r/Lyme•
TightWar6021

Psychiatric Symptoms from possible Chronic Lyme's / Co-Infections Possibly???

Question

Hey everyone, I am pretty new to this, so I'm not too sure how this may go, but I have a long battle with mental health issues from the possibility of Lyme disease. When I was 10 years old, I got Lyme disease in the summertime and wasn't treated for about 5 months. I had terrible physical symptoms, horrific body shaking, joint/muscle pain, fever, etc., and we didn't know what it was at first. I got treated with antibiotics, and all the physical symptoms went away, to my knowledge at least.

Within the next year or two, I started developing pretty bad self-harm intrusive thoughts, schizoprenic-type voices like the devil and angel that would appear out of thin air and then completely go away without me even thinking of it. It would jump to different things at times, be there for a couple of days, then completely go away. Throughout middle and high school, I was a pretty active cross-country runner/nordic skier/track athlete. That being said, looking back, it would take me 5-6 miles for my joints/muscles to relax, or for the pain in my legs to ease, and I really thought nothing of it. I can embrace pain very well and usually let it just happen, and I thought that I was just weak and that I could keep pushing, which is what I did. Later in high school, these OCD thoughts got more prevalent and were really just intrusive thoughts.

I started college, and things got worse, where I had sexual thoughts of like everything, and I just started dating a girl from my high school, who was the best thing ever, the sweetest and kindest person. These thoughts would go in and out throughout college, nothing, thinking of these thoughts. The self-harm thoughts would come in and out. I was such a hard-working student who worked my ass off and would always be a great person by helping people out and being the kindest guy. Anyways, at the end of college, these sexual thoughts/self-harm got pretty rough and felt like it was drilling me to the point where I didn't know what was going on. I lost my gf of 3 years through the process of these sexual thoughts. After losing her, my mind blew up with all kinds of thoughts. Sexual thoughts of kids/people, self-harm thoughts, harm towards others, and just weird thoughts.

With that happening, I went to the ER, and I was prescribed Prozac because of OCD thoughts, which made me have crazy ups and downs. I then went on Zoloft, which was good for a while, and I had these thoughts rolling around, but felt good until it wasn't. One day, it just switched up and terrible self-harm thoughts of things that I couldn't even imagine. It was a drug that included a hypomanic episode that caused this. I was then placed on Seroquel for bipolar 2 disorder, which made me sleep, but I felt like a complete zombie, as if I couldn't feel anything. I was on this for a while, and the thoughts would come and go constantly until mid-December. I was so sedated that I couldn't get out of bed and try to finish my last semester of engineering. I was then on 100mg of seroquel with 300mg of lithium, which felt like it saved me from the sedation and all the efforts.

My intrusive thoughts got better until I drank one day, and they just never went away. I am fine with these thoughts, just one day I completely lost all feelings in my brain, and it has been around 9 weeks since I felt anything. My pdoc says she wants me to be stable, which I feel stable, but I want to start feeling something again. I just started a job, and it is so fricking hard to do any engineering work. I stare at the screen sometimes, just wondering what happened. I had a great gf, great life, and then it was just taken away from me within the last 9 months. I want to be able to sit down, breathe, and feel something. I don't get hungry anymore. Cold showers don't feel like they should. I just used to be so alive and the kindest person out there. Just every day feels like I'm trying to get through it without living in it.

I feel these drugs have put me in a worse situation where I truly don't know what to do next. I decided to see a Lyme specialist near me and do blood tests for the co-infections of Lyme disease, as well as nervous system issues that may also be deficient in. Anyway, I am asking any of you out there who have similar issues with mental health, such as OCD/intrusive thoughts, Bipolar, Schizophrenia, from Lyme's that were seen later after antibiotics were used? Did anyone discover co-infections with Lyme and the treatment they used?

I know this is a long post, so I appreciate anyone who reads it. I want to get back the life that I had. I am a strong person and know there is always a solution to a problem, but I have been struggling quite a bit over the last 9 months with these intrusive thoughts that mean no anxiety to me anymore, and I feel that something is living inside of me.

Posted Mar 1, 2026, 1:40 AM UTC

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