Malala reveals she experienced shooting flashbacks after smoking weed at university

Nobel laureate and women’s rights activist Malala Yousafzai revealed that she once smoked weed with her friends during her university years, an experience that unexpectedly brought back traumatic flashbacks of the day she was shot in Swat and the painful ordeal that followed.

An extract from her new memoir, published by The Guardian, describes the deeply unsettling moment when Malala relived her trauma after taking her first few puffs of weed at the insistence of her friends. She recalled coughing after her first inhale but said she managed better the second time.

As her friends continued chatting, Malala shared that she suddenly became “zoned out.” Her body froze, and vivid flashbacks of the attack began to surface. She described seeing the gunman, the school bus, and the blood, memories of that horrifying day she was shot by the terrorists in 2012.

Malala said she relived the entire trauma, from her time in the hospital to the moments when she struggled to breathe during painful treatments.

"Suddenly I was 15 years old again, lying on my back under a white sheet; a tube running down my throat, eyes closed. For seven days, as doctors tended to my wounds, I was in a coma. From the outside, I looked to be in a deep sleep. But, inside, my mind was awake, and it played a slideshow of recent events:

My school bus.

A man with a gun.

Blood everywhere.

My body carried through a crowded street. Strangers hunched over me, yelling things I didn’t understand.

My father rushing toward the stretcher to take my hand.

As the images repeated in the same sequence over and over, I raged against them, trying to beat them away. This isn’t true! I told myself. The real Malala is the one trapped in this nightmare, not the girl on the stretcher. Just wake up and it will stop. Wake up!"

She added that the episode lasted for hours, leaving her detached and disoriented. Around 1 am, she and her friend Anisa began walking back to their university dorm. Still under the drug’s effect, Malala described herself as “collapsing” and unable to walk properly while the flashbacks kept replaying in her mind.

Her friend carried her to her room, where she remained in a dazed state for the rest of the night, trapped in the nightmare of those resurfaced memories.

The next morning, Malala said she was still affected, physically weak and mentally drained. She struggled to walk and avoided interacting with others. She recalled that after the attack years earlier, she had no memory of what happened immediately afterward and only regained consciousness once she was in Birmingham for treatment.

Reflecting on the experience, Malala said she realised that she had not truly forgotten her ordeal, she had only buried it deep within her mind.

"People always asked me what I remembered of the shooting. “My brain just erased it,” I told them. “One moment I was at school and the next I woke up in Birmingham.” I told myself that same story over and over – but now, I knew it wasn’t true. I had seen it all, and the memories were still lurking in my brain, years later. What had Anisa said?"