Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai has revealed that smoking weed once triggered terrifying flashbacks of the Taliban attack that nearly killed her. In a personal account published by The Guardian, Malala described how using marijuana at Oxford University brought back vivid memories of the day she was shot in the head in Pakistan’s Swat Valley.
She said it all began when she joined a few friends at a student hangout known as “the shack.” Someone offered her a bong , and she decided to try it. “It felt cool and grown-up to blow smoke in the air,” she said, admitting it wasn’t her first time around people smoking weed.
But soon after inhaling, her body froze. “My legs locked up, my body turned to stone. My brain was sending signals into a void,” she recalled. As she began to lose control of her body, she said she suddenly found herself reliving the day of the shooting. “Suddenly I was 15 again. My school bus. A man with a gun. Blood everywhere. My body carried through a crowded street. My father rushing toward the stretcher.”
Malala described how she collapsed and was helped back to her friend’s dorm, where she suffered hours of panic, vomiting, and flashbacks. “Every time I closed my eyes, the slideshow began again -- bus, man, gun, blood,” she said.
Her friend Anisa told her not to go to the hospital, warning that “it stays in your blood.” Malala wrote that she spent the night shaking and screaming, terrified to fall asleep because she feared she would “never wake up.”
In the morning, she realised the experience had unlocked memories she thought she had lost. “People always asked me what I remembered of the shooting,” she said. “I told them my brain just erased it. But now I know it wasn’t true. I had seen it all.”
Reflecting on the episode, Malala said it made her realise how trauma can linger long after the body heals. “It stays in your blood,” she wrote. “All these years later, it was still there -- waiting.”
She said it all began when she joined a few friends at a student hangout known as “the shack.” Someone offered her a bong , and she decided to try it. “It felt cool and grown-up to blow smoke in the air,” she said, admitting it wasn’t her first time around people smoking weed.
But soon after inhaling, her body froze. “My legs locked up, my body turned to stone. My brain was sending signals into a void,” she recalled. As she began to lose control of her body, she said she suddenly found herself reliving the day of the shooting. “Suddenly I was 15 again. My school bus. A man with a gun. Blood everywhere. My body carried through a crowded street. My father rushing toward the stretcher.”
Malala described how she collapsed and was helped back to her friend’s dorm, where she suffered hours of panic, vomiting, and flashbacks. “Every time I closed my eyes, the slideshow began again -- bus, man, gun, blood,” she said.
Her friend Anisa told her not to go to the hospital, warning that “it stays in your blood.” Malala wrote that she spent the night shaking and screaming, terrified to fall asleep because she feared she would “never wake up.”
In the morning, she realised the experience had unlocked memories she thought she had lost. “People always asked me what I remembered of the shooting,” she said. “I told them my brain just erased it. But now I know it wasn’t true. I had seen it all.”
Reflecting on the episode, Malala said it made her realise how trauma can linger long after the body heals. “It stays in your blood,” she wrote. “All these years later, it was still there -- waiting.”
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