u/flowerpower___

I’ve been trying to make sense of something that happened earlier this year, and I’m curious what people here make of it.

My cousin and I were very close, but lived a few hours away from each other. In late March, I went to visit her at her house. Her bf smokes really good 🌱, and she’s relatively new to smoking. She had been using gummies instead lately. One night her bf offered me some 🌱, and I took one hit from the bong. I don’t normally have experiences like what happened next, and I’ve thought about it a lot since.

After 1 hit, i immediately felt weird, clammy, and nauseated. I opened my journal app and wrote a few notes, started feeling even weirder and I couldn’t speak. I typed “help” on my phone and my cousin saw it and got me to the bathroom. I threw up and kind of blacked out and couldn’t move my body very well, it felt really heavy and kinda hard to breathe like it wasn’t automatic anymore. I told my cousin I feel like i’m dying. This is weird but as I was throwing up, it was like the toilet bowl was a whirlpool portal and sucked me in, and it was like a cave and there was an older woman kinda leading me, and it was like i was being initiated or baptized. I think it literally only lasted like 2 seconds and then i was back in my body in the bathroom. my cousin and her bf took care of me and i went upstairs and went to bed. I told my cousin about it the next morning. i felt awful and kinda kept to myself and slept the rest of the weekend before i left to go home.

At the time, I could explain it as an unusually intense reaction, but what makes it harder for me to put away is what happened afterward.

Within the following weeks, my cousin began behaving very differently. She became increasingly manic and eventually psychotic. She didn’t sleep for a few days and I woke up to 100+ messages from her, just a stream of consciousness and it sounded like she was someone else. She lived with her bf and I basically rallied her friends and our family to get her some help. She was having hallucinations and developed beliefs involving spiritual figures invading her nervous system, and a larger mission from the goddess Artemis to save the world, as well as delusions involving me. Her condition became serious enough that she was hospitalized for a week in April. She said the hospital experience was really traumatizing, but it seemed like she improved for a period afterward, and i was able to talk to her like she was almost like herself again. I know she’d been under a lot of stress and life changes, but i’d never seen her like that before and she said she’d never felt suicidal. She started withdrawing, seeming more negative and depressed over text, and started having delusions again. It got to where we couldn’t have conversations again. I had to take a step back for my own mental health.

She died by suicide in late May on her first day alone after people had been staying with her. It was also exactly two months after the weird night I had at her house.

I understand that mania and psychosis have medical and psychiatric explanations, and I’m not suggesting that a paranormal event caused her illness or her death. Grief also makes the mind search for connections, so I’m trying to be careful about that. But having my own extremely strange experience in her house shortly before everything began has stayed with me. The sequence of events feels eerie in retrospect, especially because none of us had ever seen this side of her before. And I’m devastated that I’ve lost my best friend.

I’m interested in hearing from people who have experienced something unusual around a person shortly before that person underwent a major psychological change or died. How did you understand it afterward?

i don’t wanna hear negative comments abt the bf, you have no idea how much we ran in circles, spending all our time and energy trying to take care of her before she died.

when i see/think about a particular person who harmed me, i start getting a fight or flight feeling and my root tingles. it doesn’t do it for anyone or anything else. weird

i can’t quite wrap my head around it.

i’ve had a few NDEs in my life, are there other timelines where I’m not there anymore?

I also had a cousin pass away unexpectedly recently. Could she still be in another timeline where she’s fine? Is there a timeline where she’s around and I’m the one that’s not?

Just thinking philosophically

i’ve noticed that people seem to get upset and worked up about things, and are not very chill. like increased road rage, being bad at communicating even though they think they’re good at it, reduced filter.

I spent my teens and 20s working on myself to try to handle heavy emotions, maintain healthy relationships, be able to communicate. Maybe it’s because i’m in my early 30s now and the gap is much more visible between who has done some introspection and who hasn’t.

is it a post-covid/state of the world and economy thing?

genuinely wtf is wrong with people?

edit: i feel like i’ve noticed this the most in close relationships and dating. like people don’t know how to communicate and repair, and i see more meltdowns

this was several years ago. I used to work as a prosecutor, and when i was brand new i was assigned a case that involved a relatively low impact car crash. there was the defendant and the “victims”, no one was significantly injured but there were some minor injuries. i called and talked to one of the the victims on the phone, i very specifically remember him because he also worked at the court house and was new, and this was the first time i had met him even though it was over the phone. he and his wife were mildly injured in the car accident, and we worked it out so medical bills were covered etc. he had an odd last name that i had never heard before, and a first name that could be male or female. he and his wife had the same last name. just saying that to note i know who i was talking to, and i know the facts. i even talked about it with another attorney.

anyway, fast forward to about a year ago. he and I interacted a lot more frequently since i was in and out of the court house. i brought up how he was one of the first cases i was assigned, and i had forgotten about it until i mentioned it to him. he said he remembers the car accident, but it was just him and he doesn’t have a wife, or a girlfriend, and he’s never been married.

i very vividly remember the details because it was one of my first cases, and i was trying to do a good job. i’ve never understood how that could happen 🤯 and he thought it was very weird and we dropped it and i never brought it up again

I matched with a guy who I like a lot so far, we have been chit chatting for about a week, and we went on a really fun first date last tuesday.

my cousin had been having mental health issues for the last few months, and when I got home from the date I found out she had passed away that morning. We talked about my cousin on the date and about how close she and I were. She and this guy were in the same creative industry, and their work had been having challenges the last several years. He just started a new job outside of the industry because of that.

He invited me out this past weekend, and I said it sounded so fun and I wished that I could, but I had to go out of town to see family. We've texted just a little bit the last few days and I let him know I was back in town. He asked how the trip was and I just mentioned it was kind of a heavy weekend and I'm glad to be back. He invited me to do something this coming weekend, and I'm looking forward to it and going to respond soon.

I don't quite know how to share this with him gently without making it weird. I don't want it to be a bummer or be too much on him, and I don't want him to get the idea that I'm not interested, either. I'm just grieving.

It's only been a week, but he is very sweet and has good manners, and I like him.

My cousin had been in psychosis for the last couple months, and this morning she unalived herself.

i just found out a few hours ago and it feels fake.

she got really manic in april and was hospitalized for a week. when she got out i guess she stopped taking the meds they put her on.

she’d never had an episode like this before. before she got put in the hospital she stayed up for 4 days, i woke up to over 100 texts that were stream of consciousness and weird insights about the universe. ive had friends go through kinda similar things so i saw a lot of it coming, and feel like i tried to tell her and her other friends/family/bf and i don’t feel like anyone took it seriously enough or recognized it until they had to put her in the hospital. about 2 weeks ago she started sending weird series of texts to me again and i had to politely but firmly set some boundaries and try to call her back to earth.. i didn’t reach out to friends and family again cause i didn’t feel like it was my place. she was 4 years older than me and lived with her bf 4 hours away.

i could tell she was still off, i think there’s nothing i could really have done, and she was hiding a lot of it too. and even when i tried to intervene i feel like i got blown off.

she was my best friend. **i’m sad and also mad. i recognize that lack of insight is part of the illness, but im mad that she didn’t hear me and now she’s gone. and it feels like it happened so fast.** i haven’t lost someone so close to me before. my 1 bedroom apartment feels giant and im sad.

**idk, if you have any advice for navigating losing a loved one suddenly especially someone who was in psychosis, please let me know.** would also like to say i am okay, i will be okay, i just don’t know what tf to do with this.

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