So I thought for my first post I'd offer a story of what I believe to be a psychotic episode triggered by MDMA toxicity. I've written it as prose, but I assure you that it's truly how I remember it, so here it is: the one time I came face to face with my own broken psyche. It took some time to recover afterwards, and I spent some time going through the symptoms likened to the aftermath of SS - brain zaps and a truly shaken consciousness.
It began at a festival. Stupidly, we dosed 12 fairly strong pills over 2 days, and a couple mg of MDMA over the course of the following day - all interspersed by a couple hours of sleep, and all in the blazing hot Spanish sun. By the end I knew that we'd gone over the top, fully aware of that strange feeling of a brain completely depleted of chemicals, being prodded to no avail. Still, after getting home I was shocked by how well my mind bounced back afterwards. I experienced a fairly mild come down, slept a couple hours, and felt somewhat normal, if a bit hazy. The next day, we ran an after party for the festival, got absolutely trashed on alcohol and cocaine, mustered the hangover and proceeded with our lives, to the tune of "how the fuck did we just get away with that?".
2 days later, I'm in a beautiful open-air bar with a group of friends, laughing and casually drinking when suddenly, it hits me like a brick. I feel sick to my stomach; that writhing feeling that's over and above normal nausea, and I start feeling the sharp onset of a severe migraine. My vision starts blurring, and I start having mild hallucinations. My friend's faces warp - however, there was no visual element to it. It was as if my mind was telling me their faces were twisting demonically, without the slight comfort of visual cues to confirm that it was just a basic hallucination. I immediately excused myself and ran to my car. I just about managed to get home without stopping to be sick. This was a full 3 days after my last dose of MDMA or anything mind-altering, and 42 straight hours of complete and utter lucidity, so it caught me completely off guard. I immediately ran to the safety of my bedroom.
I opened up my cupboard and bedroom doors and lay under my covers with the lights on, completely consumed with fear. I was tormented by thought of ghosts and demons and murderers; I was a helpless child, lying awake in the hot night. Just 1 hour earlier, I was smiling and laughing with my friends - and here I was, mind shattered into fragments. I woke up my parents and asked for an ambien - I told them that I was having horrific nightmares and they could see I was physically reflecting my state of mind. They knew what was happening and told me to wake them up if everything became too intense. I lay in my bed with the lights on, shaking until sleep finally took over.
I've suffered from sleep paralysis since I was a young child, so when I woke up in the dark, unable to move, I knew what was going on. Standard procedure. Breathe. It'll all be over soon. Nothing overly strange has ever occurred during these episodes - I usually just lay on my bed unable to move for a minute or two and then wake up - so I've learnt not to panic. I started feeling the slight spark of relief of it slowly lifting, when suddenly a hand grabbed my foot and threw me across the room into my door. I struggled, completely unable to fight back, being thrown about the room by this invisible force before finally waking up in a cold sweat, lights on. I'd woken up, it was just a dream. I was absolutely horrified; not even sleep would save me from this terror.
I ran out into the living room to wake up my parents. Of course they would know what to do - as always, their reason would provide a sanctuary for my skewed mind. Their bedroom door was the light through the darkness. I hammered it with my fist in a cold sweat. My father answered, and assured me that everything would be okay, and the warmth and light immediately flowed back into my periphery. I pulled out a knife and disemboweled him. I remember it in clear detail; I couldn't stop myself.
Again, I woke up in my bed - sweat dripping down my temples, lights on. This time I was definitely awake. It was hard to tell through the psychosis, but everything seemed lucid. I remembered my dream. What if it had actually occurred? What if through this thick smog of dementia I had actually murdered my father and it wasn't just a dream, or my mind was so warped that I had done it subconsciously - a merciless sleepwalker? I knew what would happen when I peered out of my room. I would find my parents laying there, murdered by my hand, and my twisted husk of a mind would be hauled off to jail. And for what? A little bit of dancing in the desert?
The whole scenario played through my head thousands of times as I sat up in bed. Finally, I pulled it together, and gathered the courage to go check what had happened. I ventured out into the dark living room, shielding my view from the glass sliding door that always produced such unimaginable horrors when I was a kid. The light was strange. Dusty, almost. My parent's bedroom door slowly opened. My father stepped out. Pure relief enveloped me entirely; that blistering wave of complete and utter disbelief at how incredibly warped one's mind can become as it crashes back down to sanity. A half sigh, half chuckle forced it's way out of my mouth. Of course I hadn't got insane and murdered my parents.
He looked down at me and asked if everything was okay. Of course it was. Everything was fine. And then I slit my father's throat. I wasn't fighting a demonic presence that was forcing my hand to his throat. I was smiling and laughing.
I woke up again. Despair. I was trapped. This loop would continue forever. Through my own doing, I had broken my mind and was forced to spend an infinite existence enacting the worst scenario imaginable. What's more - doubtless - at one point I would actually wake up, and through the gloom forget about reality, reactively continue the loop, and then fall back into my dream state, so I had also murdered my parents on the real plane of existence, as well as this dream one.
The loops continued. They became more and more unreal; at one point I was floating through my living room with my dog, in the dusty light. But they always ended in the same way.
Edit: Just by the way, I don't mean to undermine any of the stories on here which I'm sure do involve incredibly serious and lasting psychotic episodes. A bit of hyperbole for the sake of story-telling is flushed in there, but the experience is all real and unembellished.
It began at a festival. Stupidly, we dosed 12 fairly strong pills over 2 days, and a couple mg of MDMA over the course of the following day - all interspersed by a couple hours of sleep, and all in the blazing hot Spanish sun. By the end I knew that we'd gone over the top, fully aware of that strange feeling of a brain completely depleted of chemicals, being prodded to no avail. Still, after getting home I was shocked by how well my mind bounced back afterwards. I experienced a fairly mild come down, slept a couple hours, and felt somewhat normal, if a bit hazy. The next day, we ran an after party for the festival, got absolutely trashed on alcohol and cocaine, mustered the hangover and proceeded with our lives, to the tune of "how the fuck did we just get away with that?".
2 days later, I'm in a beautiful open-air bar with a group of friends, laughing and casually drinking when suddenly, it hits me like a brick. I feel sick to my stomach; that writhing feeling that's over and above normal nausea, and I start feeling the sharp onset of a severe migraine. My vision starts blurring, and I start having mild hallucinations. My friend's faces warp - however, there was no visual element to it. It was as if my mind was telling me their faces were twisting demonically, without the slight comfort of visual cues to confirm that it was just a basic hallucination. I immediately excused myself and ran to my car. I just about managed to get home without stopping to be sick. This was a full 3 days after my last dose of MDMA or anything mind-altering, and 42 straight hours of complete and utter lucidity, so it caught me completely off guard. I immediately ran to the safety of my bedroom.
I opened up my cupboard and bedroom doors and lay under my covers with the lights on, completely consumed with fear. I was tormented by thought of ghosts and demons and murderers; I was a helpless child, lying awake in the hot night. Just 1 hour earlier, I was smiling and laughing with my friends - and here I was, mind shattered into fragments. I woke up my parents and asked for an ambien - I told them that I was having horrific nightmares and they could see I was physically reflecting my state of mind. They knew what was happening and told me to wake them up if everything became too intense. I lay in my bed with the lights on, shaking until sleep finally took over.
I've suffered from sleep paralysis since I was a young child, so when I woke up in the dark, unable to move, I knew what was going on. Standard procedure. Breathe. It'll all be over soon. Nothing overly strange has ever occurred during these episodes - I usually just lay on my bed unable to move for a minute or two and then wake up - so I've learnt not to panic. I started feeling the slight spark of relief of it slowly lifting, when suddenly a hand grabbed my foot and threw me across the room into my door. I struggled, completely unable to fight back, being thrown about the room by this invisible force before finally waking up in a cold sweat, lights on. I'd woken up, it was just a dream. I was absolutely horrified; not even sleep would save me from this terror.
I ran out into the living room to wake up my parents. Of course they would know what to do - as always, their reason would provide a sanctuary for my skewed mind. Their bedroom door was the light through the darkness. I hammered it with my fist in a cold sweat. My father answered, and assured me that everything would be okay, and the warmth and light immediately flowed back into my periphery. I pulled out a knife and disemboweled him. I remember it in clear detail; I couldn't stop myself.
Again, I woke up in my bed - sweat dripping down my temples, lights on. This time I was definitely awake. It was hard to tell through the psychosis, but everything seemed lucid. I remembered my dream. What if it had actually occurred? What if through this thick smog of dementia I had actually murdered my father and it wasn't just a dream, or my mind was so warped that I had done it subconsciously - a merciless sleepwalker? I knew what would happen when I peered out of my room. I would find my parents laying there, murdered by my hand, and my twisted husk of a mind would be hauled off to jail. And for what? A little bit of dancing in the desert?
The whole scenario played through my head thousands of times as I sat up in bed. Finally, I pulled it together, and gathered the courage to go check what had happened. I ventured out into the dark living room, shielding my view from the glass sliding door that always produced such unimaginable horrors when I was a kid. The light was strange. Dusty, almost. My parent's bedroom door slowly opened. My father stepped out. Pure relief enveloped me entirely; that blistering wave of complete and utter disbelief at how incredibly warped one's mind can become as it crashes back down to sanity. A half sigh, half chuckle forced it's way out of my mouth. Of course I hadn't got insane and murdered my parents.
He looked down at me and asked if everything was okay. Of course it was. Everything was fine. And then I slit my father's throat. I wasn't fighting a demonic presence that was forcing my hand to his throat. I was smiling and laughing.
I woke up again. Despair. I was trapped. This loop would continue forever. Through my own doing, I had broken my mind and was forced to spend an infinite existence enacting the worst scenario imaginable. What's more - doubtless - at one point I would actually wake up, and through the gloom forget about reality, reactively continue the loop, and then fall back into my dream state, so I had also murdered my parents on the real plane of existence, as well as this dream one.
The loops continued. They became more and more unreal; at one point I was floating through my living room with my dog, in the dusty light. But they always ended in the same way.
Edit: Just by the way, I don't mean to undermine any of the stories on here which I'm sure do involve incredibly serious and lasting psychotic episodes. A bit of hyperbole for the sake of story-telling is flushed in there, but the experience is all real and unembellished.
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that sounds crazy !
