An influencer and parenting blogger has broken her silence about a rare condition she diagnosed herself with after she ‘pulled a bong’ as a teenager.
Perth-based ‘mumfluencer’ Constance Hall, who has an online audience of 1.3m Facebook followers revealed the long-lasting effect of smoking marijuana for the first time at the age of 13.
The mother-of six took to social media on Monday to relive the day ‘life as she knew it’ changed.
‘It was like any other day. I went back to my mate’s house after school, realised her brother was out so we stole his weed,’ Hall began.
She and her friends managed a single hit of a bong each before Hall ‘lost touch with my reality’ within minutes.
Her friends laughed at how high she was, and Hall said she couldn’t really engage with them.
‘I’d flipped from an external narrative to an internal one,’ she continued.
‘I was now trapped in my head and having conversations with myself, I was terrified and knew that this wasn’t just stoned.’
Her walk home was plagued by ‘floaters’ appearing in her vision and told her mum what had happened.
Hall’s mother told her she was stoned and helped her to bed.
She recalled feeling ‘relieved’ to feel herself again when she woke the next morning.
Two weeks later, Hall felt she was in her own head again, despite having abstained from the drug since that first puff.
‘I could see and hear but not connect the dots, my thoughts became words like I was talking to myself in my head. And the floaters in my eyes were the most prevalent thing in my vision,’ she continued.
‘My mum took me to a doctor, who wanted to run tests for epilepsy. I knew that was a waste of time, I couldn’t explain (the feeling) so I was stuck with it.’
She said she never saw another professional after that, and the absence of social media or Google in her teens meant she was none the wiser to the true cause of the episodes.
‘For years I’d suffer random, regular attacks and felt like a prisoner of my own mind. Strobe lights; a party; thinking about it would bring it on,’ Hall said.
‘Going to sleep was the only way I could get over it.
‘I once wrote in my diary ‘give me physical pain over this any day. This is hell’.’
The blogger eventually learned to control the feelings and stop any impending attacks.
She said, now, she only lives with the threat of the attacks and she is able to bring herself back to feeling present before the wave ‘engulfs’ her.
Hall believes she recently discovered the true cause of the episodes after watching an interview given by Post Malone.
The music star has talked about his battles with depersonalisation-derealisation disorder (DPDR) on a number of prominent podcasts.
‘He was explaining the exact thing I had,’ Hall wrote.
‘(That was) where I found a whole world of people suffering what I had suffered, (I even found) a simulation video that focussed on the visual eye floaters.’
‘It can be triggered by trauma or stress or substances like (hydroponically grown weed) or it can just come on by itself, and it’s more likely to affect adolescents.’
She said the disorder is a ‘master at making you feel alone’, but told her fans anyone who has DPDR is not really alone.
‘1-2 people out of 100 get it and that’s only the people who report it. she added.
‘I learnt about this way too late, it targeted and took from me years of happiness. It’s notoriously hard to explain, which adds to the isolation.’
Hall ended the post explaining the reasons for sharing her ordeal.
‘It can be seriously hell, so if I can reach one person, I need them to know that you need to speak about it, knowing that you’ll be supported.’ she wrote.
‘Taking away the fear of how you’ll be perceived during an attack is what started taking away my attacks altogether.
‘You will be happy again.’
The lengthy post was flooded with supportive messages for the blogger.
Some said the post helped them identify someone they knew who might suffer the disorder.
Others shared their own experiences with DPDR.
My 17 year-old started suffering from this this year in very similar circumstances. I almost didn’t believe him at first…When he rang and asked me to get him from school though, I saw my big 6’3′ tough guy trembling and teary, and I knew something very real was going on,’ one parent commented.
Another follower added: ‘This is exactly what happened to me one year ago, I touched medical cannabis in hopes to help with some nightmares I had been having due to stress and from there my whole world was ripped out from under me.’
Derealisation can cause sufferers to feel a sense of emotional and environmental dissociation or detachment, according to Counselling.
The disorder can make people feel as though they are outside their own body and as if they are simply observing events, accompanied by the sensation the events themselves are ‘unreal’.
Sufferers can feel emotionally and physically numb, have a distrust for their own memories, and feel automated.