Hi,

My name is Rob, and I'm from England.

While my story may be far less serious than many on this forum, it's brought me here nonetheless.

I guess you could say I am a fitness and health junkie, but in my second year of University, I ended up living with a group of friends who slowly turned into drug addicts over the period of the next two years.

It started out with one guy who smoked pot, like I'm sure quite a few people do at university, but within about 2 months of me moving in everyone was smoking it on a daily basis. Our front room was a drug den.

I am an experimental guy by nature, so joined in early on, as i was caught up in it all, trying to strengthen friendships, but soon stopped after i realized where everything was leading.
My diet and my workouts were getting less strict and i was less focused in class.

Anyway, i stopped smoking as it was not where i saw my life or self image going( i only started in the first place smoking every now and then to join in with them) but soon became very depressed as i realized i wasn't too friendly with them and felt pressured to live like them, considering they were the only friends i had.

Anyway, fast forward two years. I have just finished university. Not sure of my grades yet.

But the past two years i have suffered from severe depression and chronic stress. To the point where i didn't speak to anyone else than my housemates, and i couldn't speak to my family or friends at home due to the people associated whilst at university. I'm embarrassed to say, but i dint know where to turn, and it all slowly started wearing down on me until i had nothing left inside and was pretty helpless, just trying to keep my head up.

i know it doesn't seem that severe, but im starting to think that the two years of being fully stuck in my own head, feeling heavily dissociated from life every waking hour, with my thoughts spiraling out of control, (suicidal thoughts at times etc) that it may have had a negative affect on my brain. After all 2 years is quite a long time to be living with severe stress. Most of the time i felt "out of my body". it's weird, i know, but i felt so disconnected from myself.

I've been out of University for 3 months now and left behind the former 'friends', and can finally start to see the wood from the trees.
i'm taking a year off to get my head 'straight'.. A big contrast from my former outgoing, confident self. But hey, i guess the mind has got a mind of it's own!

So yeah, here to find out more information on how to basically nurture my brain back to health, and subsequently start seeing life through my own eyes again.

Hope it wasn't to much of a pain reading this.

NeuroRob.