The first time was the worst.  They came in the middle of the night without warning or reason, waking me from a deep sleep. Monsters made of 100% raw negative emotion appeared and had taken over my head. There were 4 of them: boredom, poison, anxiety and doom, each connected and feeding off the others.

They were foreign, relentless,  emotions without a cognitive trigger that couldn’t be explained or rationalized away.  Personal foundations of religion or using logic were useless in fighting them.  There was no escaping through sleep, drugs or alcohol, even for a second. So strong, they took away apatite and caused trembling, diarrhea, and vomiting.  At their strongest surviving more then a couple of days would not be possible.  So much worse than I ever imagined hell could be like.  It felt like they were not from this world and I feared they could even follow in death. 

Boredom was the biggest and worst of them all, 1,000 times stronger than any boredom I had experienced before.  Poison was next, taking away any joy from doing things I normally like and replacing it with even more bad feelings, adding to the already unbearable boredom.  Anxiety from not being able to get away from them kept me from sleeping or resting and doom convinced me things were going to get worse.  Time slowed and all my thoughts were consumed with trying to fight them.

The first attack over a decade ago slowly eased a few days afterword for again, no apparent reason leaving me forever changed.  I’ve felt them every day since, some days more than others but never near as bad as the first time.  Always lurking in the shadows, leaving me never knowing if and when another full out attack may happen.

Dave Lister 

listerlogic.com