I actually have unrelenting brainfog. As someone previously mentioned, English had always been my best subject in school, but now I need to involve great effort not only to formulate ledgable writing, but now, to get even a modicum of comprehensible discourse out of my mouth. I actually have to take a year out from my Journalism degree because I simply cannot form my own opinions on anything anymore due to this perpetual fog - and my parents can't understand, they thing I'm just useless. I am useless, in this state. It tends to vaguely ease at night, which then causes me to want to stay up an extra hour or two just so I can actually remember how it is to actually be able to think straight.

One of the most devastating effects is the lack of ability to comprehend speech. It just seems to go in one ear and out the other, and all I can manage is a "yeah". In fact at times I'm non-responsive. I suppose I can understand what people are saying, but I cant respond. Depersonalisation due to sleep deprivation, I'm sure of it. In the past, the only method of lifting it was combining alcohol with smoking small quantities of cannabis - but I certainly wont be venturing that route. Other utter disasters are ridiculously futile attempts at making coffee but forgetting to actually put the milk and coffee into the cup and catching myself just in time before I give my lip second degree burns, remembering what day it is or having to constantly recheck the clock because I forgot what time I "noted" merely 5-10 seconds ago, or expressing emotion. As I wrote in my journal earlier, the fog prohibits me from successfully achieving anything other than eating, drinking, smoking, urinating - and of course, depositing feces.    

Anyway, I've emailed a sleep specialist and I'll know in a few days when I can get a consultation and home sleep study arranged, so thats relieving.

I've found that a small amount of xanax - 1/2 mg two or three times a day - is the best thing for helping me to function with the brain fog.  It doesn't help me with being able to do the kind of academic work that I once enjoyed and sought to make a career of, but it does help me feel close enough to "normal" to be able to function in my daily life and at work, and that's a blessing.  It's not a long term solution by any means, but I'm grateful for at least some relief.

Finding a long term treatment solution, though, is proving difficult, mainly because there hasn't yet been a doctor who didn't look at me like a dog that's just been shown a card trick when I've spoken to them of this "fog in my brain."  Or friends or family members, for that matter.  They always just seem to dismiss this complaint as something that exists only in my head.  After so many years of having this same response, I began to think that maybe they were right.  But finding on this forum that there are many other people out there who suffer from the same problem has been very theraputic for me, and I'm sure it has for others.

Lately I've decided to give up on Western doctors and insteady try a Chinese medicine approach, after reading this article: http://acupuncture.com/newsletters/m_sept07/brain_fog.htm   I figure it's at least worth a try.  It makes sense to me to try a "holistic" approach.  I'm not convinced that whatever is causing this is something within in the brain itself, but rather by something somewhere in the body that affects the brain in such a way as to create this feeling of a "fog" and the dysfucntion that goes along with it.  Just an experiment, though.  Once I get to where I can pursue this I'll be sure to post back as to whether or not it has any degree of success.