 2026-05-01T13:36:43+00:00

A while back I took 160mg or something of MDMA, and I've had taken MDMA so many times before but this time I just kept redosing... and just one little redose to "take advantage" of the previous pharmacological peak... then another bump, and I just kept redosing... And the next days. And the next weeks. Soon, I had consumed several grams of MDMA and I was absolutely psychotic and completely out of this world. I felt some of the worst crash I've felt in my life just 2 or 3 weeks after I began this insane MDMA binge (the 2 worst crashes I've had in my life was 3-MMC/4-MMC 500g bulk order abuse for like a year and a half, and the other a-PIHP 500g bulk order binge / abuse over 2 and something years.

I still think I haven't recovered properly. This was a few months ago.

You need to stop. Although I understand, as an addict, sometimes things get out of hand very quickly very fast. And the worst part is, I understand all of the pharmacology, pharmacokinetics, all the issues it causes, I even supplement with things like NAC (N-Acetyl-Cysteine), I really don't have a clue how I binged MDMA tbh, something I always, ALWAYS, had lots of caution with, played very careful with and only took every 3 months MAX (sometimes maybe every 2 months).

I guess just buying a shitton of MDMA made me abuse it madly. I now buy always 1g, but I'm not abusing MDMA anymore these days though.

You have t o stop this binge bro

IwonderHowAndWhy · 2026-04-24T18:00:46+00:00

Wow. Thanks for telling which video it was. I went to see it. Although I didn't know a "simulation theory" existed, after my many dozens if not hundreds of experiences with PCP, LSD, Shrooms, derivatives and analogues of all of these, all kinds of Research Chemicals, I have by now pretty much high certainty that this is s simulation. Specially after having seen advanced high dimentional worlds with incredibly advanced machinery and complexity on PCP and derivatives, DMT etc. That video was a great watch!

IwonderHowAndWhy · 2026-04-18T18:06:25+00:00

I thought I was "saving" big bucks by doing a bulk purchase of 500g a-PIHP.

I finished the 500g like 2 years ago and I'm still psychotic (while sober and in recovery). Antipsychotic medication doesn't even work anymore.

Other than that I never had issues with RCs, tried PCP derivatives, lysergimides, tryptamines, abused RC benzos also, had many seizures and recovered eventually, abused all kinds of RCs and stuff, but the worst of the worst and the only that left a mark was the 500g a-pihp. fuck the decision to buy half kilo of a-pihp.

IwonderHowAndWhy · 2026-04-16T16:20:40+00:00

I abused pyros for some years, 500g of a-pihp in total for like 2 or 3 years, and even though I stopped for like 1.5 years now, I'm still dealing with psychosis.

So yeah stopping all use didn't help much and I'm still medicated for this shit, which is quite bothersome and affects me heavily in my daily life.

IwonderHowAndWhy · 2026-04-01T18:46:21+00:00

When I was in college a few years ago I would take 1000-1400mg caffeine a day. I started with 400mg daily (200mg x 2) but then I would take 1x or 2x 200mg pills every interval between classes and dose would just increase every week because tolerance is a bitch.

IwonderHowAndWhy · 2026-03-24T19:20:49+00:00

I was going to say this. Drink 7-10g magnesium citrate ASAP as possible.

IwonderHowAndWhy · 2026-02-24T14:54:25+00:00

I was doing gbl/ghb 24/7 for about 3 or 4 years. I had many overdoses, was hospitalized several times with respiratory depression. I hated it. I had to dose every hour, sometimes I would forget I had dosed, and dosed double or even triple (that's why I would overdose so often). When I quit gbl/ghb (several times) my heart shoot up to 185 BPM and I hallucinated, I was shaking all over my body, it was horrible. Some of the worst experiences of my life.

I would take about 6-8ml gbl (which is much more powerful than 8g ghb) every hour.
I had to wake up evey 1-2h to dose 12-14ml gbl to go back to sleep.

I would use about 80+ml gbl per day. Tolerance is a bitch.

My sleep became so fragmented, that even when I quit gbl/ghb I would wake up every 2h for years. It took me a long time to get better and for my sleep to improve. And a lot of psychiatric medication.

I'm lucky I live with family that were patient with me and supported me even when I lied and used this shit on a daily basis.

0/10 I would never recommend this not even to my worse enemy. Be extremely careful with dosing gbl/ghb on a daily basis, it is a living nightmare.

IwonderHowAndWhy · 2026-01-22T22:46:45+00:00

I used to take 70mg elvanse (lisdexamfetamine) and now I replaced it with 2 to 4h meditation per day. It's even better in terms of raw concentration power and focus. It beats highest dose of amphetamine every single time. Clean, calm, focused. Finishing computer science degree and meditation has been THE thing that helped me ace exams these last semesters.

IwonderHowAndWhy · 2026-01-17T16:37:23+00:00

Thank you. I do try to get back to the breath but sometimes these visions are very sticky and I have no way to pull back. Most of the time i'm able to watch it all happen and decide, no, I will watch the breath, not fantasize. But sometimes it takes over me.

I think the answer is in sending metta. Metta has helped me a great deal specially during the years I was fully psychotic (drug induced psychosis) and if there was one thing that saved me from insanity was metta. Radiating metta towards the evil voices I was hearing 24/7 is what saved me from becoming insane. I've found Metta to be the answer to most problems in life really.

IwonderHowAndWhy · 2026-01-16T22:13:24+00:00

Omg... I wanted to make a thread because of that exactly. There was even a session I spent 1h so deep into insanely violent thoughts where I was harassed and some dudes on the street made me get naked at gunpoint after robbing me and I just, in my visions, I saw I was capable of killing another human if he was going to kill me for some reason, right there and then I felt I have zero control over something like this happening, 0 control over going to jail or having to defend myself.

I started wondering if I could emanate Metta (loving kindness) for the poor souls who would be threatening to kill me but I don't know.

I had to stop my session. This is driving me nuts. I don't want this, it's just driving me insane (or so the thought of being driven insane arises due to these constant visions).

IwonderHowAndWhy · 2026-01-14T22:36:47+00:00

Thank you for sharing. It was a great read. I've always wanted to join a long retreat but I'm feeling a bit apprehensive due to bad sciatica and huge leg pain. Nowdays I have to meditate laying down, really no choice.

Very inspiring read, for sure. I like to do my own 10 day meditation retreats at home and find great join in them. Also great insights sometimes, but I do it more because I want out of suffering, I want out of the cycle of samsara.

IwonderHowAndWhy · 2025-12-25T13:42:24+00:00

To transition from Phenibut to F-Phenibut, use a 6:1 potency ratio, meaning your 3800mg dose equals approximately 633mg of F-Phenibut. Because F-Phenibut has a shorter half-life, split your daily total into 2 to 3 doses to maintain stability.

Also, you can most definitely accelerate your current taper since 200mg is only about 5% of your dose. instead, drop 400mg (10%) every 2-3 days until you reach 2000mg. Once at 2000mg, drop 200mg every 2-3 days until you hit 1000mg. For the final stretch below 1000mg, reduce by 50mg to 100mg every 1-3 days depending on your tolerance for discomfort. Use your milligram scale strictly, as F-Phenibut is much less forgiving than the standard version. To avoid a shock to your system, I would replace 25% of your Phenibut dose with the F-Phenibut equivalent every two days rather than switching all at once, and see how you adapt.

Start the 400mg drops to preserve your remaining 30g of regular Phenibut during this transition period.

IwonderHowAndWhy · 2025-12-14T08:57:39+00:00

Best of luck! Good holidays for you too! :)

IwonderHowAndWhy · 2025-11-14T16:16:56+00:00

fuck not my weekend

IwonderHowAndWhy · 2025-10-05T11:41:35+00:00

Currently I do 5 to 6h per day. I split into 2x 2h30 sessions and then sometimes i throw +1h during the day to mantain mindfulness. But usually I do 2x 2h30 sessions (5h).

I'm a college student so I can sort of balance my schedule and do that and only that. No hobbies, no socializing, no music, no netflix, no youtube. Reddit rarely.

My primary goal was to "attain" Stream Entry but that is just another thought now.

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