Hi Tom,

No, your DID can not simply disappear. All the posts I've read here offer sound advice. I think I know some of what you may be feeling. I don't know you, so I can't know everything, but I've had my alters stop talking and everything go quiet and felt the same doubts and feelings you describe MORE THAN ONCE in my 3 years of therapy for DID. I know what it is like to feel like you are going crazy. You are not. I know what it is like to feel scared when this happens. I know what it is like to want to give up. What you describe you are experiencing is not uncommon in patients with DID. Only a professional, a therapist who understands and believes in DID, can help you discover what is causing your alters to be silent or you to be unable to hear them, etc. Yes, you do need to deal with your substance abuse issues. In my own personal experience, I have worked through, with my psychologist, long stretches of silence, fears of being psychotic, feelings of confusing dreams with reality, feelings of denial, wanting to give up, doubt, etc. more than once. It is a part of the process of healing from what I have read in the literature and been told by my therapist, for some DID patients to move back and forth between stages of treatment rather than to progress directly from one stage to another. I urge you not to give up. I know how hard it is to fight, but you are stronger than you think because you are a survivor. It DOES get easier. For me, I learned from the silences and found they happened less and less, but I needed help and support from my psychologist and anyone else I could get support from, real support, unconditional love. I accepted from the beginning that it would be a long, hard road toward recovery, and still I have relapses, but I always remember that, "This too shall pass." Give yourself lots of love, you deserve it. Fight the negative thoughts that don't belong to you but that you were made to believe. Replace every negative thought with a positive thought. It has helped me, and there are many other ways to help yourself get through this, but you must get back into therapy and get help with your substance abuse. You NEED support. Everyone needs support. Some of us grew up thinking we didn't deserve support or not knowing how to ask for help. Your alters need you. If they are like mine, they need love, lots of love and hugs and understanding. I'm only just understanding now that they all have different ways of thinking about the world and need to learn how to agree to disagree, some progress faster than others at learning how to live in the present, and sometimes alters get confused, have trust issues, need to learn boundaries and so much more. For everyone it is different. I can't know you or your alters, but I can feel empathy for what you are experiencing. My heart goes out to you. You can do this. You are not hateful. You may FEEL hateful. You need help to understand this. I felt extreme self-loathing up until not too long ago, and I'm still a work in progress but I can be happy now as I heal. You can too. Hope this, in some way, helps.