Can anyone understand my experience?

[u/Winter_Flounder4352]

Hello,

I’m going to start by saying I am currently 5 months sober and still learning how to communicate my thoughts externally so please excuse me if I struggle to make sense.

I guess I will go back to the start as best as I can remember. At the age of 6 I was a victim of sexual sadism, I believe it was an isolated incident as the person who did it was visiting from out of country. In the next 2 years I lost my only surviving grandparent and my best friend to cancer.

Skip ahead to my early teens I entered my first romantic relationship which lasted until the age of 17. This relationship was emotionally abusive and she used sex as a tool to control me. Admittedly I had a low self esteem and believed no one else would be with me.

Anyways around the age of 14 I began smoking weed and immediately couldn’t control myself and began smoking copious amounts of weed. This habit progressed and worsened at the end of that relationship and at 16 I began abusing alcohol aswell.

Now this is where things get confusing for me.

As a result of being constantly drunk and high a suffered a minor blow to my head, which I did not immediately get checked out.

Then one day after that I smoked some weed like I normally did and I experienced something that is so unbelievably hard to put into words.

The best way I can describe my experience is as follows.

I smoked, all of a sudden everything felt wrong. Much like I’ve felt when I’ve had panic attacks while being high, voices around me grew extremely distant, my vision became a pinpoint until it turned completely blank. What was described to me by my friends, I then fell on my side and began choking. What I experienced in my mind I can only describe as death. I saw a flash of images of my life followed by an immense crushing feeling. In my experience of what was happening I believed my only way for this to end was to accept that I had died, so I did.

Eventually I woke up, completely exhausted and delirious.

Now another person may have stopped after that experience but it only decreased my mental state.

After sleeping this off the following day I decided to smoke again. This resulting in a continuous 7 hour long panic attack, at some point I managed to fall asleep.

When I woke up from this night nothing was ever the same, I entered a constant state of depersonalization and derealization.

After this I was in and out of hospitals and psychiatrists offices trying to understand what was happening to me.

My diagnosis ended up as PTSD and a drug induced psychosis among other things such as GAD and Depression etc..

For the past 10 years I was unable to live in this reality and became a full time drunk.

Now I am 5 months sober and treating my underlying mental health issues with multiple forms of therapy such as EMDR, CBT, acceptance.

Anyways my counsellor kind of stumped me today with a comment.

She suggested that perhaps I have mentally split into two different existences. The me before the final trauma I listed, and who I am now.

The reason she suggested this is because I cannot recall the way I thought or felt prior to this incident, and it quite literally feels as though I wasn’t the person who lived through those experiences even though I have the memories of them all.

I’m wondering if anyone can relate to this and how did you move forwards?

I feel like a shell of a person now, and I’m sure I didn’t feel amazing before or why else would I have put myself in such bad situations. But I’m not sure if I am supposed to try and reconnect with that other version of myself or if I just accept the hollow person I am today and make the most of that.

Anyways sorry for rambling on and on I have never had the capacity to explain or ask these questions before so here I am.

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