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Comment by peterwwillis | Hacker News Reader

This has happened to me with two different people. Both times my face apparently transformed into the face of the person's father - while we were sleeping together. Only one of the times was after the person smoked pot. It was scary to say the least, and scarier when the first one ran to the kitchen and grabbed a chef's knife.

Life lesson: before you get in a relationship, ask about any history of mental disorder or medications being taken. Some people don't tell you about these things until they happen.

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That is closer to PTSD than dissociating. Long story short, it sounds like a flashback, and feels precisely like the trauma is happening again. They can last anywhere from a few seconds to a longer period of time.

You're right. It just feels like a similar scenario, and (contrary to other posters' insistence) neither is faked nor dependent on drug use. As the guy in the scenario it's also the same things going through your mind; dangerous for both parties, no good solutions.

Not really a mental disorder, but an uncle was a sleepwalker, nothing scary, except he was in the military; and sometimes, he'd reenact war scenes, some times he'd take people for allies, some times not. It never ended badly, but it could have.

I had a high school friend who I strongly suspect suffered from either schizophrenia or DID. There were times when he would swear he was a soldier, even though he was just a high school student and the closest he came to marching was in band. At first I'd pass it off as a joke or prank, but one day I took a really good look at his eyes when he started wigging out, and it was like seeing a stranger. It sounds crazy but it was a different personality behind those eyes. When he would come back down from it to his normal personality, you could see the change in his expressions. He also claimed he didn't recall his thoughts or actions while he was "the soldier".

Years later, long after we had drifted apart as friends, I found out he murdered his father and tried to kill his mother and brother as well, and went to prison for life.

A second cousin , as a child , her father had cancer at the time, he awoke one night and his little girl was just about to stab him with a big kitchen knife, apparently based on what the family said , his little daughter had no recollection of the drama the night before, she became a totally normal adult with no mental problems.

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