> I noticed you said in another comment that you were treated with antipsychotics in the psych ward. Would you say they had any effect in lessening the symptoms?
Your intuition is right. The antipsychotic was actually prescribed by a psychiatrist during my second hospital stay at Brigham and Women's and not at a psych ward. (I would later enter another psych ward where the psychiatrist there prescribed a different antipsychotic and took me off of the old one.) I essentially begged for it because I wanted something that would help me that wasn't Ativan. Ativan helped a lot, but I was so concerned about it being a benzo and getting addicted to it. I wanted it to help me sleep too. The antipsychotic was prescribed in the window of time where they thought it was MS. I hadn't gotten the positive antibody test result back yet.
I'm being a bit vague here in terms of why I wanted it. I don't mind going into more detail personally, but it gets extremely dark and extremely intense very fast. I don't know if that's something I want to publicize yet. As bad as my OP sounds, it was in fact way worse.
> And, another thing. Have you ever tried dissociative drugs(like ketamine, PCP, DXM), and if so, how similar would you say your experience was to those drug experiences? Of course, feel free to tell me to fuck off if you don't want to discuss that in a public forum.
I have not. The hardest drug I've ever done was a few puffs from a vape pen of marijuana about 6 years ago. Otherwise, before the encephalitis, I would say I was a moderate consumer of alcohol and tobacco (via cigars, not cigarettes). Once the encephalitis started (early March) I went cold turkey on both alcohol and tobacco and did not suffer any withdrawal effects AFAIK. (This was a question asked by many doctors, many times, repeatedly. I was always proud to give a consistent, "Zero alcohol since March N. Zero cigars sinces March N.")
Prior to that I had considered trying LSD some day. After this, not a fucking chance.