![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() This pattern finally broke when I learned how to mindfully confront the pain during my first ayahuasca retreat. Sometimes this even got pushed to suicidal limits when the adrenaline junkie in me was at it’s peak. With help from a number of addictions I had become so accustomed to feeling emotionally numb, that each time there was a possibility of feeling pain, I jumped to consume something to make sure that pain didn’t come to the surface. I felt like the tin man from the Wizard of Oz looking for a heart. I moved like a robot and even my voice sounded like a drone. When trying everything material to satisfy myself had failed, I entered into a state of apathy, I could not tell if I was happy or sad. I realized that I am suffering from DPDR when I heard my friend talk about the same kind of behavior. I had developed tendencies to press parts of my body against hard surfaces until they hurt very bad, or enter in water at extreme temperatures just to feel my skin react, or at extreme times even bite my arm to see if I can feel anything. My sense of time and space had become very distorted and it resulted in me having very abnormal perceptions of what is real and possible.Īt the same time, my body kept trying to bring me back through self-inflicting extreme pain till I was pulled back to realize how numb I had become. Not having physical boundaries slowly led to an inability to form associations with reality, and my sense of “real” started diminishing. Being a floating piece of consciousness is comparatively weightless. I eventually forgot the feeling of physical boundaries and the experience of weight in the physical body, otherwise known as the experience of gravity. Inhaling some very toxic substances had also destroyed my sense of smell. I could not feel pain in my body or at times I didn’t even feel my body at all, not even the temperature of the surroundings. The Persistent Experience of Disconnection As I managed to keep up a great act of normalcy on the surface, nobody ever intervened deep enough to realize that my life was headed for disaster. I also had a hyper-addictive personality, which means I could get addicted to practically anything - food, television, gambling, drugs, any type of substance, even people, there was nothing that could fill the void, and yet at an unconscious level I never stopped trying. I eventually became so disconnected from my emotions and body that I couldn’t even tell that everything was out of order. My life was a nightmare, only I had no idea how or why. I only heard this term a year back, almost 12 years after I entered in this state. A drug overdose put me into the state of permanent dissociation from reality, something that in psychology is termed as depersonalization-derealization or DPDR for short. I entered the world of drugs at the age of 16 as a way to numb the pain and stress and to stay in a state where everything was apparently peaceful. This state of dissociation became permanent until I embarked on a long journey of spiritual healing to become embodied using numerous exercises I learned through ayahuasca and my teacher Silvia Polivoy at the Spirit Vine ayahuasca retreat center in Brazil. Emotional, physical and psychological stress caused me to dissociate and leave my body to escape the pain. This was a result of several traumatic experiences followed by a period of drug and substance abuse. In this article I am sharing the experience of being stuck out of my body in a state of near-consistent numbness for nearly a decade. ![]()
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