Hey guys, it's Celestia, and I don't even know how I'm supposed to start this storytime, honestly.
As a lot of you know if you've been following me and my channel for a while, I'm agoraphobic as
a result of very severe PTSD, and am subsequently unable to leave my home for long periods of time--
which, to me, is over an hour-- or at all, and only to locations that I'm familiar with and feel safe in.
Even then, I'm still liable to have a panic attack simply as a result of being out of my safe space,
and for that reason, I tend to just stay at home where I'm safe and relatively stable, because it's
terrifying to feel that you could be rendered completely incapacitated by your own anxiety and
panic and fear just because you went out. But I've been trying really, really hard to work past this
in therapy, and part of that means exposure therapy. Basically, doing the thing you're phobic of despite
the fact that you're phobic of it, in small and safe increments. And for me, based on my therapist's
recommendations, that has meant trying to force myself to go out to places close to me, like
quiet bars and coffee shops, to get myself used to interacting with society and the world again. She
thinks it'll help me eventually learn to recover, and that's exactly why I went to this lovely
restaurant-bar last month and prompted this storytime to happen. And this storytime happening is
exactly why I will literally never leave my house again. That's an exaggeration; I understand that I
will eventually need to try exposure therapy again, and I understand that staying inside forever isn't
a reasonable solution here, but as someone who was already terrified of the risks associated
with going out and just had all of those risks and fears verified and confirmed as realistic
and possible, once again, it's really hard not to feel that way and lean into that belief. Anyway,
before I get into what actually happened, I would like to give a trigger warning for intoxication,
alcohol, and non-consensual drugging. I will go into as little detail as possible, and there was no
incident to discuss following those events, but if those topics as a whole even vaguely disturb you, I
would recommend clicking away now. With that out of the way, let's talk about what happened last month.
I went to the aforementioned restaurant-slash-bar following a recommendation from a friend who said
that because I love good sake, I would love it there, as their selection of it is extensive. And
I mean, in that way, they were absolutely right: it was a lovely place, and their sake was incredible,
and if what happened later on never happened, I would probably have loved to go back sometime.
In fact, I actually texted my wife really excitedly that I thought I might have found a safe place
that I could try to go to regularly after spending the first like four hours of my evening working on
a script and an art piece and just enjoying the good vibes. I wasn't drinking heavily by any means,
because doing so would have defeated every purpose of my going there, like-- number one, I was trying to
finish my work, which being drunk would have made difficult. Number two, I was only drinking at all
because I wanted to try out some new kinds of sake. And three, while a few drinks will put me at ease
while I'm out of my house, being drunk outside of my house is terrifying for me. Because my weight is
so low as a result of my illness, I do sometimes miscalculate my tolerance and end up drinking
too much, simply because at a healthy weight, I would have been able to handle it no problem,
but I am confident that this was not the case here, because I finished a completely error-free script
and paced myself very slowly. I was completely clear-headed, albeit a little tipsy at worst,
for the entire duration of the evening, until very suddenly, I wasn't. But we'll get to that. I
had gotten there at around 4pm, at which point it was pretty chill and quiet, but it started
getting really busy at around 10. I was sitting at the bar and working on my iPad, and had just
finished the script and started working on the art piece when some guy sat down next to me and almost
immediately started talking to me. I gave him short one-word answers with the forced politeness but
blatant disinterest of every uncomfortable woman that does not want any part of an interaction,
hoping he would take the hint, but he did not, and he just kept going. He wasn't being, like, overtly
creepy or overbearing, nor did he look or seem creepy, but he was just-- he was not letting me
sit there in silence like I very clearly wanted. He wasn't trying to invade my personal space or
anything, he wasn't being an a**hole, and he wasn't getting annoyed with me for not engaging much in
the conversation, he just ignored that I wasn't engaging in the conversation because he wanted
to talk. And that was not what I had gone there for, so I did not, and really would have loved it if he
had just gone away. Which he refused to do with the persistence of a mosquito. Unfortunately, as
I had been there for hours at that point and had not yet used the bathroom, it was around
this point when it was becoming apparent that I would have to soon, especially because while I
WAS planning on leaving soon, I was also planning on walking home, which was a 45 minute walk, and
45 minutes is a long time to desperately have to pee. It would have been smarter for me to go to the
bathroom on the way out, but I still had a full drink left because I was drinking so slowly, and
forgive my crassness here, but I didn't want to spend those last 30 or 40 minutes it would have
taken me to drink it desperately trying not to piss myself. So I went to the bathroom. But while I
may have limited recent experience with the world as a whole as a result of my agoraphobia, I did
have quite a bit of experience with it before, and even if I didn't, I'm also not generally a dumbass,
so I realized the danger of leaving my drink unattended. I got the attention of one of the
nearby bartenders, and asked her to please watch my drink and my iPad just for a minute, because I was
gonna rush right to the bathroom and back so as to not put her out or take up her time. She agreed,
and I left. Now, what's weird is that the bathroom is the last thing I remember clearly. I don't even
fully remember coming back to the bar, although I do remember the panic of seeing that the bartender
had left to do something else and both my iPad and drink were unattended. I should have left as soon
as I saw that, honestly. I should have looked at that and looked at the guy still sitting beside me
and thought "it's not worth it to finish this drink", and I should have gone home. But the thing with me
is that both of my major mental illnesses, being PTSD and schizophrenia, along with the agoraphobia
resulting from both, causes me a lot of paranoia, and because the point of the evening was to try
and fight my paranoia and not let it control me, I was adamant that this was just another thing I
was being too paranoid about, and that if I let that fear stop me from finishing my night how
I planned, I would have failed at the exposure therapy I had gone there for. So while I don't
remember finishing the drink, I know that I did, and that one stupid f*cking decision made the night
take a very scary turn. Like I said, my memory of what happened next actually stops before I
even got back to my spot and finished the drink, which I found really odd in retrospect, but is
apparently typical of the type of drug that people usually put in people's drinks in these situations.
And if it was at all unclear, I am 100% confident that that's what happened: the guy who had been
bugging me roofied me. Anyway, it's a little hard to piece together what happened after I got back from
the bathroom as a result of that memory loss, but my iPad keeps track of how long I use certain apps,
and based on how long it says I kept using Procreate and the time that I went to the bathroom,
I was able to determine that I kept drawing for a little over 15 minutes afterwards. The art itself
is actually one of the most disturbing aspects of this for me, and it's what really solidified for me
that I absolutely was drugged, because it's just-- it's wrong. It's not like the lines were sloppy,
they were distorted and strange and blocky, and in places, looked like I had inexplicably stopped
picking up my pen as I drew and just tried to finish the linework in one long stroke. And I know
myself; I have drawn while completely shit-faced more than once, and I've never had a problem with
it. It has always looked normal, albeit a little sloppy or messy in places, and I have never seen
myself create anything that looked remotely like this looked. I'll show one example of it on-screen:
this is a much tamer example, because from what I can gather, I stopped working on this piece after
this little snippet here, and started working on a brand new one, which was much worse. I wish now
that I had kept it to show here, but when I saw it the next morning, I just-- I started crying and
I deleted it on impulse. I wasn't thinking about keeping it for a video, I wasn't thinking about
a video at all-- I was so ashamed that this had happened to me, and that I had LET this happen to
me, that I had no intention of ever talking about it to anyone. I'll get into why that changed later,
but the point is that seeing that piece just broke me a little bit, because accidentally drinking too
much couldn't explain that-- not at all. And seeing visual evidence like that just, I-- I couldn't handle
it. Anyway, I got back to the bar and apparently kept drawing for 15 minutes, which was presumably
how long it took me to finish my drink, because my banking app says that I paid shortly after that.
I have no way of knowing whether or not the guy had kept talking to me throughout this time, but I
do distinctly have one flash of a memory where he grabbed my arm and told me he would drive me home,
which I'm guessing stood out because I was just so scared. Like, I'm so phobic of being touched that
even my family knows to ask permission to hug me, so for this dude that I'm already scared of to do
it that aggressively and suddenly, it's-- it's not a huge surprise that that memory stood out. I don't
know what happened after, but I know I didn't go with him, and presumably managed to get away and
leave the bar. One of the bartenders confirmed this when my wife came looking for me later on.
The next thing I remember is stumbling down the street trying to get home, but I couldn't walk, and
I kept falling, and it was like-- it didn't feel like being drunk, it felt more like how I felt
when they gave me sedatives before medical tests and procedures. And that really scared me, because
I was too mentally out of it to realize I had been drugged, so I was just terrified and confused and
unable to understand what was happening to me. I couldn't figure out how to work my phone, either--
like, I knew I needed to call an Uber, but my brain couldn't figure out how to find or open the app.
What probably saved my life or at least saved me from something very bad happening was that I
had texted my wife from the bathroom at the bar, and the messages app was still open as a result,
so I was able to incoherently text her for help. I couldn't really understand her responses, so I
didn't know if help was coming or not, which left me still trying to stumble down the street before
eventually just sitting down on the sidewalk and crying. The area I was in has a very busy
nightlife, and despite the fact that this was a Wednesday night, I still remember there being a
lot of people passing by and walking around, and I remember desperately trying to ask them for help,
but the only word I could actually get out was "help". And while most of them ignored even that, I
couldn't even explain it to those who DID stop and ask what I needed, because I just-- I couldn't
make the words work. I couldn't put them together right, or even understand their meaning through
the brain fog, and I didn't even understand what was happening to me well enough to tell them even
if I could have, so I just sat there helplessly staring at them, at which point they presumably
assumed I was homeless and high and kept walking. One of them actually spit on me and said something
that I couldn't understand despite the fact that I knew it was English, but I'm guessing
it was some kind of an insult based on that same assumption. Eventually, my wife came and got me, and
she took me home and took care of me. I was still really incoherent and not making much sense, but
she managed to get me into bed where I finally passed out. Apparently I ended up getting up and
stumbling around in the middle of the night to start examining household objects like they were
foreign to me, and she says that-- okay, for context, we're Pagan, and as a result, we have a lot of
ingredients kept in small glass bottles for use in certain rituals and practices. She says that at
one point, I picked up one of those bottles and just started staring at the ingredients inside.
I do normally sleepwalk and have very persistent and severe night terrors and sleep paralysis, so me
doing weird stuff in my sleep isn't unheard of, but she says that I have literally never done anything
like that before, and that I normally just scream and sprint to the bathroom to hide from whatever
my sleeping brain has conjured up. This kind of behavior was completely different from anything
she can ever remember me doing before. The morning after was really, really hard. At first I thought I
had just inexplicably gone from perfectly lucid to blackout drunk as a result of my weight,
and that that was why I couldn't remember anything and had this headache and nausea and brain fog. But
as my wife and I started piecing the night before together and arrived at the timeline
I just explained, we quickly established that that was obviously not the case. And there was a
lot of shame for me at that point. I felt so f*cking embarrassed and ashamed that I had let this happen
to me, that I was stupid enough to put myself in that position, that so many strangers had seen me
completely incapacitated and unable to function, that I had put my wife in a position to have to
come and get me and take care of me-- there was just so much shame. I wanted to curl up and die for that
alone, and I just so desperately wanted to forget that it happened and have everyone else forget too.
The last thing I would have considered at that point was making a goddamn storytime video
about it, but there are quite a few reasons that I changed my mind that I'll explain in a minute.
Anyway, the shame, as overwhelming as it was, was and still is nothing compared to the fear.
Like, I was already terrified of leaving my home because my PTSD has so deeply and thoroughly
infected my brain with the belief that doing so will lead to me being hurt or endangered, and the
first time in a long time that I forced myself to go out anyway to prove it wrong, I got roofied. It
immediately reaffirmed everything I was already afraid of, and I still don't know how I'm supposed
to get past that. I'm trying so hard to think about this rationally and recognize that what happened
will not happen every time I go out, but there are just no words to express the amount of pure
terror this whole thing has instilled in me. I think about it every time I open my door, I think
about it every time I have to go out for groceries, I think about it every time I turn down offers to
go out with friends. I am CONSTANTLY thinking about it, and it has made everything so much worse for
me long-term. And like I said, I wanted to forget that it ever happened; I didn't want people knowing
about it, because I didn't even want to know about it. But the more I kept thinking about it and
obsessing over it and talking it through with my wife, the more I realized that it's something more
people should know about, because being roofied, for a lot of people, is something that only happens to
other people. It only happens at crowded clubs or seedy bars, it's only done by outwardly creepy dudes
who LOOK creepy and dangerous, it's only done to girls dressed provocatively. But I was wearing a
normal sweater and shorts, I was in a very upscale restaurant, and the guy that I'm very sure did
it was the kind of well-dressed and well-groomed that made me think that he and his nice polo shirt
and expensive sunglasses probably drove a Porsche and made six figures. And I want as many people as
possible to look at that and this whole experience and realize that this can happen anywhere,
to anyone, and at the hands of anyone, even if where they are or how they're dressed or who they're
with makes it seem unlikely based on society's perception of how people end up getting drugged.
I want this to be talked about as much as possible, because I got really, really lucky: other than a lot
of shame and a lot of re-traumatizing, I was fine. I had a really bad headache, nausea, and brain fog
the day after, as well as an insane amount of muscle weakness and weird muscle spasms, but
I got away from the guy responsible and I got home safely. For a lot of people, that is not the case.
Much worse things could have happened to me, and much worse things DO happen to people everywhere
in this position, and I want to bring as much attention to that as I can, so that even one
person doesn't end up like that. Try not to go out alone, and if you do, don't ever leave your
drink unattended, even if you ask someone to watch it, because just like this b*tch bartender didn't
watch mine when she said she would, you just can't trust a stranger to do so. Always make sure someone
knows where you are if you're out alone, and when to expect you home or at least expect a text from
you, and if you're ever in a position like I was where you realize your drink was left unattended
and you think you're being too paranoid or it's just too unlikely that anything happened to it,
you're not being too paranoid. You're being just as paranoid as you should be, and you should err on
the side of caution and get another drink. Paying however much for a replacement is worth keeping
yourself safe. And I guess that's really all there is to say here; this was a horrible experience that
I wish iId been smart enough to avoid, and I still hate myself and berate myself for not doing so.
Please take this storytime as a reminder to do everything in your power to stay careful and safe,
even when your circumstances or environment seems safe enough that carefulness is unnecessary.
It's not. There is no such thing as too careful. And I don't mean to be fearmongering or suggesting
that you should all stay inside forever like I do, because that's obviously not a solution, and you
shouldn't NOT live your life how you want to just because some things are dangerous or risky. I just
mean that whenever possible, be more careful about doing those things than you think you need to be,
because it might be more necessary than you think it is. Anyway, that's it for this video. Thank you
for watching, and special thank you as always to channel members Cafe Soleil, Joseph Solomon,
Unknown Code, Abyss Reborn, Dalth, and Lucian Is Apa, as well as patrons Batman, Kyle Low, blueswanson,
thisistotallymyname, Uni Tea, Cora Feere, Jamesha Walker, and ShiromeArtiste for their support. I
hope you enjoyed today's video-- actually, I kind of hope you didn't, all considered, but
whatever. Please leave a like and subscribe if you did, and I'll see you in my next one!