Hey Sickboy,
I'm obviously not the only one to realize this was written a while ago, but I wanted to say a few things. The thing that triggered me was MissAntiSunshine's comment.
"This was not a traumatic event."
How ignorant to say such a statement, especially after Sickboy had explained how it was perceived by him. Trauma is entirely subjective, so for you to judge if his experience was traumatic or not is just disrespectful and uninformed. I hate to get down to an elementary level, but it's as simple as looking up the definitions of trauma and traumatic. Do not underestimate the range of perception that humans can display.
Now - to the real issue:
Sickboy - I had something quite similar happen to me. Quick background - I smoked weed a couple of times a week from the age of 15 to 20. I stayed away from any other serious drug, as I have very significant mental health in my family. My idea was to not trigger anything that may be sitting dormant in my mind that could develop into something very serious.
In December of 2006, I ingested a small weed brownie made by my boyfriend. He and my friend were in my room with me, watching tv and just relaxing. We all had brownies from the same platter and I am 100% sure that they were not laced. Within a half hour, I was feeling good. Within another half hour, I completely lost my sanity. I couldn’t control my head and thoughts, and I felt like every horrible thought I could ever think was crawling into my head. Not only were those thoughts extremely real, but also all of those thoughts seemed to be increasing exponentially and were spiraling out of control. I couldn’t stop thinking about things that were the most terrifying for me, such as being in prison, death, unanswered perplexities and complexities (like black holes in the universe), and the fact that I felt so alone in how I felt, as if no one in the entire world could understand what was going on in my head. It was undoubtedly the worst experience of my life and definitely the most traumatic night of my life. I attempted to jump out my 3rd story window, which my boyfriend pulled me back from. Throughout the episode, I had moments where I would settle down. Within a minute, I would feel “energy” start and my feet and rush up throughout my body to my head. At that point, I would lose it again. This episode lasted for approximately 3 hours until some sleeping medication kicked in that I had taken to settle down. Neither my boyfriend nor my friend experienced anything close to what I went through.
From that night on for over a year, I felt extremely depressed, crazy paranoid, suicidal, and never completely sane. The following day and future months, I would have moments where I felt exactly the same as I did that night and would lose it again. I missed a week of classes because I couldn't pull it together. I had never seen a psychiatrist before and never really had a reason to before this incident. I went over a year without seeing someone about it. Eventually, I realized I had been suicidal for so long since that night that I was risking my life by not seeing someone. I eventually saw a psychiatrist, who described the traumatic experience triggering anxiety that I previously had and making it much worse. He also said that following week and few months after when I had similar reactions were "flashbacks" (also doesn't have a single definition). Anyway, he gave me some anxiety medication and basically explained everything that probably happened that night and the months/year to follow. I didn't see someone earlier, mostly because I did not want to take medication. After growing up witnessing the severe mental health illnesses that my mother had, I had developed a stigma against medication and wanted to find a way to address all this shit naturally. But alas, it had to be done, because I'm not sure anything more natural that I could do would be able to get this under control.
Long and the short of this is your experience was extremely traumatic to you, hence you taking time to write in a blog about it and request suggestions/opinions. I'm not trying to give you a diagnoses, but rather let you know you are not alone and that it can get better. If you ever want to talk about it more, feel free to hit me up.
Allie
