#filling up tags lknkndfkgn

[lliaq]

tw in case anyone reads this: drug use, anxiety + panic attacks, emetophobia, ptsd, depression, suicidal ideation also it's long as fuck don't even know why I'm doing this here, but I've been thinking about this a lot lately and I need to put my thoughts down somewhere

about 8 years ago I had a really strange experience while I was high. I'm pretty sure it was just weed, but honestly idk, bc it was a very intense experience for just weed. Could have been a really psychoactive strain I guess, but my bf at the time, who I got the drugs from, was also into psychedelics, so who knows. At the time this happened I was in a city I'd never been to before looking for my sister who was sort of missing, and with people I'd only met that day (aside from my bf), so setting etc not exactly ideal. We'd met 2 of them while looking for a place to sleep. They were a couple, backpacking and just passing through on their way to Peru. They mentioned that they were couchsurfing with this random dude, who after some talking offered his place to us as well. On the way to his place we stopped at a bar because there was a football(soccer) game on and they wanted to watch. I don't care about sports, so I stayed outside and people watched and decided to get high.

Once the weed kicked in, I started to feel kind of unwell. A bit nauseous and just kind of weird, so I went into this like side alley in case I had to throw up or something. and this is where it gets really hard to put into words what happened. the thing is this wasn't a hallucination, I didn't see or hear anything, it was more like a feeling but also like how in a dream you just know things, even if they don't line up with reality. e.g. I had a dream once that was set in the house I was living in at the time, except it didn't actually look like it did IRL, but I still just knew that it was my house. Like that.

so the best way I can put it (which still feels inadequate) is that I "felt" like a portal had opened in the alley and pure negative energy was coming out of it. literally bad vibes lol. but it actually, genuinely scared the crap out of me, like I was fucking terrified like never before in my life. So I booked it back to the main street where I met back up with the others and we kinda just continued on our way. My memory is a little fuzzy from here on, but I do remember that I didn't want any guys near me (repressed lesbian joke here), and also I felt like my soul was leaving my body. Like it was being pulled up and out of me through the top of my head. Also bless the backpacker girl, bc despite barely knowing me she stuck by my side the entire time and was really encouraging and supportive (at one point I thought I couldn't walk anymore bc my soul wasn't in my feet anymore(?) and she was just like "no no you're okay, you're fine, your soul is fine, just put one foot in front of the other, you got this"). Anyways, we got to the guy's place, I just kinda sat down in the hallway bc I didn't want to move anymore and zoned out. Thought I was communicating with angels or something, idk. That's the last thing I remember. Woke up on the mattress we were given the next day.

So fast forward a couple of days to when me and my bf got back home. This is when I first started experiencing anxiety. Back then, it was for the most part only triggered by the smell of weed (unfortunate bc my bf was a heavy smoker), but it wasn't super intense. Like from a scale of 1 (barely noticable) to 10 (panic attack) it was maybe a 3-4, a 6 at worst. It mostly made me feel nauseous, and emotionally anxious, not really any other typical anxiety symptoms.

bla bla bla relationship went to shit, we broke up, time passes etc. etc. and then a little over a year later my anxiety went from a 4 to a 12 overnight and stayed at a 12 for 3 months straight. I have absolutely no idea why this happened, I don't recall anything happening that day or the days before that might have caused it. But it was also seven fucking years ago, so idk.

Those were probably the worst 3 months of my life. My anxiety was dialed up to 12 literally 24/7 and suddenly centered around throwing up. It never let up for a even a second. I had multiple panic attacks every day, I was terrified of eating, I couldn't sleep (every time I went to bed and I was about to fall asleep I'd get this like panic/adrenaline surge that shocked me back awake and this could go on for hours). I still have my journal entries from that time, and reading through them now it feels almost obsessive. Just the same thing over and over again, the only thing I could think about was this extreme fear of throwing up. It completely consumed me. I tried yoga, meditation, CBD, all with very little success. In fact, I developed a thing that I guess is called relaxation-induced anxiety, altough I don't think I've ever found any credible medical research on this. Point is, the physical sensation of relaxing made me fucking insta panic. It still does to this day.

The thing that "saved" me, ironically, was being depressed and suicidal. The anixety got so bad that I couldn't take it anymore, like I wanted to die just for it to end. I fell into one of the worst depressive episodes I've ever had. It was the closest I've ever been to actually killing myself, and I've been depressed and suicidal more than once throughout my life. But it also...numbed the anxiety. It was still there, but it was bearable (barely). Honestly, I think in a weird way going into this episode might have been my brain's way of protecting me, which I know sounds kind of counterproductive when you take the suicidality into account. But like, what else was it supposed to do? idk. I did eventually get through the depression without harming myself in any way, and after that my anxiety settled back into a new status quo. It wasn't as bad as it had been in those 3 months, but it was still bad. In the following years I tried all kinds of stuff, self-help books, apps, different meditation techniques, exposure, and most recently therapy. And the thing is...nothing has made any substantial difference at all. The fear still rules my life and it has continually shrunk my world. It has me in fucking choke hold. I eventually found the word emetophobia and some reassurance in emeto reddits and discords, knowing that there are other people with this fear, but even with them, I can't fully relate. From everything I read in those, as well as the little medical research available, emetophobia seems to typically develop a) early on in life, and b) after a traumatic experience directly related to throwing up. Neither of those apply to me. Maybe I'm just a statistical outlier, idk.

And this brings me to ..... 2020? 2021? idk it's still 2019 in my head. Sometime in the last two years, I was watching Dr. K's stream (he's a psychiatrist that does educational content on youtube and twitch). He was talking to someone with anxiety. Notably, this person also had developed anxiety after a bad experience with drugs. And listening to him describe his experience was just like...this dude is inside my fucking brain. I had never related to someone talking about anxiety that way before. Not even with emetophobes. And Dr. K floated the idea of PTSD, instead of an anxiety disorder. Now, obviously he can't (and doesn't) diagnose people on stream, he just offered it as a possibilty for the guy to explore. And that possibility stayed somewhere in the back of my mind. Just a little whisper of "hm. interesting." (there was also a decent talk about what can be traumatizing, especially in the context of what is "real", re: drugs, and altered states of mind, it was an interesting discussion)

Which brings me to the fucking weewoo show of all things. Eddie Diaz my beloved <3 Truly though, seeing his story unfoled this past half-season got those gears in my brain moving again. There he is, having anxiety and panic attacks over seemingly unrelated things, and at the core of it is trauma.

I've also been reading The Body Keeps The Score, and I'm not finished w/ it yet, but so far I've been really intrigued by the way it describes trauma and the effects it has on people. Being "stuck" inside the trauma, unable to move forward, etc. It resonates a lot more with me than anything to do with anxiety.

Now I've been looking at the ICD criteria for PTSD again (that's what we use here) and A. Exposure to a stressful event or situation (either short or long lasting) of exceptionally threatening or catastrophic nature, which is likely to cause pervasive distress in almost anyone. B. Persistent remembering or “reliving” the stressor by intrusive flash backs, vivid memories, recurring dreams, or by experiencing distress when exposed to circumstances resembling or associated with the stressor. C. Actual or preferred avoidance of circumstances resembling or associated with the stressor (not present before exposure to the stressor) D. Either (1) or (2):

1) Inability to recall, either partially or completely, some important aspects of the period of exposure to the stressor

2) Persistent symptoms of increased psychological sensitivity and arousal (not present before exposure to the stressor) shown by any two of the following: difficulty in falling or staying asleep; irritability or outbursts of anger; difficulty in concentrating; hyper-vigilance; exaggerated startle response

I check pretty much all of the boxes for C and D (and some other things associated with trauma that aren't listed under these specific diagnostic criteria) . A I've been going back and forth on whether or not you can be traumatized by something that didn't "really" happen, despite your brain not being able to tell the difference between real and not real in an altered state. I think there's mixed opinions on that.

But B is the one that I always looked at and went "oh, I don't get that, so I guess it can't be PTSD". Except the last few days I've been thinking about this again and I've been wondering...what exactly would I be re-experiencing? I don't even know what the fuck I experienced. Like I said earlier, there was no hallucination, nothing perceived by the senses that I could relive. It was literally just a feeling. And putting it like that feels incredibly stupid. Like, what? I got traumatized by a fucking feeling? That's dumb. I feel like it's hard to explain to people who haven't had a similar experience how real that shit can feel and how badly it can fuck you up. It was "just" a feeling, but it was also so much more than that. I truly do not have to words for it in any language to properly describe it. And I think that's kind of the thing. It was such an abstract and hard to define experience that I think my mind just straight up didn't know what to do with it. Just fucking blue screen. Literally ???????

So, and this is just a theory, I think it kind of "projected" or put up a front. It looked around and went "I'm fucking terrified but I don't know of what because I don't know what the fuck that was, but uh... nausea? I can work with that. That's more tangible, that's real. Congrats, you have emetophobia now". At the same time, I think nausea is kind of a trigger, because it reminds me of that moment, and possibly why I'm almost more afraid of feeling nauseous than actually throwing up. (experiencing distress when exposed to circumstances resembling or associated with the stressor. haha) Even a lot of my avoidance and safety behaviors are more about preventing feeling nauseous. And I actually think this easily could have been anything else. Like if someone else had been there, or if a car drove by, or a dog barked. Pretty sure my mind just went for the "nearest" tangible thing it could transfer this feeling of terror onto. Which unfortunately happened to be my body. Thanks dude :| not like I'm literally stuck in this thing or anything The only "evidence" (using that term very loosely) I have for this theory is a very interesting and fascinating experience I had with meditation last year. I did a guided meditation from an app that was specifically for letting go of bad memorie, and I went with that moment, in that alley. And it was the strangest fucking thing. My anxiety didn't go away, it didn't even really become less, but it completely changed. I would feel anxious, but that constant loop of "oh my god what if I'm gonna throw up" was just gone. Fucking poofed. It changed physically too. After the meditation I would just sweat a fuck ton when I was anxious. Nothing at all related to nausea, throwing up, or any other stomach/GI issues. Completely different physical reponse. I did also become kind of jumpy and like I had a very strong dislike for people walking past behind me. Not sure what that was about. And then after like 3 days that "effect" disappeared and it went back to how it was before.

I haven't done that meditation since, and I'm not sure why. On one hand, that definitely gave me a sense of "hey I might be onto something here". On the other, I think I'm a little scared of trying it again. Because it either doesn't have the same effect and then it was a weird meaningless one time anomaly, or it DOES have the same effect and that, to me, basically confirms that that moment is central to the issues I'm struggling with and that means I need to work through it somehow and I don't know how to do that BECAUSE I DON'T FUCKING KNOW WHAT HAPPENED.

All of which is to say that over the last two days I've come to realize that the only thing for me to relive from that moment would be an indescribable, hard to define, soul-deep, abstract sense of terror. And I have been re-experiencing that feeling every single day for the last 7-8 years. It doesn't fit into any of the anxiety disorder boxes. I truly don't know if it fits into a PTSD box. It kind of fits into the emeto box, but also not really. projection etc. But after many many years of reading up on different disorders, plenty of introspectiong and self-reflection, and fruitless attempts at treating an anxiety disorder/phobia, I'm really wondering if I've been going about this all wrong. And if the reason nothing has worked is because nothing I've tried (except for that one meditation, which funnily is the only thing that did have a noticable, albeit temporary, effect) has really adressed the core issue.

And if so, I don't really know what to do with that. I've tried explaining this to therapists/doctors and they just..don't seem to understand what I'm saying? I don't know if that's because I'm bad at explaining it or because they don't have experience w/ that stuff, but it's been really frustrating. I've been seeing my current therapist for almost a year now and nothing has really changed in regards to my anxiety.

So I guess I'm once again the point where I'm like "hey cool I think figured something out...........now what"

I've done a little bit googling, not a proper deep dive yet, but superficial cursory research hasn't been really helpful. Like the results were mostly either about a) Drug induced psychosis b) psychedelics as a treatment for PTSD, or c) links between trauma and addiction. very little on trauma caused by drug experiences

I wonder if EMDR would work for this?

well that was a whole bunch of word vomit. not sure what to do with any this, so I guess I'll just leave it as is, and maybe I'll come back to it in a few weeks with some new insight. maybe I'm completely wrong about all of this. if only we had blood tests for mental illnesses lol life would be so much simpler.