AIBU - do past lives exist or how to explain this?

[Likeafriendivealwaysknown]

To be upfront I am not into spiritual worlds or past lives or any of that woo type stuff but I can’t Understand this.

I have a visceral reaction to any people doing drugs on tv. So for example when it happened for the first time a few years ago I was watching an episode of elementary where Sherlock went off the rails and injected drugs and got addicted again and I had a incredibly out of proportion reaction. Shaking and a panic attack, felt like I was going to vomit and couldn’t sleep that night. It’s happened a few times since where I randomly see this on tv. So much so that I actively avoid anything that is people injecting drugs or being addicted.

I don’t understand it as I’ve never done drugs myself of any kind - I’ve never even held a cigarette. I come from a stable background, loving family no history of drug abuse, lovely DH now the same. I’ve actually never even met or known anyone who does drugs casually never mind hard injecting drugs. It’s so odd.

I joked to my DH that maybe I was a drug addict in a past life! But then I started thinking well there is actually no rational reason I’d react like that.

It's nothing to do with a past life. It's just the way human brains work, sometimes they can over-think, get obsessed, start believing untruths that logically make no sense. Perhaps it's a smokescreen for some other worry in your life.

Given that you think you’ve never even met anyone who does soft drugs , I’d say you have a general very anti approach to drugs. That’s combining with some other underlying anxiety to create an extreme reaction. I think the most logical thing to do would be to consider whether you need any support with the anxiety, not whether this is a past life experience.

There are many explanations which are much more plausible than past lives!

Young people in the U.K. get taught about drugs in quite a sensationalist way. That’s not necessarily a criticism, but there is a clear focus on the danger of death and extreme illness from drug taking. Those messages can easily be internalised from a young age and lead to grave concerns about taking drugs.

Drugs are also associated with all kinds of negative things - criminality, loss of control, seediness, death, injury, illness, unsociable behaviour etc. It’s normal for them to trigger an anxiety response if any of those things are - even subliminally a cause for concern for you.

People also just have irrational overreactions to some things. My husband is a healthy human who has never seriously injured himself or spent any time in hospital. But he will faint if you even talk about needles / blood / hospitalisation. It’s so serious he has had hypnotherapy to help him prepare for the impending birth of our baby. There’s nothing in his life that would trigger that kind of phobia, but it’s very real for him.

Past lives as a rational explanation for being very anti drugs?

You seem to be fairly dramatic, so that explains it well enough.

I suspect you have memories of press reports of deaths such as Rachel Whitear and Leah Betts.

I was fascinated to read about the case of Carl Edon.

You are not spiritual or religious but your first thought after getting upset after seeing something upsetting on TV is that past lives are real? That escalated quickly!

Wow! That’s a bit of a leap, OP.

What makes you think of past lives? Maybe an alien abducted you, injected you with drugs and wiped your brain?

I react the same when I see people injecting heroin on tv. I literally feel sick and have to turn away. Don’t think it’s anything to do with a past life.
As for the possibility of people having past lives, I’m not sure. Have you seen the documentary ‘the boy who lived before’?

@DollyDoneMore

Wow! That’s a bit of a leap, OP.

What makes you think of past lives? Maybe an alien abducted you, injected you with drugs and wiped your brain?

Or your happy, stable past is a false memory implanted by a sinister cartel to cover up your actual past as an international drug kingpin?

Honestly, OP, we all get violent visceral reactions to sometimes quite odd things for no particular reason I had a reaction fully as violent as yours to a computer model of a head showing typical smallpox spot distribution on the news about 20 years ago. It was in no way disgusting in itself it looked like a computer-generated 3D shop window mannequin, but with raised spots in some non-realistic colour like blue or yellow all over it. I felt nauseated and light-headed and kept having flashbacks to it for a couple of days, to the point where I tried to find the image on the internet to see if I could neutralise it by looking at it calmly.

I definitely didn't have a smallpox-ridden past life.

I also can't watch people injecting-even though know it's not real.

Can't stand to watch people being hurt/tortured either.

Don't think you would have made a good medic anyway, by the sounds of it!