World of the Bizarre

37-year-old wakes up believing that he's 16

By T.K. Randall
July 27, 2021

Image: Inside My Head (illustrative)
Credit: Andrew Mason / CC BY 2.0 (adapted) When he awoke one morning in July last year, Daniel had suffered an episode of amnesia so extreme that he had completely forgotten everything that had happened to him over the last two decades.

Believing that he was 16 and due to go to school, he was shocked to discover that he was lying next to a strange woman and when he looked in the mirror, an unfamiliar face looked back at him.

In reality, the woman was his wife, he was 37 years old and he even had a 10-year-old daughter.

"He woke up one morning and just had no idea who I was or where he was," said his wife, Ruth. "He was very confused. I could tell he didn't recognize the room.""He thought he was either drunk and gone home with a woman or that he'd been kidnapped. I could see him looking for an escape route."

Doctors eventually diagnosed him with Transient Global Amnesia - a form of short-term memory loss that can occur very suddenly.

Fortunately Daniel started to recall details of his life within 24 hours, however much of what had happened to him over the last 20 years never returned.

He ended up having to quit his job because he could no longer remember any of his training.

"It was like his brain just said it didn't want to do it anymore and just swiped 20 years of memories," said Ruth. "I knew that when people have been through trauma that they can lose their memory of it but I didn't know it could cause 20 years of memory loss."

Source: Oddity Central

Tags: Amnesia