Need some urgent advice from an experienced Buddhist please.
I can't believe i am finally writing this, i have been wanting to tough this out and keep things to myself and just hope my syptoms improve naturally but i just can't not handle this anymore. The suffering is too much. I need advice or someone to talk to, the reason i'm writing this in the buddhism subreddit and and not in a mental health subreddit is because i believe i am going through some type of spiritual awakening but im not 100% sure, it could very well be psychosis or some type of brain damage but IF it is a spiritual experience i am going through, then i know that no conventional doctor or therapist can help me, they probably wont even have a clue of what im talking about
OK now for my story and symptoms. I am 26, i first discovered Buddhism when i was 18 due to wanting to learn more meditation. This is what lead me to the Dhamma. For some reason i just couldn't stop reading it. Anatta and Impermanence in particular blew my mind and also terrified me at the same. My knowledge of the Dhamma is not amazing by any stretch but i would say my intellectual understanding of these two in particular is above average. I'm aware that an intellectual understanding is not enough and these things must be directly experienced to be "understood". Regardless 18 year old me was not very wise and instead of meditating continued to read and read and obsess about these truths and more of the Buddhas teachings.
Skip to being 20 years old and i completely forget about Buddhism and meditation and gain an EXTREMELY severe addiction to a drug called Tramadol. I'm no drug expert but it's basically a synthetic opiate that also acts like an anti depressant and affects serotonin to. I abused this drug at VERY high dosages with little regard for my own safety, overdosing many times, almost dying many times but still continuing to take it. To cut a long story short i abused this drug every day for 5 years at lethal dosages (really dont know how i didn't die) until i got rushed to hospital for like the 5th time and made a promise to myself and my mother to never touch it again.
I made the stupid decision to quit cold turkey after taking 18+ everyday and here i am 10 month completely sober. Let me tell you the first 2-3 month was complete and utter HELL. I'm talking 24/7 panic attack every single day every single second no breaks. After that, things started to slowly improve, panic attacks started to lessen and i started to get bit more positive. Around the 4 month clean mark. Buddhism started to creep back in to my mind, i started to mentally obsess about Anatta every day but not wanting to. Anatta completely terrified my sober mind state. Instead of panic attacks it was replaced with mental torture about no self. This lasted every day until the 9 month mark until it stopped and something happened.
I kind of woke up to the present moment. I directly experienced that past and future do not exist at all. There is just now and only now. Even putting a word on it makes zero sense. It just is. This is where the true true HORROR comes. I can directly see that my past is just a memory, a scattered one at that. Instead of experiencing a "me" living a life, travelling on a linear mentally created timeline from past to future like i subconciously always believed, now "i" am just experiencing a constantly morphing NOW. Everything is just arising and passing, sight phenomena, sound phenomena , smell, taste, touch, thoughts. Anything i did a second ago is GONE, it doesn't actually exist. Its just a memory. A scattered one at that. And this is where the problems come, it is utterly TERRIFYING and disgusting, the mind keeps trying to grasp and capture life, and i know that is impossible and stupid. Its impossible to put into word but everything is just morphing and disappearing, arising and passing. I don't know what to do, there is such a massive amount of confusion and terror going on inside me. I feel like im literally experiencing psychosis or going insane or if this is some extreme post withdrawal symptoms. If anyone could talk to me after reading all of this i would truly from the bottom of my heart appreciate it. Thank you so much.
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