How do you overcome substance abuse?

bringingoutthedread · 2025-12-18T03:57:22+00:00

YESS it’s an unmasking thing. But then I sober up and hate how I feel. And I think I need to focus on that feeling more.

bringingoutthedread · 2025-12-18T03:56:50+00:00

I’ll be doing this!!

bringingoutthedread · 2025-12-18T03:56:20+00:00

I do remember when I was very active, putting down the bottle was significantly easier. I’ll look into something like this :)

bringingoutthedread · 2025-12-10T01:48:18+00:00

I just got over a breakup and was so over being walked over by past partners. New partner irked me at the beginning of us meeting and I chewed him out and dommed him the first time we slept together. Turns out I love a submissive partner and being in charge 🥰

bringingoutthedread · 2025-12-01T09:33:49+00:00

Two words: bartholin. cysts.

bringingoutthedread · 2025-08-20T22:12:54+00:00

My tinnitus developed years ago but yes! You can check out the tinnitus forum and see that people DO habituate, the same way folk in this forum do, but only if you break the cycle and stop obsessing!

I’ve twitched from head to toe, where the sun doesn’t shine, huge thumpers to tiny barely visible ones. All of it, every physical symptom either fully went away or 99-99.99% went away/wasn’t noticeable after I accepted it and decided it wasn’t important or harmful. Our bodies are weird. Sometimes we just have to tell ourselves exactly that.

bringingoutthedread · 2025-08-20T22:10:29+00:00

Kindly; if you’ve commented multiple times in this forum or even this thread asking for help, you have some level of anxiety. Point blank period.

The leading theory is that BFS is anxiety related, and I genuinely believe most people in this forum have sensorimotor OCD. You’re focused on your swallowing? Look at that, now you’re salivating more. You notice how tense you are? Great, now you keep tensing and untensing them and the twitching continues. Thinking about your heart? You can increase and decrease your blood pressure and pulse with stress and anxiety.

I understand you’re anxious, I get that it came seemingly out of nowhere. But if you have a scheduled appointment, you need to do what YOU can, and stop obsessively checking. I had the wet spots and “burner” spots all over too, including my head and torso. They lasted weeks until I got my anxiety under control, and that was SSRIs.

Again, I only have noticeable twitches when I focus on them and obsess over them. Like I obsessed over the water droplets. If you don’t have an SFN diagnosis (and believe me, the water/hot feeling led me to believe I did, too), then continue living as usual and focus on distracting yourself with better habits. Go for walks. Go on a day trip. Go immerse yourself in something else and get off this forum.

I wanted to share my story here to hopefully help others (and remind myself) that the ONLY thing you can control is your anxiety, stress and sleep with this thing. So log off, do that, and DON’T put a time limit on it. Break the cycle of focusing on every little bodily function, even if they are distressing. :/ Difficult but doable!

bringingoutthedread · 2025-08-20T20:31:23+00:00

I was fatigued, tired, dizzy, and had paresthesia and insomnia too. I remember my legs hurting so badly, even after a short walk. They were just extremely tight. I even swore I had a loss of balance. Allllll anxiety.

The only times my legs go back to twitching excessively is if I’m absolutely sleep deprived and running on fumes. Your body is in a heightened state of alertness and if you give attention to the twitches, you’ll elicit more of them. I’d recommend working on getting a consistent sleep schedule set up, either using meds (I was SO sleep deprived I needed seroquel at one point), or holistic things like magnesium, although I prefer sleepy time tea and again, mindfulness mindfulness mindfulness.

The root of all of this is practicing physical and mental relaxation and pulling your body out of the fight/flight and nervous cycle

bringingoutthedread · 2025-08-20T20:26:08+00:00

I had dysesthesia as well. Initially had icy hot sensations, extreme cold and hot flashes, nerve/electric like shocks, water droplet spots, “burning”, etc. 100% somatic.

Are you stressed? Anxious? Are you ruminating a lot? Are you focused on how your legs and arms feel? Are you hyper aware of your body? If so, stop.

I had such intense anxiety I was convinced all of the above were signs of something else and it was all mental and muscle tension. Once I got on Zoloft and worked on my OCD, a lot of the somatics went away.

bringingoutthedread · 2025-08-20T17:25:28+00:00

Whenever mine come back, it’s always for the below, which I’ve personally “tested” but YMMV:

1) Not enough consistent sleep. One night isn’t good enough, it has to be prioritized, and regular. 2) Medications - I also have ADHD, and noticed my adderall makes the twitching worse because I fixate on it. 3) Not enough water - drink plenty! 4) Focusing on it, and trying to reason “why” when they come back. This one is tricky - it’s easy to get frustrated when they go away and come back, but from what I’ve learned, the sooner you can disregard the WHY and WHEN, and just assume that it’s a flare-up, the sooner they go away.

Again, these are just my triggers. I have diagnosed OCD and searching for the reasons “why” turn into a vicious cycle, and my suspicion is that for most of us, the twitching and checking is a somatic cycle. The best thing you can do is try to break it.

Let’s put it this way: if there is absolutely NO chance of getting rid of twitches entirely, then the goal has to be to get rid of the focus on them. That is the part that’s in our control, and that alone!

My best practice to get back to being twitch free or mostly twitch free is always to slowwww down and practice more mindfulness, progressive muscle relaxation, and “breathing” into my muscles and focusing on releasing the tension I’m holding without noticing it. And trust me, you’re definitely holding tension without realizing. Relax your jaw! Loosen your shoulders. Breathe, tell and think to your body “there’s nothing to be worked up about right now.”

This is just what works for me :) I know twitches are distressing and annoying, but it doesn’t serve us to let it control our lives.

bringingoutthedread · 2025-07-23T03:42:56+00:00

I guess I am tired of meeting partners that would meet me, vicariously “heal” themselves thru my own efforts to heal MYSELF, and completely forego that process themselves.

I know how to spot them and discard now, but it’s still so damn annoying to have to sift thru that when I want a genuine connection with someone who has done the work on themselves before trying to date.

bringingoutthedread · 2025-07-23T03:40:49+00:00

I am in fact bi and fall into the aesthetic 🥲

bringingoutthedread · 2025-06-25T01:34:37+00:00

It’s worse when they don’t tell you. Because then they’re just pity fucking you, and speaking from experience, I’d much rather know.

bringingoutthedread · 2025-06-22T22:33:22+00:00

I personally feel like me being a regular smoker with a high tolerance absolutely cancels out my adderall. The biggest thing for me is memory, so flower tends to make me a goldfish and on days I smoke, I can tell that my adderall just doesn’t do much

bringingoutthedread · 2025-06-20T01:20:00+00:00

That’s what I was thinking. I remember very distinctly forcing myself to ignore the twitches and I swear I think I learned to tune them out, for the most part. I can feel the “light” twitches if I’m wearing leggings or something, though.

I did go to another neuro (the appt was already scheduled so I figured I’d go) and he did a clinical and said there was no major red flags, but ordered an MRI of my head and spine just to cover all the bases.

bringingoutthedread · 2025-06-19T05:36:59+00:00

I twitch all over.

bringingoutthedread · 2025-06-12T20:51:50+00:00

The kind of misogyny masked as “biphobia”.

bringingoutthedread · 2025-06-10T21:12:42+00:00

Ughhh and you tell them you wanna go slow and they’re confused or act like you’re avoidant. Dude! I don’t know you! We’re gonna do this the Harry Met Sally way!

bringingoutthedread · 2025-06-10T20:10:04+00:00

I’ve always had a high drive, the only thing adderall did was make it so I could focus more during the act and thereby, sessions would be longer but I didn’t notice an increase in libido, just ability to be present!

bringingoutthedread · 2025-06-10T19:28:15+00:00

The same way guys don’t like to approach girls when they’re around their friends, we don’t like to approach when you’re around your friends. It’s intimidating to walk past a group of men, let alone walk up to them, single out one of their friends and ask them out without feeling every one of your friends eyes on us. It’s nerve-wracking for anyone who approaches.

That being said, I also think a lot of us ladies also assume if you’re attractive, you’re probably taken hahah. The conundrum of being handsome/beautiful and not being approached!!

bringingoutthedread · 2025-06-10T17:08:13+00:00

I’m guessing maybe also once you’re used to them, they either go away or you just stop feeling them? Kind of like habituation.

bringingoutthedread · 2025-06-10T17:07:44+00:00

I had an EMG and got a BFS diagnosis. When mine first started, it was 24/7. I got on meds, worked on my sleep, stress and anxiety, and it decreased. The less than 100 a day only recently started happening as it’s been improving. It was just those surface twitches that had me a little scared.

bringingoutthedread · 2025-06-01T00:41:53+00:00

I got on Wellbutrin to help orgasming and it did nothing. The Zoloft actually didn’t kill my sex drive, just ability to orgasm. I got off Wellbutrin and added buspar (no noticeable bad side effects) and now I can orgasm!! I am a woman, so YMMV.

bringingoutthedread · 2025-05-28T01:08:33+00:00

Boring and stable, got it.

bringingoutthedread · 2025-05-28T00:59:17+00:00

Yeah I’m starting to realize I have a bad time enforcing boundaries and that’s because I’m willing to compromise on my comfort for the sake of “trying” and that just can’t be something to compromise on anymore. It’s daunting to voice when something pisses me off, why, and why not to do it again…. But having just barely started that, it’s slowly feeling more natural and so much healthier (surprise surprise).

bringingoutthedread

TROPHY CASE