Exploring the other trauma, the one unrelated to my childhood. When it comes back it’s a remembering, a fear of some horrifying unknown.
But it’s nothing specific. Because the feeling came first, before the rationalisations. They were never enough so became impossibly large.
The drugs caused the feeling. The was no real source.
Aside 1: The feeling was an ancient terror, a primal fear from the animal brain. You felt it when something was to kill you. It can’t be ignored, your higher functions are disabled. This kept us alive but we don’t feel it now. We get close, with “bad vibes” about a person or a place.
Aside 2: I’d never experienced anything like it, or so I thought. Then I saw on a TV show, a group of kids were on a treasure hunt and this guy dressed up like a pirate appeared. Most of the kids ran away, half convinced. One little girl started screaming and crying in total terror (because terror is always total). I’ve experienced that myself, at an old version of a decommissioned attraction at an Orlando theme park, maybe Disney. The one where an alien teleports into the room and you could feel “it” breathing on your neck via compressed air in the seats. You never saw it, only a silhouette against smoke. It was real to me and I was terrified. Looking back I feel comforted, knowing it’s not the first time I’ve experienced terror, it was imaginary, and I got over it.