Hi Redditors. I don't really use this platform much but I've decided to seek some outside (that is, outside of my usual support circle) opinions and support for some of the things I'm dealing with currently.

I want to start by saying this post is probably going to be incredibly long. I'm sorry and I do hope some of you have the capabilities to read through it, but I totally don't blame anyone if they can't or don't want to. Writing my thoughts has always been an effective way of processing my thoughts and I tend to go very indepth and detailed.

Trigger warnings ⚠️ graphic description of a traumatizing experience with marijuana, hypchondria(?), mentions/references to suicide... please let me know if there's more I should add, I'm not entirely sure I have everything.
(Also, I live in Illinois where recreational marijuana is legalized, just to assure any concerns in that sense)

So let me start with a bit of background: I'm diagnosed with generalized anxiety, autism, recurrent major depressive disorder (in partial remission, currently), PMDD, and combined type ADHD. I have seen a therapist for over 9 years now, and have had psychiatrists since I was around 11 or 12 years old. I'm a biologically female 24 year old. I don't know if some of this is relevant but I figured I would add it anyways.

I dealt with a lot of my anxiety and depression mainly in my early teenage years and up until about age 21 or 22. Since then I've been fairly stable with occasional "episodes" happening here and there, but thankfully, most were not major. I have a feeling a lot of my intense depression and anxiety was spurred on due to puberty and hormonal changes, considering I have PMDD. I think its a likely connection since most of those symptoms are much less intense now that I'm 24, almost 25, and pretty much done with puberty I believe.

Earlier this year in April, I did an extremely stupid, idiotic thing and said "Sure" when a friend (and coworker at the time) offered me a hit of indica wax while we were at his house (I was babysitting his daughter at the time and after he got back, we talked for a while and this came up). I've never consumed marijuana before, at all, until that point. I've never even done drugs that weren't prescribed for me. I knew it was a stupid decision and I would seriously sell my soul if it meant I could go back and stop myself from doing that.

I truly think I'm somewhat traumatized from the experience. Whenever I think about what I went through, what it looked and felt like through my own vision, I feel sick and get incredibly anxious. I have another friend who is actually what I call my "old hippie lady friend", we're very close friends and she has used weed her entire life. She's never forced it on me and actually told me multiple times that if I ever decided I wanted to try it, I needed to come to her and she would give me the very tiniest amount of, perhaps an infused gummy, and I would stay overnight with her so she could guide me through anything that may come up. Anytime I visit her house, now, I'm on edge when she gets ready to smoke some. Not enough to send me running, and I don't really mind her smoking around me, at least not before. I still don't exactly mind... it's just anxiety. She also doesn't smoke directly around me, just me knowing that's she's going to do it sets me on edge.

It's almost like... I feel anxious that she's going to suddenly experience what I experienced, which I know is unlikely to happen at this point since she's very acquainted with weed. The other day I was actually over there and she was "couch locked" for a little bit and I got so anxious... that'd partially what happened to me and, I don't know... I was just so nervous... scared maybe?

Okay, I'm sorry, I got a little off track... so I smoked one hit of wax with my friend and almost immediately ran to the bathroom dry heaving from the smoke. Everything started to hit me soon after that, too. Time began to slow down for me, I'd see what was going on in front of me, but it would be gradual... I describe it like watching a stop-motion film but each screencap is disconnected in time from the one before it, so one second I was walking back to his couch with his help, then next second I was on the couch, and didn't see the in between. Throughout the entire experience this is how I saw everything: slow motion screengrabs. I remember "feeling" like every "screengrab" was part of a clockwise rotation. I'm not sure if I visibly saw it like that or was just feeling it... it reminds me of the psychedelic colorful waves you sometimes see associated with weed, so I assume that part is a relatively common experience. Nothing colorful, just that strange, clockwise waviness.

By the time I got to the couch I was almost instantly "couch locked": my body was so heavy and I could not move anything no matter how much I freaking tried. This is when I believe I began having a MAJOR panic attack. During this experience and for a few days afterwards, I could only describe it as feeling like I was having a seizure. I remember thinking to myself repeatedly: "Am I just going to watch the rest of my life play out right before my eyes? With this clockwise, stop motion BS? Is this what it's like before someone dies?"

I could feel all of my limbs and digits trembling really badly. At one point I know I was hyperventilating so bad, it hurt SO BAD, my lungs seriously felt like they were burning me from the inside out. I could still see everything in the slow-motion screengrab visual, and I could still sort of hear and process what he was saying to me. He tried to guide me through it and calm me down but my body was in 100% fight or flight mode and I had zero control of it. It was like the part of my brain that was "me", the part that was recognizing these things and thinking things, was just sitting behind my eyes watching helplessly, I seriously had no control. I could see but it was choppy and it took a long time to process visual and audible things.

When I was hyperventilating, I could feel my arms, legs, toes and fingers just spasming and twitching dramatically. I do get twitchy with high anxiety moments but I've never had this full body, what felt like a convulsion, experience. This is part of what made me think I was seizing. My head was also slightly rolled back and my choppy/slow-motion vision began to go everywhere. One screengrab I'm looking at the edge of the ceiling fan, the next screengrab I'm looking off to one side, and the next one I'm again, looking off in a different direction. I don't know if I was experiencing nystagmus, but that's what it visually seemed like.

It felt like 2 or 3 hours but my friend said it lasted all of maybe 20 minutes. I honestly don't think he was being totally honest with me: I kept asking him, "Did I have a seizure??" "Was I convulsing? Was I spasming?" He said I didn't have a seizure and I was trembling a little but that's it. I don't know if it's the anxiety of everything involved, but I feel like he was making it seem a lot less intense than it really was, maybe thinking it would help me worry less. He was earnestly very sorry and guilty though, and I'm not exactly mad at him anymore, but I feel like there's just... somethings he never was telling me.

He ended up driving me home that night and helping me up to my apartment to make sure I was safe, I wasn't totally lucid by then but much more aware than I was previously. I went to bed that night in a drifting state of panic-anxiety. I think my body was still running on fight-or-flight adrenaline. I woke up early the next morning and it all started feeling horrible again: the stop-motion visual stuff was gone, but I could pretty much "feel" my anxiety or panic rolling in waves... it's hard to explain... well, it "felt" like what these look like, if that makes sense: ~~~~ just all connected in one wavy line.

It's like I was on a constant up and down roller coaster. I started off slowly building up panic once I was awake. By the time it hit the first "peak" and started going back "downhill", it was maybe 20 minutes after I had woken up and I was already on the phone with my mom because I was so scared it was happening again.

It kept going up and down, starting off slow after it hit a "peak" then gradually getting faster as it went back up or down. It was almost more terrifying than the night before: I thought I was just going to deal with this for the rest of my life. The night before, I already thought I was going to die so many times... I remember thinking to myself that there's no way I'll ever be able to consider suicide again, if that's what dying feels like. I was seriously terrified of dying to the point I was sort of terrified of my depression and past suicidal ideation.

I ended up calling an ambulance for help. I wasn't really able to walk much, my body was just so heavy and somewhat numb from the panic/adrenaline. I almost cried when the 911 dispatcher said she was going to hang up and talk to the paramedics if it was okay with me; I was terrified of being alone through it and just talking to someone was keeping me somewhat calmer.

Got to the hospital, they told me it was anxiety, I remember thinking "then I've never really experienced anxiety if THAT'S real anxiety... everything I've dealt with in the past was just child's play??" I didn't actually find out that it was most likely a severe panic attack until a week or two later, after doing some of my own research online.

I remember being in the hospital room on the bed, the nurses had left for a bit to visit other patients, and I started having an anxiety or panic attack again. I'm not really sure about which one it was at that time. I hit the call button to call for a nurse and I was already hyperventilating, I had crawled backwards up the bed so I was sort of crouching/laying on the side of my knees/legs. I couldn't even respond to the nurse at first when she came in, I remember I was only able to stare directly in front of me at the wall and hyperventilate, I was feeling intense fear. The nurse kept asking me what was wrong and by the time I was able to speak/react again, I just broke down sobbing and begged her to "please make it stop". I'm not sure why but that seemed like such a huge breaking point in all of this, for me.

I'm usually very aware of my feelings and thoughts, even if they're invasive, but at the time I was so distraught I couldn't do anything to elaborate, just beg it to stop. I eventually realized it was the wavy, up and down roller coaster adrenaline feeling, that I was begging to stop.

So... that's my "wonderful" first and last personal experience with marijuana. Ever since then, I feel like my mind is... different...? Everyone kept telling me they doubt I had a seizure, because marijuana doesn't give you seizures, etc. But what if it wasn't necessarily the marijuana, but part of the intense panic attack it caused?

I've began to notice very recently that I'm becoming hypochondriac. I've NEVER been the kind of person to worry about my health extensively, quite the opposite. There are times I definitely should have cared more than I did. Basically, this kind of anxiety, thinking and behavior is extremely unusual for me.

Especially in the last month or so, I've began excessively researching health conditions and various symptoms, I've had a few different times that I thought "This makes so much sense!! This is what I'm experiencing!!" But after the 2nd or 3rd time of this happening, I feel like I may be "forming my own answers" if that makes sense..? I should leave this kind of thing to Healthcare professionals, I know, but I keep thinking and thinking and thinking and researching things and I'm so freaking tired of thinking about what's wrong with me. So now I've also been freaking out about hypochondria, and while I'm fairly sure that's what I may be experiencing, I don't really freaking know. Maybe I'm just imagining all of this in some kind of extended, delusional placebo effect these last 2-3 months.

I really just want to go back to how everything was before that night but I feel like something is permanently changed. I keep reading about things, finding details that I relate with and "supporting" my "self-diagnosis research" or whatever. So far I've read about Ehlers-danlos syndrome, gastroparesis (these two aren't exactly related to all the above stuff but they are 2 things I've been anxiously hyperfocused on nonetheless), migraines with auras, migraines in general, panic attacks, seizure disorders, seizures that can be linked to panic attacks... I feel like I just want an answer or for someone to be able to 100% validate that "yes, you AREN'T just imagining this, your symptoms can be explained/correlated to &lt;insert health conditon&gt;".

I have an appointment with my primary care physician this week, originally I made it to ask him about his thoughts on my gastro difficulties, and now I want to ask him about migraines. I desperately want to talk to my psychiatrist about all of these thoughts but the last couple times I've tried, it's like my mind just fizzles out and I don't know how or what I'm trying to say, my train of thought disappears, and sometimes I don't even remember what we were talking about before it happened.

I've had, I believe, a lot of occasions of this brain fog where I just lose my train of thought. Only recently has it been so bad that I can't figure out how or what I want to say, it's like my brain is just shut off/disconnected and I'm just saying simple phrases like "it's like...", "I mean...", "I just..." and they trail off into nothing. I've cried a few times when it happened because I KNOW I can talk. I KNOW I can process things better than this. Just being totally unable to do it in that moment just frustrates and saddens me. I don't want to keep thinking about "what if this keeps happening? What if it's damaging my brain each time and just going to get worse?". I just want to be able to think clearly again. I want to be able to remember things that I've done, said, where I've been, etc. I can't remember a large portion of most of my days.

I dont really know what I'm hoping to get out of posting this here. In some parts of my thoughts, I feel like I'm anxiously hoping for people to come here and comment "There's definitely something seriously wrong with you!! You need to talk to your doctors about this!". At the same time, I don't know if that's just anxiety spurring it on or if I really do want that sort of validation... I don't want others to try and diagnose me because I don't want anyone to get into trouble. But I guess, if you have any sort of similar experiences, please feel free to share if you'd like...? I don't know. I'm just really confused with my life and I appreciate if you've read this far, at least.