An exerpt from my diary on the topic:
Saturday, April 17, 2004; 3:58pm:
I feel as though I have been blessed with a very powerful tool ? marijuana. I say this for novel reasons, I believe, rather than in the traditional pothead kind of way. What I mean is this: Marijuana has, for the last few months, amplified my DP to a level I have rarely experienced. I am equipped to deal with it, now, but it is not a pleasant way to live, to say the least. The DP itself is almost tolerable, but the clincher is when my depression sets in more heavily.
I was reading some of my previous entries and I feel that they somewhat glossed over the amount of pain and turmoil I was experiencing at the time. Words cannot do justice to how fucked I felt back then, and I can only recall a sliver of the emotion (and lack thereof) involved in a lot of those moments. I am grateful that I am not once again thrust back into that place, but I feel lucky to have had the experience, so I know where not to go again. However, as much as it pains me to say it, that place was not unique to my youth, and I know all to well that I can sink that low again.
It is this knowledge that scares me the most. Basically I have a choice (putting aside any ?free will is an illusion? arguments you may care to make) - a choice between testing my limits and my sanity or getting back to the way things were. Marijuana exacerbates my ?DP? (although I am fairly sure that it is not actual depersonalisation, but just a symptom of it ? dissociation), so I figure if I go totally all out on it and completely fuck myself up like I have done with alcohol on occasion, I can explore new territory in terms of my dissociative condition.
This is a frightening prospect, really. But before I delve into the implications of it, I will just rehash my old entries a little more. I often talked about the anxiety and the fear of living with DP. The fear that it would never go away and the anxiety that was caused by literally sitting on my bed and thinking ?God I just want something to take this feeling away from me!?. I caught myself thinking similarly to this as I was driving the other day, but then just told myself to ?relax and go with it?. Because the dissociation isn?t completely negative ? it allows you to explore your thoughts and surroundings in much greater detail, owing to the objectivity with which you now see the world. The trade-off, of course, is not feeling alive and not feeling a part of the world, which is catastrophic if you look at it from certain angles. But the point is, I have a choice.
I have the means to push myself right down into the darkness so that I can experience it full force. Armed with my ability to deal with the situation (having lived in this state for many years now), I feel I can handle it at the least, and heal from the ordeal at best. The only real reason not to is that, like I said, existing in that state is incredibly frightening, draining and damaging to the point where it often seems better to bury a knife in your arm than it does to continue breathing.
The goal, however, is to understand this thing once and for all. I need to understand why and how I feel like this, because to date it feels as though I am only just scratching the surface. The numerous reasons I?ve put forth include having an anxiety disorder (the most simple reason, but certainly not the most persuasive given that I don?t usually feel anxious. At least I don?t think I do), having depression to the point where my mind felt the need to separate itself from the pain (i.e. as a now obsolete defence mechanism which didn?t really work in the first place) and having the feeling induced by smoking pot back in the day (Which seems to fit, given that pot does the same thing to me now. However, the evidence against this is that I don?t recall feeling this way any time before late highschool. There is a distinct possibility, however, that because of being fat, the THC is staying in my system and has very low level effects on me for some time. This would explain the almost exponential decay of the DP feeling over the weeks following pot smoking, but doesn?t explain why the feeling can also flare up at unexpected moments when I haven?t been smoking pot). Basically, I feel that if I go deeper still I can find some answers as to the cause of the DP (Still going to refer to it as this, just for the sake of easier typing).
I guess I should give my true intention in this experiment, and that is to once and for all get rid of it. I believe that if I can understand the reason for it, then I can get right down in there and ?switch it off?. In recent meditation sessions I have had some limited success with altering the flow of energy through my body, and I feel that this could be somewhat similar. That is, with a deep enough manifestation of will and energy, I could make my brain work like its supposed to. Ultimately, if I can switch it off (and turn it back on again, wether by smoking pot or by willing it), then I will have granted myself the ultimate tool of consciousness ? to be able to change my state of mind at will for the purpose of making contact with ?the void? (as dirty, drugged-up hippies call it), or at the very least to become incredibly objective and analytical about my experiences for the purpose of dissecting out the necessary and unnecessary facets of my consciousness (i.e. healing).
But, as I imagine is understood by now, there is the danger that I go so deep that I can not/will not pull myself back out. More over it?s incredibly likely that wanting to control this is just a pipe dream. In other words, I would be taking a huge, huge risk for the small, small possibility of bettering myself (But as anyone knows to gain something so huge you have to take huge risks). I think my only solace is that after a while, the DP does indeed subside to acceptable levels. After that, I think it does slowly degrade to the point that I can barely notice it, but I can?t ever recall not feeling DP in the recent past (Because of problems described earlier). Anyway, the point is that even if I go too deep, as long as I can somehow hold on for a few weeks/months, I will be back to normal again.
I will think about this and make my decision when my head clears a bit, and possibly after I?ve talked about it with some of my friends.
- Brendan
==============
I'm going to tell you not to try this. It really is a bad idea - I basically became a complete pothead for 6 months of my life (smoking at least once every day - so not as heavy as some but I'd say I was addicted).
But I can't lie to you - those 6 months were amoungst the best of my life, in a bizarre kind of way. Because I began to discover things about myself and the world that have since changed my perspective immensely (though obviously not cured me, since I'm still here). Through the use of weed and other psychedelics I opened up parts of myself that I'd barely touched before - which means pleasant and absolutely terrifying revelations. Eventually it pushed my DP to the worst its ever been - with me sitting in the middle of a park and feeling as though I was going to die or dissapear at any second.
But if not for those experiences then I could not have learned more about myself and get a slightly different view of how to approach this "disease". For one it finally convinced me to seek professional help and begin to accept that I do have some sort of mental "illness".
So seriously, follow the advice of everyone else who told you not to try. But the choice is yours to make, ultimately.
