Crouch In Pain For Hours Every Day For The Last 10 Years

Second of a two-part series with David Reese.

If you haven’t listen to episode #6 and read my expose here: https://soultosoul.substack.com/p/david-rees

At 32 David and his friends did an ayahuasca ceremony, he remembers:

“This was heavily potent, concentrated thick, dark, black shit. Whatever the strength of what that stuff was, had unblocked the volcano. “

After 3 days of this ceremony David started to have violent seizures.

When I asked to describe the seizures, David said:

“Epilepsy meets cerebral palsy. Full body contractions, like when women are in childbirth, this might seem like I am exaggerating for dramatic effect or to sound heroic and it couldn’t be further from the truth. “

His seizures would last in 4-5 hours increments and could continue for 10-12 hours. The analogy that David used was of a mafia mob, how someone is tortured until they passed out, then they wake them back up and continue torturing them again. That what would happen to David, he would have the pain until he could not handle it anymore, he would pass out, just to wake up to another round of this torture. It happened every single day with no days off and still happens, 10 years later.

–“How did you function ? “– I asked

– “I didn’t function. That was a thing. This was when I lost everything.  The reason that I ended up completely falling down being tens of thousands of pounds in debt, losing my house, losing everything – Is because of this.” – he replied.

David asked to take a little break, his hands started to shake. On the table he had a flask with a cocktail of very potent medication mixed with alcohol to calm his seizures. He drank from the flask  and continued:

“This has happened to me in public. It happened to me in the grocery store. This has happened to me in bars, anywhere. It has made me an absolute recluse. I’ve been celibate for five years. I just stopped having sex. It’s pointless to me even trying, It’s like I’m just freaking women out, man. “ 

I was listening to this story in absolute shock. While his words made sense, inside I felt confused. How can one person get so many bad cards in a row? There was only one question on my mind, which I wasn’t sure was appropriate, but I just had to ask:

– If your life was so terrible why didn’t you commit suicide ?

David shared how he has suicidal thoughts all his life, and early on, he learned to dissociate himself from pain, from terrible events, that was his only way to survive. He also shared how he read in one of  the spiritual teachings that committing suicide will lead to infinite suffering, which is something he definitely did not want to experience.

The seizures are still present to this day, however with David’s determination and army-like routine he was able to bring them down to 4 hours a day and make them happen at predictable time after the sun sets.

His days look the same, no holidays, no weekends (2 of our recording days were exceptions).There is no other way – his seizures do not take days off. David has the whole ritual in preparation for his seizures, to stretch, roll out his back and neck with thick trigger-point roller, lay down thick mats, take a position that would ensure he does not break any bones. 

As crazy as it sounds, he is also able to dissociate from his pain and do some creative work in his head. David has a unique ability to have HD quality imagination, so while his body is shaking in excruciating pain – David imagines worlds, plans his business.