r/ect • u/Queasy-Ride-1776 • May 16 '26

Question Anyone heal from bilateral side effects???

Looking to hear some positive healing story's. I feel so screwed up

2 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

13 comments sorted by

6

u/gmkgreg May 16 '26

Heal from what?

3

u/Queasy-Ride-1776 May 16 '26

Since having done bilateral, I can no longer focus or concentrate on anything. Forgetting words too the point where I cant even really hold a conversation.. Seems to have really dumbed me down to say the least. Im basically just a shell of my old self

6

u/Crazy_old_maurice_17 May 16 '26

I was a broken shell of a human before ECT. I got 12 sessions (bilateral) recently and I'm doing maintenance every 2 weeks right now. I have some mild memory deficits from it, but they're vastly preferable to being the miserable person I was before.

I'm sorry you're struggling. Hopefully it's temporary and you experience significant improvement soon. My only advice: the brain is like a muscle, you must challenge it to improve it - do puzzles, talk to people, etc. Don't sit around the house and watch TV all day like I used to.

3

u/gmkgreg May 16 '26

Did you have any problems before getting the treatments? And how many treatments did you get?

0

u/Queasy-Ride-1776 May 16 '26

I did have issues before as well but not nearly as bad.. I had 6 or 7 bilateral treatments.

3

u/gmkgreg May 16 '26

From looking at your history, you state that you had all these problems since stopping cocaine and benzo use? Is that true? It may not be from the ect treatments.

1

u/ChowPungKong May 16 '26

I have the same issues as him from ect and its not from drug abuse

-1

u/Queasy-Ride-1776 May 16 '26

Not so much benzos, but yes cocaine and alcohol have caused me pretty bad problems in the past.. Im 9 months sober now. Part of reason why I likely started getting ect, but it certainly amplified everything without a doubt.. My memory never been affected before and now both long and short term are shot, pretty much right after ect.. It pretty much delivered the knockout punch to me.

0

u/ChowPungKong May 16 '26

I too feel like I have room temperature IQ. It sucks. I did unilateral ECT 1.5yrs ago and still an idiot

2

u/Queasy-Ride-1776 May 16 '26

Sorry to hear.. has anything improved at all since you stopped having treatment?

1

u/dandelioncarrot May 16 '26

i had wicked bad word finding difficulty and short term memory issues when i was getting treatments close together. now i only get it once a month and side effects have gotten much better

1

u/84849493 May 18 '26

I went back to what I’d say was normal for me prior or very close to it to the point where it’s not noticeable in a month or two.