For years, Malala Yousafzai could not remember the traumatic event when a masked Taliban gunman shot her in the head while she was on a school bus in Pakistan.

The forgotten memories suddenly returned when she first tried cannabis at Oxford University, according to the renowned female rights activist.

Malala was just 15 when she was targeted in her home town, in Swat Valley, because she had spoken out about her right to access education.

Despite surviving the attack, Malala was left in a coma and suffered from severe injuries, including a damaged facial nerve, a shattered eardrum, and a broken jaw, which required multiple surgeries over the years.

The specific details of the terrifying incident, from being critically transported to a hospital to eventually being flown to Birmingham for advanced care, had been wiped from her memory.

However, in her upcoming second memoir, Finding My Way, the 28-year-old shares that her first experience with cannabis brought back a surge of repressed memories.

This revelation was overwhelming for Malala, who at the time was dealing with the emotional aftermath of the attack, an ordeal that resurfaced the challenges she faced even as the youngest recipient of the Nobel Prize.

Malala had been encouraged by friends that night to smoke cannabis from the bong, a type of water pipe, which had been set up inside a shed within the grounds of Lady Margaret Hall.

But as she left afterwards, she collapsed and had to be carried back to her room.

Her mind filled with images of the gun, blood and being carried through the crowds towards a waiting ambulance. 

Speaking to The Guardian, Malala said: ‘I had never felt so close to the attack as then, in that moment,’ she said.

‘I felt like I was reliving all of it, and there was a time when I just thought I was in the afterlife.’

Malala revealed she found it hard to tell her concerned parents and friends about the flashbacks and how it had affected her mental health, because she believed her persona was about being ‘brave’, having survived a gunman. 

But then the physical impacts took over – she began sweating and shaking. Her heart was beating faster and she was suffering panic attacks. 

The activist struggled to reconcile how she had gathered the strength to recover from an assassination attempt, but now everyday tasks had become a struggle. With the help of a therapist, she finally found a way forward again.

‘I thought nothing could scare me, nothing…and then I was scared of small things, and that just broke me.’

Malala has since found rebalance in her life and continues her advocacy work. 

She married Asser Malik, a cricket executive, in 2021, and is the executive chair of the Malala Fund, which campaigns for girls’ education around the world.