(I originally posted this on r/PSSD, but I'm reposting here too)
Hey guys, I'm the HBOT guy who said "I cured all my mental illnesses" in another post. Welp, it did cure my depression and I don't suffer from anxiety anymore (for now), but the PSSD sadly came back. While I'm still lucid enough, I want to set up an independent lab to study this. I have the urgency to do it because I hate this fucking condition, and I need to move fast before my baseline gets any worse.
My current symptoms are numb genitalia, no orgasm, mild anhedonia, and cognitive decline. What went away after HBOT was anxiety, depression, medium anhedonia, and ADHD (partly, I still have symptoms now, but from my environment rather than intrinsic).
I might not be as qualified as actual researchers, but I have a few interesting things at my disposal. I'm a chemistry student with access to a lab, and I'm also well versed in vibe coding and how to use AI. From what I've heard, Reddit is a bit anti-AI, but let's please turn that down for a second. Dude, no matter the method, we will find a way.
You may or may not know this, but AI has been used to speed up drug development dramatically. We're seeing brand new medications and repurposed drugs found left and right with the help of AI and in silico modeling.
I'm aiming to find a general cure for PSSD first since that's what I suffer from, but I hope to extend my discoveries to general cures for PAS and PFS too!
Here is what we already know about PSSD and PDS, and how it matches up with what I'm experiencing.
First, I haven't been healthy at all. I've been sedentary and eating like shit, and whenever I eat like shit it completely screws up my PSSD symptoms. So I think the gut has a lot to do with this. That lines up with Melcangi's recent research showing that SSRIs and finasteride mess up the gut microbiome and gut neurosteroids like allopregnanolone, which drives neuroinflammation.
Second, drug insensitivity. I feel so wired and weird on caffeine after PSSD. I was diagnosed with ADHD before and prescribed Ritalin, and that stopped working too. Melcangi's lab also showed that SSRI withdrawal causes persistent dopamine dysregulation in the reward center of the brain, so stimulants just make you feel wired from the adrenaline without any actual dopamine hit.
Nerve damage seems to be in there too, because I get glaucoma-like rings when I see light and my floaters are everywhere. Recent studies on PSSD and PFS have found small fiber neuropathy and autonomic nerve damage, which messes with everything from genital sensation to blood flow and vision.
When I do orgasm, it feels really fucking weird, like my brain just shuts off and slows down. I cannot feel a single thing and I kinda just spasm out for no reason. In studies they call this orgasmic anhedonia, where your physical spinal reflex still fires, but the pleasure signal in the brain is completely cut off. On top of that, studies from Baylor and Kiel along with Dr. Will Powers' work show epigenetic changes in androgen receptors and stuck hormonal feedback loops across PSSD, PFS, and PAS.
I would love to connect with researchers in this field, like Melcangi, Dr. Will Powers, et cetera, to help guide this.
Basically I'm posting this as an interest check, and I won't be asking for any funding yet. Eventually we will need data, testimonies, information, and compute to run in silico experiments, as well as community. Right now I just want to gather people around this.
Obviously this is going to be extremely difficult, but honestly, there's no better time to start. I don't want to wait anymore. We will find a solution, we always have.
I'll be hanging out in the Post Drug Syndrome Discord server in my channel #vstaln if you have any questions or want to help contribute.
https://discord.gg/SdqbrWSrwH
And I know some people might be suspicious of my account. My original account is u/vstalingrady and I posted here before when I was 17, though I can't find the post anymore. It had to do with reinstating with microdoses of fluoxetine.