Was this akathisia?

I never found the cause for something that happened to me when I was 19, I got drunk for the first time and had a bad hangover and I couldn’t stop throwing up so I went to the ER and they gave me IV Plasil but my dad misguidedly asked the nurse to send it faster bc it was coming out in slow drops (the way it should be administered.) I suddenly felt relieved of my nausea and was dismissed but shortly before dismissal I felt a plunging, cold sensation. It wasn’t a cold day but I was suddenly unexplainably so cold and no matter how I would try to cover myself it would feel cold, and no matter how I would sit I was uncomfortable. In the car back home I had this weird feeling, almost like depersonalization where I’d look at my hand and just the feeling of being in my own skin was bizzarre. I thought it was all in my head bc the nausea and costant vomiting were over so I tried to act ”normal”, go to the supermarket ect and listen to music but everything felt odd and painful in a way I can’t describe. I started squeezing a pillow bc I had this terrible tension that I just couldn‘t find a cause for and felt this feverish-but-cold feeling. I tried to explain it to my mother (a nurse) but then I just couldn‘t find the words. I got checked by another doctor and couldn’t explain the symptoms but the feeling of being laid down in the hospital bed was unbearable, so I went back home and again tried to do “normal“ things like pace, eat and check my phone but it all felt unbearable. I never felt this way before but I thought it was the beginning of some deadly infection. I thought it was a bad panic attack and got my dad to drive me around at night and that’s when the physical component manifested itself, the need to restlessly extend and move my legs, I was exhausted and couldn’t drift off, I thought I was losing my mind. I went back to the hospital (3rd) time and they thought it was a seizure! Then the neurologist came and gave me Valium and I quickly recovered. WORST FEELING EVER! I felt trapped in a psychological horror story. And the worst thing was I couldn’t describe the symptoms to the meds bc it was such an alien sensation, “impending doom” anxiety feeling + unexplainable malaise, before the leg movements started. I never got an explanation for this event and it always remained a mystery to me, it was so intense but only lasted like ~9 hours. Was it akathisia or something else?

Posted Jun 2, 2026, 1:06 PM UTC

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