Military Dissociation/confabulation

[John Casont]

Hello,

I have seen a minimal amount of studies that deal with dissociation (moreover confabulation). I had a very rare experience. I returned from military combat after my 6th tour in 2009. I was going through pilot instructor training getting at best 2 hrs of sleep a night. I started taking copious amounts of diphenhydramine to help me sleep. In March 2010, I was held up and robbed at a sandwich shop. Two days later, I was asked what happened and I gave a different account than what "really" happened. It has been over a year and I still have no memory of what "really" happened.

I put really in quotes because the only reason I call it real is because my military commander told me it was real. Here is the divergence: I thought I stopped the robber. What "really" happened was the robber took the cash and ran. My commander put me in for a medal and wrote an article in the base paper about my "heroism". Someone told him it didn't happen that way, and I was consequently reprimanded and my career was ended right then and there after 8 long years of honorable service. I was diagnosed with a "brief psychosis" and then later PTSD with generic dissociation.

I am more scared than anything. I feel like I'm going absolutely crazy and every psychologist and psychiatrist has no idea. They think I'm making it up. I have had to do my own research and found articles from confabulation to diphenhydramine poisoning.

I haven't found anyone else that has had a problem exactly like mine. They've had dissociative amnesia and similar symptoms only, but nothing that included such active memory intrusion.

I am looking for a case study or clinical trial so that I can print it and hand it over to my military psychs and finally have an answer. I probably will never see peace, but at least I'll have an answer.

Thanks!

 

[ronin47]

The brain is a very complicated organ, to say the least. I've heard of things that seem equally "crazy;" a woman from my hometown got stress induced amnesia from her divorce. She woke up one morning and had forgotten the last 13 years of her life. It sounds surreal, but there it is. This must be a terribly frightening experience for you, but know that you are not alone. Based on my research confabulation has been researched but there is not a consensus on what exactly causes. It sounds like it can come from any number of sources. Some studies do link so called consolidation of memory to sufficient levels of REM sleep, which it sounds like you weren't getting very much of.

I will contact a few people in the psychology department at my university and see if I can get some studies that will help you in understanding and explaining your experience. I will PM them to you as soon as I can.

 

[LoyalOne]

I don't have any studies for you, John, but I will tell you something that might make you feel a little less alone. My PTSD sufferer has experienced the same thing, I think. Things he tells me about incidents sometimes do not correspond to things I look up about them. He has made vague complaints that he is not sure his memory is all right, and when I mention things he has told me, he sometimes asks me; 'What did I tell you?' or 'What did I say happened?'

Dates I have on emails from him flatly contradict dates he has given me, as in he clearly and vividly remembers an incident being on a specific day in August that he had already written to me about in June, stuff like that. Or he tells me someone died on duty, and they are still alive, and he gets confused when I say; 'I thought that guy didn't make it?' I would swear to you that he 100% is positive he is telling the truth as he remembers it.

I never pressed him on this at first; he has had more than one TBI, and I figure it is very poor form to grill him about his bad memories. And I know the media don't accurately report happenings overseas. But his own increasing suspicion and confusion when people are confused by what he says are making me wonder whether his memory is not just playing tricks on him, but actually telling him things turned out differently from the way they did.

I would also be very interested in hearing more on this topic.

 

[Ted Moen]

A really good book exploring military dissociation is "Going After Cacciato" by Tim O'Brien. A traumatized mind is very capable of rescripting our perception of reality then revealing the truth bit by bit years later when we are safely removed from the situation.

Ted

 

[sea]

Along with the things everybody else here is saying, another important thing you might consider is that diphenhydramine is a delirient (Causes hallucinations and delusions) when taken in large doses. Have no doubt that you probably believed it happened that way. I would highly recommend researching diphenhydramine (or if it is more accessible, dimenhydrinate, which is the same chemical) and hallucinations/delusions associated with high doses of that drug. I have experienced it myself, and can attest that it does cause both of those things. Combined with trauma and dissociation, I doubt you had a chance.

 

[John Casont]

I am very excited to see the amount of posts in reply to mine. I really appreciate your concerns. I was given a sleep study and it was discovered that I DID NOT have Apnea, but in a 7-hr period, I was in Stage 4 (REM) sleep for 36 minutes with 15 spontaneous wakes.

I wrote out a large diagnoses for myself. I researched diphenhydramine and came up with a differential diagnosis on myself. Unfortunately, that would require me to put myself through the trials (take a lot of diphenhydramine and video tape what happens--compare what I remember to what I see). I told my psychologist about this and he said it was a bad idea. I tend to agree, but I need some answers. This is one of the reasons I was hoping the research was out there, so I can apply myself to an enumerated diagnoses (somewhat like the DSM-IV).

Ted, I'm going to check out that book. It's funny I have started to take a very large interest in psychology because of this.

To reveal a little bit more information, I was reprimanded for "lying" to my commanders. I wrote a lengthy rebuttal about how I believe what I believe but it fell on deaf ears. My commander's commander (Full-bird Col) decided to place a memo in my selection records to prevent me from ever promoting. The reason they said they "screwed" me was because I decided to fight them. Wow, awesome, huh?

LoyalOne -- I was diagnosed with dissociation, brief psychosis, factitious, hypochondriac, etc, etc, etc. My first psychiatrist was asking me questions that I knew were leading to Bi-Polar II. She never admitted it, but when I got a copy of my med records, she had put in there, "I believe this may be BP II". It seems like nobody can believe that you can remember things differently. Have you ever said to yourself, "did that really happen?"

 

[LoyalOne]

John, I block completely. I apparently just wipe whatever I don't want to remember.

It must be really disorienting to not be able to trust your own head, and infuriating not to be believed when you tell people stuff. Nothing makes me more bonkers than not being believed.

I'm sorry you are having such a miserable time of it. Hopefully, the info you can get here will help. If not with your lost promotion possibilities (angry muttering >:( ) at least with your own peace?

 

[John Casont]

@LoyalOne - I agree, there is something to be said with just identifying the problem, whether or not I can change it.

 

[Nemone]

I spent five years in the military and I've always hated how things work. The UCMJ (Uniform Code of Military Justice) has some serious flaws in my opinion. Even if you did something right, if you're not liked by the people in charged or if they just feel like being a jerk, it's very easy to get screwed completely. I think I already had ptsd before I joined when I look back and that environment is just not healthy. The people in charge of you have all the power and even if you reach for help to the person above the one directly in charge, you'll merely be accused of skipping the chain of command no matter how bad the thing the person in charge of you is doing. I'm a bit bitter about this sort of thing in the military myself because I had to put up with a lot as one of few women among men.

A person who saved me from being stabbed to death ended up going to the brig because of unrelated charges because the command merely suspected him of some weird involvement with the issue. Hard to explain without going into detail but it has always made me angry, because he would have never gotten in trouble if he didn't save me. That's the military for you, the most unhealthy atmosphere in the world for someone with ptsd, especially since doctors in the military will assume that you're trying to skip out on physical training before believing that you have any type of stress related problem. The only time they ever took me seriously was when I had the hives for three months and they realized after all that time that I had walking pneumonia and the stress of it on my body was too much for me to recover from the hives. I had been complaining about cold and allergies since before I even got the hives so I was pretty angry. It took them all that time to figure out I was sick. I had some pretty bad sinus issues and ear infections while I was in too. Ugh, thinking about it makes me angry. Making me run through puddles in a rain and hail storm for twenty minutes.. yelling at me to do PE because they forgot I was pregnant.. threatening to cut off my hair with a knife at the back of my neck in the middle of formation.. so angry.... urg..

 

[OKRADLAK]

Lack of sleep on top of that med can do that.

I was not sleeping and often took Benedryl (same thing)......anyway, I started to REM without even being asleep. It happened a lot and was very scary. Some were strong enough to make me wonder if I was in a dream or reality.

I think that is what causes hallucinations. I was in full REM but not asleep. Could be similar?

 

[Nemone]

How can you tell if you are in REM? Do your eyes start twitching or something? I'm just curious because I have sleep issues myself. Sometimes it seems like I can fall into a deep sleep in a few minutes and feel refreshed when I wake up an hour later and other times, like lately, I sleep for just a couple to a few hours at a time constantly trying to get back to sleep so I can feel rested when I wake up. So exhausting, I can't figure out what is waking me at all.

But anyways, I found the idea that the hallucinations could be from being sort of asleep while you're awake interesting, though I think it's probably different. Although I haven't experienced that exactly there have been times when I dreamed about being hurt or about being attacked and woke up and had to check my body to make sure that like all my teeth were still there or had to look around the room to make sure nothing was there while I grabbed my husband's arm and wondered if I should start reciting prayers or buddhist chants to exorcise demons. I guess that could be similar. Normally I'd say it's difficult to confuse dreams and reality but somehow stuff like that really feels like it's happening sometimes. It's pretty scary.

 

[John Casont]

Possibly. I was able to do a sleep study to get the actual numbers of periods of REM and awakefulness, etc.

@Newmone - I understand where you're coming from. There are a lot of ways only one person can screw up your life. I don't think it is much different in the private sector, except in the private sector, you can quit. If you tried that in the military, you'd be a deserter and in prison!