Mine was age 16. I don’t recall having any sort of panic, but given the extent to which my adult personality resembles what I was reading at the time, I may have “rebuil[t] a new self any sort of stuff laying around.” It felt intentional at the time… No painful side effects, but that may be scar tissue. (I’m a quant, and I found GEB too clever for its own good. Maybe it was unique at the time, but by the time I read it, I had already seen its better points elsewhere.)
Mine was age 16. I don’t recall having any sort of panic, but given the extent to which my adult personality resembles what I was reading at the time, I may have “rebuil[t] a new self any sort of stuff laying around.” It felt intentional at the time… No painful side effects, but that may be scar tissue. (I’m a quant, and I found GEB too clever for its own good. Maybe it was unique at the time, but by the time I read it, I had already seen its better points elsewhere.)