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Hello, gr (it's just depressing spelling that out every time.)

"So how should I feel?" I guess the question is, why does "should" matter? How do you feel?

"What should I do? ... Just live with it?" Whatever "it" actually is, is there an alternative to living with it?

I've met a lot of people who remember being raped or abused; I'm not sure how badly you need those memories.

Besides, you really only have one person's unsupported word about what you did while passed out. Is this a person you trust a great deal? After all, what if you didn't do anything during the blackout, but the guy was hoping he could convince you that you did. Maybe he figured it would help you overcome your resistance to having sex with him.

I guess I'm just wondering: if you found out for certain what happened, in what way would your life change?

Would it be easier, or harder, and why?

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I know so many people who have PTSS and who also along with me were involved in risky behavior but not harmful as far as we knew because we blacked out or forgot or woke up somewhere else that have to problems or concerns wanting to not remember what happened thank God! Not to say you wouldn't want to but really examine your present feelings concerning the past . So may suffering humans wish they had the opppertunity to not remember what happened like you. A matter of fact a doctor in England is working on a technique for PTSS patients to forget what happened and it has promising revues but far for implementation . Anywhoo if your disease free, no physical harm, and everything is okay including your mental state before you hit the pipe again run not walk to get professional help because it's just a matter of time before you do some serious harm to yourself and the ones that love you. For some reason or another the Universe thinks your good enough to allow you to take another inhale and exhale allowing you to live another second and thats awesome . You've got to love yourself like the Universe does or whatever you believe in. Your good enough and good luck !

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The problem is that the answer to whether hypnosis would or would not work in recovering memories of that period (whether or not a specific drug was used on you) is a medical question that we're not really equipped to answer. Most of us are laypeople with some experience with mental health issues. It's not that we're unwilling to help; it's that we don't have the training or the ability to answer this particular question over the internet. And any cautions we've given you are based on what experience we have had.

It seems that you need to consult a professional who does hypnosis, discuss the problem with them, and see what they say. If you need help deciding whether to do that, perhaps we could help tangentially: what would be the benefits and the downsides of doing that? If you need to, you can do a separate analysis for whether it works, or it doesn't.

Say for instance that you try it, and you don't recover memories. Would that help you let go of the problem? But wait: what is the problem that you're trying to solve? Is it about uncertainty? Or is it about what you would conclude if you obtained certainty?

I see three options: failure, confirmation that something happened, or confirmation that nothing (or certain less undesirable somethings?) happened. Each of those should be explored for what they would mean to you. In fact, if that analysis were done well, you might even find that you don't need to know which it was.

So it might even be that you don't need a hypnotist as much as a counselor to work through your feelings. For instance, you said, "If I am able to regain those memories then I might either enjoy them or be terrified by them." What would you be terrified of? Wouldn't it be a bad idea to recover memories that increase your terror, without first addressing how you would cope with that emotion?

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Well, then is "terrified" really the word for the feeling you have?

For one thing, a terrified person probably wouldn't seek the truth in case it turned out to be what they feared.

This is an event in the past that you have no reason to believe will ever be repeated. One assumes that you've learned to be on guard against being drugged, in the future. So it seems to me more likely that the feeling is related to how you perceive the differences between the various possible scenarios.

And that's why I suggested exploring those feelings with a professional.

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After reading your story, the ending conclusion is, if you feel you were raped, you need to contact the authorities and let them know so they can help you. Whether you fantazied about it before or not, you didn't ask for this to happen. You were probably drugged and depending on how long ago this happened, they may be able to find what you were drugged with and if you did contract a diease, the doctors need to get you checked so they can treat it as soon as possible.

One good thing that could come out of contracting HIV is the fact that HIV has it's own DNA strand, meaning they can compare yours to whoever you think may have given it to you and put them away for what they did to you. You didn't deserve anything that happened to you, stay strong!

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No one said it was "wrong", really, especially since "wrong" is such a poor guide for behavior anyway.

Too, many who have replied to you, as I mentioned to you earlier, have more than enough memories of abuse of their own, and would gladly give them away.

What I would suggest as an alternate criterion to "wrong" would be: will it help you to know, more than it would hurt you, and only your opinion counts. You've said that you have a need to know, so that's an argument on the positive side. But you've also pointed out that the need is a new one and an unusually strong one.

Could it be obsessive? I don't know the answer. I would simply say that if the need to know were obsessive, it probably wouldn't go away even if you retrieved some memories. Characteristically, it would just shift to a new obsessive thought.

The other point about whether it's "realistic" would be the uncertainty about whether or what kind of memories a person forms under the conditions you described, of a combination of a stimulant and a depressant being in the system simultaneously. In other words, hypnosis might not work at all. On the other hand, it might; at which point the question becomes more, why aren't you trying it if recovering this memory is truly what you want?

And, JaiJai does ask some cogent questions, though perhaps a little roughly: is there something else going on in your life, at the moment? Was there something about your vacation that helped bring these memories back? Because these events are quite a long time in the past, it does become a question why they're so important right at this moment.

You mentioned "terror" about some of the possibilities you might find; I still think that makes recovering the memories dangerous, until you've had a chance to come to grips with what you might be terrified of. Do you really want to "confirm ... [your] worst fears"? That could be the outcome here. I'm also curious why you've side-stepped my suggestions that you talk to someone knowledgeable (such as a hypnotist or therapist) about your options. We're pretty helpless, except for moral support.

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