At 'almost 8 months' I too was very low and felt my recovery had stopped was stuck in a rut avoiding TV, books, loud music and anything else fun because it all overstimulated me.

I've just gone 11 months and am improving pretty fast. Have improved fastest of all between 9 and 11 months (a time period which coincided with me starting to really hit the blueberries, decaff green tea, turmeric, fish oil, cherry juice, eggs and aerobic exercise). Doc has said he expects me to go on improving for up to two years if I don't feel completely better before then. Don't know where he got that figure from but nothing that's happening to me gives me any reason to disbelieve him.

So hang in there, there's plenty to hope for yet. Most of these time periods doctors talk about seem pretty arbitrary to me.

The other day I took a psychiatric patient through the London Underground and had to not only deal with it myself but also look after him and assess whether he could manage such a journey independently. It doesn't get much more overstimulating than that - but I had no problems and no after-effects. This is a massive improvement since my eight month mark