Im struggling and today I did something I havnt done in a few months… I got high. For a few blissful hours I was joyful, for the first time in a long time I was actually enjoying life. The highs were interspersed with lows however, and this is where I noticed something very interesting.
I felt my body do something all too familiar. I started dissociating. I continued to have lows and highs the next 24 hours. I noted some similarities and differences between dissociation and dissociative highs.
When I’m high, I’m either laughing and focused or I’m dissociated. The dissociation feels heavy in my chest, my breathing rate is incredibly slow and I can feel my heartbeat very slow and strong. My whole body feels heavy and it’s hard to keep my mind focused on what I’m doing because I keep ‘drifting off’ somewhere to ‘wake up’ 5 minutes later with that familiar dazed feeling of trying to work out my surroundings. The differences seem to be more around the cognition. When I’m in a high dissociative state my mind wanders from thought to thought, slowly dipping in and out of a thought seeing little movies as they play out. Then I snap back and then I’m off to the next clip. I have feelings when I drift off. I see the video and I feel emotions. I’m not aware I’m doing it until I snap out of it.
When I dissociate in therapy the physical symptoms of the state are more or less the same. Slow breathing, heart rate and blood pressure. Heaviness, lack of movement, tingling in body.
The cognition is different though. There is nothing going through my mind. It’s like I’ve been switched off. Time passes and thoughts don’t arrive. I’m not really aware of my surroundings and although I’ve never had it happen, I think my ability to sense pain would be non existent too. I can hear things going on. But I can’t respond. It’s like I’m an astronaut floating round in the black void of space and I can see a tiny star in the distance and that’s it. Somehow I have to get to that star and use it as the way out. I float feeling absolutely nothing and getting nowhere until something interjects from the outside world and im propelled towards the star. Then it’s a lottery… I could hit the star and it will explode the void of nothingness and bring back some physical movements. Then the cognition follows. However, I could miss the star and continue slowly spinning round until I’m propelled again.
I think the point I’m trying to make is that being ‘spaced out’ is similar to dissociation physically but very different cognitively. Every person experiences mental health differently. Same with highs. Don’t assume that I’m being ignorant if I’m not responding to you. I’m trying my best. I just can’t get to the star on my own.
P.s I forgot all about the crippling depression and anxiety that comes after the drugs wear off……… Send help – Violet x
Shrink(ing) Violet 