W
willow tournesol
New member
Hi all,
I'm new here and I've never done anything like this but I figured maybe someone out there is struggling with the same thing and can help. I'd like to provide some background as to what led up to my hospitalization and my journey after. I hope you'll have the patience to read through all of it.
About a year and a half ago I was in my last semester at college. I was reading and watching a lot of mind expanding content, including documentary series about nature and religion and how everything is interconnected. I was taking a course called Psychedelic Anthropology where we were reading and discussing topics like consciousness and the psyche, neuroscience, spirituality, and the advantages of using psychedelic plants mindfully and intentionally. I was also taking a Movement course in which I was learning how to become embodied and listen to my body as well as my final seminar in Film Making. (I promise this all is important) At the time I was on Effexor for depression and was smoking a lot of weed.
One night I couldn't sleep and I had the urge to return to a screenplay I was writing. I stayed up all night researching and finishing it. Throughout the next few days, I continued to get increasingly more and more euphoric and deeper into a state of psychosis. In this state I was experiencing what I called a spiritual awakening. Everything was significant and synchronistic. I felt the universe within me and me within it. I embodied God and had such a strong vision for unity amongst all people, especially my family.
There's so many details I could go into, but perhaps they're not important. What is important is that this experience was so powerful and beautiful and sacred to me. However, I was very public about it- posting on social media, reaching out to family and friends, professors, and employers. I even got int front of two of my classes and ranted about my spiritual awakening and how we could all come together to put on a music festival/ form something called art church. It wasn't until I was on my kitchen floor seemingly "giving birth" and claiming to be the second coming of Christ that my friends called my Mom and my therapist and we all decided it was time to go to the hospital.
While I was in the hospital I was still experiencing these intense synchronicities and experiencing myself as Christ. Every person and word being said, every painting, every picture, every song was somehow a reassurance of what was happening in my head. As if there was a very thin veil separating my internal experience and the external world around me.
I was in an agreeable, happy, excited state until the doctor came in to speak to me. The moment I looked into his eyes I flipped and became very aggressive and tried to attack him as I believed him to be the Devil who was trying to end the world. I have never in my life been aggressive or over taken by anger. I was restrained, sedated, and locked in a room. I believed myself to have "lost the game" and that the forces of evil defeated me and the world was to end. The moment before I went unconscious from what I now understand was the Haldol, I experienced the universe coming to a single point. I was everything and nothing all at once.
I was released after a week, but despite being on heavy antipsychotics I was still experiencing these synchronicities in everything- songs, books, billboards, conversations happening around me. What once was so comforting, reassurance that everything is interconnected and that God exists in all things and within me, now terrified me. In the following weeks after my hospitalization the intensity of the synchronicities decreased and somehow I finished school, continued to work, and live on my own.
After working with multiple psychiatrists and trying multiple medications, now almost two years later I am on 125mg of Lamotrigine and stable. I haven't had another manic episode and only experienced one deep depressive episode around the 1 year anniversary of my hospitalization. I've spent this time trying to understand my experience both from a scientific, Western, medicinal point of view and a mystical, spiritual, Eastern philosophy point of view.
I still see these synchronicities all the time. In a different way than before though. It's hard to explain, but I believe everything to be happening for a reason and that sometimes the movies I'm watching or the music I'm listening to or the conversations I'm having are exactly what I need to hear. I so easily find lessons and insight in everything.
These synchronicities bring me comfort sometimes and sometimes they terrify me. I'm terrified that I'm losing touch with reality and that I'm going to go into psychosis again. I do believe that God exists within all things, including myself but I'm terrified to embody my own Divinity. I feel like I can't move past this. I'm ashamed of having been so public about it all and I feel so misunderstood by those around me. I've never read about or met anyone who has had quite the same circumstance as mine. Sometimes I wonder if I am Bipolar or if it really was a Spiritual Awakening, perhaps both.
Any reflections, questions, or insight would be so much appreciated!
-Willow
I'm new here and I've never done anything like this but I figured maybe someone out there is struggling with the same thing and can help. I'd like to provide some background as to what led up to my hospitalization and my journey after. I hope you'll have the patience to read through all of it.
About a year and a half ago I was in my last semester at college. I was reading and watching a lot of mind expanding content, including documentary series about nature and religion and how everything is interconnected. I was taking a course called Psychedelic Anthropology where we were reading and discussing topics like consciousness and the psyche, neuroscience, spirituality, and the advantages of using psychedelic plants mindfully and intentionally. I was also taking a Movement course in which I was learning how to become embodied and listen to my body as well as my final seminar in Film Making. (I promise this all is important) At the time I was on Effexor for depression and was smoking a lot of weed.
One night I couldn't sleep and I had the urge to return to a screenplay I was writing. I stayed up all night researching and finishing it. Throughout the next few days, I continued to get increasingly more and more euphoric and deeper into a state of psychosis. In this state I was experiencing what I called a spiritual awakening. Everything was significant and synchronistic. I felt the universe within me and me within it. I embodied God and had such a strong vision for unity amongst all people, especially my family.
There's so many details I could go into, but perhaps they're not important. What is important is that this experience was so powerful and beautiful and sacred to me. However, I was very public about it- posting on social media, reaching out to family and friends, professors, and employers. I even got int front of two of my classes and ranted about my spiritual awakening and how we could all come together to put on a music festival/ form something called art church. It wasn't until I was on my kitchen floor seemingly "giving birth" and claiming to be the second coming of Christ that my friends called my Mom and my therapist and we all decided it was time to go to the hospital.
While I was in the hospital I was still experiencing these intense synchronicities and experiencing myself as Christ. Every person and word being said, every painting, every picture, every song was somehow a reassurance of what was happening in my head. As if there was a very thin veil separating my internal experience and the external world around me.
I was in an agreeable, happy, excited state until the doctor came in to speak to me. The moment I looked into his eyes I flipped and became very aggressive and tried to attack him as I believed him to be the Devil who was trying to end the world. I have never in my life been aggressive or over taken by anger. I was restrained, sedated, and locked in a room. I believed myself to have "lost the game" and that the forces of evil defeated me and the world was to end. The moment before I went unconscious from what I now understand was the Haldol, I experienced the universe coming to a single point. I was everything and nothing all at once.
I was released after a week, but despite being on heavy antipsychotics I was still experiencing these synchronicities in everything- songs, books, billboards, conversations happening around me. What once was so comforting, reassurance that everything is interconnected and that God exists in all things and within me, now terrified me. In the following weeks after my hospitalization the intensity of the synchronicities decreased and somehow I finished school, continued to work, and live on my own.
After working with multiple psychiatrists and trying multiple medications, now almost two years later I am on 125mg of Lamotrigine and stable. I haven't had another manic episode and only experienced one deep depressive episode around the 1 year anniversary of my hospitalization. I've spent this time trying to understand my experience both from a scientific, Western, medicinal point of view and a mystical, spiritual, Eastern philosophy point of view.
I still see these synchronicities all the time. In a different way than before though. It's hard to explain, but I believe everything to be happening for a reason and that sometimes the movies I'm watching or the music I'm listening to or the conversations I'm having are exactly what I need to hear. I so easily find lessons and insight in everything.
These synchronicities bring me comfort sometimes and sometimes they terrify me. I'm terrified that I'm losing touch with reality and that I'm going to go into psychosis again. I do believe that God exists within all things, including myself but I'm terrified to embody my own Divinity. I feel like I can't move past this. I'm ashamed of having been so public about it all and I feel so misunderstood by those around me. I've never read about or met anyone who has had quite the same circumstance as mine. Sometimes I wonder if I am Bipolar or if it really was a Spiritual Awakening, perhaps both.
Any reflections, questions, or insight would be so much appreciated!
-Willow