# Potsmoke, DP and the journey of awakening



## northmonk (Jul 31, 2006)

Wow, well after years of searching the web and struggling isolated and alone to understand what happened to me that fateful day 14 years ago exactly (two 7 year cycles in consciousness apparently) I stumble across this website and lo and behold I find a whole community of people suffering the same thing almost exactly as what I've labored with all these years! So I suffer from Depersonalization/Derealization although that is a label and all labels are limiting I believe. Ok the background, it all started for me one summers day in a field in Wiltshire where I'd gone with some good friends to photograph the crop circles, which form every year in that part of England. We'd set up camp and I built a bong out of a camping kettle, one thing I used to pride myself on was my bong building.... airtight etc etc, anyways after the second or third large toke on this bong which contained a large amount of gold seal resin (grass was very rare in those days in England) I was sitting in the tent with my best friend and we were just looking at each other and laughing at how completely mashed we were after the bongs. We laughed and laughed and then suddenly inside me it was like someone threw a switch somewhere and my mind detached from my body and emotions and I was looking back at myself. Through my detached mind I started looking at myself, all through internalized thoughts etc, and started judging myself saying things like "look at you, stoned again you waster when are you going to get a grip and grow up and get your life together" and it FELT (very important word) like the ground had been whipped from under my feet and I was falling into a horrible self conscious/self judging nightmare. My friend seeing my face change and the smile fade too quickly said to me "are you ok?" I can't remember my reply but it was probably something like "yeah I?m just a bit fu**ed" and I tried to sidestep the awful mental detachment that had taken place inside myself. The rest of the weekend which would normally have been full of belly laughs and stoned-ness featured a very weird atmosphere of uncomfortable ness and silence and mutterings of "get yourself together man" from my friends who had witnessed a complete withdrawal by a guy who had been pretty strong willed and extrovert with a strong personality with plenty to say etc into a nervous wreck of a man full of self-doubt. They treated me like a complete loser for the rest of the weekend and it was very awkward and like an ordeal for the next 2 days just to try to communicate and be there. Anyways every time I smoked pot after that it came back very intensely and I would have really unpleasant conversations where my mind would be just totally watching and judging everything I said and did undermining me every time I tried to speak or act and my voice would reflect my inner state sounding full of fear & shaky and nervous. This had a very damaging effect on my friendships as my friends struggled to deal with what was happening to me and adjusting to it, some simply didn't and started looking at me very strangely and aggressively kind of like "what the hell is wrong with you man get yourself together"! The most fateful turning point was one day at work while I was sitting at my desk I had the thought "god what happened if that awful paranoia spilled over into my day to day life", as up until that point it had only happened when in pot smoking circles, and it was as if just having the thought opened a door in my mind for it to invade every nook and cranny of my life until I was in a complete state of anxiety and panic all the time. I would sneak around at work trying & praying not to bump into anyone especially people who knew me because the guy who they could relate to before was now long gone and there was only this fearful wreck of a person left. It went from bad to worse until I had to give up my job and I basically ran away to America to travel for 3 months. I got back from there having funnily enough met a guy in a similar state (like minds attract and all) over there and we agreed to go and live in London. That?s when the depersonalization got really bad, feelings of being locked up in my head and pressure in my third eye area and temples was unbearable, my eyes locked in a fearful staring state most of the time, especially dealing with people, my whole thing was social anxiety related, the depersonalization at its most extreme when dealing with people in the supermarket etc was horrible. I was right up in my head, self-consciousness burning a hole in my face and eyes it felt like. I felt emotionally completely dead as if all the anxiety I had experienced had sent my emotions and body into shutdown mode and in its place my world became, I remember describing at the time, a dull grey soulless nightmare!! There was no purpose in my life at all, there was certainly no pleasure or joy anymore that had long dispersed with the pot smoke! Anyways I don?t want to drone on too long and wallow in the past cos that?s where it is and that?s where it belongs so all I?ll say is that all I can remember from that awful grey lifeless period in my life was complete lack of feeling it was like my chest area where I experienced emotions was encased in a thick metal overcoat or waistcoat of some sort and the only place I experienced feeling anything was just as intense pressure in the head and constant thoughts, obsessive and compulsive thinking, I felt utterly jammed in the mind?.it was a living hell! A lot of time has passed and in the time since those dark grey days I have discovered that the journey back to wellness and health lies through the body and reversing the whole process that dragged me up into my head. Along the way I have started using a technique called rebirthing although I tend to refer to it as breath work because rebirthing sounds a bit ?Californian? if you know what I mean! Anyways the breath releases patterns and emotions, tensions/blocks held within the body mind and since I started using it I have certainly started feeling a lot more although the tension in between my eyes is still there occasionally usually in social situations when my self consciousness rises, its nowhere near to the same degree. I experience the block in my throat the most like when trying to speak my voice will break up and that can be very unpleasant and frustrating its like I cant express my power, it?s all turned inside against me. So I continue to breath my special breath every week with absolute faith that the power of the breath and the energy contained within it will heal me from this awful experience I?ve endured for so long. I smoked pot every day for 5 years to ridiculous extents with bongs and hot knives and really abused it, which is what probably brought it all on. I never smoke pot anymore it still brings up terror and the feeling I?m losing my mind when I do it?s a horrible experience so I stay well clear and my ethos now is to heal myself completely of the past and my issues that maybe the dope just brought to the surface. My fundamental belief is that we are souls that take birth and live through all sorts of experiences in order to realize our true nature, which I believe to be transcendental or divine. Suffering I?ve read, which has been the theme of my life for the past 15 years, is a great awakener and I can personally vouch for that! It?s a beautiful thing to be able to turn round to your worst experience that when you?re in it you think is hell and damnation and to be able to say ?thank you, you taught me so much about myself and how to let go of who I thought I was? so your worst nightmare turns into your greatest teacher and in that sense your greatest blessing. Life strips away the shit if you surrender to it/not resist it and what remains is who you really are in your essence and that can never be damaged. I offer this post in the hope that it can bring some hope to those lost in the dark night of their souls still and would say if you allow this thing to burn its purifying path that there is a light at the end of the tunnel and when that light grows strong enough and you get close enough you will realize that all that darkness was worthwhile and who you are is beyond all physical, mental and emotional suffering and those things are but temporary tunnels that we pass through in order to shed our illusions and realize who we really are. Peace and Godspeed on your journeys fellow travelers.


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## Rozanne (Feb 24, 2006)

Dear Northmonk,

Thankyou for writing that -- you are in the right place.

I started to un-dissociate as I read your post.



> I offer this post in the hope that it can bring some hope to those lost in the dark night of their souls


I'm not sure the people in the dark night of their souls got that far down the megaparagraph though, S; it would be easier to read if you wrote in blocks!
All the best
R


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## CECIL (Oct 3, 2004)

I read the first few lines and it sounded promising, but its just too hard to read with no paragraphs, sorry.


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## northmonk (Jul 31, 2006)

Yes I see what you mean it does appear a pretty daunting block of text to read. Would have been much more digestable had I broken it down....breathing spaces! I've only written to forums a few times ever so not really experienced in the art of posting, you live and learn...


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## jeanie82 (Nov 6, 2006)

Well I read the whole thing. Thank you.


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## Coming?Back2Life (Oct 20, 2006)

Geez that was inspiring m8 hugely inspiring i was smoking an ounce a week in bongs/buckets everything intense smoking of weed and then my anxiety started i couldn`t express myself to my friends but back then my DP/DR hadn`t started it took a few extremely stressfull moments in my life like being attacked etc b4 i finally became ill it was around christmas time in 2000. I had the flu and before i knew it i was in my bed with a serious viral infection and THAT was when it truley started i then had my first panic attack and it`s been downhill from there took me 5 years to find out what this is hopefully i can divert my conscious mind enough for my true sub conscious to heal and take on a new view of the world and it`s surroundings ( i was diagnosed as post viral fatigue/chronic fatigued but i knew it wasn`t physical it was a mental thing so for years i pestered my parents telling them i thought i was insane schizophrenia the lot shame)

On a side note i don`t smoke and do not enjoy smoking weed anymore at all and the other drugs that i did so that`s a positive and i am now leading a healthy lifestyle in the forms of eating better and lots of exercise altho i still do have chronic dp/dr 24/7 and those same obsessive thoughts that lead me to my keyboard to research the inet for hours and hours on end slowly drifting further and further into DP/DR i am so happy i am not fighting it now as i have a name for it b4 i thought i was losing my sanity and each hour of each day was dedicated to fighting this and in the end i lost  and became 100x worse so accept how u r feeling but divert your conscious mind from it don`t give it the fuel it deserves just FEEL.


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## Lynch_mob (Jan 10, 2007)

I felt the same, the exact same feeling, and situation that i had faced and i learned a lot of stuff that night that happened that i did not have a name for. Thank you. I also started to feel better reading it.

I feel like everything that is me is trapped is trapped inside my chest for somereason as well.. It's like this picture of me and most of all my memories and pictures of myself i keep seeing in the picture like a television w/o sound. It's like i'm trying to break out.

One thing i still can't (or will not) accept is why people get upset when you withdraw from them or conversation's... Offensive? WHY!!!!! somone help. I need a step by step description.


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