Life can get pretty dull from time to time, so it’s nice to be reminded that we can get surprised once in a while.

And that’s not always a good thing.

AskReddit users talked about what they thought people exaggerated until they experienced it themselves.

Check out what they had to say.

Lost in a fog.

“Brain fog.

I had an alcohol withdrawal seizure in March. My short term memory and sense of time are absolutely **** right now.

On the plus side, I haven’t had a drink in over 90 days and I don’t want one.”

Bad for you.

“How much stress can mess you up physically.

When I was a kid, my mum had a horrendous job in a call centre that made her so stressed she could barely get out of bed on her days off and was plagued by a mysterious “allergy” the doctors couldn’t figure out.

I figured it was depression at the time but as an adult, I know it was literally stress because then it happened to me.

My last job messed up my wages and left me with pretty much nothing for food and bills after my rent for about 2 months, I got so stressed out I shed almost all the skin in my mouth/lips, had shooting pains in my arms, my skin broke out, my nails became really brittle.

I was constantly nauseas and really gassy/bloated with no appetite, chest pains so bad I was sure it was a heart attack…and then like the day after the next pay day, I suddenly felt pretty much fine because I wasn’t (as) stressed any more.

That was in April and by mid-May I was 99% back to normal (my jacked up nails are still a little janky but they grow slow).

Sleepless nights.

“Oh, what I would give to not have insomnia! I go through periods of sleeping more or less normal, and then for seemingly no reason, I’ll have weeks on end where a good night of sleep is IMPOSSIBLE.

I’ll get 2-4 hours of sleep despite pills, tea, baths, white noise, meditation – everything. I’ll spend my days so deeply, utterly exhausted that I can barely think, and my whole body feels heavy, lifeless.

It’s hard to feel any kind of emotion, let alone happiness or contentedness. Just existing as a human shaped puddle until the time when I can go to bed and hope to god that tonight will be different for some unknown reason.

Insomnia is a real nightmare. It will tank your mental health and send you spiraling real fast.”

Jeez…

“Hot Flashes.

I didn’t think they were this bad.

I’m a 31 year old man who took Wellbutrin for the past month and hot flashes are a side effect.

I thought you just thought you were hot. No, you really are.

You’re super hot legitimately, and you have to do something about it or you’ll go insane.

It’s not in your head. It’s your brain raising your temps until you can’t focus on anything else.”

Awful.

“You know that grief you see in dramatic movies when someone gets horrible news via a phone call and just crumples to the floor wailing

Always felt like melodrama to me.

Until I got the call that there had been an accident and my dad had ****.”

Feelin’ it!

“How great home-grown fruits and vegetables are. I figured that was just gardener talk justifying their time-consuming hobby.

Then I bought a house where the previous owner had a vegetable garden and orchard. That spring I saw these things coming up out of the ground and thought “is that asparagus?”. Cut them and cooked them and they were incredible Then, the plums ripened.

I never even liked plums but I thought I’d try one so I pulled it off the tree and bit into it – “well, that’s not bad. Pretty juicy” (fresh picked fruit is far juicier than the stuff in stores). So anyway I ate another plum and then another and the next thing I know I’ve been standing there eating plums for like five minutes and the juice is literally – I mean literally – running down my arms and dripping off my elbows.

And those hard and sour strawberries you buy in stores are nothing like soft sweet strawberries slightly warm from the sun that never make it into the house because you just sit in the garden eating them as fast as you pick them. And of course… tomatoes.

OMG.

Once you start growing your own you will never be able to buy another one in a supermarket.”

Debilitating.

“Honestly, addiction.

When I was in junior high my dad had an injury at work that ultimately resulted in a pretty bad opiate addiction.

I didn’t understand how someone could prioritize a pill to such an extent or how awful they could be if they didn’t have it.

And then I grew into a person with crippling anxiety who discovered Xanax. The rest is a decade-long story of how I learned empathy and a lot of other hard lessons.

But to have been so naive…”

Scary stuff.

“Panic attacks.

Like, don’t get me wrong, I knew it was serious, but I didn’t understand the depth of how awful it feels and how 100% it feels as real as any other panic.

Only happened to me one time and it felt like that moment before you get hit with a baseball bat. For like an hour.”

Yikes.

“Sleep paralysis.

I really legitimately thought I was going to ***. My retina were burnt in a way where I couldnt even close my eyes or look away from the impending doom.

I felt slimy blood come out of my ears as my tinnitus got progressively louder. A creature was slowly advancing, my chest compressed.

All until it suddenly went away and i regained control of myself.”

You gotta do it.

“Honestly, how hard it is for someone to leave a toxic relationship.

When I was younger I used to think yeah no way if ever let someone treat me like that, no way! But it’s like you have blinders on when you’re in that situation.

Almost like you can’t see what everyone else sees and when they try to tell you, it just rolls off you like water. It leaves you feeling mildly uncomfortable for a bit, but you give it long enough and it goes away.

Even when you start noticing the lies piling up, start admitting to yourself that maybe you’re being abused, catching the slips of their infidelity left and right…I lost a few friends that tried to tell me what was going on before it was suddenly like my head was above the water. I was awake!

And almost hypocritally I still look back at myself and think why didn’t I just leave sooner!”

Wet and wild.

“I skinny dipped in Lake Michigan on a backpack trip.

There was a light breeze and I had left my suit/towel back at base camp but couldn’t pass up the opportunity to get in the water on such a beautiful night.

The breeze quickly dried me off and I could put my warm clothes back on in less than 2 minutes out of the water. It was glorious. I didn’t realize how annoying wet swim suits are until then.”

The worst.

“The passing away of a pet.

I knew it would be horrible, but I thought it was just a few weeks of grieving. I lost one of my cats to illness, and I didn’t even cry.

I was in so much shock, nothing felt real, and even to this day I still start to choke up when I think about her.”

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