#and I know she’s worried about me because she came up before mg bath specifically to check on me and make sure I was alright

[froggi-mushroom]

A lot has been happening recently which means I had a little bit of an emotional moment earlier and my mum’s been so gentle to me for the rest of the day I just

[abysmalll]

Hi. I know it’s been a while. I try to stay active on here when I can, and I reblog photos I like or poetry that resonates with me, anything really, every now and then. I can’t believe I’ve had this blog since I was 14 years old. I’m turning 25 next month. It feels like I’ve lived an entire lifetime on the internet.

I’m writing this because I need to write about it. I need to accept this experience that I am having for what it is and putting words to it helps me. It helps me cope. And I don’t care if anybody reads it. Tumblr is a dead art anyway. This is me writing to the abyss of the internet, a love letter if you will, to myself, about a traumatic experience.

It has been a week since I accidentally drugged myself with 500 mg of delta 8 cannabinoid (in the form of a gummy). I bought this “sampler pack” of what I thought to be CBD gummies a couple of weekends ago while a friend was visiting from Florida. The shop did not seem sketchy, it was a legitimate dispensary, and the men behind the counter were wearing lab coats and seemed pretty knowledgeable about THC and CBD products. Originally, I bought the sampler pack thinking it was CBD isolate only. I didn’t even think the dosage was that high, maybe 25 mg tops. You know, CBD. The thing you can buy in lotions and bath bombs at those kiosks in the mall. The safe weed alternative: suitable for relaxing muscles, calming mind and body, and relieving anxiety. The sampler pack that I bought did not have many descriptions on it: just the brand and that it was a CBD + delta 8 gummy. I did not realize that delta 8 was another form of THC. I did not know that it was a synthetically / lab altered version of a part of the weed plant or anything that would cause me to get extremely high. When I saw the packaging, I just thought, cool CBD gummies. This will help me have a relaxing night, maybe a good night’s sleep. I never bought them with the intention to get fucked up. I never would have bought them if I knew what delta 8 actually was. To be fair, it was completely misrepresented to me by the men at the store I bought them from. I was under the full impression that this was a relaxing CBD gummy sampler. I did not know that, in reality, what myself and a friend were about to consume was 1000 mg of straight cannabis product (500 mg CBD + 500 mg delta 8). From all of the research I’ve done on delta 8 (now having experienced what I experienced), in reddit forums and the like, experienced users of the weed alternative say that they stay away from anything stronger than 100 mg. 100 mg is enough to fuck you up pretty heavily. To clarify, I took 1000 mg (half CBD / half delta 8). I basically had 25x the “strong” amount for experienced users. Now some people have a hard time getting high, their tolerance is pretty up there, and they need up to 400 mg to really feel it and feel it hard. To clarify again, I still had much more than 400 mg. Now to the experience:

My friend and I had just gotten back to my place after spending the day at a town festival (nothing big due to COVID, just a couple of booths set up of people selling their handmade products, animal shelters and sanctuaries giving out informational pamphlets and volunteer lists, etc.) We got lunch with a third friend after that. I was feeling totally normal. I had a beer at lunch, but pretty sober to say the least. We parted ways with our third friend and headed back to my house. I had originally given the gummies to my friend to hold on to (we would’ve taken them a few weeks prior when I originally bought them but we ended up not that specific night) and she brought them back to me so we could try together. I hesitated at first. I held the gelatinous square in my hand, thumbed it around a bit, a little anxious at the thought of “well I hope this isn’t TOO strong” and thought “what the hell”. And I ate it. She ate the other one. Little did I know how strong it would actually turn out to be. (For context: I am a very light smoker. I have a CBD pen that is 1:1 THC but is very mellow, and I smoke J’s every now and then because I don’t like the feeling of getting too high from bongs or other methods. My friend who ate the other gummy is a daily user. She smokes CBD joints and regular weed daily, eats edibles frequently, and is working on getting her medical card for anxiety).

I felt a slight giggly out-of-it-ness after 30 minutes - right away I was feeling it, feeling something. This was what I was expecting. A very mild happy vibe. This felt okay. This felt normal for what I thought I ate. This was what I had signed up for. I still felt pretty normal besides the slight buzz. Perfect. Just something to help me relax a little bit. Something to take the edge off. Akin to drinking a beer after a long day at work. I spoke in the parking lot with my friend for 45 minutes after ingestion and we both felt and seemed pretty normal. Keep in mind, edibles take time to fully kick in. In my head I completely forgot that I ate that gummy. I thought its full purpose had been fulfilled. I thought I was at the level I was supposed to be at all along. I felt fine. My friend drove home. Thank GOD she got home before it really kicked in. I would’ve felt terrible with that on my conscience if it hit her while driving.

And then I came back inside after she left. I noticed that I felt slightly more out of it, a little bit at a Dutch angle if you will. Nothing to worry about though. Just thought to myself; oh, I’m high. This was more than I was expected. But that’s okay. I told my boyfriend (with my tail between my legs: he’s not a huge fan of weed-anything but he doesn’t care that I imbibe every now and then). I told him “babe, I just thought you should know… That I ate a gummy with ___ and I’m actually feeling high right now”. And that was that. He smirked and said “okay pothead”. Went about our usual business. I smelled myself after standing outside in the heat for 45 minutes in that parking lot and thought, ugh I stink.

And then I took a shower.

I felt okay in the shower. Just normal. The hot water rolling down my body. I wasn’t having a break from reality. Not yet anyway.

And then I got out of the shower.

I wrapped my hair in a towel. I threw on an oversized t-shirt, something comfortable. The cool air after being in a hot shower wrapped around me in a ghostly hug. At this point in time, I don’t know if the drastic change in temperature triggered it. I don’t know. All I know is it had been an hour and a half since ingestion at this point and this act of getting out of the shower was the precipice for what I was about to experience. What I was about to fall into. I FaceTimed my friend to see how she was feeling. It hadn’t hit her at all yet. Okay, slight anxiety. Was I the only one feeling this? Was I feeling something I shouldn’t be? My boyfriend and I had given her a spare TV recently and I wanted to see if she was having any troubleshooting issues with it (she was hooking it up, seeing if the google chromecast still worked, etc). We spoke on FaceTime. I anxiously asked her if she was sure she wasn’t feeling anything.. I didn’t like the prospect of me being the only one feeling out of sorts. She insisted that she was feeling fine.

And then she couldn’t speak in full sentences. I thought it was me. I thought I wasn’t hearing her correctly, or processing her words in the way I should be. Anxiety. And then she said: OH. I feel it. I am high. This is not just CBD.

And then I fell.

Not physically. I didn’t physically fall down. I sat there on FaceTime with her, and I felt myself getting higher and higher, and I already had anxiety from what I thought would be a simple CBD sleepy gummy turning out to be a full on edible experience. I felt myself (my consciousness, whatever part of my personality that makes me - me) fall out of my body. I felt myself and my body disconnect. The only way I can explain it is that feeling you get when you’re falling asleep, and your mind isn’t fully asleep yet but your body is. Where you become aware of the fact that you’re falling asleep and you panic and your consciousness snaps back into your body and you jolt out of bed, alert. That feeling. That is the closest thing to what I was experiencing. Except I wasn’t sleeping. I was fully awake. I was tripping. And not only was I tripping, I was tripping BALLS.

I felt my heart lurch out of my chest. In a shaky voice I said “I have to go” and hung up. I jumped out of bed (I was FaceTiming her while laying in bed). I went to tell my boyfriend what was going on. I told him, “Hey- I’m not feeling normal. This isn’t supposed to be happening. I’m not supposed to be feeling this way right now”. I was going from anxiety mode to panic mode. I felt it happening. Except the whole time, I was high out of my mind. Completely, unexpectedly so. In complete and full honesty, I wasn’t associating this right away to the gummy. Because in my mind, I didn’t buy an edible. I bought what I thought was something else. I thought it was just a simple CBD gummy. Something to help me sleep. This couldn’t be causing me to feel this way, right? No. I have to be having a heart attack or something. Something’s wrong with my body. Something’s wrong with my brain. The two are not connecting. I’m phasing in and out. I feel my heart rate begin to rise along with my panic. I have an Apple Watch, and in a moment of clarity (and stupidity) I thought it best to put it on. I needed to check my heart rate. I fully thought I was having a heart attack and this mental detachment I was experiencing was the result of a serious bodily issue rather than the gummy I ingested two hours prior. I put the watch on. Heart rate is at 135. Okay, not terrible but not great. That’s the heart rate of a person who is jogging. That’s the heart rate of a person who is doing an exercise. I’m laying in bed. Why is my heart rate that high? Oh god. I’m feeling terrible. I’m feeling out of my body. My vision is getting darker and I feel like I’m inside my head watching everything happen on the giant movie screen that is my eyes, but I’m not outside of the screen. I’m experiencing this panic, but not in my body. I wish I could explain it better than this. I wish I could have it make sense to the average person. But the reality of it was that I was not experiencing something that you would normally experience unless you were blackout drunk, tripping balls, having a psychotic break, or drugged. Heart rate is creeping up higher and higher. I’m googling what a normal healthy heart rate is for a person of my size and weight (female, 5’2”, 110 lbs, 24 y/o). I read a sentence that says “if your blood pressure exceeds 180 or higher seek immediate medical attention”. I confused heart rate and blood pressure in the whirl of cortisol and adrenaline and fear. I check my watch again. 184 BPM.

Total. Fucking. Panic.

I felt my heart beating OUT of my chest. It felt like what I imagine holding a hummingbird feels like. It wasn’t beating, buzzing. My heart was buzzing. I thought, is this what it feels like to die? Am I going to die, right here, right now, in my bed? 24 years old? I just graduated college. I haven’t even started my first salaried job yet. I haven’t been married. I haven’t had kids. I haven’t bought my first house. I haven’t experienced so many things and I am about to die, right here, right now. My entire body was numb. Pins and needles. I thought: “I am having a heart attack. 184 BPM. My vision is going dark. I am fully going to pass out”. I yelled out for my boyfriend, at this point in the other room. He rushes in. I tell him what’s happening. He begins to panic. Not knowing how to calm me down. He tries to get me to do breathing techniques with him. It’s past the point for that. I told him, I need to go to the hospital. I need to be near a defibrillator in case that’s really what this is, a heart attack. Because I have a better chance of survival if I’m near a machine. If my heart gives out. I’m trying to communicate this as best I can, while being sky high. I can barely speak. He says, “okay we’re gonna go see ___ (our roommate, and a good friend of mine).” And he guides me downstairs. I stand up on my feet. I feel like I’m a thousand feet in the air and yet so incredibly small. We make our way downstairs to our roommates’ room. He knocks, she lets us in. I stumble in like a drowned rat, hair still wet from the shower. I must’ve looked fucking insane. She takes one look at me but I don’t see her face. I don’t process a face on her head. I just see a blur. I’m still panicking. Heart still beating like a hummingbird. I hear them talking in rushed tones but I don’t hear words. It sounds like the Peanut Gallery parents, if you’ve ever watched Charlie Brown movies. Womp womp womp womp womp.

Next thing I know, she hops out of bed and is wrapping me up in a blanket. She runs to her bathroom and grabs a pot of what smells like, lavender lotion? She’s rubbing it on my cheeks and face. I’m sobbing and all I smell is salt from my tears and lavender. She’s talking to me, but I don’t fully hear her. Like when you watch those movies of a person coming-to in the hospital and the faces of the people surrounding them in their hospital bed blur in and out, the voices fade in and out. I hear her ask me what’s going on. I tell her basically everything I wrote here, just now, but I don’t hear myself say it. The synapses in my brain aren’t firing properly. I know I’m doing things, speaking, but I can’t hear what I’m saying. I know I’m sitting here, wrapped in this blanket, but I don’t know where my body ends and the furniture begins. Cause for more anxiety. It feels like a never ending loop of fear and panic and sensory deprivation, or at least sensory overload? Who knows. My sensory experience is not of this Earth. Sitting in this space, in this room, hearing her talk to me, not really knowing what she is saying but knowing there is care behind it, gives me one small pin point of reality to hold onto. One tiny thing to save me from this seemingly endless nightmare. She takes the watch off of me. I hear her tell me I don’t need to be looking at that right now. No wonder my heart rate is through the roof. I’m giving myself a panic attack.

A panic attack. Is that what this is? Am I not having a heart attack? It sure feels like one. I guess they’re pretty similar. I was convinced, CONVINCED, I was dying. But here I was, some while later, wrapped in this burrito blanket in this room, and I was still experiencing things. Even if the experiences were warped and horrifying. It wasn’t death. But what was it then?

And then I remembered that I ate a gummy two hours earlier. I was having a drug induced panic attack. I was never expecting this. I was NEVER expecting this… What the fuck WAS this? It wasn’t normal. It was exactly what I discovered it to be later on, after researching the label of that sampler pack. It was 1000 mg of CBD and delta 8, a FDA-loophole for weed. And I was buckled in for the full fucking ride.

If you’re wondering what was going on with my friend, she was still high. She was experiencing a strong high from that gummy, but we had nowhere near similar experiences. I was on Mars. She, I think, fell asleep a little later on and woke up the next day ready to smoke again. I am amazed at how vastly different our experiences were. I would give anything to have had that kind of experience. I would’ve loved to wake up the next day, head slightly fuzzy, but feeling normal all the same, and been able to conceive of smoking weed. And if we’re being completely honest, I’m so incredibly grateful that she didn’t experience this. I would not wish this on ANY person. It was my fault that I ate that gummy, and I gave her one too. We could’ve both been fucked. At least it’s only me. My burden to carry.

But being alone in it is scary. And guess what. I woke up the next day, not feeling like myself. Not feeling normal. Not feeling present.

And I’ve woken up every day since in a completely altered state of being. I’m obviously here, I’m breathing, I’m trying to do regular tasks that I do every day. But everything feels so much harder. Everything feels fuzzy. My body feels numb. Some days are worse than others, but for the most part, nothing ever feels normal. I’m realizing that what I’m experiencing is DPDR from a drug induced panic attack. And I’ve cried every single day since that fucking day. It’s been a full week and I’m still having a break from reality. I still feel fuzzy, and like my head and my body aren’t connected, and I’m feeling depressed. I have racing thoughts. I can’t think myself out of this. I know it might seem like I’m fully lucid if I’m able to write all of this, but I’m writing this from a dreamlike state of semi-reality. I still don’t feel real, and people and places don’t feel real. Temperature changes send me into a panic. I zone out and realize that I’m not in my head and even when I “come to” I’m still not FULLY zoned in. My ears and head feel clogged, or like they’re full of cotton balls. I want so badly to escape this feeling but no matter what I do, everything feels surreal. I have no sense of time. I cannot process words. Even writing this, I guarantee you that I forgot 80% of it already. I have to reread things several times to make sure they make sense. If I’m watching a television show, I feel like I’m seeing characters talking to each other but not absorbing anything being said. How am I supposed to live like this? I’m so fucking scared. I can’t eat without feeling weird. I can’t sleep without feeling weird. I can’t do anything. I’m supposed to start my new job on Monday, and I have to be fully aware to do my training, and I’m so afraid of failing because I can barely do the bare minimum right now. I’ve considered going to the hospital but what good would that do? They would think I’m having a psychotic break and admit me to a mental hospital, where I’d be surrounded by unfamiliar people and settings, and be unable to leave. And I’d ruin my life. I’d ruin my job opportunity that I spent 6 months post-grad trying to get hired for, and I finally did. I’d ruin my ability to make an income. I’m terrified of ruining my relationships with people right now because I need so much more support from everybody than I ever do. I am so fucking terrified of my life right now because I do not feel real. I convinced myself the other night that I actually died on Saturday and I am not really experiencing any of this. I have anxiety attacks every day now. Little things set me off. I had an anxiety attack at my mom’s today and she is worried about me. Everyone is worried and nobody knows what to do, including me. I cannot live like this. It’s affecting my day to day life in such a strong sense that I can’t do minimal things. Everything frightens me. I just want to feel normal again. So badly. I would do ANYTHING to feel okay again. I just want to be me. Not this shell of a person. I feel like I fucked up my brain.

This isn’t a cry for help. I know realistically there’s nothing that anyone can do. That helplessness has set in. This is just me yelling at the void and hoping it helps me feel something better than this. I want to be real again.