I honestly wasn’t sure how to answer the memory question, because although I remember lots of things well, they don’t seem to be organized or attached to each other the way they seem to be for other people around me. A person’s name, face, and story might all be things I know, but I don’t easily link them to each other. I remember the (complicated) names of characters from hundreds of fantasy and sci-fi novels I read 10-20 years ago, and have near-photographic memory of the location of every item in my refrigerator (yes, refrigerator specifically, not the pantry cabinets around it), but routinely forget where I put my keys/phone/wallet/mug/etc. The other night I was talking about a bunch of similar places I’ve been along a route, and I remembered images of each one, and the set of street names they were all on, but had no idea which was which, or where they were geographically in relation to each other.
As far as unusual mental experience, I went through a years-long period of depression without realizing it had happened. I gradually lost most emotions and didn’t notice. I lost much of my senses of smell and taste. I lost a lot of my ability to distinguish specific sounds and visual features in my environment (I’d look right at a field and not see the bright red flowers, or in one notable instance, the tree that had fallen into a house). At its worst I thought I had had a stroke, because one day my reaction time slowed by at least a factor of 2-3, I had trouble doing basic tasks like paying at the grocery store, and when people spoke to me I sometimes heard the individual sounds but they didn’t form words in my head. That part lasted about a week. All of those symptoms went away in one moment three days after I started taking antidepressants, and since I got the dosage right, they’ve never been back for more than a few hours at times when I missed a dose and am extremely stressed or tired. Also in that first month on antidepressants I reread Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha and made more progress in my meditation practice than I ever had before or since (extremely clear experiences of what he describes as all eight jhanas and all the stages leading up to stream entry), like I cleared a blockage and released a flood of potential I’d been building up for years.
I honestly wasn’t sure how to answer the memory question, because although I remember lots of things well, they don’t seem to be organized or attached to each other the way they seem to be for other people around me. A person’s name, face, and story might all be things I know, but I don’t easily link them to each other. I remember the (complicated) names of characters from hundreds of fantasy and sci-fi novels I read 10-20 years ago, and have near-photographic memory of the location of every item in my refrigerator (yes, refrigerator specifically, not the pantry cabinets around it), but routinely forget where I put my keys/phone/wallet/mug/etc. The other night I was talking about a bunch of similar places I’ve been along a route, and I remembered images of each one, and the set of street names they were all on, but had no idea which was which, or where they were geographically in relation to each other.
As far as unusual mental experience, I went through a years-long period of depression without realizing it had happened. I gradually lost most emotions and didn’t notice. I lost much of my senses of smell and taste. I lost a lot of my ability to distinguish specific sounds and visual features in my environment (I’d look right at a field and not see the bright red flowers, or in one notable instance, the tree that had fallen into a house). At its worst I thought I had had a stroke, because one day my reaction time slowed by at least a factor of 2-3, I had trouble doing basic tasks like paying at the grocery store, and when people spoke to me I sometimes heard the individual sounds but they didn’t form words in my head. That part lasted about a week. All of those symptoms went away in one moment three days after I started taking antidepressants, and since I got the dosage right, they’ve never been back for more than a few hours at times when I missed a dose and am extremely stressed or tired. Also in that first month on antidepressants I reread Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha and made more progress in my meditation practice than I ever had before or since (extremely clear experiences of what he describes as all eight jhanas and all the stages leading up to stream entry), like I cleared a blockage and released a flood of potential I’d been building up for years.