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Kalinda
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Joined: 9 Jan 2012
Age: 36
Gender: Female
Posts: 191
Location: West Virginia

06 Nov 2013, 3:43 am

I'm not sure what to think, if it's me or what. It happened after I smoked a tobacco alternative that I purchased by someone whose able to sell stuff like that. I feel so stupid. I called 911 and went to the ER after it happened, to make sure I was ok. They didn't even give me an EKG to check. I thought it was never going to end, or I was going to die. A friend gave me vitamin B and some water, I eventually was able to come out of it.

I'm diagnosed with Bipolar and I take Abilify. I also added Adderall to keep me awake and focused. Could there be another underlying condition I have missed? I'm freaking out because the experience was very scary. I lost consciousness, was falling all over the place, had trouble breathing, and objects and space distorted extremely around me. I saw things as if far away.

Time seemed to stop, and then it kept repeating. I couldn't see or focus on what was happening. My head was filled with nothing but a buzzing and flickering sound and I couldn't find myself or my thoughts. I've never lost consciousness before. It was the scariest experience. I felt like life was draining out of me. My feet and hands turned purple first, now I remember because I was wearing flip flops in the cold. But during the seizure I had heightened energy it felt like, just an inability to control it. The world literally washed away and was replaced by a screen. I depersonalized and I thought I was gonna die.

I kept falling backwards. I lost balance completely. I couldn't even keep my head up.


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pensieve
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06 Nov 2013, 6:56 am

Firstly, losing consciousness is passing out. It sounds like you were conscious but lost some sensory perceptions.

I think what triggered the seizure could have been Adderal or just a combination of all those meds. Stimulants give me seizures. I pretty much experienced this today. I felt really uneasy just walking to the grocery store and when I returned home I had a seizure. Was unable to get up from bed for about 3 hours.

I often got the high energy sped up feeling on Ritalin. I pretty much now have a seizure disorder from being on those damn pills.

Best thing to do is go to a neurologist if you want to know you have a seizure disorder yourself. Seizures aren't always related to epilepsy though. Epilepsy is when they are re-occuring and there's physical evidence in the brain. When they can't find the physical reason they say it's psychosomatic or something.


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Apple_in_my_Eye
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06 Nov 2013, 7:27 am

Kalinda wrote:
I lost consciousness, was falling all over the place, had trouble breathing, and objects and space distorted extremely around me. I saw things as if far away.

Time seemed to stop, and then it kept repeating. I couldn't see or focus on what was happening. My head was filled with nothing but a buzzing and flickering sound and I couldn't find myself or my thoughts. I've never lost consciousness before. It was the scariest experience. I felt like life was draining out of me. My feet and hands turned purple first, now I remember because I was wearing flip flops in the cold. But during the seizure I had heightened energy it felt like, just an inability to control it. The world literally washed away and was replaced by a screen. I depersonalized and I thought I was gonna die.

I kept falling backwards. I lost balance completely. I couldn't even keep my head up.


I'm not a doctor or nurse or anything else, but I have a condition that make me prone to passing out from low blood pressure. I've gone fully out about 5-6 times (and half out too many times to remember) and your description sounds like what I've experienced (and it does feel like you're dying!).

Anyway, the purple hands and feet thing caught my eye, because that can be a sign that blood is pooling, rather than circulating, in your body, and that means that your brain can end up getting deprived of enough blood/oxygen to keep it functioning (because too much of your body's blood ends up stuck in your legs/feet). Hence you can't properly see, hear, think, sense time, etc. So, that sounds familiar to me, but again I'm not a doc/EMT/nurse.

The standard advice if that happens is to bend over: lower your head so that it is below your heart. That makes it easier for your heart to pump blood to your brain. Or, better, you can lay on your back with your knees bent (feet drawn up to your backside). Don't try to keep standing upright.

You should probably call or see your doctor and tell him/her about it (sounds like you're going to, yeah?).

My guess is that whatever you got sold provoked a vasal-vagal syncope:
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/vasova ... pe/DS00806

Oh, and about the energy -- when you have the above your adrenal glands pump out a huge amount of adrenaline -- so it might've been that.

IIRC, V-V syncope can sometimes trigger a seizure, though I've never had it happen.

End of info. dump.